There’s a great scene in The Big Short, the movie of Michael Lewis’ book about the mortgage crisis, where two shiny-suited brokers brag about how many loans they’ve been producing — for big commissions — to unsuitable borrowers. “We call those loans ‘Dorothys’ ‘cause they’re magic,” grins the one in black. “No credit, no income, no problem: just tap your shoes together three times and say ‘There’s […]
Short takes and quick hits for the week of November 11-17, 2016. ‘Yahoo is not safe to use,’ former company engineer says Posted December 16, 2016 14:10 PST An absolutely brutal article in The Parallax by Seth Rosenblatt. After a second data breach involving as many as a billion users, what should users do? Let’s just say there aren’t many advocates for the company right now. Here’s […]
By Lisa Baertlein and Svea Herbst-Bayliss Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc (CMG.N), under pressure from activist investor Bill Ackman, named four new board members on Friday, paving the way for a reunion of sorts between its chief executive and a former top executive at McDonald’s, which once owned the burrito chain. Matthew Paull, a former McDonald’s Corp (MCD.N) chief financial officer, will join the Chipotle board. Media executives […]
Submitted by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com, Stimulus, in a general sense, is something that causes an action or response. A ringing alarm clock may prompt someone to exit their slumber. Or a fist to the gut may force someone to gasp for breath. Stimulus can come in many forms and varieties. It can come in the form of a stick; do this and you won’t get whacked […]
From left, Richard Baraniuk, Tan Nguyen and Ankit Patel. Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University Neuroscience and artificial intelligence experts from Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine have taken inspiration from the human brain in creating a new “deep learning” method that enables computers to learn about the visual world largely on their own, much as human babies do. In tests, the group’s “deep rendering mixture model” largely […]
A ‘liquid biopsy’ chip can trap and identify metastatic cancer cells in a small amount of blood drawn from a cancer patient. The breakthrough technology uses a simple mechanical method that has been shown to be more effective in trapping cancer cells than the microfluidic approach employed in many existing devices. The device captures cancer cells with antibodies attached to carbon nanotubes. (via WSJ)
Lately, there has been discussion of a “blurring” of Agile methodologies with design thinking. These are two philosophies with different terminologies, practiced by different groups of people, that have the same goal — to provide elegant and continuously improving technology solutions that serve users and customers. This blurring may be necessary with software release cycles now going into the hours, or even minutes for some businesses. Photo: […]
Credit: Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne A drone has been equipped with feathers to increase its precision during flight. The bio-inspired device can spread or close its wings while flying, making it easier to maneuver and more resistant in high winds. When they need to change direction, increase their speed or counter headwinds, birds alter the configuration of their wings. To steer, for example, they spread one […]
New cancer therapies harness the immune system to fight tumors. One of the main principles behind these therapies is to find out precisely which molecules on cancer cells trigger an immune response. A team of researchers has, for the first time, identified suitable protein structures directly from patients’ tumor cells. The procedure therefore opens up new possibilities for individualized targeted cancer treatments. (via WSJ)
Credit: George Hodan/Public Domain Computers may be able to group consumers into marketing segments in real time just by observing how they respond to online videos and other social media data, according to a team of researchers. In a study, computers used information from social media accounts to automatically build marketing personas, said James Jansen, professor of information sciences and technology, Penn State. Marketing research professionals typically […]
Allergic reactions to peanuts cause around 500 hospitalizations and even some deaths in the United States each year. Food that contains trace amounts, because it was produced with factory equipment or kitchen tools that came into contact with peanuts, can prove fatal for allergic individuals who consume it unsuspectingly. Accidentally ingesting as little as a third of a single peanut — about 70 milligrams — can send […]
Chinese government bond yields retreated slightly after the central bank eased a credit squeeze that has been exacerbated by the US Federal Reserve’s rate increase. On Friday morning the People’s Bank of China injected a net Rmb45bn ($6.5bn) into the interbank market through reverse repos, bringing total net injections for the week to Rmb250bn. This marked a reversal from last week when the central bank drained more than […]
By J.R. Wu | TAIPEI TAIPEI Before getting too carried away with Taiwan’s elevated status under a Donald Trump presidency, President Tsai Ing-wen might want to check her bank balance. Trump’s suggestion that the “one China” principle – that Taiwan is a part of China – was up for negotiation has already prompted sabre-rattling from Chinese state media and some in the military establishment. Taipei’s ability to […]
Almost a quarter of Americans acknowledged sharing fake news political news online, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center. The report, which is based on a telephone survey of more than 1,000 people, showed that 23 percent of respondents shared fabricated stories. In that group, 14 percent said they knew the story was fake at the time they shared it. Nearly a quarter of […]
A schematic shows a smartphone and the diagnostic attachment for antimicrobial susceptibility testing. Credit: Aydogan Ozcan/UCLA A team of UCLA researchers has developed an automated diagnostic test reader for antimicrobial resistance using a smartphone. The technology could lead to routine testing for antimicrobial susceptibility in areas with limited resources. Antimicrobial-resistant bacteria are posing a severe threat to global public health. In particular, they are becoming more common […]
The Food and Drug Administration warned, Dec. 14, that repeated or long term use of general anesthesia or sedation drugs for children, who are younger than three years old or pregnant women, who are in their third trimester could affect the child’s developing brain. The warning is the result of a comprehensive analysis of the most recent research in the field, according to the agency. Anesthesia And Brain […]
Investors have piled into Russian equity and bond funds over the past week as oil prices have rallied and President-elect Donald Trump named an oil executive with close ties to Vladimir Putin as US secretary of state. Russian stock funds recorded inflows of $451m in the week to December 14, the biggest weekly haul since the first quarter of 2011, according to EPFR. Mutual funds and exchange […]
By Joseph Menn The U.S. agency charged with ensuring that voting machines meet security standards was itself penetrated by a hacker after the November elections, according to a security firm working with law enforcement on the matter. The security firm, Recorded Future, was monitoring underground electronic markets where hackers buy and sell wares and discovered someone offering log-on credentials for access to computers at the U.S. Election […]
Women who regularly take painkillers may place themselves at increased risk of damaging their hearing. Findings of a new study have revealed that taking just two ibuprofen or paracetamol pills weekly for more than six years would be enough to cause hearing loss. Ibuprofen, Acetaminophen And Risk Of Hearing Loss For the new study, researchers looked at the data of more than 54,000 women who were between 48 […]
Drones launched from an autonomous vehicle could help guide it by mapping surrounding areas beyond what the car’s sensors can detect, according to Ford company officials Ford Motor Co. is studying a system to use drones to help guide self-driving vehicles, including on off-road adventures, company officials said. Drones launched from an autonomous vehicle would help guide it by mapping the surrounding area beyond what the car’s […]
Doha, Qatar December 15, 2016 Muntajat (Qatar Chemical and Petrochemical Marketing and Distribution Company Q.J.S.C.) signed its first international agency marketing agreement with Total. The signing ceremony took place at the K Trade Fair 2016 in Dusseldorf, Germany and was attended by senior representatives from Muntajat and Total. Total produces a range of polymers including polyethylene, polypropylene, and polystyrene. With Polymers business unit offices based in Brussels, […]
Dec 15, 2016 11:35 am IST Hindus have made large gains in the amount of time they spend in school, but they still have the lowest educational attainment of any major religion worldwide, according to a report from the Pew Research Center. The researchers said they used four measures of educational attainment: no formal schooling, primary education, secondary education and post-secondary education across all major religions worldwide. It […]
A new coreset-generation technique has been presented by researchers that’s tailored to a whole family of data analysis tools with applications in natural-language processing, computer vision, signal processing, recommendation systems, weather prediction, finance, and neuroscience, among many others. (via WSJ)
Photo On the campus of New York University Abu Dhabi. The failure of Georgetown and N.Y.U. to call out the suppression of critical speech suggests the complicity that gulf money buys. Credit Andrew Holbrooke/Corbis WASHINGTON — Cyberespionage may be the new normal, but you wouldn’t think that an American graduate student would be a target for state-level spyware and surveillance. Apparently, though, I am. On May 19, […]
