Interesting Links: April 15, 2019

Business, News, Science, Technology, or whatever gets my attention.

Straight from my RSS feed:

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Ten posts and micro-summaries from my 1000+ daily headlines. I filter them so you don't have to.

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1. STEEM The bugs and debugging of DNA - a quick refresher for DNA damage repair - @scienceblocks follows up to a previous article with a description of a variety of DNA repairs. The article contains helpful comparisons to error correction in office documents in order to make the topic easily understandable.
2. Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp Are Back Up After Reported Outages Worldwide - Facebook, Instagram, and whatsapp were down for up to 2 1/2 hours yesterday morning (April 14).
3. Watch Toyota's massive basketball robot shoot a hoop, and read up on how you should think about AI and, erm, Jesus - I didn't read the article, but scroll all the way to the bottom to see a pretty impressive basketball shot by Toyota's robot.
4. How Climate-Friendly Would Flying Cars Be? - According to the article, flying cars are 5 years from demo and 10 years from general use, and they may fly at speeds up to 150 MPH. They're less efficient than cars with a single passenger, but better than cars with a driver and three passengers. In particular, the flying car is highly efficient when cruising, but uses large amounts of energy during takeoff and landing. The article does not mention additional energy savings from reducing congestion on the ground.
5. Impact factors: Payment by results - In a possible siting of Goodhart's Law, the journal impact factor was created as a tool for librarians to organize their journal collections, but is increasingly being used to determine departmental research budgets and author bonuses. According to the article, a better standard is to evaluate the quality of each article on an individual basis.
6. The Dissertation Publication Requirement: It’s Time for Reexamination - A lawyer turned doctoral student objects to the mandate to publish a dissertation as a degree requirement. Objections include privacy concerns for marginalized and victimized people, legally ambiguous standing for the author's claim to intellectual property, and contract law ramifications of requiring a student to enter into a legal contract with a 3rd party publisher. The article delves further into legal standards for contract law, raising concerns about substantive and procedural conscionability, as well as the question of whether a contract has been formally agreed upon. In short, the student is being required to surrender "privacy and property rights", things of value, but receiving no compensation.
7. The data are clear: Ebola vaccine shows ‘very impressive’ performance in outbreak - From the article: "The experimental Ebola vaccine being used to try to contain the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is protective 97.5% of the time, according to new data released by the World Health Organization on Friday."
8. Tyrannosaurus Rex: Scary. Smart. Social? - Scientists reopened the debate over whether T-Rex was a social species when they found fossils from as many as 20 Tyrannosaurs, all believed to have died together. Other evidence of social behavior include finds of multiple co-located sets of prints, and the fact that large herds of herbivores would have been capable of defense against lone predators. However, the T-Rex brain is believed to be too small for hunting in packs, so the debate continues.
9. After pushback from states and cities, Amazon Go might accept cash - Cashless stores were outlawed in Philadelphia and New Jersey on the grounds that they discriminate against low income households. Amazon Go has announced that they will begin accepting alternative payment methods, possibly including cash and SNAP benefits. No time frame was given. Amazon is piloting Amazon Cash where customers can load their card through local convenience stores like 7-Eleven or CVS.
10. Marvel super heroes exhibit to open at The Franklin Institute (Gallery) - The 15,000 square foot exhibit was scheduled to open on Saturday, April 13, and run through September 2.

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### About this series
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