Collaborative Work Tools

Matt Kapko contrasts the pros and cons of departmental vs. corporate wide collaboration tools .

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Contract Tracing Software for Android and iPhone

J.R. Raphael provides an overview of opt-in contact tracing software which might reduce the spread of coronavirus if widely installed. Raphael commends the corporate cooperation, but questions whether there will be sufficient voluntary adoption of the app.

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Stressing the Internet

Dritan Suljoti suggests that the internet may slow with all of the traffic inspired by people staying at home, but it will continue to function.

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Ergonomics

Brian Nadel reviews basic ergonomics for those setting up a home office.

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1918 Flu Epidemic

Michael Worobey talks about the genesis of the 1918 Flue Epidemic . Worobey traces the history of the flu back to the Great Epizootic of 1872, where equines flu appeared in Toronto and spread throughout North American, then spread to chickens and turkeys. The disease, which was an H1N1 virus, eventually made its way to humans.

Worobey also determined that the aged in 1918 were infants in the 1840 H1N1 virus epidemic, and thus had antibodies in the 1918 epidemic.

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Foldable Phones

J.R. Raphael warns that the current crop of foldable phones are proof-of-concept devices which reinforce the reputation that the brand is an innovator .

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Destruction of Ancient Mediterranian Civilization in 1177 BC

Eric Cline speaks about the destruction of ancient civilizations which occurred about 1177 BC .

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Student Struggles Under The Shadow of Coronavirus

Vimal Patel writes about the struggles students face as their courses are moved online. Many courses were transformed into a pass-fail format, so students wonder if they will have the proper grades in essential courses to obtain a graduate student fellowship.

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Student Evaluation in a Time of Coronavirus

Emma Dill shares how students are being evaluated now that they have been moved to an online environment. Many are being graded on a pass-fail basis to minimize the negative impact of being moved online mid-semester.

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Azolla and Global Warming

The Azolla Foundation promotes the utilization of tiny water ferns to feed humanity and reduce global warming, but notes that they grow so rapidly that they can be an invasive species .

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Video Presence and the Home Environment

ABC News has a story about the influence of home interiors on a person's video presentation .

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Coronavirus and Vocational Studies

Katherine Mangan reports that medical assistants and vocational students are unable to complete the work experience hours required to receive their degree in a timely manner, due to workplace closures caused by coronavirus.

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Typescript

Josh Fruhlinger describes Typescript as a "typed" form of open source Javascript developed by Microsoft. Typescript is used to generate equivalent Javascript, making it compatible with current browsers

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Shelter In Place

German Lopez notes that shelter in place mandates have saved thousands of lives.

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PowerPoint Coach

Rob Enderle is wowed by the new coach feature in PowerPoint.

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World Book Day, April 23

Amazon is celebrating "Book Day" by offering free downloads of nine Kindle e-books .

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ASMR

Deirdre Sackett shares research into autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) , which causes states of relaxation, productivity, or disgust as a result of experiencing certain sound patterns.

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Interactive Science Results

James Somers suggests that data sets and interactive data tools are replacing peer reviewed scholarly journals as the primary method of disseminating scientific literature. He gives the examples of tools such as Mathematica and Jupyter, and of data set projects which utilize their interactivity.

ProQuest is leveraging their databases to enter this space with the tool ProQuest TDM Studio. -DD

Defeating Opioid Addiction

Beth Macy tells the story of Nikki King and her fight against Appalachian opioid addiction .

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Improving Memorization

Tom Stafford gives three tips for memorization :

1. Practice to recall and use information, not to recognize information;
2. Study a little each day, rather than spending the same number of hours in a single marathon study session; and remember,
3. Mastery requires a lot of intentional practice; learning in ones' sleep does not develop mastery.

Mary Slaughter also wrote about studying and memorization.

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Home Office Accountability

Kristine Berman discusses the need for home workers to maintain accountability , and suggests best practices to make the remote office like a corporate office.

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Clean the Home Office

Brian Nadel suggests how people can keep their home office (and for parents, their home classroom) free of viruses and bacteria .

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What You Know Determines What You May Learn

Marlieke van Kesteren notes that what you know determines what you may learn . Joshua Foer has earlier mentioned that education in foundational concepts is required for advanced learning in the book Moonwalking With Einstein, and it is one of the reasons for a liberal arts education.

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Bible Quotations About Isolation

Godwin Jireh shares quotes from the Bible about isolation and crisis.

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Enjoy Studying

Scott Young suggests how to enjoy studying . Youhg says that key is to associate studying with a reward: for example, visualize how mastering the material will enable you to do a specific task, or consider that you will be recognized for mastery.

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Coronavirus Surveillance Report

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control have created a Weekly Coronavirus Surveillance Report which indicates the number of reported infections by state.

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WHO calls on world to say #ThanksHealthHeroes

April 7 is World Health Day!
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Affirming Students

James Lang suggests that instructors should practice values affirmation . Lang cites research by Miyake1, Kost-Smith, Finkelstein, Pollock, Cohen, and Ito1 (2010), which showed that affirmation seemed to level performance among genders, as well as research by David Gooblar (2020) on minority response to affirmation.

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Web Browsers

Gregg Keizer reports that the Chrome browser is close to 70 percent market share, with Edge (7.6 percent), Firefox (7.2 percent), Safari (3.6 percent) and Opera (1.1 percent) far behind.

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Turning Adversity Into Advantage

Dina Gerdman reviews Edge: Turning Adversity into Advantage by Laura Huang.

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Maintaining the Immune System

Sumathi Reddy discusses ways to maintain a healthy immune system .

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Phone Cleaning

Joanna Stern shares the experimental results of phone cleaning . Stern notes that even aggressive cleaning is unlikely to damage a modern phone. She also notes that most medical scientists feel that phones normally only pick up an individuals own microbes, and thus cleaning your personal phone, so long as only you touch it, is unlikely to influence health outcomes.

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Collaboration Software

Matthew Finegan writes about how collaboration software companies are letting users try their offerings without charge during the coronavirus pandemic

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Middle Manager Requirements

Joseph Fuller argues that the attainment of college degrees should not be required from all middle-level managers.

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