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S1How to Reimagine the Second Half of Your Career - Harvard Business Review (No paywall)  It takes constant reinvention to make sure our efforts, career paths, and viability as valuable members of organizations, communities and disciplines continues throughout our career. To better imagine the second half of your career — whether it’s in the job you’re currently doing or something new entirely — you need to engage in the continuous sharing and re-purposing of your experience, passion, and expertise to create a platform of thought leadership around yourself. By becoming a recognized expert in your chosen domain or discipline you can attract new opportunities and career directions. To do this, the author recommends focusing on five core concepts: entrepreneurialism; self-confidence; continuous learning; continuous improvement; and reinvention.
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S7S8How extreme weather will affect the insurance and energy sectors When Storm Isha hit Northern Ireland and northern Britain in January 2024, wind gusts of almost 100mph caused widespread damage to property. This strong extra-tropical cyclone also influenced both the insurance and energy sectors. Isha resulted in damages which required the insurance industry to pay out approximately €500 million (£427 million).
That’s a significant financial impact, yet considerably smaller than some previous extreme weather events, such as Storm Lothar which affected much larger regions of Europe with losses of nearly €10 billion.
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S9How do I keep my fruit, veggies and herbs fresh longer? Are there any 'hacks'? We all know fresh produce is good for us, but fruit, vegetables and herbs have a tendency to perish quickly if left uneaten.
This is because even after harvesting, produce from living plants tends to continue its biological processes. This includes respiration: producing energy from stored carbohydrates, proteins and fats while releasing carbon dioxide and water vapour. (Ever found a sprouting potato in your pantry?)
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S11No, sugar doesn't make your kids hyperactive It’s a Saturday afternoon at a kids’ birthday party. Hordes of children are swarming between the spread of birthday treats and party games. Half-eaten cupcakes, biscuits and lollies litter the floor, and the kids seem to have gained superhuman speed and bounce-off-the-wall energy. But is sugar to blame?
The belief that eating sugary foods and drinks leads to hyperactivity has steadfastly persisted for decades. And parents have curtailed their children’s intake accordingly.
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S13What causes landslides? Can we predict them to save lives? A devastating landslide struck several remote villages in the mountainous Enga province in Papua New Guinea late last week.
While it is too early for official confirmation, estimates place the death toll between 690 and 2,000 people, with thousands more missing. That only a few bodies have been recovered serves as a tragic reminder of the destructive power of these events.
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S14How genes shape birdsong, even when birds grow up far from home With the arrival of spring, a timeless ritual begins anew: male birds fill the air with song, seeking to attract mates and defend their territories from other competing males.
But there is a lot we still don’t understand about how birds learn which sounds to sing. Our latest study offers new insights and suggests genes may play a more important role than scientists realised.
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S15Understanding how ions flow in and out of the tiniest pores promises better energy storage devices Modern life relies on electricity and electrical devices, from cars and buses to phones and laptops, to the electrical systems in homes. Behind many of these devices is a type of energy storage device, the supercapacitor. My team of engineers is working on making these supercapacitors even better at storing energy by studying how they store energy at the nanoscale.
Supercapacitors, like batteries, are energy storage devices. They charge faster than batteries, often in a few seconds to a minute, but generally store less energy. They’re used in devices that require storing or supplying a burst of energy over a short span of time. In your car and in elevators, they can help recover energy during braking to slow down. They help meet fluctuating energy demand in laptops and cameras, and they stabilize the energy loads in electrical grids.
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S16Risky business: Why executives keep finding themselves in political firestorms Back in March 2022, Disney’s then-CEO Bob Chapek said that his company wouldn’t take a public stand on Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Four days later, he yielded to rebukes from LGBTQ employees, reversed his decision and criticized the bill publicly.
In the ensuing political firestorm, the state of Florida revoked Disney’s 55-year-old favored tax and regulatory status, sparking legal disputes that lasted well into 2024. Chapek, deeply weakened, was fired not long after the controversy broke, in November 2022.
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S17How the 'model minority' myth harms Asian Americans May is Asian and Pacific American Heritage Month, a time when Americans celebrate the profound contributions of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders – a group that is commonly abbreviated as AAPI – to U.S. society. It’s also a time to acknowledge the complexity of AAPI experience.
And as a professor who studies equity and inclusion in business, I think the focus on AAPI communities this month provides an excellent occasion to push back against a stereotype that has long misrepresented and marginalized a diverse range of people: the myth of the “model minority.”
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S18Democracy in Africa: digital voting technology and social media can be a force for good - and bad University of the Witwatersrand provides support as a hosting partner of The Conversation AFRICA.
It’s a bumper year for elections on the continent: by the end of 2024, 20 countries ought to have gone to the polls to vote in national elections. A handful of others are also scheduled to conduct local-level elections. As is the case elsewhere in the world, digital technologies have come to play a key role in African elections and political life more broadly – sometimes, but not always, in positive ways.
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S19Why are organisational cover-ups so common? The TV dramatisation of the UK Horizon Post Office scandal evoked outrage and disbelief. However, as another example of dysfunctional organisational behaviour, it was expected rather than exceptional.
The Post Office saga joins a long list of cover-ups or scandals that includes Hillsborough, Enron, Grenfell, the infected blood scandal, the Tuam babies scandal in the Republic of Ireland, Boeing 737 Max and Nasa (Columbia space shuttle). They represent what happens when there is a move within organisations and institutions to cover up the causes of a tragedy.
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S20Why using dating apps for public health messaging is an ethical dilemma
Chancellor's Fellow, Deanery of Molecular, Genetic and Population Health Sciences Usher Institute Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society, The University of Edinburgh
Dating apps are not just about finding love or hooking up. They’re becoming increasingly important in the communication of public health messaging, particularly sexual health.
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S21Zombie fires in the Arctic smoulder underground and refuse to die - what's causing them? So-called “zombie fires” in the peatlands of Alaska, Canada and Siberia disappear from the Earth’s surface and smoulder underground during the winter before coming back to life the following spring. These fires puzzle scientists because they appear in early May, way ahead of the usual fire season in the far north, and can reignite for a number of years.
Reports of such fires date back to 1940s, when they were rare events. However, the frequency and intensity of these fires has increased significantly in the past two decades, hand in hand with accelerated warming in the Arctic, the fastest-warming region on the planet.
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S22Digital campaigning is a huge part of elections now - but going viral isn't everything The election has commenced and the race is on – to amass as many likes, shares and comments as possible. Digital campaigning, particularly through social media, is now a key part of political candidates’ communication toolkit.
In fact, every general election campaign since 1997 has at some point been lauded as the first to make effective use of digital campaigning. But it was in 2015 that David Cameron’s campaign first made strategic use of social media to drive an election victory.
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S23Carlo Acutis: what the first 'millennial saint' says about the Catholic church's future The London-born Italian teenager Carlo Acutis is likely to become the first “millennial saint” after two miracles attributed to him were recognised by Pope Francis.
Spending most of his life in Milan, Acutis was an incredibly devout Catholic who went on regular pilgrimages across Europe. He had a desire to attend mass daily and regularly pray the rosary – but he also loved playing video games and teaching himself computer coding and animation.
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S24S25Descartes and the deep state: what 17th-century philosophy reveals about Trump and QAnon What if I were to tell you that the US government and media is controlled by a secret cabal of devil-worshippers who are organising the mass kidnapping of children? Well, according to a recent poll, 17% of Americans believe this to be the case.
Another 30% believe the 2020 US presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. A further 36% think the COVID-19 pandemic was intentionally planned by a global elite.
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S26For American Jews, interfaith weddings are a new normal - and creatively weave both traditions together My friend is Muslim, her husband Jewish. They were married under a Jewish wedding canopy made from the groom’s bar mitzvah prayer shawl – which, his mother announced to the assembled guests, had been made in India, the bride’s parents’ country of origin. The bride wore a red wedding sari. The groom’s mother read and explained the seven blessings of a Jewish wedding; the bride’s mother read from the Quran and then provided an English translation.
The bride and groom sipped from the same cup of wine, as one does at a Jewish wedding. But knowing that I was writing about her wedding for my book on interfaith marriages, the bride pulled me aside in between the ceremony and the photos. They had replaced the traditional wine with white grape juice, she told me – nonalcoholic in deference to the fact that she is Muslim; white out of fear of staining the wedding finery before the photos.
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S27S28Americans break election ties in crazy ways - and jeopardize democracy in the process Commentators and observers are concerned about the possibility of a tie in the November 2024 presidential election. One possibility is that both major-party candidates end up with 269 electoral votes – one short of the 270 required to claim victory. Another scenario is that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who appears to be attracting significant interest from the voters, collects a few electoral votes, preventing Biden or Trump from reaching the magic 270.
But then what? In recent decades, election ties have happened all over the country and have been resolved through bizarre, often comical procedures. The common feature of these methods is that the people’s wishes play no part in them. The voters are entirely removed from what is supposed to be a democratic process.
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S29What QAnon supporters, butthole sunners and New Age spiritualists have in common Four years later, White accepted the endorsement of the Minnesota GOP in the state’s 2024 U.S. Senate race.
In the interim, White had appeared on the show of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, where he decried the “establishment” and “corporatocracy.” While on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, he complained that women “had become too mouthy.” Elsewhere, he lambasted the LGBTQ+ movement as “Luciferian” and described Israel as the vanguard of a “new world order.”
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S30TikTok activism: how queer Zimbabweans use social media to show love and fight hate University of Fort Hare provides support as an endorsing partner of The Conversation AFRICA.
In Zimbabwe, there is a long held public view that queerness is “unAfrican” and imported to Africa from the west. Even though numerous studies have proven this not to be true, reiterations of this lie by the state has led many to believe that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ+) people cannot be Zimbabwean.
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S31Pro-Russian breakaway region Transnistria shows limits of domino theory in international relations On 28 February, the leader of Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria, Vadim Krasnoselski, held the Seventh Congress of Deputies to discuss the implications of Moldova’s latest customs duties on Transnistrian businesses. His calls for Russia’s protection in response to Moldova’s “economic strangulation” sparked fear in many international observers of an imminent integration of the region into Russia, and even of a new frontline in Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Far from the international uproar, reactions on the domestic front were much more measured. Valeriu Pașa, president of one of the main think tanks in Chisinau, Watchdog, suggested that this Congress appeared more like a manoeuvre aimed at influencing public opinion. Meanwhile, in March Modolva’s vice-prime minister tasked with the mission of reintegrating Transnistria, Oleg Serebrian, sought to allay anxieties:
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S32Fears that English is 'disappearing' in England are misplaced - history shows the island has always been multilingual A common lament among those opposed to immigration is that “in many parts of England, you don’t hear English spoken any more”. But it has never been the case that English was the only language spoken on this island.
Old English, the earliest ancestor of the modern English language, was a relative newcomer to Britain. Its speakers, the Anglo-Saxons, came from different regions across what is now northern Germany to an island where many Celtic languages were spoken alongside Latin – a legacy of southern Britain’s time as a Roman colony. The Old English language was initially joined by other Germanic languages including Old Norse and Frisian.
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S33From health to sports - ears can say a lot about you An ear is like an iceberg – much of it is out of sight. The only visible part is the auricle – the seashell shaped structure made of bendy cartilage, covered in skin. Its main role is to act as a trumpet, filtering and funnelling sound waves down into the middle, then the inner ear, where they are converted into our sense of hearing.
A medical ear examination usually involves an inspection of the canal, using an instrument called an otoscope. This is usually to investigate more common ear conditions – an infection, or a clog of wax.
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S34 If 10% of the World Were Developers: GitHub's Mario Rodriguez The spring 2024 issue's special report looks at how to take advantage of market opportunities in the digital space, and provides advice on building culture and friendships at work; maximizing the benefits of LLMs, corporate venture capital initiatives, and innovation contests; and scaling automation and digital health platform.
The spring 2024 issue's special report looks at how to take advantage of market opportunities in the digital space, and provides advice on building culture and friendships at work; maximizing the benefits of LLMs, corporate venture capital initiatives, and innovation contests; and scaling automation and digital health platform.
When Mario Rodriguez emigrated from Cuba to the United States at age 14 with his parents â a university professor, and a teacher turned electrical engineer â they had already instilled in him the value of education and a love of learning. That passion has guided him throughout his career â as a program manager with Microsoft; then as part of GitHub, following Microsoft's 2018 acquisition of the developer platform; and as a cofounder of a charter school in North Carolina. Now, as senior vice president of product at GitHub, Mario oversees the team developing the GitHub Copilot AI-assisted software development tool.
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S35Microsoft Is Giving Windows a Memory and It Might Change Everything Microsoft has tried multiple times to make interacting with artificial intelligence an essential part of using Windows, but Recall, a new memory-focused feature it announced alongside its new Copilot+ PCs might be the first time it could actually stick.
Recall leverages changes Microsoft made to Windows 11 to accommodate Arm chips, along with the Neural Processing Unit (NPU) inside those chips, to catalog, “understand” (as much as any AI can), and make searchable, everything that happens on your PC. Everything from your Discord chats to your browser tabs is findable with a search — even a vague one.
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