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
EDITOR'S PICK PSYCHOLOGY The Secret Science Behind Dating Apps Key Takeaway: Research shows that viewing dating profiles can influence our judgments, particularly in terms of facial attractiveness. Sequential effects, or “serial dependence,” are a type of bias in psychology that affects how we judge the current item. High similarity between faces leads to more assimilation, while low similarity produces less or even contrast. These […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
CULTURE EDITOR'S PICK These Are The 7 Scariest Books From Literature A truly scary story never really leaves you. It lurks in long evening shadows, calls out through mysterious bumps in the night and blows down your neck whenever you feel a sudden shiver. With Halloween approaching, we asked six of our academic experts to tell us about the scariest book they’ve ever read. From haunted […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
ART & DESIGN CULTURE EDITOR'S PICK China’s Hidden Century Key Takeaway The British Museum’s China’s Hidden Century exhibition focuses on details of daily life in the 19th century, including ornaments, clothes, and artefacts. The exhibition highlights the deteriorating domestic and international situation, such as the Taiping and Nian rebellions, starvation, and violent encroachments by the British and other European and Asian countries. The exhibition […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK SOCIOLOGY Complex Identity Of The Modern Individual In Japan After having lived as an isolated feudal society for more than 250 years, Japan opened its doors to the rest of the world when the United States sent Commodore Matthew Perry to Japan to issue a treaty of trade. The Meiji period from 1868 to 1912 led to enormous fundamental changes in Japan’s political, economic, […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
STRATEGY When Should I Expand My Business Internationally? Uber first launched it’s service in San Francisco in 2011. I was there when they went international later that same year, launching at the Le Web conference in Paris. Less than six years later they are live in 84 countries. For startup founders it’s getting easier and easier and easier to expand globally. The world […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK JOURNAL & RESEARCH Lessons From The 1997 Asian Financial Crisis In the mid-summer of 1997, much of East Asia was gripped by the Asian financial crisis. The crisis began in Thailand due to the mounting pressures of its exchange rate in the last quarter of 1996. The These mounting pressures arose from the increase of the already high current account deficits that engulfed the country at the […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
CULTURE EDITOR'S PICK JOURNAL & RESEARCH SOCIOLOGY Chinese Society From Confucius To Communist Revolution To figure out the effects of national events on a society and to understand how a society’s behaviour patterns are shaped throughout the history, one should understand that society’s or nation’s psychology. In order to understand a nation’s psychology, one should look at the social psychology discipline. Barons, Byrne & Suls (1989) characterize social psychology […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
ENTREPRENEURSHIP INTERVIEWS Hazarizq, Founder Of Insporeum Hazarizq (‘Rizq’ to his friends) is a creative entrepreneur hailing from Malaysia. Describing himself as a man with big dreams, he dropped out of his studies in International Business and started Ten Points Up, a successful creative production company and have worked closely with notable brands such as Good Vibes Festival, Urbanscapes Festival, Red Bull […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
ENTREPRENEURSHIP SOCIOLOGY TECHNOLOGY How Esports Became Mainstream Referring to eSports (electronic sports) as a professional athletic sport has been controversial right from the start. The idea of being a professional player of online video games always seemed to be fairly distant to what was considered the norm for a career in society. However, with the growth of internet connectivity and the popularity […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The New Frontier Of Time Key Takeaway: The second, the fundamental unit of time, is being refined through advancements in timekeeping technology. Throughout history, humans have sought to track time with greater precision, starting with the Neolithic site of Newgrange in Ireland. In 1967, the International System of Units established that a second corresponds to 9,192,631,770 oscillations of radiation emitted […] Written by Empirics Asia November 29, 2024November 29, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Japan: The Birth Place Of A.I.? Key Takeaway: The announcement of John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton as Nobel laureates in physics sparked frustration in Japan, who felt overlooked in the recognition of their own AI pioneers. Shun’ichi Amari introduced a method for adaptive pattern classification in 1967, which would later be used in Hinton’s “backpropagation” method. Kunihiko Fukushima created the world’s […] Written by Empirics Asia November 28, 2024November 28, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Universe’s Biggest Mystery: Why Are We Here? Key Takeaway: Recent research by physicists has revealed that our universe may not be optimal for intelligent life. The mysterious force known as dark energy accelerates the universe’s expansion, but its value is far smaller than theoretical expectations. Researchers used anthropic reasoning to explain this, arguing that the properties of the universe must align with […] Written by Empirics Asia November 22, 2024November 22, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Test Of Human Intelligence Key Takeaway: Scale AI has launched the initiative “Humanity’s Last Exam” to determine the capabilities of cutting-edge large language models (LLMs) like Google Gemini and OpenAI’s o1. The initiative aims to determine how close we are to achieving AI systems that rival human expertise. The challenge lies in evaluating intelligence in machines that can already […] Written by Empirics Asia November 21, 2024November 21, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
When Reality Fractures Key Takeaway: Researchers have discovered that delusions, which are convictions that cling to a distorted view of reality, are a result of the same cognitive pathways that produce everyday beliefs. Delusions often defy common sense but emerge when the system of meaning-making veers off course. A case of postpartum psychosis revealed that a woman experienced […] Written by Empirics Asia November 20, 2024November 20, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Rise And Fall Of Volkswagen Key Takeaway: Volkswagen, once a symbol of German industry and co-management between shareholders and unions, is facing a crisis due to strategic missteps, a convoluted governance structure, and a culture that often prioritizes control over innovation. The company’s journey began in 1937 with the Beetle, which became the world’s largest carmaker in the 1980s and […] Written by Empirics Asia November 19, 2024November 19, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
How The Moon Shapes Life On Earth Key Takeaway: The Moon’s silent pull shapes life on Earth in various ways, from orchestrating mass spawning events in coral reefs to guiding predators and prey’s nightly routines. For millennia, creatures have lived in tune with its phases, responding to its light and gravitational sway. The Moon’s influence extends beyond oceans, as its reflected light […] Written by Empirics Asia November 18, 2024November 18, 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