United States of America

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Fighting Ebola with Open Source Collaboration

The enormity and severity of the West African Ebola epidemic that began in 2014 is hard to fathom. Over 10,000 people died with hundreds of thousands deeply affected by loss. In treating any medical condition, information is needed to provide adequate care, but when it’s an epidemic so severe, so dangerous and so fast-moving, it’s required more than ever. Ebola creates enormous barriers for patient care. It’s communicability means those who directly treat patients within the “Red Zone” must take extreme precautions. The lack of knowledge about who is infected and what constitutes effective treatment — not to mention the swift and severe toll it takes on the human body — makes caring for those affected extremely difficult...

Increase in International Cyber Attacks Calls for National Testbed

HSD Foundation | The Hague Security Delta | October 24, 2016

On Friday 21st of October The United States was subjected to massive and widespread cyberattacks which disrupted website domains and internet traffic through DDoS attacks. DDoS attacks flood websites with traffic and impairs normal services. "The massive outage drew the attention of the FBI which said Friday that it was "investigating all potential causes" of the attack." Popular websites like Twitter, Amazon, Spotify and Netflix went down for some users on Friday...

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Promoting Earthquake Readiness

Harvey V. Fineberg | Washington Monthly | July 1, 2016

In Oregon, Washington State and California, an early warning system helps citizens and officials better prepare for and respond to earthquakes. In the early morning hours on August 24, 2014, scientists at UC Berkeley received a “ShakeAlert” – an alarm providing warning of a pending earthquake. Five seconds later, the city of Napa felt a magnitude 6.0 earthquake. That five-second warning was an early success for a broader goal: the creation of an earthquake early warning system that can communicate the size, extent and timing of imminent earthquakes on the West Coast...

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Spying on Mental Health Records is a Dangerous Idea

Graham Panther | Medium | July 22, 2016

Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull just made a surprising announcement: the Government is considering accessing the mental health records of Australians suspected of terrorist activity. This is supposed to be a way of preventing so-called “lone wolf” attacks — such as in Nice, or Orlando— because apparently these horrific acts are primarily the result of mental health issues. So why do I feel like our society just got that much more unsafe with this announcement?...

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The Challenge of Saving Lives with 'Big Data'

Staff Writer | BBC News | February 7, 2016

Every day, more data about our lives is being generated than ever before. When it comes to saving lives, the bigger the data the better - but what to do with it all? Ninety per cent of the data in the world has been created in the past two years alone, experts estimate - and the reason for that is technological innovation. The internet, mobile phones, cameras, sensors, bank cards and social media are just some of the items responsible for the massive volume of "big data" that is currently amassed every single second...

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Why China Is Beating the U.S. at Innovation

Paul Davidson | USA Today | April 17, 2017

For decades, America lost factories and jobs to China but retained a coveted title: the world's leader in inventing and commercializing new products. Now, even that status has been eroded, and it's hurting the economy. While the United States is still at the top in total investment in research and development — spending $500 billion in 2015 —  a new Boston Consulting Group (BCG) study released Monday has made a startling finding: A couple of years ago, China quietly surpassed the U.S. in spending on the later stage of R&D that turns discoveries into commercial products. And at its current rate of spending, China will invest up to  twice as much as the U.S., or $658 billion, by 2018 on this critical late-stage research...

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Why Giving Birth Is Safer In Britain Than In The US

Kate Womersley | Digg | September 1, 2017

At 11:58 pm this past June 25, Helen Taylor gave birth to her first baby, a boy, at West Suffolk Hospital in the east of England. At 11:59 pm, with 15 seconds to spare before midnight, his sister was born. The obstetrician and her team were pleased; the cesarean section was going smoothly, fulfilling Helen’s wish that her twins share a birthday...

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