NEW RESOURCES

Hong Kong Standard: Database rates Chinese medicine. “Chinese University of Hong Kong researchers have developed Asia’s first global online database on the effectiveness of Chinese medicine. The bilingual evidence-based platform, ‘Integrative Medicine Clinical Evidence Portal,’ comprises more than 200 experiments on how effective Chinese medicine is in different situations.”

Mongabay: Monkey business: Building a global database of primate conservation studies . “Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, together with researchers at the University of Cambridge (where I work), have just published the results of a three-year project gathering the data on how well primate conservation initiatives have worked to conserve species from lemurs to chimpanzees. The ‘Primate Synopsis’ collects scientific papers and, where possible, NGO reports, testing conservation ‘interventions’ — actions that conservationists might undertake in order to have a favorable impact on these species.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Artstor: Now available: highlights from the collection of The Morgan Library & Museum. “The Morgan Library & Museum (The Morgan) has contributed approximately 200 images from its permanent collection to the Artstor Digital Library. The selection provides a range of highlights from The Morgan’s European drawings collection from the Renaissance to the 20th century, featuring celebrated works from Albrecht Dürer through Francisco Goya and Paul Cézanne.”

CNET: Google’s top searches of 2017 were Hurricane Irma, Matt Lauer. “This was the year of #MeToo and hurricanes. And that was reflected in the way people searched for stuff online. Google said Wednesday that the two top trending topics of 2017 in the US were ‘Hurricane Irma’ and ‘Matt Lauer.’ In Google parlance, ‘top trending’ means they had the highest spike in traffic over a certain period of time this year compared to last year. The search giant also released a list of top global searches that featured a variety of queries about Apple’s iPhone.”

TechCrunch: Facebook opens AR platform and ‘World Effects’ to all developers. “Facebook is trying to close the augmented reality gap with Snapchat with the help of an army of third-party developers. Today, eight months after debuting its Augmented Reality Camera Effects platform and AR Studio tool at F8, Facebook is allowing all developers to start building AR experiences for its Facebook Camera. That includes ‘World Effects’ — Facebook’s copy of Snapchat’s World Lenses — that augment your environment with 3D objects rather than just your selfies.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Newsroom NZ: Word Holocaust ‘dangerous and derogatory’: Google. “A New Zealand photographer says he could no longer use the word ‘Holocaust’ to promote his video series on Holocaust survivors after it was disallowed by Google. Auckland photographer Perry Trotter says he used Google’s AdWords to promote his Shadows of Shoah exhibitions but all his ads were recently disallowed because they contained ‘dangerous and derogatory’ content.” This is almost a Facebook level of ridiculousness.

Economic Times: Media agencies say Facebook, Google ‘must pay for news’ from which they make millions. “Nine European press agencies, including AFP, called Wednesday on internet giants to be forced to pay copyright for using news content on which they make vast profits. The call comes as the EU is debating a directive to make Facebook, Google, Twitter and other major players pay for the millions of news articles they use or link to.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Krebs on Security: Patch Tuesday, December 2017 Edition. “The final Patch Tuesday of the year is upon us, with Adobe and Microsoft each issuing security updates for their software once again. Redmond fixed problems with various flavors of Windows, Microsoft Edge, Office, Exchange and its Malware Protection Engine. And of course Adobe’s got another security update available for its Flash Player software.”

Tom’s Guide: New Twitter Scam Spamming Feeds: What to Do. “I can’t believe I’m typing this, but: do not click on the baby poop. Seriously. A new fake viral video scam with the tantalizing title ‘Baby Poops in His Onesie, But Dog’s Response Leaves Millions of People in Hysterics’ is tricking Twitter users into handing over access to their accounts.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Phys .org: Borrowing a leaf from biology to preserve threatened languages. “One of the world’s 7,000 languages vanishes every other week, and half – including scores of indigenous North American languages—might not survive the 21st century, experts say. To preserve as much linguistic diversity as possible in the face of this threat, McGill University scientists are proposing to borrow a leaf from conservation biology.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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