from WaPo Ask anyone who has experienced the lingering maladies of the pandemic, and they’ll tell you long covid is no figment of the imagination. Tiredness, breathlessness, body aches and “brain fog” hang around for millions of people. Some of these symptoms are also common without covid, and researchers are trying to pin down with precision the lasting damage this virus can do to the human body. They are far from a full understanding. That’s why a new study in Scotland is important. It was aimed at discovering the frequency, nature, determinants and impact of long covid on a large […]
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Change: The Inevitable Choice Forward
from Educause If you ask people how they feel about change, many will say that change can be difficult, especially when it is rapid and unexpected. If change is difficult for many, then why do it? Why change? We change inevitably as we age, and we change intentionally when we alter the conditions of our mental and physical environments. Positive change is a balance of tradition and innovation; society has shown it can adapt to new trends while standing on the shoulders of tradition. For instance, successful efforts to develop and distribute effective COVID-19 vaccines rested on decades of accumulated […]
Continue readingIf You’re Suffering After Being Sick With Covid, It’s Not Just in Your Head
from NYTs When the influenza pandemic of 1918-19 ended, misery continued. Many who survived became enervated and depressed. They developed tremors and nervous complications. Similar waves of illness had followed the 1889 pandemic, with one report noting thousands “in debt and unable to work” and another describing people left “pale, listless and full of fears.” The scientists Oliver Sacks and Joel Vilensky warned in 2005 that a future pandemic could bring waves of illness in its aftermath, noting “a recurring association, since the time of Hippocrates, between influenza epidemics and encephalitis-like diseases” in their wakes. Then came the Covid-19 pandemic, […]
Continue readingBa.2 Omicron Symptoms: What To Look Out For As Variant Spreads In The US
from Fast Company According to the latest Nowcast data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the BA.2 omicron subvariant of COVID-19 has now become the dominant strain across the United States. As of April 2, 2022, the BA.2 variant makes up 72.2% of all cases in the country. While that total is expected to only grow in the coming weeks, as of now BA.2 is more dominant in some areas of the country than others. Here are the areas of America most affected with BA.2 as well as the latest symptoms to watch out for as the […]
Continue readingThe Great Resignation and The Great Deflate
from Serendipity35 2021 was the year of the “Great Resignation.” We have been told that it was a year when workers quit their jobs at historic rates. This is an economic trend meaning that employees voluntarily resign from their jobs. Blame has been aimed at the American government for failing to provide necessary worker protections in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This led to wage stagnation. There was also a rising cost of living. The term was coined in May 2021 by Anthony Klotz, a professor of management at Texas A&M University. It’s now 2022 and unemployment rates have fallen […]
Continue readingEducating in the Metaverse
from SERENDIPTHY35 There is not much mention of education in all the discussions this year about the metaverse, but it is thought that it will better allow students to have a cyber-physical learning experience. The virtual world will merge with the real one more and more seamlessly. For the past 20 months, there has been a global educational experiment in online learning. But don’t think that what has happened in education because of the COVID-19 pandemic is an accurate account or prediction of what teaching and learning are at their best, or what they will become in a metaverse. The […]
Continue readingAccess To Online College Courses Can Speed Students’ Degree Completion
from Brookings Online courses are an increasingly important part of students’ college experience, but how does this impact what students glean from their college experience? Trends toward online learning were evident even before the COVID-19 outbreak. For instance, more than 30% of all students enrolled at postsecondary institutions took at least one online course in the fall 2016 term. Advocates of online education suggest that departments offering online courses can support their students through the ease of access to coursework; for example, internet-based learning can help students avoid scheduling conflicts and offer students greater flexibility to pursue outside activities, like […]
Continue reading‘The Great Resignation’ Misses the Point
from Wired IN EARLY MAY, Anthony Klotz, an associate professor of management at Texas A&M University, did an interview with Bloomberg about a possible spike in job turnover. “The Great Resignation is coming,” he warned. A few weeks later, the Bureau of Labor Statistics confirmed a record 4 million Americans had left their jobs in April. Suddenly, people were reaching for ways to refer to the phenomenon unfolding before them—to brand it, to make sense of it. Klotz’s catchy off-the-cuff terminology, now printed on Bloomberg’s pages, seemed to fit the bill. And just like that, a name was born. We […]
Continue readingFlipped Learning: What Is It, And When Is It Effective?
from Brookings Instructors are constantly on the lookout for more effective and innovative ways to teach. Over the last 18 months, this quest has become even more salient, as COVID-19 has shaken up the academic landscape and pushed teachers to experiment with new strategies for engaging their students. One innovative teaching method that may be particularly amenable to teaching during the pandemic is flipped learning. But does it work? In this post, we discuss our new reportsummarizing the lessons from over 300 published studies on flipped learning. The findings suggest that, for many of us who work with students, flipped […]
Continue readingPowerful Consumer Trends To Watch In 2021
from Forbes Consumer data from 2020 is rolling in, and the numbers are telling. Covid-19 drove major shifts in consumer behavior that will likely have lasting effects. To understand and respond to consumer trends, it’s important to examine the underlying patterns that power a new approach to life, work and buying. At my company, we keep our ears to the ground, ready to sense the tremors that will shake things up. It’s what our clients have come to expect from us; time and time again, we’ve used our foresight and market responsiveness to create future-facing content that matters. Here’s my […]
Continue readingHow Will the Coronavirus Evolve?
from The New Yorker In 1988, Richard Lenski, a thirty-one-year-old biologist at UC Irvine, started an experiment. He divided a population of a common bacterium, E. coli, into twelve flasks. Each flask was kept at thirty-seven degrees Celsius, and contained an identical cocktail of water, glucose, and other nutrients. Each day, as the bacteria replicated, Lenski transferred several drops of each cocktail to a new flask, and every so often he stored samples away in a freezer. His goal was to understand the mechanics of evolution. How quickly, effectively, creatively, and consistently do microorganisms improve their reproductive fitness? Lenski’s flasks […]
Continue readingCovid Is Now a Crisis for the Unvaccinated
from NYTs Case counts are rising, some hospitals are filling up, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is again recommending universal masking in areas where cases are surging. But to suggest that Covid-19 is an escalating emergency in the United States is not quite right. The truth is that the vaccinated and the unvaccinated are experiencing two very different pandemics right now. If we don’t confront that, the nation can’t address either appropriately. The C.D.C.’s announcement will lead many to believe that the pandemic is getting worse. But if you and most of the people in your area […]
Continue readingBreakthrough Covid Vaccine Tech Could Help Defeat Other Diseases
from Reuters Breakthrough technology that transforms the body into a virus-zapping vaccine factory is poised to revolutionise the fight against COVID-19 but future pandemics and even cancer could be next, scientists say. The initial success of so-called messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) vaccines in late-stage trials by Moderna as well as Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech is the first proof the concept works. Both experimental vaccines had efficacy rates above 90% based on interim findings, which was far higher than expected and well above the 50% threshold U.S. regulators insist upon for vaccines. Now scientists say the technology, a slow-motion […]
Continue readingA Covid-Fighting Tool Is Buried In Your Phone. Turn It On.
from WaPo Here’s a phone alert you wouldn’t want to miss: “You have likely been exposed.” The coronavirus surge is upon us, and your phone might be able to help. About 100 million Americans now have the ability to get pop-up notifications from local health authorities when they’ve personally spent time near someone who later tested positive for the coronavirus. But exposure notifications only work if you and the people around you turn them on. Yes, you! There’s early evidence this anonymous smartphone technology works — but so far isn’t helping very many Americans. In August, I wrote about the […]
Continue readingThe iOS COVID-19 App Ecosystem Has Become A Privacy Minefield
from ars technica When the notion of enlisting smartphones to help fight the COVID-19 pandemic first surfaced last spring, it sparked a months-long debate: should apps collect location data, which could help with contact tracing but potentially reveal sensitive information? Or should they take a more limited approach, only measuring Bluetooth-based proximity to other phones? Now, a broad survey of hundreds of COVID-19-related apps reveals that the answer is all of the above. And that has made the COVID-19 app ecosystem a kind of wild, sprawling landscape, full of potential privacy pitfalls. Late last month, Jonathan Albright, director of the Digital […]
Continue readingHiring Remotely Is The New Reality. Here’s How To Do It With Speed
from Fast Company In some ways, growing businesses are akin to children: They will go through periods of rapid and transformative growth spurts. Short times of accelerated sales and growing customer bases are often accompanied by growing pains, during which the business must get accustomed to a new pace. While these periods are exciting, as they are typically a sign of success, it is also extremely challenging because that success will only last as long as you’re able to adequately support it. During such periods of growth, an expanded team is a critical component to sustaining and supporting new demand. […]
Continue readingThe COVID-19 Pandemic Is Revealing The Regressive Business Model Of College Sports
from Brookings This year’s college football season is shaping up to be vastly different than any other in history. While games are being played, crowds are exceptionally limited or nonexistent. Furthermore, there are simply fewer games—and there is no guarantee of a complete season for any school. The combination of these factors is costing universities tens of millions of dollars and upending the underlying business model of college sports. Universities across the country have already responded by ending many low-revenue sports. This has led to widespread lamentations about the decreased opportunities for intercollegiate athletes who play sports that cannot support […]
Continue readingWhen Should Schools Reopen Fully In-Person?
from Brookings Over the past several months, schools and colleges across the country have had to make heart-wrenching decisions about whether and how to reopen. Should they have any in-person activities? If so, when? And at what point—and with what adjustments—is it safe to return to fully in-person activities? If there is a flare-up in COVID-19 cases, should we scale back in-person activities? The debates over these questions have become rancorous. I argue below that this is because the questions themselves are very difficult to answer, and then offer some ideas on how to make the decisions easier and better. […]
Continue readingCOVID-19 Might Mean Humanity Has Entered An Age Of Pandemics
from BuzzFeed News Humanity has “entered a pandemic era,” with the worldwide coronavirus outbreak likely the first of accelerating epidemics to come, top US infectious disease scientist Anthony Fauci and other public health experts are warning. In an August report in the journal Cell, Fauci and epidemiologist David Morens, his National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) colleague, foresee an accelerating rate of pandemics in the years ahead driven largely by deforestation, urban crowding, and wet markets for wild game, which will make increasing environmental degradation worldwide in this century, “the key determinant of disease emergence.” “I don’t have […]
Continue readingWhy The Move To Online Instruction Won’t Reduce College Costs
from Brookings As COVID-19 swept across the country in March, colleges shuttered and millions of students and instructors were propelled into a world of distance education. Institutional leaders are now grappling with how to provide a quality education over the academic year ahead while also guarding the health and safety of students, faculty, and staff. Online instruction is a core component of many colleges’ strategies, with a growing number abandoning in-person plans for the fall. Questions about the feasibility, quality, equity, and costs of online instruction sit front and center. Our recent analysis suggests that the difficulty of shifting instruction […]
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