10 for today start with quantum physics and ends with a weird version of Hallelujah

Quantum Physics Isn’t Magic, But Thermodynamics Seems That Way
via 3 Quarks Daily: Chad Orzel in Forbes

Boiling water. Photo by Chad Orzel.
As someone who has written a book about quantum physics and is at work on another, I get asked a fair number of questions about quantum phenomena. These are often portrayed as a kind of magic, but if you spend enough time thinking about the subject, it’s very clearly not magic. Quantum phenomena are weird, certainly, because they confound everyday intuition, but they follow very naturally from the application of fairly simple rules. Knowing more about it doesn't make the subject any less amazing, but the weirdness recedes a bit.
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Researchers Discover How Animals First Appeared on Earth
via Big Think by Paul Ratner

Bacterium. Credit: ANU
Australian researchers say they solved “one of the greatest mysteries of science” – how large complex animals first appeared on Earth. It was a key milestone that led to humans. The scientists found that the rise of algae was instrumental in triggering one of the most transformative ecological revolutions in the planet's history.
The new study comes from the Australian National University and was based on examining ancient sedimentary rocks, gathered in central Australia. The lead researcher Associate Professor Jochen Brocks explained that the scientists crushed the rocks to extract molecules of ancient organisms.
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This blind software developer's display is 450 word-a-minute speech synthesizer
via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder

Tuukka Ojala is a blind software developer in Finland. When he works, he keeps his laptop closed (it has an external keyboard attached to it).
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Blood, bookworms, bosoms and bottoms: the secret life of libraries
via the Guardian by Stuart Kells
Their history is full of remarkable discoveries that go well beyond the books themselves – they contain our flesh, our souls and ourselves

‘Two trends are changing how we think of old books and old libraries.’
Photograph: Alamy
I recently had the privilege of circling the world to write a book about libraries. My timing was excellent: after a short-lived e-books scare, physical books are back in fashion, and libraries are the place to be.
My trip was not unlike the pilgrimages made by 18th-century library tourists. On my journey I noticed two trends that are changing how we think of old books and old libraries.
The first is a stronger focus on provenance research. Through whose hands have the books passed? How did those handlers use and mark and protect their books? This branch of bibliography is helping to humanise it.
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Rival Maps of India and Pakistan
via Big Think by Frank Jacobs
Pakistan and India are such quarrelsome twins that they don't even agree on their birthday. Both countries were born from British India, but Pakistan celebrates 14 August 1947 as its independence day; for India, it's 15 August.
In either case, that's just over 70 years ago. The media attention for those conjoined anniversaries earlier this year focused mainly on how the joy of independence remains indelibly mixed with the trauma of separation.
But there are many other stories to be told about this vast subcontinent. Here are two sets of maps that provide a different angle on the two nations, celebrating instead life's rich pageant through two categories for which the region is rightly famous – textiles and food.
In western media, the map of Pakistan is used mainly for three things: to highlight Taliban activity in the frontier zone with Afghanistan, to illustrate tensions over the disputed border with India, or to locate a terrorist attack in one of the country's big cities.
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How black holes could delete the universe - new explainer video
via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder

The always-excellent maker of animated explainer videos, Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell just released a new video that explains what black holes are, explains what information is, and then goes into the way that black holes are the cause of something called "The Information Paradox." The takeaway: we all might be stretched on a flat screen, just imagining that we are in three dimensions.

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Scientists Have Enhanced Spider Silk Using Nanotubes
via Big Think by Philip Perry
Have you ever watched a spider make its web? What we consider lowly or for some (myself included) fear-inducing creatures, are actually master architects, hunters, and artists. It didn’t happen overnight. It’s a process spiders have been perfecting over the past 400 million years. No doubt, spider silk is strong, versatile stuff. There’s a rumor that it’s stronger than steel. Though it isn’t exactly (see video at the end), this enhanced version definitely is.
In a study published in the journal 2D Materials, UK and Italian researchers wanted to see if they could make spider silk stronger than its natural state. These scientists took spiders and put either graphene or nanotubes in their water supply. Graphene is one of the strongest artificial materials out there. And it’s just one atom thick.
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NOTE: The image at the top of the post is of a web without the arachnid who made it but there is one of the eight-legged creatures further down and a fairly large one at the start of the video.

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How to educate your child in the seventeenth century
via OUP Blog by Alyssa Russell

  Book, read, reading, bookmark, and page by Ben White. CCO Public Domain via  Unsplash.
The end of summer and beginning of autumn mean that children and young adults worldwide are heading back to school. While much has changed since the time of the seventeenth century, such as which children were allowed to go to school and which weren’t, and what they were taught there – one thing that has not changed is the worry a parent feels about their child getting the best education they can. In these series of excerpts from letters from the seventeenth century, we can see how ideas about education have evolved and changed in the past 300-some years.
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The First Map of London's 'Pseudo-Public' Space Epidemic
via Big Think by Frank Jacobs
London’s public spaces are undergoing a quiet but profound transformation. An increasing number are, in fact, no longer public.
About 50 of these ‘privately-owned public spaces’, or Pops, have now been identified by the Guardian newspaper on this, the first comprehensive map of these areas. Many are in busy parts of the city centre, and are traversed by countless Londoners every day.
Not that they’d notice. Most Pops are not signposted; people generally only become aware of them when they break the rules that govern these spaces. Those rules are drawn up by their private owners, and are usually as un-advertised as the exact borders of each Pops. Quite often, they proscribe activities that are perfectly legal in ‘genuine’ public spaces: taking a picture, doing an interview, protesting, taking a nap.
One of these twilight zones of civil liberty is the More London estate. Located on the south bank of the Thames close to Tower Bridge, it surrounds London City Hall, the democratic heart of the British capital – home to the directly-elected Mayor, and the 25-seat Assembly that scrutinises him. But the area around the egg-shaped building is owned by the Kuwait Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund of the emirate.
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Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah played on the mbira
via Boing Boing by Andrea James

Mbiras (sometimes called kalimbas or thumb pianos) are traditional African plucked instruments with tuned metal tines attached to a wood sounding board. They come in a range of complexities, with the one played here near the top of the line.
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The declining share of manufacturing jobs

a column by Oya Celasun and Bertrand Gruss for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

The manufacturing sector is believed to play a unique role as a catalyst for productivity growth and income convergence, and as a provider of well-paid jobs for less-skilled workers.

This column argues, however, that the declining share of manufacturing employment over the past decades need not hurt the income convergence prospects of developing economies and that the loss of manufacturing jobs can only explain a small fraction of the rise in inequality in advanced economies. That said, getting the policies right is key to help countries make the most out of structural transformation.

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Harvard Business Review: Employees Who Use Social Media for Work Are More Engaged – but Also More Likely to Leave Their Jobs

an article by Lorenzo Bizzi for Harvard Business Review [grateful thanks to Tara at ResearchBuzz: Firehose

Social media can be a powerful communication tool for employees, helping them to collaborate, share ideas and solve problems. Research has shown that 82% of employees think that social media can improve work relationships and 60% believe social media support decision-making processes. These beliefs contribute to a majority of workers connecting with colleagues on social media, even during work hours.

Employers typically worry that social media is a productivity killer; more than half of U.S. employers reportedly block access to social media at work. In my research with 277 employees of a healthcare organization I found these concerns to be misguided. Social media doesn’t reduce productivity nearly as much as it kills employee retention.

In the first part of the study I surveyed the employees about why and how they used platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Respondents were then asked about their work behaviors, including whether they felt motivated in their jobs and showed initiative at work. I found that employees who engage in online social interactions with coworkers through social media blogs tend to be more motivated and come up with innovative ideas. But when employees interact with individuals outside the organization, they are less motivated and show less initiative. These findings suggest that the effects of social media depend on who employees interact with; employees who interact with their colleagues share meaningful work experiences, but those making connections outside the organization are distracted and unproductive.

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Attracting young people to the mining industry: six recommendations

an article by Jan Johansson, Bo Johansson, Joel Lööw, Magnus Nygren and Lena Abrahamsson (Luleå University of Technology, Sweden) published in International Journal of Mining and Mineral Engineering Volume 9 Number 2 (2018)

Abstract

The present workforce in the mining industry is ageing, and mining companies have difficulties recruiting young people who are not particularly interested in working in the industry. Simultaneously, mining companies tend to rely on contractors that offer volume flexibility and expertise, often in a combination that is economically appealing.

This makes recruitment and development of the whole of the mining workforce complex.

To recruit the right workforce, mining companies and their contractors need to cooperate and improve their knowledge about both attractive and repelling work features so that they can make wiser strategic decisions based on facts.

On the basis of a Swedish context, we discuss different aspects of attractive workplaces and summarise our 'lessons learned' in six recommendations dealing with general health and safety issues, work organisation, competence development, gender equality, social responsibility and outsourcing.

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Anxiety and Your "What If Calculator"

a post by Annabella Hagen for the World of Psychology blog



Some universities provide a “what if calculator” to help students project possible grades. It provides the percentage they need on each test to get their desired grade at the end of the course. Based on what they would like their final grade to be, they can decide how much work and effort to put into studying for their final exam.

If we all had a what if calculator to forecast our future, life would be so much easier!

We could say we all are in a possession of a what if calculator. For many of us, that amazing thought-making machine works overtime. The problem is that though our mind means well, its calculations are not entirely accurate most of the time. Quite often, the predictions are worst-case scenarios that lead us to anxiety, avoidance, and behaviors that get in the way of living a more meaningful life.

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How ‘local’ are local labour markets?

Paper No. CEPCP523: published in CentrePiece Volume 23 Number 1 (Spring 2018)

If we want to create jobs in disadvantaged local areas, the idea of ‘local’ needs to be revisited.

Alan Manning (LSE, London, UK) and Barbara Petrongolo (Queen Mary University of London, UK) explain the problem of thinking of geographical space as non-overlapping single labour markets. Their study, which draws on evidence from job openings in London ahead of the 2012 Olympics, provides a useful toolkit to understand the likely impact of place-based policies.

JEL Classification: J61, J63, J64, R12

Full text (PDF 3pp)

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Panic attacks suck

a post by Wil Wheaton for his own blog (WIL WHEATON dot NET)



I had panic attacks all night long, last night. Each time I fell asleep, I woke up what felt like minutes later, in absolute terror. Like, imagine that you’re on an airplane and everything seems fine, and then it suddenly drops like 1000 feet. You know how you think you’d feel? The rush of adrenaline, the certainty that you were about to die, the helplessness to do anything about it … that’s how I felt all night long (all night, yeah).

I recall four specific times this happened, because each one had some different physical sensation when I woke up. There was the hot tingling in my arms and legs, there was the sense that I was not quite awake, but awake enough to know that the terror was about to hit, and then struggling in vain to prevent it, this cold wave that started in my chest and spread out all over my whole body like ripples in a pond, and the time my heart was beating so hard, I thought I was having a heart attack. Oh, and each time I woke up, I didn’t know where I was. Once, I didn’t know who I was. So I guess that’s five times I can recall, but I know it happened more than that because I didn’t get any meaningful rest. Also, a lot of the neurochemicals that I need to function are only created in my brain when I’m sleeping, so my dumb brain, which is already sort of challenged to give me the juice I need to exist, didn’t get to do its thing. That’s been really great.

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