BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK Panda Diplomacy: What We Can Learn About Chinese Economics Key Takeaway: San Diego Zoo and China’s Wildlife Conservation Association signed a deal in February 2024 to return Chinese giant pandas to the US by the end of the summer. This move signifies a warming of relations between the US and China, as well as a bid by China to help repair its struggling economy. […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK The Rise Of Robo-Retail Key Takeaway: Canada’s first robotic cafe, RC Coffee, opened in Toronto in October 2020, reviving the concept of a restaurant where food and drinks are served by technology. The trend of digitally enabled retail automation has grown in popularity in Canada over the past decade, driven by safety concerns and labor shortages. As of the […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK SOCIOLOGY Why Is Free Time Still So Rare In Our Modern Productive Society? Key Takeaway: In the past, many economists assumed that people’s need for more stuff would eventually be met, leading to more free time. The 40-hour week is not the result of a personal calculation of costs and benefits but rather a result of a hard-fought political battle that culminated in the Fair Labor Standards Act […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK SOCIOLOGY The Maths Of Societal Collapse Key Takeaway: The author, a historian and complexity scientist, has been studying history for over a decade, noticing patterns in the past. They have been working on cliodynamics, a new field that uses statistical methods and computational simulations to understand how complex systems change over time. The Seshat: Global History Databank, a collection of over […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK POLITICS The Future Of China’s Semiconductor Industry Key Takeaway: China’s national champions for semiconductor design and manufacturing, HiSilicon and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), are making waves in Washington. Huawei’s launch of the Huawei Mate 60 smartphone in August 2023 showed that Chinese self-sufficiency in HiSilicon’s semiconductor design and SMIC’s manufacturing capabilities were catching up at an alarming pace. The US has […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK Why Are Most Robots White In Colour? Key Takeaway: Racial and gender bias in artificial intelligence algorithms and language models has been a concern in social robots, which are designed to interact with diverse groups of people. Socially assistive robotics aims to create machines that will help people help themselves, but these robots often do not reflect basic aspects of society’s diversity. […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK How China Is Revolutionising Shopping Malls Key Takeaway: From 1990 to 2020, China’s malls reflected its economic growth, catering to the emerging middle class. These malls were built by US architectural firms and are now being reimagined as civic spaces for communities to meet and interact. The COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of online shopping have devastated foot traffic, leaving the […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
ART & DESIGN EDITOR'S PICK The Secret Recipe Of Studio Ghibli Movies Key Takeaway: Studio Ghibli, a Japanese animation studio, has been a global phenomenon since 1985, with its debut feature Laputa: Castle in the Sky. The studio gained international recognition with the releases of Princess Mononoke (1997) and Spirited Away (2001), which won the Academy Award for best animated feature. The founders, Hayao Miyazaki and Isao […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK The Economics Of Rare Whisky Key Takeaway: The whiskey market has been booming for some time, with rare bottles and barrels selling for astronomical prices. The market has been driven by economic factors, with high prices for rare items like rare bottles and barrels, and social factors, such as the increasing focus on the purported authenticity of craft products like […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
CULTURE EDITOR'S PICK PSYCHOLOGY Does Music Manipulate Our Memories? Key Takeaway: Studies in psychology are beginning to understand how music helps people remember films, scenes, and characters. Music can help us understand characters, create deeper emotional links, and create mood-congruency effects when the music and movie both make us feel the same way. Irony and mood-incongruity effects occur when music and movies make us […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Democratising Finance Through Artificial Intelligence Key Takeaway: Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing investment by making professional financial insight and portfolio management accessible to everyone. AI-powered robo-advisers, such as Betterment and Vanguard, are democratizing investment and providing tailored advice to a new generation of investors. With 31% of gen Zs and 20% of millennials using robo-advisers, the financial industry is adapting […] Written by Heather He March 19, 2024March 19, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Final Frontier Of Forensic Science Key Takeaway: Nasa’s Artemis program is set to return astronauts to the Moon and establish a permanent orbiting laboratory by the end of the decade. As humanity’s footprint expands, a new field emerges: astroforensics. Space presents a unique and harsh environment for forensic investigations, with altered gravity, cosmic radiation, extreme temperatures, and oxygen-providing climate systems. […] Written by Zack Kowalske March 18, 2024March 18, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Future Of Spacesuits Key Takeaway: The Polaris Dawn mission, which includes the first spacewalk organized by a private company, has been delayed due to complications with the design and development of a suitable spacesuit. Moon suits are a key element of Nasa’s Artemis lunar programme that have yet to be delivered. Spacesuits are no longer expected to be […] Written by Yang Gao March 11, 2024March 11, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Why We Will Never Master The Financial Markets Key Takeaways: Stock market enthusiasts often claim to predict financial market trends with great accuracy, but this is not possible due to the uncertainty and unpredictable nature of the environments in which we make daily decisions. Human cognition tends to favor a reductionist approach to information processing, sometimes called “tunneling,” which can lead to biased […] Written by Benoît Béchard March 8, 2024March 8, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Is There Life On Europa? Key Takeaway: The Juno mission has sampled Jupiter’s atmosphere for the first time, revealing that Europa’s icy surface produces less oxygen than previously thought. Europa has an ocean below its icy surface with twice the amount of water as Earth’s oceans and an ocean floor in contact with rock, enabling chemical water-rock interactions that produce […] Written by Andrew Coates March 7, 2024March 7, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Halo Effect Key Takeaway: A recent study suggests that the “halo effect” is more complicated than previously thought, as attractive people may receive more help from strangers, higher wages, and more job opportunities. This can lead to more favorable treatment in life, such as lighter prison sentences. However, in court, jurors show biases, and more attractive defendants […] Written by Robin Kramer March 6, 2024March 6, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Secrets Of The Queen Bee Key Takeaway: Bees, including honey bees, are important pollinators of many crops and plants. However, most bees do not have queens, and most live without them. Instead, a single female lays eggs in a simple nest, providing pollen and nectar. Bees have a social structure with thousands of workers who support the queen. Bee queens […] Written by Phil Starks March 5, 2024March 5, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Rethinking Education Key Takeaways: The Industrial model of education that fueled the modern era and its dizzying reach did its job incredibly well. In his writing, Flynn illustrates study after study, spanning nations and decades, in which modern educational gift of abstraction — a transcendent sign of intelligence, as we saw in Raven’s Matrices — has been […] Written by Anthony Fieldman March 2, 2022October 19, 2022 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
How China Is Transforming Its Economy Through Learning I highly recommend reading the McKinsey Global Institute’s new report, “Reskilling China: Transforming The World’s Largest Workforce Into Lifelong Learners”, which focuses on the country’s biggest employment challenge, re-training its workforce and the adoption of practices such as lifelong learning to address the growing digital transformation of its productive fabric. How to transform the country […] Written by Enrique Dans February 1, 2021February 1, 2021 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Why You’re Not Seeing Success With Influencer Marketing With the new year around the corner, now is a good time to re-evaluate your past marketing strategies and gear up for the year ahead. For some businesses, influencer marketing has simply not seemed to live up to its lofty promises of genuine engagement, credibility, and transparency. Some have claimed that it has been failing […] Written by Michael Tan January 14, 2021January 15, 2021 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
A New Philosophy of Business I’m about to ask you to take a mental leap. For the next 8 minutes, suspend your notions of what a business is, and I’ll propose a new lens for you to look through. There are a lot of questions asked around what “community” means for business. “Where should community fit in my organization?” and […] Written by Empirics Asia September 5, 2018September 5, 2018 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked