Quartz: “The omicron variant of covid-19, which has replaced delta as the most common strain, is still spreading around the world. While it’s much more contagious than previous covid-19 variants, omicron carries two possible silver linings: It appears to be less likely to cause severe illness and its spread raised some hopes that it could help create herd immunity in areas of low vaccination rates. This, for instance, is what prompted the World Health Organization’s European office to publish a statement saying omicron might open a new phase in the pandemic, with widespread immunity reached through a combination of vaccinations and infections. Yet new research published Jan. 26 by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco shows the long-term effect of omicron-induced immunization might be highly overrated…”
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Daily Archives: February 1, 2022
Tiny nanoplastics are floating in the air—and you’re breathing them in
Fast Company: “By some estimates, people have discarded 4,900 million tonnes of plastic have into the environment. Once in nature, that plastic starts to degrade, fragmenting into microplastics about the size of a sesame seed, which are inadvertently ingested by humans and animals through eating them in seafood and drinking them in water. Some reports… Continue Reading
Pete Recommends Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, January 29, 2022
Via LLRX – Pete Recommends Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, January 29, 2022 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly… Continue Reading
UK Supreme Court has launched its first, free, online course for the public
Paul Sandles, Librarian and Departmental Records Officer: “The Supreme Court has launched its first, free, online course for the public. https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/inside-the-supreme-court. We have worked in partnership with Royal Holloway, University of London, to create the course. Our aim is to give people a behind the scenes look at the work of the Supreme Court and… Continue Reading
USPTO launches new Patent Public Search tool and webpage
“The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today announced a new Patent Public Search tool that provides more convenient, remote, and robust full-text searching of all U.S. patents and published patent applications. Based on the advanced Patents End-to-End (PE2E) search tool USPTO examiners use to identify prior art, this free, cloud-based platform combines the capabilities of… Continue Reading
Is your job at the top of the Glassdoor best jobs 2022 list? If not, try one that is
TechRepublic: “Psychiatrists earn more ($252,385), and real estate agents and corporate recruiters have higher job satisfaction scores (4.4 out of 5). Despite that stiff competition, an IT job took the top spot in Glassdoor’s annual list of the top jobs in the U.S. Enterprise architects are number 1, followed by full-stack engineers, data scientists, devops… Continue Reading
Read the CIA’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual: A Timeless Guide to Subverting Any Organization with “Purposeful Stupidity” (1944)
Open Culture: “…Now declassified and freely available on the Homeland Security website, the manual the agency describes as “surprisingly relevant” was once distributed to OSS officers abroad to assist them in training “citizen-saboteurs” in occupied countries like Norway and France. Such people, writes Rebecca Onion at Slate, “might already be sabotaging materials, machinery, or operations of their… Continue Reading
Gmail Is Getting a New Look: Here’s What’s Changing
MakeUseOf: “Gmail is not known for revamping its look more often. However, since its major design overhaul in 2020, Google is ready to spice things up a little further by introducing a new integrated view. The new Gmail look builds upon the 2020 design overhaul, making it easy to switch between your emails, Google Chat,… Continue Reading
Legislative and Judicial Developments Affecting Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER)
CRS Legal Sidebar, Legislative and Judicial Developments Affecting Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) Updated February 1, 2022: “The Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER)system is the U.S. Court’s web-based service that gives registered users electronic access to documents filed in the U.S. Courts via the online Case Management/Electronic Case Files system, known… Continue Reading
CRS – Financial Regulation: Systemic Risk
Financial Regulation: Systemic Risk, February 1, 2022: “The U.S. financial system has experienced two major episodes of financial instability in the 21stcentury (as well as a few minor incidents)—the 2007-2009 financial crisis and instability surrounding the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020. In both cases, the federal government and the Federal… Continue Reading
