17th February 2018, 1 min read

Science and Technology links (February 16th, 2018)

1. In all countries, in all years–without exception–girls did better than boys in academic performance (PISA) tests.
2. Vinod Khosla said:

There are, perhaps, a few hundred sensors in the typical car and none in the body. A single ad shown to you on Facebook has way more computing power applied to it than a $10,000 medical decision you have to make.

1. The gender of an unknown user can be identified with an accuracy of over 95% using the way a user is typing.
2. Citation counts work better than a random baseline (by a margin of 10%) in distinguishing important seminal research papers.
3. By consuming vitamin B3 (or niacin), you can increase your body’s production of Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide (NAD+ for short). It turns out that NAD+ supplementation normalizes key Alzheimer’s features (in mice). If I suffered from Alzheimer’s, I would not hesitate to take niacin supplements.
4. The U.S. has never produced so much oil.
5. According to Nature, birds living in large groups are smarter.
6. A few years ago, we were told that the Pacific nation of Tuvalu would soon disappear due to climate change. In fact, for now, it is growing in size.