Katalin Karikó

Dear Commons Community,

Last week, Katalin Karikó was announced the winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, alongside her colleague Drew Weissman. The two had worked together at the University of Pennsylvania on messenger-RNA research that paved the way for Covid-19 vaccines. But Karikó was not always embraced by her scientific community, and in the days since the prize was announced, national news headlines and social-media commentaries have seized on her story. After years of unsuccessful attempts to obtain grant funding, Penn demoted her and cut her pay in the late 1990s. Years later, she was told she was “not of faculty quality” and kicked out of her lab space. And a paper she and Weissman published in 2005 was initially desk-rejected by Nature, which considered it an “incremental contribution.” (The paper appeared in Immunity instead.)

It was that paper that, 15 years later, became a blueprint for the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines that saved millions of lives around the world. Karikó and Weissman’s work “fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system” and enabled vaccines for the virus to be created and distributed inside of a year, the Nobel Prize committee wrote.

Karikó, who is originally from Hungary, has described the challenges she faced as a scientist in media interviews through the years and in her memoir, Breaking Through: My Life in Science, being released next week. But her story drew exponentially more attention after last week’s announcement. It especially struck a nerve with scientists and academics on social media, who seized upon Karikó’s recounting, in an interview on the Nobel website, of being “kicked out from Penn” and “forced to retire.” It felt like fitting karmic payback that the ambitious scientist who’d never managed to land a high-profile grant and was shut out by a high-profile academic institution was now a Nobel laureate.

Read more of her story at The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

As soon as the federal pandemic relief started arriving at America’s schools, so did the relentless calls.

Tech companies by the dozens wanted a chance to prove their software was what schools needed. Best of all, they often added, it wouldn’t take a dime from district budgets: Schools could use their new federal money.

They did, and at a tremendous scale.

An Associated Press analysis of public records found many of the largest school systems spent tens of millions of dollars in pandemic money on software and services from tech companies, including licenses for apps, games and tutoring websites.

Schools, however, have little or no evidence the programs helped students. Some of the new software was rarely used.

The full scope of spending is unknown because the aid came with few reporting requirements. Congress gave schools a record $190 billion but didn’t require them to publicly report individual purchases.

The AP asked the nation’s 30 largest school districts for contracts funded by federal pandemic aid. About half provided records illuminating an array of software and technology, collectively called “edtech.” Others didn’t respond or demanded fees for producing the records totaling thousands of dollars.

Clark County schools in the Las Vegas area, for one, signed contracts worth at least $70 million over two years with 12 education technology consultants and companies. They include Achieve3000 (for a suite of learning apps), Age of Learning (for math and reading acceleration), Paper (for virtual tutoring) and Renaissance Learning (for learning apps Freckle and MyON).

The pandemic sparked a boom for tech companies as schools went online. Revenue skyrocketed and investors poured billions into startups.

At the same time, new marketing technology made it easier for companies to get school officials’ attention, said Chris Ryan, who left a career in edtech to help districts use technology effectively. Equipped with automated sales tools, marketers bombarded teachers and school leaders with calls, emails and targeted ads.

“It’s probably predatory, but at the same time, schools were looking for solutions, so the doors were open,” Ryan said.

At the school offices in rural Nekoosa, Wisconsin, the calls and emails made their way to business manager Lynn Knight.

“I understand that they have a job to do, but when money is available, it’s like a vampire smelling blood,” she said. “It’s unbelievable how many calls we got.”

The spending fed an industry in which research and evidence are scarce.

“That money went to a wide variety of products and services, but it was not distributed on the basis of merit or equity or evidence,” said Bart Epstein, founder and former CEO of EdTech Evidence Exchange, a nonprofit that helps schools make the most of their technology. “It was distributed almost entirely on the strength of marketing, branding and relationships.”

Many schools bought software to communicate with parents and teach students remotely. But some of the biggest contracts went to companies that promised to help kids catch up on learning.

Clark County schools spent more than $7 million on Achieve3000 apps. Some were widely used, such as literacy app Smarty Ants for young students.

Others were not. Less than half of elementary school students used Freckle, a math app that cost the district $2 million. When they did use it, sessions averaged less than five minutes.

The district declined an interview request.

Some Las Vegas parents say software shouldn’t be a priority in a district with issues including aging buildings and more than 1,100 teacher vacancies.

“What’s the point of having all this software in place when you don’t even have a teacher to teach the class? It doesn’t make sense,” said Lorena Rojas, who has two teens in the district.

Education technology accounts for a relatively small piece of pandemic spending. Tech contracts released by Clark County amount to about 6% of its $1.2 billion in federal relief money. But nearly all schools spent some money on technology.

As districts spend the last of their pandemic aid, there is no consensus on how well the investments paid off.

The company Edmentum says Clark County students who used one of its programs did better on standardized tests. But a study of a ThinkCERCA literacy program found it had no impact on scores.

A team of international researchers reported in September that edtech has generally failed to live up to its potential. With little regulation, companies have few incentives to prove their products work, according to the researchers at Harvard and universities in Norway and Germany.

The federal government has done little to intervene.

The Education Department urges schools to use technology with a proven track record and offers a rating system to assess a product’s evidence. The lowest tier is a relatively easy target: Companies must “demonstrate a rationale” for the product, with plans to study its effectiveness. Yet studies find the vast majority of popular products fail to hit even that mark.

“There has never been anything close to a proper accounting of what has been spent on or how it was deployed,” Epstein said. “You can call it mismanagement, you can call it a lack of oversight, you can call it a crisis. There was a lot of it.”

Epstein has called for more federal regulation.

“Some companies sold hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars in products that they could see were barely ever being used,” the nonprofit CEO said.

In Louisville, Kentucky, education technology contracts totaled more than $30 million. The Jefferson County district signed contracts with online tutoring companies Paper and FEV for a combined $7.7 million. Millions more went to companies such as Edmentum and ThinkCERCA for software to supplement classroom teaching.

Jefferson County declined an interview request, saying most of the contracts were approved by officials who have left. Asked for records evaluating the use and effectiveness of the purchases, the district said it had none.

The district said it is using this year as “a fresh start.”

“We will be compiling baseline data and the new academic leadership team will be analyzing it to determine the impact these programs are having on student learning,” a district statement said.

In Maryland’s Prince George’s County, curriculum director Kia McDaniel spent hours sifting through pitches. Her team tried to focus on software backed by independent research, but for many products that doesn’t exist.

Often, she said, “we really did depend on the results that the sales team or the research team said that the product could deliver.”

Students made gains using some apps, but others didn’t catch on. The district paid $1.4 million for learning support from IXL Learning, but few students used it. Another contract for online tutoring also failed to generate student interest.

The district plans to pull back contracts that didn’t work and expand those that did.

Even before the pandemic, there was evidence that schools struggled to manage technology. A 2019 study by education technology company Glimpse K 12 found, on average, schools let 67% of their educational software licenses go unused.

Ryan, the former edtech marketer, said that at the end of the day, no technology can guarantee results.

“It’s like the Wild West, figuring this out,” he said. “And if you take a huge step back, what really works is direct instruction with a kid.”

Those of us who have been promoting the need for research on education technology know this story well.  While many ed tech companies promote their software honestly, others do not.  In 1994 and again in 2012, I wrote about the “predatory” nature of some in the ed tech industry.  Unfortunately, it continues.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

As of this morning, there were more than 1,100 casualties as a result of the Hamas’ attack and Israel’s retaliation –  700+ in Israel, 400+ in Gaza and 123,000 Gazans displaced.

Hamas’ attack on Israel comes at a time when the country faces historic domestic political division, growing violence in the West Bank and high-stakes negotiations among Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

After its members killed 200 Israelis and kidnapped dozens more, Hamas claimed it was taking revenge for a series of recent actions by Israel at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque and in the West Bank. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government has been conducting an escalating crackdown against what it says are rising Palestinian terror attacks for more than a year.

Former U.S. intelligence and military officers said they believed the timing of the Hamas attack was primarily aimed at disrupting negotiations between Israel and Saudi Arabia as Riyadh appeared on the verge of a historic step to normalize relations with Israel. As reported by NBC News and Reuters.

Iran is seeking “to put pressure on their implacable foe Israel” with this attack, said retired Navy Adm. James Stavridis, a former commander of NATO.

In an interview with NBC News‘ Lester Holt last month, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said, “We are against any bilateral relations between our regional countries and the Zionist regime,” a reference to Israel. Raisi added, “We believe that the Zionist regime is intending to normalize this bilateral relations with the regional countries to create security for itself in the region.”

In recent weeks, diplomats from the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia have told NBC News that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Joe Biden have all expressed support for an agreement that would result in Saudi Arabia recognizing Israel diplomatically.

Diplomats say that if Saudi Arabia agreed to recognize Israel it would lead other Arab states to do so. A series of such agreement would end decades of hostility between Israel and its neighbors dating back to 1948.

All three sides, though, have complex conditions for such an agreement. Breaking with past Saudi rulers, bin Salman has signaled that he is willing to recognize Israel, given the vast economic benefits it would provide to Saudi Arabia. Before the Hamas attack, there were reports that Saudi Arabia had told the White House it would agree to increase its oil production to help cement a deal, something the Biden White House has sought for two years.

But the Saudis want the U.S. to help them develop a civilian nuclear program, something opposed by hard-right members of Netanyahu’s coalition and by members of the U.S. Senate, which would have to approve any such deal.

Separately, Biden told Netanyahu when they met in New York last month that any agreement would have to include land for the Palestinians so that they could establish a viable state, something Netanyahu’s settlement extensions in the West Bank would prevent. Last week, a bipartisan group of Senators raised the same concerns in a letter to the White House.

The West Bank, meanwhile, remains the scene of rising attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians. Israeli settlers have violently attacked Palestinians at least 700 times in 2023 — the highest number on record, according to the U.N.’s humanitarian agency (OCHA).

Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir praised the expansion of the settlements, calling for more. Netanyahu’s far-right government responded with plans to build 5,000 new Israeli settlements. Israeli settlements built on Palestinian land are illegal according to international law, and have been condemned by the U.S. government.

As the talks with the Saudis, Israelis and Americans progressed, Palestinian disappointment rose. “There is a palpable frustration among the Palestinians at seeing the Saudis and Israelis moving closer,” said Stavridis.

Netanyahu has also stoked domestic division among Israelis as he has pushed a judicial reform that would weaken Israel’s Supreme Court, a move that sparked mass protest across the country.

The first portion of reform passed in March after The Knesset, the Israeli parliament, enacted a law that protected a prime minister from being removed from power. It stipulated that the prime minister could be ousted only for health or mental health reasons, and only the leader and their office could make that decision.

The judicial reform came after Netanyahu  forced multiple elections in recent years as the prime minister struggled to remain in power. Critics denounced the court reforms by noting that it would weaken the democratic checks of power within Israel, some even noting that it was tailor-made to keep Netanyahu in leadership after he faced allegations of corruption.

A second part of the reforms passed in July would prevent the court from declaring government decisions unreasonable. A poll from Israel’s Channel 13 that month found 56% of Israelis feared the judicial reform would spark a civil war.

Starvidis, the former admiral, said that Hamas and its patrons viewed the deep political divisions in Israel as a potential opportunity to strike. There is a sense among Israel’s adversaries that it “has never been more divided, never been weaker, never been more torn apart, he said.

Nadav Eyal, as Israeli author and senior columnist with the Yediot Ahronot newspaper, predicted in an interview that the attack would transform the country further. “This event was a national trauma. It’s like 9/11 but frankly bigger,” he said. “We have dozens of people who are abducted — civilians.”

Eyal said that, no matter the country’s divisions, Israel would respond militarily. “This really forces Israel to react with the utmost force,” he added. “There is a consensus with the Israeli public and the political sphere that this changes everything in the region and for Israelis.”

Every indication is that this will be a long, bloody conflict!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Here is reporting from The Hill on the mess the Republicans are in trying to elect a new speaker.

Already in uncharted territory, House Republicans are navigating even more surprise waves as they race to select a replacement for former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) next week.

The normally internal, relationship-based process is getting a swath of outside attention — a reality that is not sitting well with many in the House GOP.

Plans for a televised Fox News forum with the candidates were quickly scrapped after backlash.

And former President Trump has weighed in with a preferred pick, after showing openness to being a Speaker candidate himself and sources saying he considered showing up at the Capitol for the Republican nominating contest.

It has the potential to be the most competitive race for a party’s top spot that the House seen in decades — a dynamic that members must grapple with on a severely condensed timeline, with a looming shutdown deadline exerting pressure to quickly elect a Speaker that can restore normal business of the House.

One of the few other times the House faced a mid-session Speaker change was in 2015, when around a month passed between Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) announcing his resignation and the House GOP’s internal nominating contest. Now, members have just more than a week between McCarthy’s ouster and their internal nominating contest set for Wednesday.

“What we’re seeing is a very accelerated process,” said Matthew Green, professor of politics at Catholic University and coauthor of “Choosing the Leader: Leadership Elections in the U.S. House of Representatives.”

“It’s like, super speed,” he continued.

Two powerhouses in the GOP conference — House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) — are jockeying for the top spot in the chamber, reaching out to different coalitions within the party to secure support for the gavel. Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, is also mulling a run for Speaker.

All three contenders bring a different flair to the table.

Scalise is a leadership veteran, having served in the highest echelons of the House since 2014; Jordan is the founding chairman of the influential conservative House Freedom Caucus and holds the gavel for the powerful House Judiciary Committee; and Hern, a newcomer relative to the other two, leads the largest GOP group in the chamber.

“I will say I’m impressed with the number of endorsements these candidates have gotten so quickly,” Green said of Scalise and Jordan. “I call them both serious competitors. The problem, though, is that if you have leadership ambitions, you really kind of have to start like years in advance.”

The competitiveness of — and widespread interest in — the race was on full display Thursday morning, when news broke that Fox News would hold a televised forum with the three contenders. Such an event would be highly unusual, given that leadership elections are normally hashed out hidden from the public eye.

But those plans quickly fell apart as some lawmakers spoke out against the idea. Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez (R-Fla.) called the event “unproductive.”

A Jordan spokesman said that he would prefer the candidates speak to the GOP conference before the televised event, CNN first reported.

Hern then wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that he “will not be participating in the televised debate.” Scalise followed suit, and plans for the forum were scrapped within hours of them having been unveiled.

But the idea of the unconventional event — and its subsequent domino-effect fall — epitomizes the atypical nature of this month’s Speaker’s race, which has gained outsized attention on the national stage after McCarthy’s stunning, and unprecedented, fall from the top spot.

The peculiar essence of the race does not end there.

Trump’s shadow has added to the chaos surrounding the Speaker saga, with the former president being endorsed for the job, floating a potential visit to the Capitol, offering himself up to be the interim GOP leader, and, eventually, throwing his support behind Jordan — all within a matter of days.

It is very unusual for a former president to get involved in a closely contested Speaker contest.

“Usually they don’t want to get involved, because heaven forbid they pick a losing candidate — now they’ve just burned a bridge with the winner,” Green said. But, he added: “You know, Donald Trump does what he does.”

Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) announced Tuesday night — shortly after McCarthy’s ouster — that he would nominate Trump to be the next Speaker, with Reps. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) also backing the former president.

House rules do not require the Speaker to be a member of the chamber, but the possibility of a Trump Speakership was largely panned as unrealistic and far-fetched — especially as the former president, who is facing four indictments and a civil lawsuit in New York, barrels ahead with a comeback bid for the White House.

Despite those ongoing engagements, news broke Thursday afternoon that Trump was considering making a trip to the Capitol on Tuesday, when the GOP conference is scheduled to huddle for a candidate forum amid the Speaker race. Later in the day, Trump offered himself up for the top House job, albeit on a short-term basis.

“They have asked me if I would take it for a short period of time for the party, until they come to a conclusion — I’m not doing it because I want to — I will do it if necessary, should they not be able to make their decision,” Trump told Fox News Digital.

But just hours later, Trump changed course, throwing his support behind Jordan for Speaker and urging his allies on Capitol Hill to do the same. The announcement came shortly after Nehls beat him to the announcement, writing on X that he had talked to Trump, and that the former president was endorsing Jordan.

“He will be a GREAT Speaker of the House, & has my Complete & Total Endorsement!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Conservative outside groups, including Heritage Action and the Club for Growth, have also released public statements about what they are looking for in a Speaker.

“Even in high-profile races like this, outsiders don’t usually have as much influence as they’d like to think they do,” Green said. “Lawmakers are thinking about their own careers, and the person who can help them the most is usually the leader who’s being elected.”

“Now, having said that — for very, very close races, sometimes it can make a difference,” Green said.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Visitors can now use a free app on their smartphones as a way to view ancient Greek sites such as the Acropolis with a digital overlay showing how it once looked. This includes a collection of marble sculptures removed from the Parthenon more than 200 years ago that are now on display at the British Museum in London.  

For now, the app supported by Greece’s Culture Ministry allows visitors to point their phones at the Parthenon temple, and the sculptures housed in London appear back on the monument as archaeologists believe they looked 2,500 years ago.

Other, less widely known features also appear: Many of the sculptures on the Acropolis were painted in striking colors. A statue of goddess Athena in the main chamber of the Parthenon also stood over a shallow pool of water. As reported by the Associated  Press.

“That’s really impressive … the only time I’ve seen that kind of technology before is at the dentist,” Shriya Parsotam Chitnavis, a tourist from London, said after checking out the app on a hot afternoon at the hilltop Acropolis, Greece’s most popular archaeological site.

“I didn’t know much about the (Acropolis), and I had to be convinced to come up here. Seeing this has made it more interesting — seeing it in color,” she said. “I’m more of a visual person, so this being interactive really helped me appreciate it.”

The virtual restoration works anywhere and could spare some visitors the crowded uphill walk and long wait to see the iconic monuments up close. It might also help the country’s campaign to make Greek cities year-round destinations.

Tourism, vital for the Greek economy, has roared back since the COVID-19 pandemic, even as wildfires chased visitors from the island of Rhodes and affected other areas this summer. The number of inbound visitors from January through July was up 21.9% to 16.2 million compared with a year ago, according to the Bank of Greece. Revenue was up just over 20%, to 10.3 billion euros ($10.8 billion).

The app, called “Chronos” after the mythological king of the Titans and Greek word for “time,” uses augmented reality to place the ancient impression of the site onto the screen, matching the real-world view as you walk around.

Virtual reconstructions using Chronos also cover three other monuments at the Acropolis, an adjacent Roman theater and parts of the Acropolis Museum built at the foot of the rock.

Impressive!

Tony

Click to enlarge

Dear Commons Community,

New hiring defied predictions last month and shows that the US economy is remaining strong (see graphic above).

Businesses across the U.S. economy ramped up their hiring in September, despite surging interest rates, financial market turmoil, the ongoing threat of a government shutdown and an uncertain outlook to add the most jobs in any month since January.

The hiring binge confounded expectations for a slowdown and added one more layer of complexity to the Federal Reserve’s high-wire effort to defeat inflation without causing a recession.

The 336,000 jobs that were added in September exceeded the 227,000 for August and raised the average gain for the past three months to a robust 266,000. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.8%, not far above a half-century low.

Yesterday’s government report raised hopes for a notoriously difficult “soft landing,” by which the Federal Reserve would manage to curb high inflation with a series of rate hikes without derailing the economy.

But the healthy pace of hiring also highlights the confounding nature of the U.S. economy as it navigates the uncharted post-pandemic era. A strong job market suggests that growth might be too healthy for inflation to keep declining and that the Fed might have to further raise rates.

Speaking after the September hiring data was released, President Joe Biden asserted that the robust job growth was a result of his policies, a message he has repeated in speeches ahead of next year’s elections. Yet polls show that most adults still hold a negative view of the economy, with Biden’s agenda having yet to make much impact on public sentiment.

The president attributed public doubts about the economy to the nature of news media coverage, which he said prioritizes the negative.

“I think that the American people are smart as hell and know what their interests are,” Biden said. “I think they know they’re better off financially than they were before.”

Here are some questions and answers about yesterday’s job report courtesy of the Associated Press.

WHY IS HIRING STILL SO STRONG?

The Fed has raised its benchmark short-term rate 11 times since last year to about 5.4%, the highest in 22 years — the fastest pace of rate hikes in four decades. The increases are intended to slow borrowing and spending by businesses and consumers, thereby cooling growth. When employers added just 105,000 jobs in June, economists had expected further modest gains to come. Instead, hiring has rebounded with vigor.

There are several likely reasons why: Millions of people have started job hunting in the past year, pulled into the job market by strong demand for workers and higher pay. Others have likely been drawn in by financial stress they feel from higher prices. Immigration has also rebounded after COVID-era restrictions were lifted.

As a result, more workers are available to fill millions of open positions. This trend has lessened the labor shortages that many employers complained about since the recovery from the 2020 pandemic and enabled some companies to finally catch up to their previous employment levels. In September, for example, restaurants and bars added 61,000 positions, finally restoring their pre-pandemic levels of payrolls.

Likewise, hospitals, child care centers and government agencies are still adding workers as they seek to rebuild their staffs after having lost workers during COVID.

“We’ve seen a very impressive rebound in the labor supply,” said Sarah House, senior economist at Wells Fargo. “After a downturn, there’s a lot of consternation about to what extent workers will come back. And what we’ve seen is that workers do respond to a strong jobs market.”

Sarah Tilley, a senior vice president at the business software provider ServiceNow, is seeing evidence that more workers are available. Responses to their job listings are 80% higher than they were a year and a half ago, she said, with some of that increase likely a result of widespread layoffs last year by tech companies.

Another change from a year ago, she noted, is that even workers with tech skills are less able to job-hop for large raises.

“People would jump off, get these real meaty increases,” she said. “And that’s changed. People are less inclined to take the risk.”

Consumers spent freely over the summer — on travel, hotels, movies and concert tickets — and lifted the economy in the process. Because consumer spending drives about 70% of the U.S. economy, analysts expect growth to top a healthy 3% annual rate for the July-September quarter. With the economy growing steadily, businesses are likely more confident about adding positions.

WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN FOR THE FED?

It could make Fed officials more inclined to raise their key interest rate in November or December. In the past, Chair Jerome Powell has said that slowing inflation back to the Fed’s 2% target will require “pain” in the labor market. So far, there’s been little to no such pain.

And just Thursday, Mary Daly, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, suggested that the Fed could hold off on another hike “if we continue to see a cooling labor market and inflation heading back to our target.” Friday’s data doesn’t suggest much cooling is happening.

At the same time, the Fed’s main concern is that rapid hiring will stoke strong wage increases. Higher wages can fuel inflation if companies raise their prices to offset their higher labor costs. In September, wage growth slowed; it rose 4.2% from a year earlier. That is a solid gain, and slightly faster than inflation. But it was the mildest year-over-year increase in more than two years.

Such data underscores the tantalizing prospect that inflation could continue to ease — it was 3.7% in August — without requiring widespread layoffs or a recession, in what Austan Goolsbee, head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, calls “the golden path.” Some other Fed officials think the economy will have to cool to truly stamp out rising prices.

At the same time, long-term interest rates have spiked in the past two months, making loans more expensive across the economy and potentially serving as a brake on economic growth and inflation. Mortgage rates have jumped to 7.5%, the highest level in 23 years.

“It’s a pretty solid report and perhaps it makes the Fed a little bit more nervous just given the overall strength of the jobs market,” House said. But the jump in interest rates “is doing some of the Fed’s work for it, and that makes another hike less compelling.”

Another consideration that economists are increasingly considering is that if the economy is still chugging along, maybe that shows that it can withstand higher interest rates for the long term. If so, the Fed’s benchmark rate might not be restricting growth as much as Fed officials think and may need to rise noticeably higher.

IS THE JOB MARKET BENEFITING EVERYONE?

The U.S. economy is vast and diverse, and even in solid job reports there are pockets of weakness. In September, while the overall unemployment rate was unchanged, it rose noticeably for African-American workers.

Higher unemployment for Black Americans can sometimes serve as a warning signal of a weakening economy. That’s because Black workers are often the first to be laid off. It’s too soon to say if that is happening now, given that Black unemployment is still relatively low at 5.7%.

Still, that rate is up from 5.3% in August, and from a record low for Black unemployment of 4.7% in April.

The jobless rate for Hispanics fell last month from 4.9% to 4.6%. For Asian Americans, it fell from 3.1% to 2.8%. For whites, the unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.4%.

Good news for American workers!

Tony

Jon Fosse

Dear Commons Community,

Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, whose work tackles birth, death, faith and the other “elemental stuff” of life in spare Nordic prose, won the Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday for writing that prize organizers said gives “voice to the unsayable.”

The novelist and playwright said the prize was recognition of “literature that first and foremost aims to be literature, without other considerations” — an ethos expressed in dozens of enigmatic plays, stories and novels, including a seven-book epic made up of a single sentence.

Fosse’s work, rooted in his Norwegian background, “focuses on human insecurity and anxiety,” Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel literature committee, told The Associated Press. “The basic choices you make in life, very elemental stuff.”  As reported by the Associated Press.

One of his country’s most-performed dramatists, Fosse said he had “cautiously prepared” himself for a decade to receive the news that he had won.

“I was surprised when they called, yet at the same time not,” the 64-year-old told Norwegian public broadcaster NRK. “It was a great joy for me to get the phone call.”

WHY DID THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE GO TO JON FOSSE?

The author of 40 plays as well as novels, short stories, children’s books, poetry and essays, Fosse was honored “for his innovative plays and prose, which give voice to the unsayable,” according to the Swedish Academy, which awards the prize.

Fosse has cited the bleak, enigmatic work of Irish writer Samuel Beckett — the 1969 Nobel literature laureate — as an influence on his sparse, minimalist style.

Edmund Austigard, executive officer of Fosse’s publisher, Samlaget, said the author described his work as “slow writing and reading literature.”

“It’s not a type of literature that you bring to the beach and read in an hour or two,” he said. “It’s a type of literature … that invites you into a unique world and invites you to stay there for a while.”

WHAT IS THE NYNORSK LANGUAGE?

While Fosse is the fourth Norwegian writer to get the literature prize, he is the first in nearly a century and the first who writes in Nynorsk, one of the two official written versions of the Norwegian language. It is used by just 10% of the country’s 5.4 million people, according to the Language Council of Norway, but completely understandable to users of the other written form, Bokmaal.

Guy Puzey, senior lecturer in Scandinavian Studies at the University of Edinburgh, said Bokmaal is “the language of power, it’s the language of urban centers, of the press.” Nynorsk, by contrast, is used mainly by people in rural western Norway.

“So it’s a really big day for a minority language,” Puzey said.

Norway’ culture minister, Lubna Jaffery, told news agency NTB that it was “a historic day for the Nynorsk language and Nynorsk literature.”

Norway’s Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson received the prize in 1903, Knut Hamsun was awarded it in 1920 and Sigrid Undset in 1928.

In recognition of his contribution to Norwegian culture, in 2011 Fosse was granted use of an honorary residence in the grounds of the Royal Palace.

WHAT DID JON FOSSE WRITE?

His first novel, “Red, Black,” was published in 1983, and his debut play, “Someone is Going to Come,” in 1992.

His work “A New Name: Septology VI-VII” — described by Olsson as Fosse’s magnum opus — was a finalist for the International Booker Prize in 2022. The final volume in a seven-novel exploration of life, death and spirituality contains no sentence breaks.

His other major prose works include “Melancholy;” “Morning and Evening,” whose two parts depict a birth and a death; “Wakefulness;” and “Olav’s Dreams.”

His plays, which have been staged across Europe and in the United States, include “The Name,” “Dream of Autumn” and “I am the Wind.”

Fosse has also taught writing — one of his students was best-selling Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard — and consulted on a Norwegian translation of the Bible.

HOW DID JON FOSSE REACT TO THE NEWS?

Mats Malm, permanent secretary of the academy, reached Fosse by telephone to inform him of the win. He said the writer, who lives in the western city of Bergen, was driving in the countryside and promised to drive home carefully.

“I stand here and feel a little numb, but of course very happy for the great honor,” Fosse told Norway’s TV2.

The Nobel Prizes carry a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) from a bequest left by their creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. Winners also receive an 18-carat gold medal and diploma at the award ceremonies in December.

Congratulations to Mr. Fosse

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Scientists Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Aleksey Ekimov won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their discovery of tiny clusters of atoms known as quantum dots, widely used today to create colors in flat screens, light emitting diode (LED) lamps and devices that help surgeons see blood vessels in tumours.

The prize-awarding academy said that their findings on quantum dots, which in size ratio have the same relationship to a football, as a football to the earth, had “added color to nanotechnology” – when matter is used on an atomic or molecular level in manufacturing.

“Researchers believe that in the future they could contribute to flexible electronics, tiny sensors, thinner solar cells and encrypted quantum communication,” the academy said in a statement.

The more than century-old prize is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and is worth 11 million Swedish crowns ($1 million).

One of the “fascinating and unusual properties” of quantum dots is that they change light color depending on the particle size, while keeping the atomic structure unchanged, said Johan Aqvist, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.

Asked during a press conference how he felt to hear news of his award, Bawendi said by phone from the United States: “very surprised, sleepy, shocked, unexpected and very honored.”

He added that quantum dots were still being heavily researched. “I’m sure something really interesting is going to come out this.”

The quantum dot technology, which enabled high-definition QLED TVs sold by Samsung, Sony or TCL, traces its roots to early 1980s work by Ekimov.

At the time, he discovered that the color of glass changes with the size of copper chloride molecules contained in it and that sub-atomic forces were at play.

Speaking to Reuters on the phone, 78-year-old Ekimov who was born in the Soviet Union and later moved to the U.S., marvelled at the latest flat screen technology, something he did not envision during his early pioneering work. “Remember what a TV was back then!” he said, laughing.

A few years later, Brus extended the work to fluids.

In 1993, Bawendi revolutionised the production of quantum dots and improved their quality. Among other uses, the research enabled LEDs that shine more like natural sunlight, avoiding the bluish neon light they were previously shunned for.

Bawendi is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Brus is professor emeritus at Columbia University and Ekimov works for Nanocrystals Technology Inc.

Brus was hired by AT&T Bell Labs in 1972 where he spent 23 years, devoting much of the time to studying nanocrystals.

Bawendi was born in Paris and grew up in France, Tunisia, and the United States.

Congratulations to all!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

IBM is planning to train 2 million learners in artificial intelligence by 2026 in an effort to help close the global AI skills gap.

According to a recent news release, IBM is expanding AI education and training partnerships with universities globally, with a focus on training people currently underrepresented in the field. The announcement said that IBM will also put new generative AI course material on IBM SkillsBuild, a free education program for adult learners as well as high school and university students.

Citing a recent survey of 3,000 C-suite executives by the IBM Institute for Business Value that estimated 40 percent of their workforces would need to reskill over the next three years, the announcement said generative AI is creating a demand for new roles and skills.

“AI skills will be essential to tomorrow’s workforce,” Justina Nixon-Saintil, IBM’s vice president and chief impact officer, said in a public statement. “That’s why we are investing in AI training, with a commitment to reach 2 million learners in three years, and expanding IBM SkillsBuild to collaborate with universities and nonprofits on new generative AI education for learners all over the world.”

According to the announcement, the program will give university faculty access to IBM-led training resources, including lectures, classroom materials and opportunities to earn certificates. It added that IBM will also provide free online courses for students in generative AI and Red Hat open-source technologies.

IBM SkillsBuild had already offered free coursework in AI fundamentals, chatbots and AI ethics, but it’s adding more in subjects such as prompt writing, getting started with machine learning, improving customer service with AI, and generative AI in action. The news release added that AI-enhanced features within the IBM SkillsBuild learning platform will include chatbot improvements to assist learners throughout their courses, as well as “learning paths” tailored to each student.

The announcement further noted that this new effort will build on IBM’s prior commitment to upskill 30 million people for tech jobs by 2030, adding that since 2021, over 7 million learners have enrolled in IBM upskilling courses.

I am sure we will continue to see a good deal of AI training and education support from the major commercial software providers in the not-too-distant future.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has announced that the Nobel Prize in Physics 2023 will be awarded to

 Pierre Agostini
The Ohio State University, Columbus, USA

Ferenc Krausz
Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Garching and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany

Anne L’Huillier
Lund University, Sweden

“for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter”

The three Nobel Laureates in Physics 2023 are being recognised for their experiments, which have given humanity new tools for exploring the world of electrons inside atoms and molecules. Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier have demonstrated a way to create extremely short pulses of light that can be used to measure the rapid processes in which electrons move or change energy.

Fast-moving events flow into each other when perceived by humans, just like a film that consists of still images is perceived as continual movement. If we want to investigate really brief events, we need special technology. In the world of electrons, changes occur in a few tenths of an attosecond – an attosecond is so short that there are as many in one second as there have been seconds since the birth of the universe.

The laureates’ experiments have produced pulses of light so short that they are measured in attoseconds, thus demonstrating that these pulses can be used to provide images of processes inside atoms and molecules.

In 1987, Anne L’Huillier discovered that many different overtones of light arose when she transmitted infrared laser light through a noble gas. Each overtone is a light wave with a given number of cycles for each cycle in the laser light. They are caused by the laser light interacting with atoms in the gas; it gives some electrons extra energy that is then emitted as light. Anne L’Huillier has continued to explore this phenomenon, laying the ground for subsequent breakthroughs.

In 2001, Pierre Agostini succeeded in producing and investigating a series of consecutive light pulses, in which each pulse lasted just 250 attoseconds. At the same time, Ferenc Krausz was working with another type of experiment, one that made it possible to isolate a single light pulse that lasted 650 attoseconds.

The laureates’ contributions have enabled the investigation of processes that are so rapid they were previously impossible to follow.

“We can now open the door to the world of electrons. Attosecond physics gives us the opportunity to understand mechanisms that are governed by electrons. The next step will be utilising them,” says Eva Olsson, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics.

There are potential applications in many different areas. In electronics, for example, it is important to understand and control how electrons behave in a material. Attosecond pulses can also be used to identify different molecules, such as in medical diagnostics.

An attosecond is a billionth of a billionth of a second. This duration is so short that there are about as many attoseconds in a single second as there have been seconds in the entire history of the universe.

Congratulations!

Tony