The Conversation: The future of protest is high tech – just look at the Catalan independence movement. “People across the world are demonstrating their discontent in increasingly creative and disruptive ways. The past year has seen schoolchildren across the world join the Fridays for Future strikes, witnessing mass walkouts from schools across the globe. In Chile, coordinated fare-dodging protests on public transport – also led by school pupils – has now grown into mass unrest against the rising cost of living. During the past two weeks, protests have erupted across Lebanon in opposition to rising taxes, involving road blockades and a human chain across the country to illustrate the unity of the people.”
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Phys .org: Recreating Earth through code
Phys .org: Recreating Earth through code. “The first Earth System Model developed and based in Africa are creating one of the most reliable and most detailed modulations of climate change. What does it take to recreate Earth? A couple of thousands of line of code, throw in some data from all the weather stations around the world, and a supercomputer.”
TechCrunch: Legislators from ten parliaments put the squeeze on Facebook
TechCrunch: Legislators from ten parliaments put the squeeze on Facebook. “The third meeting of the International Grand Committee on Disinformation and ‘Fake News’, a multi-nation body comprised of global legislators with concerns about the societal impacts of social media giants, has been taking place in Dublin this week — once again without any senior Facebook management in attendance.”
Aleteia: Digital maps provide treasure trove of information about the Catholic Church, for free
Aleteia: Digital maps provide treasure trove of information about the Catholic Church, for free. “GoodLands, whose mission is to help the Catholic Church use its land better for the benefit of people and the environment, is providing a number of free maps related to various aspects of the worldwide Catholic Church at its Catholic GeoHub site. If you have a desktop computer, a strong internet connection and maybe a lot of time on your hands, you can explore maps showing the boundaries of Catholic dioceses and parishes, the numbers of Catholics in each, the ratio of priests to parishioners, or stats on Catholic healthcare in various parts of the world.”
University of Chicago: Comprehensive Database Offers New Tools for Examining Global Competition Laws and Policy
University of Chicago: Comprehensive Database Offers New Tools for Examining Global Competition Laws and Policy. “Two leading scholars from the University of Chicago Law School and Columbia Law School have released the world’s most comprehensive collection of competition laws and enforcement practices to date, providing researchers, lawyers, journalists, and policymakers with new tools to assess the economic impact of these laws across borders.”
Cornell Chronicle: AI tool detects global fashion trends
Cornell Chronicle: AI tool detects global fashion trends. “GeoStyle analyzes public Instagram and Flickr photos to map trends using computer vision and neural networks, a kind of artificial intelligence often used to sort images. Its models help researchers understand existing trends in specific cities and around the world over time, and its trend forecasts are up to 20% more accurate than previous methods.”
Drugs .com: New Database Shows ‘Rare’ Diseases Are Not So Rare Worldwide
Drugs .com: New Database Shows ‘Rare’ Diseases Are Not So Rare Worldwide. “A disease is considered rare when it affects fewer than five in 10,000 people, according to a European definition. Until now, it’s been difficult to gauge how widespread rare diseases are. But a team led by a French research institute has analyzed the scientific literature on thousands of rare diseases and created a database that makes it possible to estimate how many people worldwide have them.”
