World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim outlined a bold agenda for the global community toward ending extreme poverty by 2030 and promoting shared prosperity to boost the incomes of the poorest 40 percent of the population in each country. Kim noted that the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG), to halve extreme poverty, was achieved …
Is it the beginning of the end of Moore’s law or the beginning of the end of AMD ? AMD claims that the delay in transitioning from 28nm to 20nm highlights the beginning of the end for Moore’s Law. John Gustafson, chief graphics product architect at AMD, has said that Moore’s Law is ending because …
Using nuclear power in place of fossil-fuel energy sources, such as coal, has prevented some 1.84 million air pollution-related deaths globally and could save millions of more lives in coming decades, concludes a study. The researchers also find that nuclear energy prevents emissions of huge quantities of greenhouse gases. These estimates help make the case …
Sparse coding provides a class of algorithms for finding succinct representations of stimuli; given only unlabeled input data, it discovers basis functions that capture higher-level features in the data. However, finding sparse codes remains a very difficult computational problem. In this paper, we present efficient sparse coding algorithms that are based on iteratively solving two …
There are several recent forecast / predictions for the Chinese yuan by noted economists. * By 2015, a third of China’s cross-border trade will be settled in yuan, making the yuan one of the three most-used in global trade along with the dollar and euro, HSBC forecast in a report this month * The Chinese …
Air pollution on trend to improve in the United States from 68000 deaths per year in 2005 to 36,000 in 2016. Recent risk assessments have characterized the overall burden of recent PM2.5 and ozone levels on public health, but generally not the variability of these impacts over time or by sector. Using photochemical source apportionment …
The Chinese economy has been growing at a rapid pace for over thirty years. Most of this growth has come from higher labor productivity, while growth of employment has diminished along with a slower rate of increase in the working-age population. This paper looks at the challenges that China will face over the next two …
Misguided agricultural policies may boost India’s short-term food output but may transform India into a food importer in the longer term. The overproduction of grains in India has rapidly depleted underground aquifers and sharply reduced soil fertility. Sound food policy should be a priority for India, on track for the world’s largest population by 2025. …
Tesla Motors Inc. (TSLA), the electric-car maker headed by billionaire Elon Musk, climbed to a record after saying it turned its first quarterly profit on higher-than- forecasted sales of its Model S sedan, overcoming a controversy about the car’s performance. Tesla rose 13 percent to $42.94 at 9:42 a.m. New York time after surging as …