VIDEO REELS

21Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

ENVIRONMENT, IN OTHER NEWS, TOP FOUR, VIDEO REELS

The Coming Cicada Invasion

Billions of cicadas are about to emerge from underground in a rare double-brood convergence. In the wake of North America’s recent solar eclipse, another historic natural event is on the horizon. From late April through June 2024, the largest brood of 13-year cicadas, known as Brood XIX, will co-emerge with a midwestern brood of 17-year cicadas, Brood XIII. This event will affect 17 states, from Maryland west to Iowa and south into Arkansas, Alabama and northern Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia and Maryland. A co-emergence like this of two specific broods with different life cycles happens only once every 221 years. The last time these two groups emerged together was in 1803, when Thomas Jefferson was president. For about four weeks, scattered wooded and suburban areas will ring wit...

Chatbots Refuse To Produce Controversial Content: What You Need To Know

20Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

AI, TECHNOLOGY, VIDEO REELS

Chatbots Refuse To Produce Controversial Content: What You Need To Know

AI chatbots refuse to produce ‘controversial’ output − why that’s a free speech problem. Google recently made headlines globally because its chatbot Gemini generated images of people of color instead of white people in historical settings that featured white people. Adobe Firefly’s image creation tool saw similar issues. This led some commentators to complain that AI had gone “woke.” Others suggested these issues resulted from faulty efforts to fight AI bias and better serve a global audience. The discussions over AI’s political leanings and efforts to fight bias are important. Still, the conversation on AI ignores another crucial issue: What is the AI industry’s approach to free speech, and does it embrace international free speech standards? We are policy researchers who study fre...

TikTok Fears: A Closer Look At The Problem Of Poor Media Literacy In The Age Of Social Media

21Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SOCIAL MEDIA, TOP FOUR, VIDEO REELS

TikTok Fears: A Closer Look At The Problem Of Poor Media Literacy In The Age Of Social Media

TikTok fears point to larger problem: Poor media literacy in the social media age. The U.S. government moved closer to banning the video social media app TikTok after the House of Representatives attached the measure to an emergency spending bill on Apr. 17, 2024. The House voted on each of the four components of the bill, and the one affecting TikTok passed 360-58 on Apr. 20, 2024. The packaging is likely to improve the bill’s chances in the Senate, and President Joe Biden has indicated that he will sign the bill if it reaches his desk. The bill would force ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, to either sell its American holdings to a U.S. company or face a ban in the country. The company has said it will fight any effort to force a sale. The proposed legislation was mo...

7Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

TECHNOLOGY, VIDEO REELS

Batteries So Many Sizes And Shapes

Why batteries come in so many sizes and shapes. If you’ve looked in your utility drawer lately, you may have noticed the various shapes, sizes and types of batteries that power your electronic devices. First, there are the round, non-rechargeable button cells for your watches and small items. There’s also the popular AA and AAA cylindrical batteries for calculators, clocks and remotes. Then you have the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries in your laptops and phones. And don’t forget about the lead-acid battery in your car. Maybe you have a drawer in your house that looks like this? Peter Fiskerstrand/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA I’m a professor who studies batteries and electrochemistry. To understand why batteries come in many different sizes and shapes – and serve many purposes – look to th...

Could April’s Eclipse Interrupt Solar Power Straining Electrical Grids

5Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SCIENCE, TOP FOUR, VIDEO REELS

Could April’s Eclipse Interrupt Solar Power Straining Electrical Grids

April’s eclipse will mean interruptions in solar power generation, which could strain electrical grids. During the most recent total solar eclipse visible in the U.S., on Aug. 21, 2017, the skies darkened as the Moon crossed in front of the Sun. It blocked out all sunlight – except for that from a golden ring visible around the Moon’s shape, called the corona. Not surprisingly, solar power generation across North America plummeted for several hours, from the first moment the Moon began to obscure the Sun to when the Sun’s disk was clear again. On April 8, 2024, another total solar eclipse will track across the U.S., causing perhaps an even greater loss of solar power generation. Although this will be the second total solar eclipse visible in the U.S. in under seven years, these events are...

A Closer Look At The First SEC Approved US Climate Disclosure Rules

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

ENVIRONMENT, VIDEO REELS

A Closer Look At The First SEC Approved US Climate Disclosure Rules

SEC approves first US climate disclosure rules: Why the requirements are much weaker than planned and what they mean for companies. After two years of intense public debate, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved the nation’s first national climate disclosure rules on March 6, 2024, setting out requirements for publicly listed companies to report their climate-related risks and in some cases their greenhouse gas emissions. The new rules are much weaker than those originally proposed. Significantly, the SEC dropped a controversial plan to require companies to report Scope 3 emissions – emissions generated throughout the company’s supply chain and customers’ use of its products. The rules do require larger companies to disclose Scope 1 and 2 emissions, which are emissions fro...

AI Can Now Track Your Emotions — But Should It?

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

AI, TECHNOLOGY, VIDEO REELS

AI Can Now Track Your Emotions — But Should It?

Emotion-tracking AI on the job: Workers fear being watched – and misunderstood. Emotion artificial intelligence uses biological signals such as vocal tone, facial expressions and data from wearable devices as well as text and how people use their computers, promising to detect and predict how someone is feeling. It is used in contexts both mundane, like entertainment, and high stakes, like the workplace, hiring and health care. A wide range of industries already use emotion AI, including call centers, finance, banking, nursing and caregiving. Over 50% of large employers in the U.S. use emotion AI aiming to infer employees’ internal states, a practice that grew during the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, call centers monitor what their operators say and their tone of voice. Scholars hav...

A World In Which Corporations Controlled All Information — Norman Jewison’s ‘Rollerball’ — Is This Vision Becoming Reality?

2Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

POLITICS, VIDEO REELS

A World In Which Corporations Controlled All Information — Norman Jewison’s ‘Rollerball’ — Is This Vision Becoming Reality?

Norman Jewison’s ‘Rollerball’ depicted a world in which corporations controlled all information – is this dystopian vision becoming reality? If the films of Norman Jewison, who died on Jan. 22, 2024, had a unifying theme, it was how his characters searched for meaning and questioned the rules of their worlds. No matter the genre of the scores of films he directed – from “In the Heat of the Night” to “Fiddler on the Roof” – his characters grew by confronting their own biases and preconceptions, even if it meant sacrificing things they once held dear. And as a media scholar, I see the Canadian director’s 1975 film “Rollerball” as one of his most underrated works. In it, the film’s hero, Jonathan E., is a star athlete who’s willing to risk his own life to avoid being a pawn for his corporate...

50 Years Ago ‘Jaws’ Portrayed Sharks As Monsters And Inspired A Generation Of Shark Scientists

2Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

MOVIES, VIDEO REELS

50 Years Ago ‘Jaws’ Portrayed Sharks As Monsters And Inspired A Generation Of Shark Scientists

‘Jaws’ portrayed sharks as monsters 50 years ago, but it also inspired a generation of shark scientists. Human fear of sharks has deep roots. Written works and art from the ancient world contain references to sharks preying on sailors as early as the eighth century B.C.E. Relayed back to land, stories about shark encounters have been embellished and amplified. Together with the fact that from time to time – very rarely – sharks bite humans, people have been primed for centuries to imagine terrifying situations at sea. In 1974, Peter Benchley’s bestselling novel “Jaws” fanned this fear into a wildfire that spread around the world. The book sold more than 5 million copies in the U.S. within a year and was quickly followed by Steven Spielberg’s 1975 movie, which became the highest-grossing...

Lorne Michaels — Nearly 50 Years Of Comedy Gold

28Feb

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

CELEBRITY NEWS, TOP FOUR, VIDEO REELS

Lorne Michaels — Nearly 50 Years Of Comedy Gold

Lorne Michaels, the man behind the curtain at ‘Saturday Night Live,’ has been minting comedy gold for nearly 50 years. On April 24, 1976, Lorne Michaels, the creator and producer of the late-night NBC comedy program “Saturday Night” – it had not yet changed its name to “Saturday Night Live” – appeared on camera in hopes of luring the Beatles to reunite on the program. The Fab Four’s last concert had been eight years earlier in San Francisco, and the band had stopped recording together in 1969. Michaels addressed the band members by name – John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr – and then acknowledged rumors that the group might get back together. “It’s also been said that no one has yet to come up with enough money to satisfy you,” Michaels said. “Well, if it’s money ...