Foreign Affairs Get Ready for a Russo-German Europe The last few weeks have revealed some important truths about Europe. Prior to the crisis in Ukraine, most Americans and Western Europeans had become used to a Franco-German Europe. In this version of Europe, which was designed after World War II to dampen one of the greatest state rivalries in history, France and Germany made […]
National Post Third world lessons in healthcare: how ‘reverse innovation’ could revolutionize Canada’s medical landscape Blindness costs Canadians almost $16-billion a year, with two of its leading causes, diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma, often detected too late to prevent vision loss. Two University of Toronto medical students may have a found a solution, however — in India. Jeff Martin and Mohan Pandit say a device known as 3nethra, which comes from […]
Making a computerized voice a little more human Speech scientist Rupal Patel customizes synthetic voices for people who can’t speak. She tells Guy Raz of TED Radio Hour about helping people communicate in a voice that fits their personality. {Audio}
DR Your facial expressions reveal you – not – always Some people are told that they can read their facial expressions like an open book. They’re not conceal how they have it. Others are told that they have a poker face, so you can not see on their face what they feel. However, our facial expressions may not matter, because according to new research that interprets […]
Losing bidder goes to court to block comutter rail deal Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad Co., which lost its bid to continue running the state’s commuter rail network, plans to file a request Thursday asking a judge to stop the winning bidder, Keolis Commuter Services, from taking over, arguing that the award process was skewed by favoritism. The conflict threatens to disrupt the scheduled July 1 […]
PBS NewsHour Why obsessing over economic indicators may hinder economic improvement The monthly jobs report is big news on the first Friday of every month, swaying the financial markets and prompting immediate analysis. But should these numbers matter so much? A new book, “The Leading Indicators,” argues we overvalue data like the GDP and inflation. Economics correspondent Paul Solman talks to author and analyst Zachary Karabell. […]
Emotions may not be so universal after all Our current understanding of facial expressions could be specific to Western cultures. From a very young age, infants have a way of making their feelings known – contorted faces and howls indicate their displeasure with a meal or a damp diaper, a gummy smile their contentment, and a furrowed brow their puzzlement over a new […]
Online commenting: a right to remain anonymous? A revolution is at hand, and the consequences could fundamentally change the identity of the Internet — or, more precisely, your identity within it. Websites and social networks are increasingly changing the structure of their comments sections in an attempt to breathe civility back into what many see as the Wild West of the Web. […]
College Board drops essay portion of SAT The College Board unveiled a sweeping redesign of the SAT test on Wednesday that scraps the essay requirement and ushers in other changes aimed at making the test more relevant to what students study in college and less susceptible to gaming through expensive test-prep courses that favor the wealthy. Starting in the spring of 2016, […]
When it comes to chronic illness, college campuses have a lot to learn I recently received e-mails from a frustrated graduate student with chronic disease who was tired of administrative roadblocks at her particular school, and a distraught parent of a college student who was about to withdraw from another school because of her health. Both e-mails sought commiseration and advice, and both speak to the same issue: […]
Boston Globe opens its website paywall while GateHouse puts some up for first time This has been a busy week of website news for the state’s two biggest news organizations: The Boston Globe is opening up the wall around its site, while GateHouse Media is putting up paywalls on some of its local sites for the first time. The shift at the Globe to what’s known as a metered […]
SF Gate Study finds some truth to ‘gaydar’ concept A new study by Northeastern University finds that the concept of “gaydar” (that gays and lesbians are better able to detect someone’s sexuality on first meeting) has some truth to it. An all-female study found that women who identified as lesbians were in fact more accurately able to identity another woman’s sexuality than their heterosexual […]