Layoffs are intensifying — The labor market is said to be stronger than ever. The unemployment rate is at pandemic lows. And September was the 21st consecutive month in which the number of jobs increased. The U.S. added 263,000 jobs last, and the unemployment rate fell to 3.5 percent from 3.7 percent in August. …

Data paint a far from rosy economic horizon — At the end of last year, central bankers considered inflation transitory. This June, people thought the worst for the market was already over. And in August, when July’s inflation stood at 8.5 percent, inflation was under control for some. In a more realistic world, there was little doubt the optimism…

How investors capitalize on the dark economic times — Mark Spitznagel had his great epiphany at age sixteen. On a visit to the Chicago Board of Trade to meet family friend Everett Klipp, he was captivated by the allure of the markets. Klipp ran a futures trading firm, and for Spitznagel, he soon became a mentor. During that time…

The new Moon race and the rise of new international tensions — On the night of Dec. 16, 2020, some infrared cameras detected the warmth of a capsule returning from space in the Mongolian skies. A short time later, a recovery team spotted the capsule in a snowy grassland in Inner Mongolia. It was the reentry module of the Chinese Chang’e-5 mission…

Structural batteries are the next step forward for electric vehicles — The range is the first major obstacle preventing the electric mobility revolution from becoming mainstream. But on the other hand, it is not an easy problem to solve at the engineering level. It is not simply a matter of designing cars with bigger batteries. Bigger batteries would result in what…

The singular relationship between humanity and artificial intelligence — Humanity’s relationship with artificial intelligence is singular. Our deepest fear is that a higher form of intelligence could end our species. But at the same time, it is our deepest hope for accelerating progress and solving science’s biggest challenges. Decades ago, we asked artificial intelligence to predict the end of…

The diagnosis of the conservation status of thousands of species is far from rosy — The scientific community lacks data on the conservation status of thousands of species. That makes it impossible to track their conservation prospects and determine the measures for their survival. In the reference database, the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List –which classifies the extinction risk of more…

If you find meditation hard, try NSDR — In 2015 Larry Page stepped down as CEO of Google, and Sundar Pichai took his place. Pichai was the natural choice to take the helm of the company. He had previously been labeled “the most powerful person in mobile” and “the man behind Google’s most important products.” Since joining Google…

As the world’s rivers dry up, states compete for water control. — Water scarcity afflicts about 40 percent of the world’s population. And by 2025, this percentage will rise to 50 percent. Over the past decades, global water use has grown more than twice the rate of population increase. …