Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA
ATLANTA (AP) — Dr. William Foege, a leader of one of humanity’s greatest public health victories — the global eradication of smallpox — has died.Foege died Saturday in Atlanta at the age of 89, according to the Task Force for Global Health, which he co-founded.The 6-foot-7 inch Foege literally stood out in the field of public health. A whip-smart medical doctor with a calm demeanor, he had a canny knack for beating back infectious diseases.He was director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and later held other key leadership roles…
Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com.Why does burping make noise? – Henry E., age 8, Somerville, MassachusettsBurping is a normal part of everyday life.Burps happen when air from your stomach travels back up your food tube – called an esophagus – to your mouth. Air gets into your stomach during activities like eating or drinking. If you drink things that contain lots of gas – like the carbon dioxide in bubbly sodas, for example – you’ll probably burp more than usual…
ATLANTA (AP) — Your watch says you had three hours of deep sleep. Should you believe it?Millions of people rely on phone apps and wearable devices like rings, smartwatches and sensors to monitor how well they’re sleeping, but these trackers don’t necessarily measure sleep directly. Instead, they infer states of slumber from signals like heart rate and movement, raising questions about how reliable the information is and how seriously it should be taken.The U.S. sleep-tracking devices market generated about $5 billion in 2023 and is expected to double in revenue by 2030, according to market research firm Grand View Research.…
The growl of a V8 engine — a deep, throaty roar that swells when a driver stomps the gas pedal — had for years been fading from auto assembly floors.No longer.The American automotive landscape is changing after a period that saw tighter emissions rules push automakers toward more efficient, quieter powertrains and prompted shifts away from big V8 engines.But many of those regulations, including the federal EV incentives, have fallen away, leading automakers that once promised to discontinue the gas-hungry engines to reinvest in V8 offerings — especially in full-size trucks and performance cars.The shift isn’t a wholesale retreat from…
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with William Tunstall-Pedoe, 56, a founder and CEO. Amazon’s acquisition of his startup and his role at Unlikely AI have been verified by Business Insider. This piece has been edited for length and clarity.I helped create Alexa, a product that everyone has heard of and most people have used. I’m proud of what we built.But by 2016, it was clear that leaving Amazon, which I joined after the company acquired my startup, was the right decision. Continuing to work on Alexa would have been a very different job from building and launching…
Harvey CEO Winston Weinberg wants to be under pressure.Weinberg said that he’s realized he does his best work when he goes to sleep, dreading just how busy he’ll be the next day.”The weeks that I do the best work or feel like I did the best work is every single night before I go to bed, I’m like, ‘Ah, shit,'” Weinberg told investor Harry Stebbings during a recent episode of Stebbings’ “20VC” podcast.Harvey is one of the hottest names in the closely-watched legal AI startup space. In December, Weinberg’s firm said it had reached an $8 billion valuation.Weinberg said he…
There’s a long banner hanging in Amplitude’s San Francisco office. It reads: “NO MAGICAL THINKING.”No, it’s not some rag on Joan Didion. It’s a reminder, CEO Spenser Skates told Business Insider, that technology can never replace deep thinking and hard work. In the AI age, that reminder is more important than ever — so much so that employees must look up at it every day.Amplitude, an 800-person, publicly traded analytics company, is undergoing an AI transformation — with the goal of reinvigorating its business.Amplitude went public in September 2021 at the height of the pandemic, climbing to an all-time closing…
Snowfalls can now beget windfalls.As Americans rush to buy essentials ahead of Winter Storm Fern, some are also buying shares on prediction markets, like Kalshi and Polymarket, betting on how much snow will fall in New York City.Traders on Kalshi have bet almost $900,000 as of Saturday afternoon on whether more than 12 inches of snow will fall in New York City on Saturday and Sunday. Meanwhile, on Polymarket, traders have bet about $210,000 on how much snow New York City will see this weekend. The winning category is now 8 to 10 inches.The storm is expected to bring heavy…
There were times at this week’s meeting of the World Economic Forum when Davos seemed transformed into a high-powered tech conference, with on-stage appearances by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and even more industry executives. The big topic, unsurprisingly, was AI, with CEOs laying a vision for the technology’s transformative potential while also acknowledging ongoing concerns that they’re inflating a massive bubble. Amidst all that big-picture prognostication, they also found time to take swipes at their competitors, and even at their ostensible partners. On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s…
Big Tech companies and upcoming startups want to use generative AI to build software and hardware for kids. A lot of those experiences are limited to text or voice, and kids might not find that captivating. Three former Google employees want to get over that hurdle with their generative AI-powered interactive app, Sparkli. Sparkli was founded last year by Lax Poojary, Lucie Marchand, and Myn Kang. As parents, Poojary and Kang were not able to satisfy their children’s curiosity or give engaging answers to their questions. “Kids, by definition, are very curious, and my son would ask me questions about…