Washington Post (September 1)
DeepMind has expanded its “database of folded proteins to more than 200 million — nearly all catalogued proteins known to science, including those in humans, plants, bacteria, animals and other organisms” and made “them publicly available and free.” The AlphaFold database “does not reveal all of biology’s mysteries, nor is it the only advance needed for drug development or disease fighting. But the views are truly astonishing.”
Tags: Advance, AlphaFold, Animals, Bacteria, Biology, Catalogued, Database, DeepMind, Disease fighting, Drug development, Folded proteins, Free, Humans, Plants, Science
MarketWatch (November 27)
The plan to close plants and slash workforce “is good for GM—and it could shake up things at Tesla and Ford too.” Despite coming under political fire, GM’s “newly announced cost-cutting plan has drawn praise on Wall Street, with analysts applauding the car maker for sharpening its focus on higher-growth areas such as driverless and electric vehicles and forestalling a slowdown in its business.”
Tags: Analysts, Cost cutting, Driverless, EVs, Ford, GM, Plants, Slowdown, Tesla, Wall Street, Workforce
New York Times (August 31)
“Worldwide, insect pests consume up to 20 percent of the plants that humans grow for food, and that amount will increase as global warming makes bugs hungrier…. That could encourage farmers to use more pesticides, which could cause further environmental harm.”
Tags: Bugs, Environment, Farmers, Food, Global warming, Humans, Hungrier, Insects, Pesticides, Pests, Plants, Worldwide
New York Times (March 15)
“There’s no way to bring back all those steel plants and steel jobs, even if we stopped all imports. Partly that’s because a modern economy doesn’t use that much steel, partly because we can produce steel using many fewer workers, partly because old-fashioned open-hearth plants have been replaced by mini-mills that use scrap metal and aren’t in the same places. So this is all a fantasy.”
Tags: Economy, Imports, Jobs, Mini-mills, Plants, Scrap metal, Steel
Taipei Times (February 8)
“Tuesday night’s earthquake off the coast of Hualien County has again raised the issue of human fragility in the face of the power of nature and how the geological conditions that exist in Taiwan need to be respected.” Although “nuclear power is a relatively clean source of energy,” any benefits “could be wiped out overnight should a nuclear disaster happen, especially given the proximity of two of the three operational plants to the capital and within the nation’s most-populated area.”
Tags: Clean, Disaster, Earthquake, Energy, Fragility, Hualien, Nature, Nuclear power, Plants, Taiwan
Financial Times (November 8)
Stung by the strong yen, over 100 TOPIX-listed manufacturers have issued profit warnings. Conventional cost cutting is no longer doing the trick. “After decades of building plants overseas and trying to make production leaner and more efficient to address the currency vulnerability, analysts say Japanese companies are facing a sobering reality: the urgency to sell underperforming businesses and join hands with rivals to survive brutal market conditions.”
Tags: Analysts, Cost cutting, Efficient, Japan, Leaner, Manufacturers, Overseas, Plants, Production, Profit warnings, Topix, Underperforming, Vulnerability, Yen
