The top 15 stories curated by editors and fellow readers!
From the Editor's Desk
America's Energy Divide: How Democrats and Republicans Feel on Energy Energy and climate issues have long been a point of division in American politics, with Democrats generally believing in investing in renewable energy sources while Republicans are more supportive of expanding energy production more broadly, including the use of fossil fuels and nuclear energy.
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WorkWorkThe Kremlin is close to crushing Pokrovsk, a vital Ukrainian town - The Economist (No paywall)This is not Nina Uvarova’s first evacuation. The first time, she fled the advancing Wehrmacht as a two-and-a-half-year-old. Now, aged 84, she is running from Vladimir Putin’s army. The retired teacher has packed her most valuable belongings into five bags, which her son lifts onto the 14.10 evacuation train to Lviv. The emotions of the day bring back memories of her first escape. “The explosions, the shooting, the hiding in basements, I still remember it all.” The decision to leave agonised her, but Russian artillery landing in Pokrovsk’s southern district left no choice.
WorkWorkQ&A: To Protect the Natural World, We Need to Put a Price on It - Harvard Business Review (No paywall)Sarah Kapnick, chief scientist at NOAA, tells HBR how the agency is developing scientific standards and low-cost technologies to measure and value natural ecosystems. Kapnick highlights the critical role of accurate environmental measurement in aiding businesses to understand their impacts, create new financial instruments, and enhance risk management. She discusses NOAA’s efforts to bridge the gap between scientific research and practical applications, the importance of international cooperation, and the growing involvement of the private sector in environmental monitoring.
WorkWorkUkraine to receive $125 million in US military aid: reportOn Thursday, an official within President Joe Biden's administration told the Associated Press (AP) that a new $125 million military aid package will include an array of defense systems including air defense missiles, ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), anti-armor missiles, counter-drone technology and Javelins.
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WorkAustralian court rules in case that asked 'what is a woman'?The Federal Court found that although Roxanne Tickle had not been directly discriminated against, she was a victim of indirect discrimination - which refers to when a decision disadvantages a person with a particular attribute - and ordered the app to pay her A$10,000 ($6,700; £5,100) plus costs. WorkThe trial of Lucy Letby has shocked British statisticians - The Economist (No paywall)It was “feeble”. It was “very unsatisfactory”. It was, in short, “terrible”. If you wish to annoy a statistician, ask them about the trial of Lucy Letby, a British nurse. Statisticians will, typically, take no view whatsoever on the guilt or otherwise of Ms Letby, who in August 2023 was found guilty of murdering seven very young babies in a hospital near Liverpool between 2015 and 2016, and given 15 life sentences without the chance of parole.
WorkConfessions of a Theoretical PhysicistI remember the day when, at the age of 7, I realized that I wanted to figure out how reality worked. My mother and father had just taken us shopping at a market in Calcutta. On the way back home, we passed through a dimly lit arcade where a sidewalk bookseller was displaying his collection of slim volumes. I spotted an enigmatic cover with a man looking through a microscope; the words “Famous Scientists” were emblazoned on it, and when I asked my parents to get it for me, they agreed. As I read the chapters, I learned about discoveries by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek of the world of microscopic life, by Marie Curie about radioactivity, by Albert Einstein about relativity, and I thought, “My God, I could do this, too!” By the time I was 8, I was convinced that everything could be explained, and that I, personally, was going to do it. WorkWhat's Really Going On in Machine Learning? Some Minimal ModelsIt’s surprising how little is known about the foundations of machine learning. Yes, from an engineering point of view, an immense amount has been figured out about how to build neural nets that do all kinds of impressive and sometimes almost magical things. But at a fundamental level we still don’t really know why neural nets “work”—and we don’t have any kind of “scientific big picture” of what’s going on inside them.
WorkWorkFast food has a Gen Z problem - Business Insider (No paywall)Gen Z diners surveyed by Morning Consult were less likely to say that they thought fast-food chains were a good value than all the older generations. Morning Consult collected the data in monthly polls over the course of this year and broke results down for other generations, including millennials, Gen X, and baby boomers.
WorkWork WorkBlue Origin Hits a Pair of Destructive Rocket Setbacks - Inc.com (No paywall)Blue Origin, the space startup founded in 2000 by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, has always been fairly secretive -- unlike its slightly younger rival SpaceX, many of Blue Origin's advances have happened behind closed doors and without fanfare. But reports say that even as Blue Origin is closing in on the first launch of its giant New Glenn rocket, a potential serious competitor to the SpaceX Falcon 9 spacecraft, several destructive accidents have hit the rocket production line. WorkCan Better Biotech Finally Replace Lab Animals? - Scientific American (No paywall)When it came time for Itzy Morales Pantoja to start her Ph.D. in cellular and molecular medicine, she chose a laboratory that used stem cells—not only animals—for its research. Morales Pantoja had just spent two years studying multiple sclerosis in mouse models. As an undergraduate, she’d been responsible for giving the animals painful injections to induce the disease and then observing as they lost their ability to move. She did her best to treat the mice gently, but she knew they were suffering. “As soon as I got close to them, they’d start peeing—a sign of stress,” she says. “They knew what was coming.” WorkThe Speech of Kamala Harris's Lifetime - The New Yorker (No paywall)The Chicks sang the national anthem. The actor Kerry Washington, who, like many of the women in Chicago's packed United Center, looked earnestly political in a suffragette-white outfit, guided Kamala Harris's pint-size grandnieces in a brilliant troll of Republicans who have refused to pronounce the Vice-President's name correctly. "Kama-la," they instructed, their tiny voices amplified by the roar of thousands. In the days and hours leading up to the speech of Harris's life, the Democrats featured John Legend, Stevie Wonder, even Oprah Winfrey. The singer-songwriter Pink sang her bittersweet hit ballad "What About Us." Eva Longoria, introduced as "actress, director, and philanthropist," extolled the nominee as a friend and led a chant: "She se puede!" Was there any crueller way to taunt the celebrity-obsessed former President than to emphasize the embarrassing glitz gap between the two parties in this most consequential of election years? The entertainers headlining Donald Trump's final night at the Republican Convention were Kid Rock and Hulk Hogan. WorkWorkWhy the Pentagon is spending billions to bring laser weapons to the battlefieldThe Israel-Hamas conflict has shed new light on the need to defend against threats that range from small rockets to ballistic missiles. Israel has invested in the Iron Beam system, which produces a high-energy laser, to complement the Iron Dome batteries used to launch interceptors to take out incoming rockets."Interceptors are just surface-to-air missiles that shoot down incoming weapons. And there's obviously a limited number of them in the launcher at any given time, and they cost money and they're expendable," said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. "A laser, on the other hand, gives you essentially an infinite magazine of interception opportunities, because the laser â as long as you've got electricity â will continue to recharge, continue to shoot down incoming weapons."Many of these directed-energy systems are now starting to be used more extensively in the field. The DE M-SHORAD, or Directed Energy Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense system, was tested by the U.S. Army in 2023 at the Yuma proving grounds. The Navy has the HELIOS, or High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance, installed on the U.S.S. Preble, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer."We're at an inflection point right now, when it comes to the use of these directed-energy, laser weapons," said Masao Dahlgren, a fellow with the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Various services in the U.S. military are prototyping these systems, bending metal, putting things out there and experimenting with them."Watch the video to find out what the future of laser weapons holds. WorkWorkHeat Kills Thousands in the U.S. Every Year. Why Are the Deaths So Hard to Track?The C.D.C. relies on death certificates reported by local authorities for its tally, but the way these certificates are completed varies from place to place. Many local officials do not have the time, funding or staffing needed to investigate heat-related questions. And officials do not apply a consistent set of criteria to determine whether heat contributed to a death — or even consider heat as a potential factor when filling out death certificates. WorkHarris Wants America to See Itself in Her“I know there are people of various political views watching tonight. And I want you to know, I promise to be a president for all Americans,” she said. “You can always trust me to put country before party and self. To hold sacred America’s fundamental principles, from the rule of law, to free and fair elections, to the peaceful transfer of power.” WorkOn Gaza, Democrats' Most Divisive Issue, Harris Embraces Biden's Balancing ActShe then went on to talk anew about the “devastating” damage and “innocent lives lost” as the Israelis retaliated. “The scale of the suffering is heartbreaking.” But, like Mr. Biden, she gave no indication that, if elected, she would use the leverage of America’s military support for Israel to pressure it to change tactics. She offered no hint of the tension in the relationship with Mr. Netanyahu, which she has witnessed firsthand, as a listener-in, and sometimes participant, in the tense phone calls with the Israeli leader. Work5 Takeaways From the Democratic Convention“We are the heirs to the greatest democracy in the history of the world,” she said as she neared the dramatic finish of her speech. She was seeking to occupy some of the most frequently trod ground of winning American campaigns. WorkFull Transcript of Kamala Harris's Democratic Convention SpeechSo, America, the path that led me here in recent weeks was, no doubt, unexpected. But I’m no stranger to unlikely journeys. So, my mother, our mother, Shyamala Harris, had one of her own. And I miss her every day, and especially right now. And I know she’s looking down smiling. I know that. WorkWorkBurning Man: Why the US festival could be in troubleDespite being burned-out herself, Roberts says she will always love Black Rock City. Is she worried about its future? \"It\'s going to survive. It might not be 80,000 people every single year, but there will always be people that want to discover Burning Man for the first time.\" WorkWorkLessons From a Bank-Robbing Guerrilla Turned PresidentLast week, I traveled to the outskirts of Montevideo, Uruguay’s capital, to visit Mr. Mujica at his three-room home, full of books and jars of pickling vegetables, on the small farm where he has grown chrysanthemums for decades. As the sun set on a winter day, he was bundled in a winter jacket and wool hat in front of a wood stove. The treatment had left him weak and hardly eating. WorkTwo Armed Rebels Who Led a Nation: A Love StoryAmid war, they found love. But just weeks later, they were thrown in prison, where they were subjected to torture and abuse. Over 13 years, they managed to exchange only a single letter. The guards confiscated the rest. WorkOpinion | Kamala Takes ChicagoFor weeks she had been pitching herself as a “joyful warrior,” as her husband, Doug Emhoff, put it — the bright, inclusive, graceful antidote to Trump’s dark, repudiating gracelessness. On Thursday night, she was all those things but she was scorching, too, calling out Trump for trying to steal the 2020 election and then sending “an armed mob to the United States Capitol” to achieve his ugly ends, saying he “fanned the flames.” WorkWorkWhat Voters Outside the Democratic Bubble Thought of Harris's Speech“I really wasn’t happy with the Biden administration,” said Ms. Reed, who like her husband is 77 and a retired schoolteacher. “But listening to her tonight, maybe it’s not as hard to vote for her. And, you know, I’m a little scared of what Trump will do when he gets back in power.” WorkWorkWorkFree Booze, a Lake Cruise and Selfies Galore: How Democrats Courted Influencers at the D.N.C.The treatment was part of an elaborate and unprecedented campaign to flood social media with positive messages about Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz as they accepted their party’s nominations this week. Democrats treated influencers like celebrities, hoping that free stuff and copious access in Chicago would reap buzzy posts on Instagram, TikTok or YouTube, the primary sources of news for a critical, and growing, slice of voters. WorkDemocrats Taste Victory in November. But Are They Too Confident?But in a series of high-profile admonitions during the four-day convention, several Democratic Party elders issued stern warnings for anyone believing the happy talk that Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota are on a glide path to the White House. WorkWorkWorkWorkKennedy Withdraws From Presidential Contest in ArizonaThose signatures, however, could be problematic. As The New York Times reported this week, two people familiar with the campaign’s operations said the signatures had been collected by a super PAC backing Mr. Kennedy, rather than the campaign itself. Federal law limits coordination between campaigns and outside organizations, and the move would most likely have opened the campaign up to legal complaints. WorkKerry Washington Knows TV Politics. Now She's Hosting a Real Party.Ms. Harris and Ms. Washington have met before, when Ms. Washington visited the White House last year. It’s not clear what they discussed, but in an apparent nod to her tenure as a (fictional) D.C. operative, Ms. Harris posted a photo to social media with the caption “Welcome back to the White House.” Work'This Is the Convention of the Woman'“You hear the eloquent voice of Michelle Obama. I thought Secretary Clinton gave one of the best speeches I’ve heard her deliver in her career,” said Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, himself a talented orator whose soaring speech on Monday you might have forgotten amid all the big-ticket women, including Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state to whom he was referring. WorkJackson Hole History Points to Powell Sidestepping Market Shocks“The market pricing is pretty fair,” said John Queen, a portfolio manager at Capital Group, which oversees $2.5 trillion in assets. “The Fed has been pretty successful at putting the economy on the right path, where growth is slowing but not falling apart.” WorkWorkWorkFast fashion giant Shein finds child labour cases in supply chainAt the time, a spokesperson for the company said: \"Shein has a zero-tolerance policy for forced labour and we are committed to respecting human rights. We take visibility across our entire supply chain seriously and we require our contract manufacturers to only source cotton from approved regions.\" TradeBriefs Publications are read by over 100,000 Industry Executives About Us | Advertise | Privacy PolicyUnsubscribe (one-click) You are receiving this mail because of your subscription with TradeBriefs.
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