Telescope #75
SUSTAINABILITY
Activision Blizzard will pay roughly $50 million to settle a 2021 lawsuit by a California regulator that alleged the videogame maker discriminated against women employees, including denying them promotion opportunities and underpaying them. DETAIL
According to a new analysis by Travel Smart, a campaign by the European Federation for Transport and Environment, about half of over 200 global business firms reduced their business-related travel emissions by over 50% from 2019 to 2022. Much of this reduction in emissions could be attributed to less air travel since the pandemic. DETAIL
The Canadian province of Ottawa is planning to announce new automobile regulations — the Electric Vehicle Availability Standard — this week, while the Canadian government is set to unveil a requirement that all new cars must be zero emissions by 2035, according to a senior government source, as Reuters reported. DETAIL
HEALTH
MIT AI cracks code to defeat bacteria that kills 10,000 in US yearly. Scientists have now leveraged deep learning to discover a new class of compounds that can kill a drug-resistant bacterium. DETAIL
Days after a SARS-CoV-2 infection, an otherwise healthy teenage girl suddenly had trouble breathing. COVID-19 appeared to have paralyzed her vocal cords. The girl needed a surgical tracheostomy – an opening in her windpipe below her voice box – to support her breathing for over a year. According to a new case report on the event, COVID's impact on the nervous system may cause vocal cord paralysis in rare cases. DETAIL
Over the last decade, several case studies have reported that people with multiple sclerosis (MS) who started antiretroviral therapy for HIV (to keep the virus in check) subsequently found that their MS symptoms had either disappeared completely or the disease progression had slowed considerably. DETAIL
DIGITAL / TECHNOLOGY / SCIENCE /AI
A bipartisan group of lawmakers has written to U.S. President Joe Biden, warning European technology regulation are unfairly targeting U.S. companies and not including many Chinese or EU firms, according to a letter seen by Reuters on Monday. DETAIL
Google DeepMind has devised a new LLM that sticks to mathematical truths. The company's FunSearch can solve highly complex math problems. Miraculously, the solutions it generates aren't just accurate; they're entirely new solutions that no human has ever found. DETAIL
The rapid implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) in the U.S. financial system could pose significant risks if not properly overseen, warned the Financial Stability Oversight Council this week, highlighting for the first time AI-related risks in its yearly financial stability report, as reported by Reuters. DETAIL
China on Thursday banned the export of technology to extract and separate rare earths, in a further step towards protecting its dominance in several strategic metals. DETAIL
ENERGY / TRANSPORTATION
According to the "Istanbul Traffic Authority" report, it was determined that an Istanbulite who participates in traffic only on weekdays spends 7 hours a week in traffic, and approximately 4.5 hours of this is wasted time due to congestion. Accordingly, 3.5 years of Istanbulites' lives are spent waiting in traffic. DETAIL
Volvo Cars has commissioned the Swiss firm to supply more than 1,300 robots to produce future electric cars. ABB will deploy the robots at Volvo’s production sites in Torslanda, Sweden, and Daqing, China, beginning in 2024. DETAIL
Georgia Tech materials engineers have unraveled the mechanism that causes degradation of a promising new material for solar cells—and they've been able to stop it using a thin layer of molecules that repels water. DETAIL
CYBERSECURITY
Britain's National Grid has started removing components supplied by a unit of China-backed Nari Technology's from the electricity transmission network over cyber security fears, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. DETAIL
Last month, AT&T announced an accomplishment that might seem as unlikely as a call to a customer-support line being answered with zero hold time: a sustained decrease in spam texts. according to the company, new and better network filters blocked a record 1 billion-plus spam texts in July. DETAIL
Despite a slight decrease in ransomware attacks in 2022, cybercriminals are becoming more creative, employing tactics like double extortion and personalized attacks to extort payments from businesses, according to Danielle Roth, head of cyber and tech claims for AXA XL. DETAIL