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« In the form it is known today, macroeconomics began in 1936 with the publication of John Maynard Keynes’s “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money”. Its subsequent history can be divided into three eras. The era of policy which was guided by Keynes’s ideas began in the 1940s. By the 1970s it had encountered problems that it could not solve and so, in the 1980s, the monetarist era, most commonly associated with the work of Milton Friedman, began. In the 1990s and 2000s economists combined insights from both approaches. But now, in the wreckage left behind by the coronavirus pandemic, a new era is beginning. What does it hold? »

It is not yet clear where it will lead.

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Ultrashort laser pulses induce unusual sound waves via a structural instability in a material.

RIKEN physicists have initiated unusual sound waves in a flake using ultrashort pulses of laser light and then created videos of their movement using electron microscopy. This advance should help engineers to achieve higher precision control of heat flow and sound in nanodevices using light.

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A supersensitive dopamine detector can help in the early diagnosis of several disorders that result in too much or too little dopamine, according to a group led by Penn State and including Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and universities in China and Japan.

Dopamine is an important neurotransmitter that can be used to diagnose disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia.

“If you can develop a very sensitive, yet simple-to-use and portable, detector that can identify a wide range of dopamine concentration, for instance in sweat, that could help in non-invasive monitoring of an individual’s health,” said Aida Ebrahimi, assistant professor of electrical engineering, Penn State, and a corresponding author on a paper published Aug. 7 in Science Advances.

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#SpaceWatchGL Opinion: Space Traffic Management – Impact of Large Constellations on Military Operations in Space.

🌚 #SpaceWatchGL

As part of the partnership between SpaceWatch. Global and Joint Air Power Competence Centre, we have been granted permission to publish selected articles and texts. We are pleased to present “Space Traffic Management – Impact of Large Constellations on Military Operations in Space”, originally published by the Joint Air Power Competence Centre for the Conference Read Ahead 2020.

by Mr. Marc Becker, DLR Space Administration, Bonn, Germany

Continue reading “#SpaceWatchGL Opinion: Space Traffic Management – Impact of Large Constellations on Military Operations in Space” | >

Are you worried about AI collecting your facial data from all the pictures you have ever posted or shared? Researchers have now developed a method for hindering facial recognition.

It is a commonly accepted fact nowadays that the images we post or share online can and might find themselves being used by third parties for one reason or another. It may not be something we truly agree with, but it’s a fact that most of us have accepted as an undesirable consequence of using freely available social media apps and websites.

To avoid this happening, a team of researchers from the University of Chicago have developed an algorithm, named “Fawkes,” as an ode to Guy Fawkes, that works in the background to slightly alter your image, which is mostly unnoticeable to human eye. The reason for this is that companies, such as, Clearview, which collect large amounts of facial data, use artificial intelligence to find and connect one photograph of one’s face to another photograph from elsewhere. This connection is found by linking the similarities between the two photos. However, it doesn’t mean that the recognition only occurs when identical facial symmetry or characteristics, such as moles, are found. Facial recognition also looks into “invisible relationships between the pixels that make up a computer-generated picture of that face.”

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The Study

Now, Format Medical Research takes on two high profile clinical trials involving the antibody cocktail known as REGN-COV2. Garnering national attention, this investigational therapy targeting COVID-19 has receive a lot of attention. The Ventura County Star reports that the SMO will commence the first study, representing one of 150 sites in North and South America, this Friday. The goal: determine if the antibody medicine offers a safe and effective treatment for those who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.

The second study focuses on those participants who are actually healthy but “at risk” of the virus. In this study, the participants will take the therapy to determine if there are prevention properties and the sponsor seeks up to 2,000 participants.

Although perhaps not a household name among big pharmaceutical sponsors perhaps that may change as FORMAT Medical Research in Oxnard, California, recently secured a major contract with Regeneron to participate in their highly watched, Operation Warp Speed-funded REGN-COV2 double antibody COVID-19 clinical trial. The Southern California-based research organization starts two trials with the New York State-based sponsor chief, Nicholas Focil, who now faces “the most important study of my career.”

Continue reading “Oxnard, CA’s FORMAT Medical Research Secures Two Big Clinical Trials with Regeneron Investigating REGN-COV2” | >

Scientists can use some pretty wild forces to manipulate materials. There’s acoustic tweezers, which use the force of acoustic radiation to control tiny objects. Optical tweezers made of lasers exploit the force of light. Not content with that, now physicists have made a device to manipulate materials using the force of… nothingness.

OK, that may be a bit simplistic. When we say nothingness, we’re really referring to the attractive force that arises between two surfaces in a vacuum, known as the Casimir force. The new research has provided not just a way to use it for no-contact object manipulation, but also to measure it.

The implications span multiple fields, from chemistry and gravitational wave astronomy all the way down to something as fundamental and ubiquitous as metrology — the science of measurement.

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