LONDON (AP) — Britain, the United States and Canada accused Russia on Thursday of trying to steal information from researchers seeking a COVID-19 vaccine.
A person in China scans a QR code with a smartphone to register their real name before getting off a bus in Wuhan, China. Zhang Chang/China News Service via Getty Images
The US is rolling out digital contact tracing. How has it been working in other countries?
vox.com - by Shirin Ghaffary - April 18, 2020
If and when lockdown restrictions are lifted in the US, would you agree to let the government anonymously track your interactions with people within a 6-foot radius to control the spread of Covid-19?
That’s an increasingly urgent question as President Trump and state governors debate how and when to safely reopen the US economy — and as technology is being touted as a solution that would help people reenter public life.
And tech giants are stepping up. Last week, Apple and Google announced a plan to turn phones into opt-in Covid-19 tracking machines that would, if all goes as planned, make it easier for health officials to identify and alert people if they’ve been exposed to the virus.
The right message at the right time from the right person can save lives. CDC’s Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) draws from lessons learned during past public health emergencies and research in the fields of public health, psychology, and emergency risk communication. CDC’s CERC program provides trainings, tools, and resources to help health communicators, emergency responders, and leaders of organizations communicate effectively during emergencies.
Photograph - Getty Images - nfpa.org - by Jesse Roman - July 1, 2019
Around the world, an army of volunteers equipped with little more than laptops monitors social media activity during all manner of emergencies. That work is contributing to a fundamental change in how safety agencies interact with the public during large-scale disasters.
. . . a virtual operations support team, or VOST community remains primarily a loosely affiliated network of do-gooder volunteers . . .
. . . Because the work is conducted online, VOST members can be located anywhere in the world . . .
. . . The general term for this work is social monitoring, a concept that has grown steadily since about 2010. Many forward-thinking disaster managers now see this digital sleuthing as critical to their on-the-ground efforts, regardless of the type of disaster they are facing.
The AI renaissance of recent years has led many to ask how this technology can help with one of the greatest threats facing humanity: climate change. A new research paper authored by some of the field’s best-known thinkers aims to answer this question, giving a number of examples of how machine learning could help prevent human destruction.
The suggested use-cases are varied, ranging from using AI and satellite imagery to better monitor deforestation, to developing new materials that can replace steel and cement (the production of which accounts for nine percent of global green house gas emissions).
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia with Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov in Moscow last year. General Gerasimov said Saturday that Russia should bring a blend of political, economic and military power to bear against its adversaries. Credit: Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik
nytimes.com - by Andrew E. Kramer - March 2, 2019
The chief of Russia’s armed forces endorsed on Saturday the kind of tactics used by his country to intervene abroad, repeating a philosophy of so-called hybrid war that has earned him notoriety in the West, especially among American officials who have accused Russia of election meddling in 2016 . . .
. . . General Gerasimov said Russia’s armed forces must maintain both “classical” and “asymmetrical” potential, using jargon for the mix of combat, intelligence and propaganda tools that the Kremlin has deployed in conflicts such as Syria and Ukraine.
And he cited the Syrian civil war an example of successful Russian intervention abroad. The combination of a small expeditionary force with “information” operations had provided lessons that could be expanded to “defend and advance national interests beyond the borders of Russia,” he said.
Trolls used the vaccination debate to try to sow discord during the US election, researchers say. Photograph: Buenaventuramariano/Getty Images/iStockphoto
newsweek.com - by Christina Maza - February 14, 2019
Russian propaganda may be responsible for the persistence of measles as conspiracy theories about vaccinations spread across the Internet, according to researchers.
The same Russian trolls who attempted to provoke racial tensions and influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election were also responsible for spreading propaganda against vaccinations. Their efforts may have helped cause the measles outbreak that infected tens of thousands and killed dozens in Europe last year, researchers told Radio Free Europe.
sciencemag.org - by Michael Price - December 20, 2017
There’s an apparent paradox in modern life: Society as a whole is getting smarter, yet we aren’t any closer to figuring out how to all get along. “How is it possible that we have just as many, if not more, conflicts as before?” asks social psychologist Igor Grossmann.
The answer is that raw intelligence doesn’t reduce conflict, Grossmann asserts. Wisdom does. Such wisdom—in effect, the ability to take the perspectives of others into account and aim for compromise—comes much more naturally to those who grow up poor or working class, he says.
My research shows that when people feel threatened they want ‘tighter’ social norms, with profound consequences for politics
theguardian.com - by Michele Gelfand - September 17, 2018
What is the essential dividing line between human beings around the world? . . .
. . . My research across hundreds of communities suggests that the fundamental driver of difference is not ideological, financial or geographical – it’s cultural. Behaviour, it turns out, depends a lot on whether the culture in which we live is a “tight” or “loose” one.
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