Harvard Business Review; Nancy Baym, Jonathan Larson, and Ronnie Martin
from
This year, teams across Microsoft (including ours) have conducted over 50 studies to understand how the nature of work itself has changed since early 2020. Microsoft’s annual Work Trend Index is part of this initiative and includes an analysis of trillions of productivity signals — think emails, meetings, chats, and posts — across Microsoft and LinkedIn’s user base. It also includes a survey of more than 30,000 people in 31 countries around the world.
One of the biggest and most worrisome changes we saw across these studies was the significant impact that a year of full-time remote work had on organizational connections — the fundamental basis of social capital.
A team of scientists, backed by a $10 million grant from Schmidt Futures, will work to enhance climate-change projections by improving climate simulations using artificial intelligence (AI).
Led by Laure Zanna, a professor at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and NYU’s Center for Data Science, the international team will leverage advances in machine learning and the availability of big data to improve our understanding and representation in existing climate models of vital atmospheric, oceanic, and ice processes, such as turbulence or clouds. The deeper understanding and improved representations of these processes will help deliver more reliable climate projections, the scientists say.
MIT Sloan Management Review, Thomas H. Davenport and Thomas C. Redman
from
This is a good time to turn to testing to guide decisions, using all sorts of experiments around factors that have been influenced by the pandemic. The experiments don’t have to be terribly burdensome in these taxing times; some may occur naturally, and many companies now have analytics groups in HR and elsewhere that can gather and analyze needed data. Some companies have gathered enough relevant data over the past year to make fact-based decisions about post-pandemic work arrangements. Others have insufficient data now but can begin conducting experiments to create data that fills in the gaps.
Types of Decisions Where Experiments and Data Can Help
One of the biggest questions for many companies is whether to require employees to return to a five-day workweek in the office. We’ve seen evidence that working from home has had benefits such as less wasted commuting time, less carbon in the atmosphere, and perhaps even greater productivity. According to a Stanford study, there is a huge range in how many days a week employees would like to be in the office post-COVID-19 — the median response is two days, but 25% of respondents said five days, and 20% said never. Some companies have already staked out radical positions, like New York-based Skillshare, which has closed down all of its physical offices. Others, like Netflix, are run by a CEO who calls remote work “a pure negative” with no benefits. Neither of these extreme policies seems to be based on extensive data or analysis, and they involve sweeping positions regarding all workers in all jobs, and across all family and living situations.
The summit of Mauna Kea is perfect for astronomy but it’s also regarded as one of the most sacred lands for Native Hawaiians. We get a look inside the two sides that have been debating about the construction of one of the largest ground telescopes in the world. [video, 33:35]
The University of Alberta announced a five-year partnership with TELUS to establish a 5G “Living Lab” at the U of A that will contribute to a pipeline of new research and technology with commercial applications, while supporting the development of the talent pool needed to enhance economic recovery and diversification in Alberta.
The $15-million investment from TELUS will provide the 5G infrastructure that will allow TELUS and the U of A to accelerate research and drive technology roadmaps to address society’s most pressing challenges now and into the future.
“Our innovative curriculum responds to the tremendous interest in data science skills from students, faculty and employers,” said Professor Alexander Aue, chair of the Department of Statistics and head of the Data Science Steering Committee. “There is a huge demand for a data science major at UC Davis.”
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee are automating the search for new materials to advance solar energy technologies.
A novel workflow published in ACS Energy Letters combines robotics and machine learning to study metal halide perovskites, or MHPs — thin, lightweight, flexible materials with outstanding properties for harnessing light that can be used to make solar cells, energy-efficient lighting and sensors.
“Our approach speeds exploration of perovskite materials, making it exponentially faster to synthesize and characterize many material compositions at once and identify areas of interest,” said ORNL’s Sergei Kalinin.
“Invasive forms of brain–machine interfaces can already give movement back to those who have lost it due to neurological injury or disease,” says Sumner Norman, postdoctoral fellow in the Andersen lab and co-first author on the new study. “Unfortunately, only a select few with the most severe paralysis are eligible and willing to have electrodes implanted into their brain. Functional ultrasound is an incredibly exciting new method to record detailed brain activity without damaging brain tissue. We pushed the limits of ultrasound neuroimaging and were thrilled that it could predict movement. What’s most exciting is that fUS is a young technique with huge potential—this is just our first step in bringing high performance, less invasive BMI to more people.”
The new study is a collaboration between the laboratories of Richard Andersen, James G. Boswell Professor of Neuroscience and Leadership Chair and director of the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Brain–Machine Interface Center in the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience at Caltech; and of Mikhail Shapiro, professor of chemical engineering and Heritage Medical Research Institute Investigator. Shapiro is an affiliated faculty member with the Chen Institute.
Amazon and startup Hugging Face say the ability to rapidly assemble thousands of neural networks inside of Amazon SageMaker, and train them with greater ease, will “democratize” use of deep learning.
We’ve all been there. The awkward small talk. The fluorescent lights illuminating the sweat on your brow. The feeling like you’re a used-car salesman — but the used car is yourself. Job interviews are the worst. And according to a new book, they’re often pretty much useless for selecting the best candidate for a position.
The book is called Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment. It’s by the Nobel Prize-winning psychologist and behavioral economics godfather Daniel Kahneman, as well as Olivier Sibony and Cass Sunstein (who, by the way, recently joined the Biden administration). The authors cite job interviews as an example of human decision-making going off the rails.
“If all you know about two candidates is that one appeared better than the other in the interview, the chances that this candidate is indeed the better one are about 56% to 61%,” they write. That’s better than using the flip of a coin to make a hiring decision — but barely.
More than 800,000 people live in Minneapolis-St. Paul, also known as the Twin Cities. How do the region’s residents interact with the ecosystem of which they’re a part? Scientists affiliated with a new U.S. National Science Foundation-funded Long-Term Ecological Research, or LTER, site based in Minneapolis-St. Paul will examine how turmoil, socioeconomic disparities, pollution, habitat loss and climate change interact to affect the environment in the Twin Cities.
The $7 million, six-year renewable award will create a hub of research based at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, with the goal of deepening the understanding of the ecological processes in municipalities. That knowledge requires uninterrupted, long-term environmental data collection, analysis and interpretation.
U.S. colleges are laying plans to roll out Covid vaccinations to thousands of students, faculty and staff, turning large spaces like stadiums and auditoriums into inoculation centers as the academy yearns for a return to normality.
So far, they’ve been limited by a lack of supply for a largely young and healthy demographic. That’s changing rapidly as states try to meet President Joe Biden’s May 1 deadline for all adults to be eligible. About half of 296 higher education institutions polled are planning mass vaccination clinics by June, according to a continuing survey by the American College Health Association.
“Schools have been preparing for months now,” said Anita Barkin, co-chair of the group’s Covid-19 task force. “Many are just waiting for the opportunity.”
Some have already begun. Mississippi State University is making shots available on its Starkville campus at a drive-thru in the parking lot of the student health center, after Governor Tate Reeves said all adults would qualify. The school began administering vaccines Tuesday, initially for faculty and staff. Later shipments will be available for those over 18, including students.
Computing Research Association, CRA Bulletin; Elizabeth Bradley, Madhav Marathe, Melanie Moses, William D Gropp and Daniel Lopresti
from
In Fall 2020, the Computing Research Association released a series of planned white papers produced through its subcommittees (including the Computing Community Consortium), exploring areas and issues around computing research with the potential to address national priorities over the next four years. Called Quadrennial Papers, the white papers attempt to portray a broad picture of computing research detailing potential research directions, challenges, and recommendations for policymakers and the computing research community.
One of those white papers Pandemic Informatics: Preparation, Robustness, and Resilience outlined a strategy to reduce the impact of global pandemics stressing early detection, predicting the public’s reaction and developing effective policies.
Several months later, the pandemic is still ongoing but we are facing a new and different set of challenges that are both surprising and yet also somehow predictable. The authors of the paper have produced a March 22nd, 2021 Addendum to address current issues.
Online April 15, starting at 3:10 p.m. Mountain. Catherine Potts, a doctoral student in the Montana State University Department of Mathematical Sciences and recipient of a 2020 Kopriva Graduate Student Fellowship, will present “Archetypal Analysis Applied to Neuronal Cellular Signaling.”
Online April 12, starting at 3 p.m. Eastern. “Join us for an interactive workshop to discuss and design data science techniques to address current and emerging cybersecurity challenges.” [registration required]
