Humans will supply digital services to complement AI When the first printed books with illustrations started to appear in the 1470s in the German city of Augsburg, wood engravers rose up in protest. Worried about their jobs, they literally stopped the presses. In fact, their skills turned out to be in higher demand than before: somebody had to illustrate the growing number of books. Fears about ..
As if global warming were not enough of a threat, poor planning and unwise subsidies make floods worse The extent of the devastation will become clear only when the floodwater recedes, leaving ruined cars, filthy mud-choked houses and the bloated corpses of the drowned. But as we went to press, with the rain pounding South Texas for the sixth day, Hurricane Harvey had already set records as Amer..
Angela Merkel is on track for another win Posters have gone up around Germany. Angela Merkel is back from her holiday. The chancellor begins her election tour tomorrow, August 12th, with a rally in Dortmund. Next week she travels on to the Rhineland and the north-western city of Bremen. Martin Schulz, her Social Democratic (SPD) challenger, will launch his series of live events there a week late..
Haenyeo(lit. sea women) are female divers in the Korean province of Jeju. Known for their independent spirit, iron will and determination, the haenyeo are representative of the semi-matriarchal family structure of Jeju. HistoryJeju's diving tradition dates back to 434 A.D. Originally, diving was an exclusively male profession, with the exception of women who worked alongside their husbands. The ..
The sense of pervading gloom about the mainland’s control and Shanghai’s rivalry is overdone OF THE world’s three great commercial centres—New York, London and Hong Kong—two are on the defensive. London faces a rupture with the European Union, which wants to seize the City’s euro-related activities and shift them inside the currency zone. In Hong Kong the fear is of deeper assimilation by mainla..
In navigation, a rhumb line, rhumb, or loxodrome is an arc crossing all meridians of longitude at the same angle, that is, a path with constant bearing as measured relative to true or magnetic north. IntroductionThe effect of following a rhumb line course on the surface of a globe was first discussed by the Portuguese mathematician Pedro Nunes in 1537, in his Treatise in Defense of the Marine Ch..
There are no good options to curb Kim Jong Un. But blundering into war would be the worst It is odd that North Korea causes so much trouble. It is not exactly a superpower. Its economy is only a fiftieth as big as that of its democratic capitalist cousin, South Korea. Americans spend twice its total GDP on their pets. Yet Kim Jong Un's backward little dictatorship has grabbed the attention of th..
The transverse Mercator map projection is an adaptation of the standard Mercator projection. The transverse version is widely used in national and international mapping systems around the world., including the UTM. When paired with a suitable geodetic datum, the transverse Mercator delivers high accuracy in zones less than a few degrees in east-west extent. Standard and transverse aspectsThe tra..
The Mercator projection is a cylindrical map projection presented by the Flemish geographer and cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569. It became the standard map projection for nautical purposes because of its ability to represent lines of constant course, known as rhumb lines or loxodromes, as straight segments that conserve the angles with the meridians. Although the linear scale is equal in ..
More adults are not having children. That is much less worrying than it appears Pocket living has been building and selling small flats in London since 2005. The flats have many of the things that young, single people want, such as bicycle storage, and lack the things they do not, such as large kitchens and lots of bookshelves. At first, Pocket expected that most buyers would be in their late 20..
Sanctions should target officials, not the country Venezuela claims to have more oil than Saudi Arabia, yet its citizens are hungry. An astonishing 93% of them say they cannot afford the food they need, three-quarters have lost weight in the past year. The regime that caused this preventable tragedy professes great love for the poor. Yet its officials have embezzled billions, making Venezuela th..
But will it? Republicans' latest efforts to overhaul the Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama's health care law, failed in the Senate on the night of July 27th. Three of their Senators - Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowksi of Alaska and John McCain of Arizona - joined all 48 Democrats to vote down "skinny" repeal. The amendment was the last option available after the Senate earlier rejected both..
But it is still hard to dislodge an incumbent who is determined to cheat To be a democracy takes more than free elections. But no democracy can thrive without them. In some places votes are travesties, with incumbents sweeping the board; in others, free elections are entrenched. It is places in between - where multiparty elections are relatively new, the result is uncertain and the incumbents' w..
In big ways and small, China is making its presence felt across the continent IN CRISP white uniforms and standing to attention beneath a fluttering red flag with five golden stars, the sailors on board the People’s Liberation Army ships setting sail for Djibouti on July 11th represent a significant step for China. When they arrive they will open the Middle Kingdom’s first military base abroad s..
According to a 1978 article in the American Economic Review, 90% of the economists surveyed agreed that the minimum wage increases unemployment among low-skilled workers. By 1992 the survey found 79% of economists in agreement with that statement, and by 2000, 45.6 were in full agreement with the statement and 27.9% agreed with provisos (73.5% total). The authors of the 2000 study also reweighte..