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
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
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK Twitter’s Future After Threads Key Takeaway: Mark Zuckerberg’s new social media platform, Threads, has been released in smartphone app stores, with at least 30 million users signing up on its first day. The platform could potentially be a reliable alternative to Twitter, as Twitter has faced issues with user data, safety, and reliability since its acquisition by Elon Musk […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK What We Can Learn From Kanye West And Adidas Key Takeaways: Brand collaborations are strategic partnerships between two or more brands. When done well, the collaboration helps both partners grow their brands and amplify a shared message. But just like any marriage, it doesn’t always go well; recent examples include Yeezy’s breakups with Gap and Adidas. Adidas has ended its partnership with Yeezy after […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK SOCIOLOGY TECHNOLOGY Megacities In The Digital Age Key Takeaways: Digitization and crowdsourcing will actually undermine the very foundations of the megacity economy, which is typically built on some combination of manufacturing, commerce, retail and professional services. Shopping malls, for example, which once thrived in megacities, are now suffering from the advent of e-commerce. Today, megacities have become synonymous with economic growth. In both developing and […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK Why 2022 Will Be The Automotive Industry’s Make Or Break Year If nothing else, the global chip shortage has exposed the automotive industry’s Groundhog Day: a sector reliant on very old semiconductors that are unprofitable for chipmakers to produce, meaning they have to build special factories with technologies that they no longer use in their cutting-edge processes. So while the consumer electronics industry will soon be over the chip crisis, the automotive […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK SOCIOLOGY TECHNOLOGY How The Pandemic Changed Digital Journalism In the last decade, smartphones and mobile technology have altered newsrooms, transforming news gathering, live broadcasting and content distribution. Trained on an iPhone 4s at the University of Sheffield in 2011, I was one of the first mobile journalists in the UK. Over the course of my career broadcasting live, from war zones in Iraq to tornados […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK PHILOSOPHY SOCIOLOGY Consumerism vs. Cultivation Over the past three years, I have become increasingly disappointed in capitalism. It’s not that I’ve landed on the wrong side of the equation. I am squarely on the “winning” side. So, my misgivings aren’t fueled by personal feelings of exclusion or hardship. They are fed by an increasing awareness about the extent of destruction […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK POLITICS SOCIOLOGY Do Unbiased Juries Exist In An Age Of Social Media Jury selection that began on Oct. 18, 2021, in the trial of three men accused of murdering unarmed Black jogger Ahmaud Arbery has been, according to an NPR report, a “very painstaking process.” That’s because it’s been hard to find jurors who have not been exposed to media reports of Arbery’s death or a graphic video […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK ENTREPRENEURSHIP STRATEGY How Images Get Customers To Time Travel Aconsumer shopping for a midcentury sofa may be more likely to buy it if the background in its advertisement is a little disorganized. Likewise, people looking to purchase a new smartphone could more quickly pull the trigger if the ad were simple and sleek. That’s because ads for vintage products are more appealing when they […] 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