New AI may threaten 'safe' office jobs, say researchers | BBC News

Humans already work alongside robots in industries such as manufacturing. Now, for knowledge workers, the threat of AI (artificial intelligence) replacement is coming faster than they imagined. In early 2023, OpenAI's ChatGPT ushered in a new era – one in which AI went from a pipe dream to a very real, contentious issue for workers. The stakes are high: an April report from Goldman Sachs estimates ChatGPT, and other similar generative AI tools, could increase global GDP by as much as 7%, while replacing 300 million full time workers.

How safe are the Tokyo Olympics from COVID-19?

 The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is facing increasing pressure from the public to postpone or cancel the upcoming summer games in Tokyo.

Japanese public opinion is largely against holding the world’s largest sporting event while the nation struggles to contain its fourth wave of coronavirus and vaccinate its population. Public health officials and the Tokyo Doctors Association fear the event will place more strain on already crowded hospitals. And the head of the country’s doctors’ union warned that a new Olympic COVID variant could result from holding the event.

Johnson & Johnson vaccine delayed in Europe due to safety concerns

 

US trial of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine confirms safety and effectiveness - BBC News

 

Results from the long-awaited US trial of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid vaccine have confirmed that the shot is both safe and highly effective.

How do I know the Covid vaccine is safe? - BBC News

 

The UK will begin its mass vaccination programme next week after the Pfizer/BioNTech jab was approved. Other countries are expected to follow.

'U can’t touch this' parody – Pandemic safety for school children

Wash your hands. Wear a mask. Keep your distance. Those are the rules. But when even adults struggle...how do you convince school kids? Critics say authorities haven't come up with consistent strategies to protect schoolchildren.

How safe are cruise ships from the coronavirus?

In early February, a man tested positive for Covid-19 after disembarking from this ship, the Diamond Princess. The ship was quarantined immediately after arriving in Japanese waters a few days later. More than 3700 passengers and crew members were on board. 700 of them soon sickened with the coronavirus

High Speed, High Safety: Shinkansen Documentary

High Speed, High Safety The world-class technology of Shinkansen. Since Japan's Shinkansen bullet train service went into operation 50 years ago, it has prided itself on its high speed, high safety and punctuality unrivaled in any other country. It boasts a record of no passenger fatalities caused by accidents, and an average delay of only 30 seconds from the scheduled time.

The real reason Boeing's new plane crashed twice

Two Boeing airplanes have fallen out of the air and crashed in the past six months. On the surface, this is a technical failure. But the real story is about a company's desire to beat their rival.

The handling of the 737 Max issue was a showcase for incompetence in the Trump White House

Mark Sumner  

Daily Kos Staff

There’s a word for how well the Trump White House handled issues surrounding the crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 and their possible connections to a Lion Air crash in October. Unfortunately, using that word would filter this story from many readers. Concerns about the plane being flown at the time of both crashes—the relatively new Boeing 737 Max 8—caused airlines and nations around the world to ground the jet following the second crash. But, as news graphics kept showing, the planes were still flying over the United States long after they had been locked down everywhere else.

But as Transportation Secretary and Mitch McConnell spouse Elaine Chao was demonstrating her faith in the plane by booking a flight on a 737 Max, behind the scenes Donald Trump was dissing the design—but not because of its safety record. According to the Washington Post, Trump’s feelings about the plane were all about the aesthetics. He prefers the 757, which he uses as a personal jet, and his informed technical opinion on the 737 is that “It sucked.” Trump also stated that he couldn’t understand why Boeing made the 737, and that he “never would have bought a 737 for the Trump Shuttle.”

And that’s certainly true. Because the Trump Shuttle went bankrupt in 1990 just months after it was launched, and ceased operations completely in less than two years. The current generation of 737s wasn’t introduced until 2011, and the Max plane not until 2016. While Trump might not think the planes worthy of being his personal air whip, someone certainly does: Boeing has sold just four short of 7,000 of the 737 Next Generation planes. They are the mainstay of air fleets around the world.

That absolute ubiquity is what makes possible issues with a plane in this series such a big deal. And also what makes an order to put them on the deck after two deadly crashes not only obvious, but something that has to be done with planning and coordination to minimize both risk and disruption to the transportation net. Instead, the aftermath of the Ethiopia Airlines crash was handled with a combination of bizarre stubbornness, a disregard for the public welfare, and capricious action that only incidentally stumbled on doing the right thing. In the wrong way.

As evidence mounted throughout the day that not only were the two deadly crashes related, but other behavior by the same model of new plane was reason for concern, Chao refused to even consider action, and Trump refused to act without Chao. The words “out of an abundance of caution” never seem to have been considered, because to have an abundance of caution, you first need to have a sufficiency of caution. For a White House that regularly bypassed recommendations on pulling pesticides off the market and that allows coal waste to be dumped in streams, the caution level stands at zero.

Only embarrassment could possibly move the needle, and when Canada finally moved to ground any 737 Max over its airspace, that embarrassment level rose into the red. Trump continued to delay, expecting Chao or regulators at the FAA to act. But it’s not clear that he called Chao, or that she even thought of breaking away from her SXSW appearance to do her job. And when it comes to the FAA, there’s not a single person in charge whose title does not include the word “acting.” Trump put them there expressly because they were against regulating the industry. They’re all “acting” because their nominations would be iffy in front of even a Republican-controlled rubber-stamp Senate. “Acting” describes precisely what they will not do.

On Wednesday, Trump finally achieved a government that met perfectly his own design—staffed by incompetents who wouldn’t make a move that might dent the price of a stock, even when the lives of Americans were directly on the line. It was a position that finally required Trump to do something on his own. Which required lying. Fortunately, that’s the one thing that Trump can do. When he hijacked a planned press event on immigration to announce that the 737 was being grounded for carefully thought-through “fact-based” reasons, he was just pulling it from his tailpipe … but at least it put the planes on the ground.

Facts didn’t get the job done. Trump’s incompetent selections holding down “acting” positions across the regulatory bodies were content to wax their fiddles while the nation burned … but enough personal embarrassment finally made something happen. Not only is that not how things are supposed to work, it’s exactly how things are not supposed to work. A competent FAA or transportation secretary would have landed those planes early, long before public sentiment and newsroom graphics made their neglect of the public good the story of the day.

Two crashes of the same model of jet in the space of five months is definitely concerning, especially when the first of those jets was only delivered in 2017. Odd as it seems, it could still be only coincidence—it’s the nature of coincidence that it always looks improbable. There may be nothing to fix, or there may be serious issues that represent an across-the-board threat to every Max-series plane. But at least that can now be discovered without counting the bodies falling from the air.

The Max jets are designed for improved fuel efficiency and are meant to compete with a new generation of relatively fuel-sipping planes like Airbus’ A320neo. The Max pushes some genuine technical advances to lower fuel consumption by 14 percent over the standard 737 Next Generation, and those planes were already much more efficient than the previous generation. Despite bearing the same name as the parent jet, the Max has changes everywhere. Larger, more efficient engines required change not just to the airframe, but of everything down to the landing gear. The materials are different. The wing design is different. The Max series of planes isn’t just a variant of the 737 Next Generation planes that are so common at present; they’re meant to replace those planes. To be the next next generation.

At present, Boeing has produced around 400 of the Max-series planes. If there is a problem, even an obscure, rarely occurring problem that appeared twice only through wild coincidence, this is certainly the time to discover it. Because when there are 7,000 in the air, even a rare issue could result in all-too-common tragedy.

Why safe playgrounds aren't great for kids

The stereotypical modern playground — with its bright colors and rubberized flooring — is designed to be clean, safe, and lawsuit-proof. But that isn't necessarily the best design for kids. US playground designers spent decades figuring out how to minimize risk: reducing heights, softening surfaces, and limiting loose parts. But now, some are experimenting with creating risk. A growing body of research has found that risky outdoor play is a key part of children’s health, promoting social interactions, creativity, problem-solving, and resilience.

Japanese man with death wish and/or nerves of steel waits for passing train INSIDE crossing gates (video)

頭おかしい(笑) pic.twitter.com/Sy3fEZwEiu

— タコサバイバー (@moon15remu) January 11, 2019

The video was filmed along the Tobu Urban Park Line, which runs through Saitama and Chiba, the prefecture directly to the north and east of Tokyo. By the time the video starts, the gates are already down and the warning light flashing, and a man on a bicycle, who’s facing in the direction of the camera, is waiting. He’s not on the far side of the gates, though. Instead, he’s standing between them, with no barrier between him and the tracks the approaching train is barreling down.

“I don’t think he’s gonna get hit, but that doesn’t look like a good idea,” says the person filming the video from inside his car, and thankfully the bicyclist, casually balancing himself by sticking his left foot on top of a sidewalk divider, isn’t struck by the train. However, the fact that the train’s horn can’t be heard until the train is already going by suggests that the conductor didn’t notice the bicycle until the train was already right next to him perhaps because his dark brown jacket made him difficult to spot in the nighttime conditions.

After sounding its horn, the train comes to a halt, with baffled passengers onboard staring down from the windows at the man outside who was just inches away from death. Once the train is completely stopped, the bicyclist nonchalantly hops off from his bike, slides it under the gate, remounts it, and pedals away at a relaxed pace, showing he could have moved out from between the gates at any time prior to the train’s arrival.

Tobu's Urban Park line funs from Omiya and Kasukabe in Saitama and Kashiwa in Chiba

Road signs suck. What if we got rid of them all?

How removing signs and barriers can make streets safer

Some cities in Europe are undergoing a fascinating transformation: they’re getting rid of all of their road signs.

That’s thanks to a design concept called “shared space,” where urban planners drastically lessen the presence of traffic lights, signs, and barriers, encouraging all forms of transportation to share the road. There’s evidence that drivers often totally ignore road signs, so the heightened risk forces commuters to remain on high alert as they pass through an intersection, in theory leading to safer travel.

It’s part of a broader urban planning trend in the pursuit of walkable streets. In Barcelona, planners are sectioning off 9-block “superblocks” to insulate neighborhoods from heavy traffic. But shared space is walkable minimalism taken to the extreme — and it’s become a divisive topic in the places it’s been implemented.

Hey! Don't Eat There

Good ole China back in the news again for its appalling food safety record.   One would surmise that after a few hundred of these cases the Chinese government might, just might implement some kind of food safety inspection program.  But, no not enough have been sickened or  died for that to happen.

 The latest food scandal in China is spreading fast, dragging in U.S. coffee chain Starbucks, Burger King Worldwide Inc and others, as well as McDonald’s products in Japan.McDonald’s Corp and KFC’s parent Yum Brands Inc apologized to Chinese customers on Monday after it emerged that Shanghai Husi Food Co Ltd, a unit of U.S.-based OSI Group LLC, had supplied expired meat to the two chains.
On Tuesday, Starbucks said some of its cafes previously sold products containing chicken originally sourced from Shanghai Husi, a firm that was shut down on Sunday by local regulators after a TV report showed staff using expired meat and picking up meat from the floor to add to the mix.
A Tokyo-based spokesman at McDonald’s Holdings Co (Japan) Ltd said the company had sourced about a fifth of its Chicken McNuggets from Shanghai Husi and had halted sales of the product on Monday. Alternative supplies of chicken have been found in Thailand and China, he added. 

Japan's TEPCO admits down playing Tsunami risk

Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said in a statement on Friday that it knew safety improvements were needed before last year's tsunami triggered three meltdowns, but it had feared the political, economic and legal consequences of implementing them.
"When looking back on the accident, the problem was that preparations were not made in advance," Tepco's internal reform task force, led by company President Naomi Hirose, said in the statement.
"Could necessary measures have been taken with previous tsunami evaluations? It was possible to take action" by adopting more extensive safety measures, the task force said.
The task force said Tepco had feared efforts to better protect nuclear facilities from severe accidents such as tsunamis would trigger anti-nuclear sentiment, interfere with operations or increase litigation risks.

Why worry about safety when profits are involved