PHARMAField: “A new online reporting site, dedicated to reporting any COVID-19 treatment adverse events, including suspected side effects from medicines, future vaccines and incidents involving medical equipment relating to COVID-19 treatment, has been launched. The new and tailored Yellow Card COVID-19 reporting site makes it quicker and simpler for healthcare professionals, patients and carers to report side-effects or incidents. The site has been developed as part of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency’s (MHRA) work to protect the public through enhanced COVID-19 vigilance and in preparation for large-scale use of potential new or repurposed medicines, medical devices, diagnostic tests and future vaccines…”
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Daily Archives: May 6, 2020
Facebook uses 1.5bn Reddit posts to create chatbot
BBC News: “Facebook has launched a new chatbot that it claims is able to demonstrate empathy, knowledge and personality. “Blender” was trained using available public domain conversations which included 1.5 billion examples of human exchanges. The social media giant said 49% of people preferred interactions with the chatbot, compared with another human. But experts say… Continue Reading
NOAA exploring impact of COVID-19 response on the environment
NOAA: “The coronavirus pandemic response has reduced pollution from a large number of sources across many geographic regions. NOAA has launched a wide-ranging research effort to investigate the impact of reduced vehicle traffic, air travel, shipping, manufacturing and other activities on Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. NOAA scientists are using the most advanced atmosphere-ocean models to… Continue Reading
What U.S. States Are Ready To Test & Trace Today?
#TestandTrace: “Test and Trace is a classic public health approach for containing diseases. It means identifying people who have come into contact with an infected person (contact tracing) , testing them, and then isolating them if they’re sick. This is proven to quickly limit the spread of a deadly disease like COVID-19. Here’s a basic… Continue Reading
How My Boss Monitors Me While I Work From Home
The New York Times – As we shelter in place in the pandemic, more employers are using software to track our work — and us: “…With millions of us working from home in the coronavirus pandemic, companies are hunting for ways to ensure that we are doing what we are supposed to. Demand has surged… Continue Reading
Work From Home Is Here to Stay
Vanity Fair – The future of jobs after the pandemic is a blurry mix of work, life, pajamas, and Zoom. “…. While working remotely confers some mental-health and other benefits, the “job” as we know it might never be the same. Conferences, in-person meetings, and even handshakes might be deemed not worth the risk of… Continue Reading
Finding Solace, and Connection, in Classic Books
The New York Times Coronavirus Notebook: “…In this time of crisis, we are reminded that literature provides historical empathy and perspective, breaking through the isolation we feel hunkered down in our homes to connect us, across time zones and centuries, with others who once lived through not dissimilar events. It conjures our worst nightmares (Poe’s… Continue Reading
Global health crises are also information crises: A call to action
Xie B, He D, Mercer T,et al. Global health crises are also information crises: A call to action. J Assoc Inf Sci Technol.2020;1–5. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24357: “In this opinion paper, we argue that global health crises are also information crises. Using as an example the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) epidemic, we (a) examine challenges associated with what… Continue Reading
New Search Engine for State Legislation
“BillTrack50 offers both a free and a paid service. Our genuinely free service allows citizens to search by keyword or bill number to discover and review an unlimited number of state and federal bills. Unlimited free access to bill data is fundamental to the working of our sharing tools and is fundamental to our mission.… Continue Reading
ABA Legal Fact Check explores legal workplace issues arising from COVID-19
“A new ABA Legal Fact Check posted today examines how COVID-19 is raising questions — and legal challenges — to employers’ actions related to keeping their workplace safe and to workers’ rights to seek reasonable accommodation under federal and state law. Employers, for example, can now require workers to have their body temperatures taken before… Continue Reading
2020 Library Systems Report
American Libraries – 2020 Library Systems Report: “The library technology industry took some significant turns in 2019. Ex Libris, a ProQuest company, acquired Innovative Interfaces and shifted the balance of power, strengthening Ex Libris’s position in technology for academic libraries and propelling it as a major player in public libraries. This move narrows the slate… Continue Reading
