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CEO Picks - The best that international journalism has to offer!  S45S4Practicing Yoga Can Help Prevent Alzheimer's Disease - Discover Magazine (No paywall)   But a new study from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) suggests yoga can be a potent ally in preserving cognitive function — especially if it involves a variety of activities like meditation, breathwork, mudras (shapes or positions made with the fingers), and chanting, all found in Kundalini.Anti-inflammatory and anti-aging benefits: Blood tests revealed increased gene expression associated with reducing inflammation and slowing aging processes — namely, improved peripheral cytokine activity or signaling proteins within the immune system. Better cytokine activity suggests a healthier immune response, which is particularly relevant in conditions like Alzheimer's disease, which research has associated with systemic inflammation.
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S65 simple things you can do to live more sustainably - Environment (No paywall)  It feels unfair to be asked to change your day-to-day life to solve what is, by all scientific accounts, a global environmental crisis, especially when fossil fuel emissions continue unabated and celebrities famously take private planes to cross distances they could easily drive. I get it—it’s exhausting.But if you’re like me and the state of our planet sends you into a mental tailspin, I’ve found that mindfully tending to your little slice of Earth can help keep that existential dread at bay. You, individually, can’t stop sea levels from rising, but you, individually, can provide a small backyard refuge for endangered monarch butterflies by planting a few milkweed bulbs. How sweet is that?
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S20Latino-Owned Businesses Are Booming, But Access to Funding Remains a Challenge  According to the ninth annual State of Latino Entrepreneurship report, released today from the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative, Latino-owned businesses contribute more than $800 billion to the U.S. economy. And Latinos are starting new businesses at rapid rates: between 2007 and 2022, the report found, there was a 57 percent increase in Latino-owned businesses, compared to a 5 percent increase in the number of White-owned businesses. Latina business owners are "most impacted" by ongoing gaps, says Barbara Gomez-Aguinaga, associate director of the SLEI. According to the report, Latino-owned businesses generate 51 percent more revenue than Latina-owned businesses. While Latina business owners are actively seeking financing, Gomez-Aguinaga says, they receive the lowest loan approval rates (39 percent) from both local and national banks. White female business owners, in contrast, have 55 percent approval rates from local banks and 65 percent from national banks, while White men are at 60 percent from national banks and 67 percent from local banks. Â
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S7One big problem with how we rank countries by happiness  Believe it or not, it typically comes down to one question. The pollsters use something called the Cantril Ladder. They ask: “Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you, and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?”When I first did this exercise, I said my life is a seven out of 10. But behind this answer was a more complicated truth. I’d initially thought about rating my life a six. Yet there was a voice tugging at me, from my years of reporting on people living in extreme poverty. Compared to their lives, I figured mine was probably pretty easy. So I bumped up my rating."As decades of evidence demonstrate, happiness often comes not from comparing ourselves to others, but through connection with them, something that might be missing from some of the [World Happiness] report's key variables," Jamil Zaki, a Stanford psychologist, noted. "As such, it's ironic that many headlines about the report have focused on how countries 'rank' in happiness, reinforcing a competitive view that might be part of why we find it so hard to be happy in the first place!"
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S9Inside the Creation of the Worldâs Most Powerful Open Source AI Model - WIRED (No paywall)  This past Monday, about a dozen engineers and executives at data science and AI company Databricks gathered in conference rooms connected via Zoom to learn if they had succeeded in building a top artificial intelligence language model. The team had spent months, and about $10 million, training DBRX, a large language model similar in design to the one behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT. But they wouldn’t know how powerful their creation was until results came back from the final tests of its abilities.“We’ve surpassed everything,” Jonathan Frankle, chief neural network architect at Databricks and leader of the team that built DBRX, eventually told the team, which responded with whoops, cheers, and applause emojis. Frankle usually steers clear of caffeine but was taking sips of iced latte after pulling an all-nighter to write up the results.
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S19TikTok Talks With FTC Near End as Chinese Sellers Complain About Crackdown  The U.S. Federal Trade Commission could resolve its investigation into Chinese-owned short video app TikTok over allegedly faulty privacy and data security practices by either filing suit or reaching a settlement in the coming weeks, a source told Reuters. Politico earlier reported the potential FTC action on Tuesday, citing people with direct knowledge of the matter. The FTC and TikTok declined to comment. The Justice Department did not immediately comment.Â
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S22What a New York City Business is Doing About Viral Violence  This week, violence against women in New York City has gone viral on TikTok. After multiple women reported being punched while walking around midtown and downtown Manhattan in broad daylight, a local business intends to help them stay safe.One TikTok influencer, who goes by Halley Kate on the app, posted a video on March 25 saying she was "punched in the face" by a random man near Chelsea; in tears, she showed a large bump on her head. The video now has more than 42 million views. Another user by the name of Mikayla posted a video--which now has 11 million views--a day later, saying a man hit her in the face on her walk home from class at Parsons School of Design. A user named Kendall shared a video on March 27 reporting a similar altercation after walking in Times Square with coworkers and showed a goose-egg lump on her forehead that she says resulted from the attack. More videos populated the app throughout the day and users flooded comments sections, recalling similar instances.
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S25When a Top Performer Is Treating Colleagues Badly  In this episode, the former dean of Harvard Business School Nitin Nohria discusses the classic case study, “Rob Parson at Morgan Stanley.” He breaks down the issues at the heart of the case—including the questions it raises about managers’ accountability for their employees’ behavior.
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S42Mucus Saves Your Life Every Day  The slimy substance is so powerful that doctors once made hog stomach mucus milkshakes to treat ulcers.Christopher Intagliata: One of the most crucial discoveries in 20th-century medicine may not have happened when it did if not for some snot on a petri dish.
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S21Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman  A psychologist by training, Kahneman was best known for his 2011 book Thinking, Fast and Slow, which asserted that fast thinking is emotional and intuitive, while slow thinking is analytical. Kahneman and a colleague, the psychologist Amos Tversky, pioneered a field that came to be known as behavioral economics starting in the 1970s. They argued that people are not purely rational actors and that biases--mental "kinks" as Kahneman called them--can influence economic decision-making. That can lead to bad bets on the stock market, hiring the wrong people based on job interviews, or excessive optimism when planning the timeline for a project.In a 2014 interview with Inc., Kahneman emphasized that entrepreneurs should not go with their fast-thinking gut, but should look to data to inform their decision-making. "Experts tend to be overconfident, so they make predictions they have no business making," Kahneman said. A formula, on the other hand, will not incorporate assumptions or biases in place of missing data.
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S41How to Improve a Meeting (When You're Not in Charge)  Research shows that many employees find meetings ineffective, inefficient, or unproductive, but unless you work in a psychologically safe environment, where candor is encouraged, you’re unlikely to raise your hand and speak up about what’s wrong — especially if you’re not the person running the meeting. The authors have identified a series of interventions that anyone can use:
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S28Why Isn't Your Strategy Sticking?  It’s insufficient to just share the goals and objectives of your strategy and hope implementation will succeed. In this article, the author explains how to shift from an operational to a contextual mindset so that you can better identify the hidden obstacles that may be thwarting your strategy’s implementation so you can address them before they take root.
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S8Does Long-Term Benadryl Use Increase Dementia Risk? - Scientific American (No paywall)  In the past few months TikTok videos about the over-the-counter antihistamine Benadryl have gone viral because of research suggesting that long-term use of the popular drug is associated with an increased risk of developing dementia. And similar effects on memory and cognition have also been suggested for dozens of other common medications.Benadryl is a brand-name medication that contains diphenhydramine, the active ingredient in many allergy, cold and anti-itch drugs. It can cause significant drowsiness and is also found in several sleep aids. Diphenhydramine has anticholinergic effects, meaning it blocks the action of a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine. Medical uses of anticholinergics go beyond allergy relief; drugs in this class have long been used as prescription tricyclic antidepressants and incontinence treatments, as well as over-the-counter sleep aids. But experts have been finding evidence that links anticholinergics to increased dementia risks. “That’s now clear, and we have plenty of data to back it up,” says Malaz Boustani, a geriatrician and neuroscientist at the Indiana University School of Medicine. He and other researchers are now trying to determine whether anticholinergics really are contributing to dementia development in any way—and if so, what exactly is happening in the brains of vulnerable adults.
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S10S11What Self-Awareness Really Is (and How to Cultivate It) - Harvard Business Review (No paywall)  Self-awareness seems to have become the latest management buzzword — and for good reason. Research suggests that when we see ourselves clearly, we are more confident and more creative. We make sounder decisions, build stronger relationships, and communicate more effectively. We’re less likely to lie, cheat, and steal. We are better workers who get more promotions. And we’re more-effective leaders with more-satisfied employees and more-profitable companies.
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S5NASA smashed an asteroid with a rocket. The debris could hit Mars. - National Geographic (No paywall)  In the future, if nothing is done to stop it, an asteroid not much larger than a football stadium will crash into the planet. Should it hit a city, it will annihilate it much like a non-radioactive nuclear bomb. There are 25,000 asteroids, roughly 460-feet long, like this zipping about in near-Earth space, and about 15,000 of them are yet to be found.One way to stop them from hitting Earth is to change their trajectory by crashing into them with a small spacecraft. In September 2022, to test this deflection technique, a van-size spacecraft slammed into a 525-foot-long (harmless) near-Earth asteroid named Dimorphos at 14,000 miles per hour—and in doing so, successfully shifted its orbit around a larger space rock named Didymos.
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S17Are electric vehicles really selling? And which countries are leading the way?  Electric cars tend to have a lower carbon footprint than petrol or diesel cars over their lifetimes. While more carbon is emitted in the manufacturing stage, this “carbon debt” tends to pay off quickly once they’re on the road.1 The carbon savings are higher in countries with a cleaner electricity mix, and these savings will also increase as countries continue to decarbonize their electricity grids.How quickly are countries moving to electrified transport? Which countries are leading the way?
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S18Lawsuit's Progress Against Coinbase Is a Big Win for the SEC  A federal judge in Manhattan on Wednesday said the U.S. securities regulator's lawsuit against Coinbase can move forward, but dismissed one claim the agency made against the largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange.While the decision is a partial win for Coinbase in what could be a lengthy and expensive court battle, it largely blesses the SEC's approach to cryptocurrency and agrees with other judges who have sided with the regulator.
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S23This Black Founder Is Bringing Top VC Investors With Him as He Tackles the Broken Consumer Debt Market  In 2016, Guy Assad, the 39-year co-founder and CEO of Clerkie, a San Francisco-based AI-powered financial planning platform, was working at McKinsey & Company when his father was diagnosed with cancer. Assad's three degrees, including a Stanford MBA, and his position at one of the world's leading management consulting firms didn't prepare him for handling the debt his family amassed from his father's illness. Guy Assad Sr. had been a civil engineer in Haiti, where he built roads and housing for the poor. Â "That was my first experience with dealing with debt in the U.S.," Assad says. "I was dealing with the grief of my father dying but also figuring out how to deal with the money side of it. We had these medical debts, and you have to pay those off and then you have to deal with collections companies after settling with them. You don't know who's calling you to collect or if it's fraud or not."
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S26The Key to Preserving a Long-Term Competitive Advantage  Howard Yu, Lego Professor of Management and Innovation at IMD Business School in Switzerland, discusses how this industrial cluster is a unique example of enduring competitive advantage. He explains how these companies offer a counter-narrative to the pessimistic view that you can’t stay ahead of the competition for long.
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S3Jane Fonda Champions Climate Action for Every Generation  Jane Fonda, at 86, is small-boned and elegant, her eyes like soft blue-gray flannel. Yet it’s startling how much energy shoots through her via a simple handshake: if a woodland creature could shake your hand, it might feel like this, the will of an entire forest ecosystem pouring through one being. She’s physically strong, sitting up straight and tall for more than an hour on a backless ottoman, perched before a cozy sitting-room fireplace in her Los Angeles town house. But the message telegraphed by her handshake is less a matter of muscle tone than of pure urgency. If you could put it into words, it would be this: There’s not much time left.Fonda has already lived many lives. The daughter of a much loved actor and a socialite, Henry Fonda and Frances Ford Seymour, she has built an astonishing acting career herself: In the space of just a few years, she shifted from the campy delights of Barbarella to career-defining performances in Klute and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? Younger audiences know her from the Book Club movies and the hit TV series Grace and Frankie. And although it’s now common for actors to support causes they care about, vocally and financially, Fonda is the OG actor-activist. In the early 1970s she supported Native American causes and spoke out on behalf of the Black Panthers. She’s fought for civil rights and issues directly affecting women’s welfare, though she may be best known for her anti–Vietnam War stance in the 1970s—in particular, a photograph of her perched on an anti-aircraft gun taken during a 1972 trip to Hanoi. Fonda has apologized repeatedly and profusely over the years for that photo, knowing how hurtful it was to GIs and veterans. She knows what it’s like to be embattled, and to go to battle for principles she believes in. But in 2019 Fonda had a breakthrough that, as she describes it, was bigger than any revelation she’s had in decades of both acting and activism.
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S37Our Favorite Garmin Smartwatches Are on Sale ![]() to celebrate the start of the spring season, Garmin is holding a sale on various gadgets and accessoriesâincluding a few WIRED-approved smartwatches. Whether you're a novice runner or a seasoned hiker, we're confident that at least one of the discounted smartwatches below will make the perfect companion for your next outdoor adventure.These deals aren't just at Garmin eitherâwe've also linked to other retailers like Amazon and Target. Don't see anything you like here? Check out our buying guides, like the Best Fitness Trackers, the Best Sleep Trackers, or the Best Camping Tents.
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S12Smaller Businesses Looking to Human Workers, Not AI, to Boost Productivity - Inc.com (No paywall)  Just 8 percent of U.S. private company leaders in a new Deloitte survey say that A.I. is currently boosting their organization's productivity. And the smaller companies in the survey were even less likely to say they were prioritizing investments in "advanced technology," like A.I, to boost productivity in the next year: Just 16 percent of companies with annual revenues under $500 million planned to lean on A.I. versus 44 percent of companies with revenues north of that threshold.Instead, those smaller companies aim to use their talent more effectively, ranking "reskilling and upskilling existing employees" as their top priority for driving increased results. Even among larger companies---more interested in prioritizing A.I.--hiring qualified or skilled talent is still their main productivity play.
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S44Viral Genetics Confirms What On-the-Ground Activists Knew Early in the Mpox Outbreak  Monkeypox Virus Colorized transmission electron micrograph of monkeypox particles found within an infected cell , cultured in the laboratory. Image captured and color-enhanced at the NIAID Integrated Research Facility (IRF) in Fort Detrick, Maryland.In June 2022 I sat shaking my head as I heard from senior U.S. government officials that mpox (then monkeypox) was under control. At the time, my dear friend back home in New York, to whom I’d spoken on the phone, had mpox.
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S13Which country will be last to escape inflation? - The Economist (No paywall)  To get a view of the various battlefields, we have updated our measure of “inflation entrenchment” for ten rich countries. The measure comprises five indicators: core inflation, unit labour costs, “inflation dispersion”, inflation expectations and Google-search behaviour. We rank each country on each indicator, then combine the rankings in order to form an overall score.The results are better than in November, when we last conducted the exercise. They also reveal a linguistic divide. Countries in the eu and Asia perform well; in the English-speaking world, inflation is taking longer to fade. Australia tops the ranking. Britain and Canada are not far behind. America is doing better, but even there inflation remains entrenched.
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S154 essential tactics for honing your leadership language  Every leader wants to give that speech. With victory all but out of reach, they want their words to rouse the team’s emotions and inspire them to overcome the the odds. You can practically hear the music swelling just thinking about it. Such speeches make for storybook moments, but how a leader uses language in everyday situations can be just as, if not more, powerful. As Wharton School marketing professor Jonah Berger tells Big Think, “The most fascinating thing I’ve found from the work that we and others have done is that subtle shifts can have such a big impact.”
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S16How Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping define democracy  Shortly after Xi Jinping was reelected as China’s head of state in 2022 — by a vote of 2,950 to zero — the Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang criticized U.S. President Joe Biden for contextualizing the event as part of a battle between Western democracies and non-Western autocracies. Gang proclaimed that China, alongside Vladimir Putin’s Russia, was “committed to promoting a multipolar world and greater democracy in international relations.”Neither politician can be taken at their word, though. Gang’s career is predicated on his loyalty to Xi, for which he was rewarded a promotion to state councilor. Meanwhile, Biden hopes to imbue his reelection campaign against Donald Trump with a sense of existential dread. Motivated by the politics of their respective countries, neither is telling the full story.
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S24What Demographics Forms Say About Inclusivity at Your Company  For members of minority groups, finding their identity omitted in an organization’s demographics forms can make them question whether their identity is valued and respected by that organization. The seemingly mundane choices companies make when designing demographics forms — such as those used in job applications or employee engagement surveys — can have relatively major implications. Decision makers may not recognize these implications, though. In this article, the authors summarize recent research on identity omission in demographics forms and offer two low-cost, low-risk suggestions for how organizations can boost the inclusivity of the demographics forms they use.
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S27Creating a Corporate Social Responsibility Program with Real Impact  Exploring the critical role of experimentation in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), research on four multinational companies reveals a stark difference in CSR effectiveness. Successful companies integrate an experimental approach, constantly adapting their CSR practices based on local feedback and knowledge. This strategy fosters genuine community engagement and responsive initiatives, as seen in a mining company’s impactful HIV/AIDS program. Conversely, companies that rely on standardized, inflexible CSR methods often fail to achieve their goals, demonstrated by a failed partnership due to local corruption in another mining company. The study recommends encouraging broad employee participation in CSR and fostering a culture that values CSR’s long-term business benefits. It also suggests that sustainable investors and ESG rating agencies should focus on assessing companies’ experimental approaches to CSR, going beyond current practices to examine the involvement of diverse employees in both developing and adapting CSR initiatives. Overall, embracing a dynamic, data-driven approach to CSR is essential for meaningful social and environmental impact.
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S43How Visually Impaired People Can Experience Solar Eclipses  Scientists have created a guide to the 2024 total solar eclipse for the visually impaired that includes tactile graphicsThis combination of pictures created on December 14, 2020 shows the different stages of the total solar eclipse as seen from Piedra del Aquila, Neuquen province, Argentina on December 14, 2020.
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S50First-Ever Magnetic Map of Milky Way's Black Hole Reveals a Mystery  Polarized light from Sagittarius A*, our galaxy’s supermassive black hole, shows swirling magnetic fields that may hint at the presence of an unseen jetThe Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, who produced the first ever image of our Milky Way black hole released in 2022, has captured a new view of the massive object at the center of our Galaxy: how it looks in polarized light. This is the first time astronomers have been able to measure polarization, a signature of magnetic fields, this close to the edge of Sagittarius A*. This image shows the polarized view of the Milky Way black hole. The lines mark the orientation of polarization, which is related to the magnetic field around the shadow of the black hole.
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S39Online Conspiracies About the Baltimore Bridge Collapse Are Out of Control ![]() Conspiracists and far-right extremists are blaming just about everything and everyone for Tuesday morning's Baltimore bridge collapse.A non-exhaustive list of things that are getting blamed for the bridge collapse on Telegram and X include President Biden, Hamas, ISIS, P. Diddy, Nickelodeon, India, former president Barack Obama, Islam, aliens, Sri Lanka, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, Wokeness, Ukraine, foreign aid, the CIA, Jewish people, Israel, Russia, China, Iran, Covid vaccines, DEI, immigrants, Black people, and lockdowns.
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S40The Baltimore Bridge Collapse Is About to Get Even Messier ![]() In the early hours of Tuesday morning, the global supply chain and US coastal infrastructure collided in the worst possible way. An enormous container ship, the Dali, slammed into a support of the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore, crumpling its central span into the Patapsco River and cutting off the city's port from the Atlantic Ocean. Eighteen hours later, at approximately 7:30 pm Tuesday evening, rescuers called off a search, with six missing people presumed dead.With the wreckage yet to be cleared, the Port of Baltimoreâa critical shipping hubâhas suspended all water traffic, according to the Maryland Port Administration, though trucks are still moving goods in and out of the area. Baltimore is the ninth busiest port in the US for international trade, meaning the effects of the crash will ripple across the regional, US, and even global economy for however long the 47-year-old bridge takes to fixâa timeline, experts say, that's still unclear.
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S30ByteDance shuts down its WhatsApp clone in Africa  ByteDance has shut down LetsChat, an app that was once considered a rival to WhatsApp and Telegram in Africa.The Chinese tech giant pulled the plug on LetsChat on March 23, according to a note on its website. “Logged-in users will no longer be able to log in again,” the note said. “All reward tasks will stop and completed tasks will be distributed in [the] form of credit. Please pay attention to the balance in your wallet.” LetsChat was removed from various app stores on February 26, according to the statement.
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S31The Deaths of Effective Altruism ![]() I'm fond of effective altruists. When you meet one, ask them how many people they've killed.Effective altruism is the philosophy of Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto wunderkind due to be sentenced tomorrow for fraud and money laundering. Elon Musk has said that EA is close to what he believes. Facebook mogul Dustin Moskovitz and Skype cofounder Jaan Tallinn have spent mega-millions on its causes, and EAs have made major moves to influence American politics. In 2021, EA boasted of $46 billion in fundingâcomparable to what it's estimated the Saudis spent over decades to spread Islamic fundamentalism around the world.
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S47Does Long-Term Benadryl Use Increase Dementia Risk? Benadryl, which contains diphenhydramine, is a drugstore mainstay and just one medication out of many that could possibly damage brain healthIn the past few months TikTok videos about the over-the-counter antihistamine Benadryl have gone viral because of research suggesting that long-term use of the popular drug is associated with an increased risk of developing dementia. And similar effects on memory and cognition have also been suggested for dozens of other common medications.
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S46How Animal Brains Tell Friends from Strangers  A small section of the mouse brain’s hippocampus uses specific neural codes to denote social familiarity and identityYou see a woman on the street who looks familiar—but you can’t remember how you know her. Your brain cannot attach any previous experiences to this person. Hours later, you suddenly recall the party at a friend’s house where you met her, and you realize who she is.
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S48'Uncertain,' a New Podcast Series on the Joys of Not Knowing  Does the word "uncertainty" make you nervous? Would you say it kinda describes the state of the world these days? Enter Uncertain, a new limited podcast series from Scientific American, that will change the way you think about that word.[CLIP: David Krakauer: So we actually enjoy, cognitively, not knowing, and we pay huge sums of money to not know things.]
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S14How ground-based astronomers overcome Earth's atmosphere  One of the most profoundly remarkable properties about our atmosphere is that it’s transparent to not only sunlight, but to starlight as well. As we turn our eyes skyward after the Sun goes down, a glittering tapestry of planets, stars, galaxies, and nebulae illuminates the heavens. If we want to view it, all we have to do is look with the proper tools.But our view of what’s out there, from here on Earth, is limited in ways we rarely think about. Even on a cloudless night, any light coming to us from space must pass through over 100 kilometers (more than 60 miles) of atmosphere, which itself has continuous variations in density, temperature, and molecular composition. Any light coming in has to contend with the atmosphere, and even though the atmosphere is transparent, that light inevitably gets distorted.
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