A mere amount of 2.2 grams (780 TBq) of tritium, diluted in $1.25 \cdot 10^6$ m$^3$ water, contained in 1047 tanks at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant are being released to the Pacific Ocean. The operation is scheduled to last over 30 years, with not more than releasing 62 mg (22 TBq) of tritium annually. The outcry in the world's press and the world's population is huge and countries like e.g. China are protesting aloud and are even banning Japanese seafood being sold in their domestic market. The outcry is real, the perceived fears are real, the havoc created on the Japanese fish market is real, but the danger is non-existing. The panic results from over-regulations initiated by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) and similar bodies worldwide, prohibiting a reliable assessment of dangers and are thereby also preventing a solid risk analysis of real dangers.
We explore the effect of nursing home status on healthcare outcomes such as hospitalisation, mortality and in-hospital mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some claim that in specific Autonomous Communities (geopolitical divisions) in Spain, elderly people in nursing homes had restrictions on access to hospitals and treatments, which raised a public outcry about the fairness of such measures. In this work, the case of the Basque Country is studied under a rigorous statistical approach and a physician's perspective. As fairness/unfairness is hard to model mathematically and has strong real-world implications, this work concentrates on the following simplification: establishing if the nursing home status had a direct effect on healthcare outcomes once accounted for other meaningful patients' information such as age, health status and period of the pandemic, among others. The methods followed here are a combination of established techniques as well as new proposals from the fields of causality and fair learning. The current analysis suggests that as a group, people in nursing homes were significantly less likely to be hospitalised, and considerably more likely to die, even in hospi
Bangladesh, situated in the foothills of the Himalayas in South Asia, is a nation characterized by its extensive river network. This riverine state comprises various features such as small hill ranges, meandering seasonal creeks, muddy canals, picturesque rivers, their tributaries, and branching streams. Numerous cities and ports have been established along both sides of these rivers, forming an inseparable connection to the country's civilization and agricultural system. These waterways serve as vital channels for communication and transportation of goods due to their easy accessibility and cost-effectiveness. In Bangladesh, waterway accidents have been a persistent issue. Every year, a significant number of people suffer injuries, fatalities, or go missing due to shipping accidents. While major naval accidents briefly generate public outcry and prompt investigations by the media and authorities, this study aims to examine accident data spanning from 1995 to 2019. The goal is to identify the primary factors contributing to these accidents using multiple linear regression theory in various mathematical combinations. The model's accuracy is validated using different datasets. Additi
Successful containment of the Coronavirus pandemic rests on the ability to quickly and reliably identify those who have been in close proximity to a contagious individual. Existing tools for doing so rely on the collection of exact location information of individuals over lengthy time periods, and combining this information with other personal information. This unprecedented encroachment on individual privacy at national scales has created an outcry and risks rejection of these tools. We propose an alternative: an extremely simple scheme for providing fine-grained and timely alerts to users who have been in the close vicinity of an infected individual. Crucially, this is done while preserving the anonymity of all individuals, and without collecting or storing any personal information or location history. Our approach is based on using short-range communication mechanisms, like Bluetooth, that are available in all modern cell phones. It can be deployed with very little infrastructure, and incurs a relatively low false-positive rate compared to other collocation methods. We also describe a number of extensions and tradeoffs. We believe that the privacy guarantees provided by the sche
In this theoretical paper, I propose creation of a venture bank, able to multiply the capital of a venture capital firm by at least 47 times, without requiring access to the Federal Reserve or other central bank apart from settlement. This concept rests on obtaining default swap instruments on loans in order to create the capital required, and expand Tier 1 and 2 base capital. Profitability depends on overall portfolio performance, availability of equity default swaps, cost of default swap, and the multiple of original capital (MOC) adopted by the venture bank. A new derivative financial instrument, the equity default swap (EDS), to cover loans made as venture investments. An EDS is similar to a credit default swap (CDS) but with some unique features. The features and operation of these new derivative instruments are outlined along with audit requirements. This instrument would be traded on open-outcry exchanges with special features to ensure orderly operation of the market. It is the creation of public markets for EDSs that makes possible the use of public market pricing to indirectly provide a potential market capitalization for the underlying venture-bank investment. Full cover
This article is a commentary on the verdict of the "L'Aquila Six", the group of bureaucrats and scientists tried by an Italian court as a result of their public statements in advance of the quake of 2009 Apr. 6 that left the city in ruins and cause more than 300 deaths. It was not the worst such catastrophic event in recent Italian history, but it was one of -- if not the -- worst failures of risk assessment and preventive action. The six were found guilty and condemned by a first level of the justice system to substantial prison terms. The outcry provoked by the verdict in the world press and the international scientific community has fueled the already fiery debate over whether the six should have been tried at all. They have been presented as martyrs to science being treated as scapegoats by a scientifically illiterate justice system and inflamed local population for not being able to perform the impossible (predict the event). Petitions of support have been drafted and signed by thousands of working scientists and technical experts in many fields excoriating the court and the country for such an outrage against the scientific community, often accompanied by ominous warnings abo
The mass media play at least five basic functions which include news dissemination, surveillance of the environment, correlation of the components of the society, entertainment and transmission of social heritage. Sometimes, disruptions and impairments do occur in the performance of these roles and some of these basic functions become dysfunctions, which turn the media into purveyor of negative values. The present study investigates how popular the Nigerian TV reality show, Big Brother Naija BBN, is perceived by its viewers. Three hundred heavy viewers of the program were surveyed from Lagos and Ede, South-West Nigeria, and their opinions and attitudes were sought regarding, why they like or dislike the program; the gratifications that those who like the program derive and whether the BBN, as media content, is generally functional or dysfunctional to the society. Sixty six per cent 66 33.7 of respondents like the program because it entertains. Half of the respondents, 99 50.5 dislike immoral aspects of the program. The viewers affirm that the eviction part of the program was their highest form of gratification. Most respondents, despite public outcry against the program, consider t
Designed to compete with fiat currencies, bitcoin proposes it is a crypto-currency alternative. Bitcoin makes a number of false claims, including: solving the double-spending problem is a good thing; bitcoin can be a reserve currency for banking; hoarding equals saving, and that we should believe bitcoin can expand by deflation to become a global transactional currency supply. Bitcoin's developers combine technical implementation proficiency with ignorance of currency and banking fundamentals. This has resulted in a failed attempt to change finance. A set of recommendations to change finance are provided in the Afterword: Investment/venture banking for the masses; Venture banking to bring back what investment banks once were; Open-outcry exchange for all CDS contracts; Attempting to develop CDS type contracts on investments in startup and existing enterprises; and Improving the connection between startup tech/ideas, business organization and investment.
Figgie is a card game that approximates open-outcry commodities trading. We design strategies for Figgie and study their performance and the resulting market behavior. To do this, we develop a flexible agent-based discrete-event market simulation in which agents operating under our strategies can play Figgie. Our simulation builds upon previous work by simulating latencies between agents and the market in a novel and efficient way. The fundamentalist strategy we develop takes advantage of Figgie's unique notion of asset value, and is, on average, the profit-maximizing strategy in all combinations of agent strategies tested. We develop a strategy, the "bottom-feeder", which estimates value by observing orders sent by other agents, and find that it limits the success of fundamentalists. We also find that chartist strategies implemented, including one from the literature, fail by going into feedback loops in the small Figgie market. We further develop a bootstrap method for statistically comparing strategies in a zero-sum game. Our results demonstrate the wide-ranging applicability of agent-based discrete-event simulations in studying markets.
A strange "chirping" signal from a distant supernova has revealed the birth of a magnetar, confirming that these incredibly magnetic neutron stars can power the universe's brightest stellar explosions。 The discovery also marks the first time Einstein's general relativity has been used to explain the mechanics of a supernova
Astronomers have released the largest gravitational wave catalog ever, revealing 161 new black hole collisions and pushing the total number of detections to 390。 Among the highlights are the clearest gravitational wave signal ever recorded, the most accurate location of a black hole merger, and growing evidence that some black holes are the product
A centimeter-sized crystal has revealed clear signs of quantum entanglement, showing that large, everyday objects can display surprisingly deep quantum behavior。 The discovery could help solve the mystery of strange metals while opening new possibilities for ultra-precise quantum sensors and other advanced technologies
A major breakthrough in quantum technology has turned magnons, tiny magnetic waves once considered too short-lived for practical use, into promising carriers of quantum information。 Researchers extended their lifetime by nearly 100 times, reaching up to 18 microseconds, and discovered that the main limitation is not a law of physics but the purity
Hubble has captured a spectacular view of LH 95, where about 2,500 young stars are still on their journey to becoming full-fledged stars。 Scientists discovered these growing stars can keep pulling in gas and dust for millions of years, extending an important stage of stellar development。 The region also contains multiple generations of stars living
An unusual gravitational wave signal has renewed hopes that primordial black holes, long considered purely theoretical, may finally be within reach of discovery。 If confirmed, they could solve one of astronomy's greatest mysteries by explaining the nature of dark matter
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured a spectacular red, white, and blue view of one of the Milky Way's oldest star clusters to celebrate the nation's 250th anniversary。 Hidden within the ancient cluster are clues to how exploding stars helped transform the young universe into one capable of forming planets and, eventually, life