NEW RESOURCES

Money Talks News: New Tool Reveals Nursing Home Infection Violations. “A new free tool from Kaiser Health News (KHN) enables the public to look up the infection records of more than 15,000 nursing homes across the country. Specifically, the tool shows federal inspection citations for facilities that violated infection-control and prevention guidelines. This data is available because these nursing homes accept patients with Medicare or Medicaid health insurance, which makes them subject to certain federal oversights.”

Houston Chronicle: MFAH unveils new Latin art resources. “The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and its research institute, the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA), have launched an expanded, redesigned website and database for its Documents of Latin American and Latino Art Digital Archive Project. Begun 20 years ago, the project now offers full, free access to more than 8,200 letters, manifestos, newspaper and journal articles, exhibition reviews and other key theoretical, critical and art-historical texts. The materials include significant writings by artists, critics and curators from Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean and the U.S. Latino communities — many now available for the first time, via a more user friendly platform.”

New Atlas: NASA’s first global groundwater maps reveal drought in remote areas. “While a drought may quickly become evident in inhabited regions that depend on regular rain, when remote parts of the world undergo a dry spell it might not become obvious for a long time, if ever. To build a more complete picture of drought-stricken areas, NASA has developed its first global groundwater map, which it hopes will become useful way of monitoring water supplies as the world contends with ever-hotter temperatures.”

MIT News: Learning about artificial intelligence: A hub of MIT resources for K-12 students. “In light of the recent events surrounding Covid-19, learning for grades K-12 looks very different than it did a month ago. Parents and educators may be feeling overwhelmed about turning their homes into classrooms. With that in mind, a team led by Media Lab Associate Professor Cynthia Breazeal has launched aieducation.mit.edu to share a variety of online activities for K-12 students to learn about artificial intelligence, with a focus on how to design and use it responsibly.”

UConn Today: Humanities Institute Fellow Examines Archive of School Shootings Fiction. “Hayley Stefan is a doctoral candidate in English and a Humanities Institute Dissertation Research Fellow who is focusing her research on the growing genre of school shooting fiction. Her dissertation is titled: ‘Writing National Tragedy: Race & Disability in Contemporary U.S. Literature and Culture.’ From her dissertation research, she has established The School Shooting Fiction Archive, which investigates school shooting fiction. The archive currently includes 76 school shooting fiction texts published between 1977 and 2019, with more than half published after the shootings in Sandy Hook in December, 2012. She spoke with UConn Today about her research.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

India Times: Google to shut down Neighbourly app in May. “Google is shutting down its neighbourhood community app Neighbourly, nearly two years after its launch. In a note to its users, the Internet giant said that the app hasn’t gained traction as they had hoped, due to which they will be closing down the app on May 12, 2020 and users will be able to download their Neighbourly content until October 12 this year.”

Neowin: Google’s Art Transfer lets you add famous art styles to pictures. “Google has announced that its Arts & Culture app will let you apply characteristics of well-known paintings to the pictures you take, in the latest update. The new feature, called Art Transfer, is available in the Camera menu in the bottom bar of the Google Arts & Culture app.”

USEFUL STUFF

New York Times: How to Digitize Your Most Important Documents. “Scanning copies of your personal papers creates a digital archive that can also be used as a backup, especially if you have the files password-protected and stored in a secure location. And even if you don’t have a document scanner, you can create your personal archive with a smartphone, a few apps and a bit of time. Here’s a guide to getting started.”

The Next Web: Holy sheet: How to track your stock portfolio with Google Sheets. “Recently, millennials have been bombarded with a slew of new personal finance apps. It seems as if budgeting, saving, and investing is all the rage nowadays, and that everyone’s aiming for FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early). But again, you don’t really need a fancy app to do all of that.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

University of Massachusetts Amherst: Irma Mcclaurin Wins Grant for Development of Black Feminist Archive in Special Collections and University Archives. “Irma McClaurin, who earned her Ph.D. and MFA from UMass Amherst, was recently awarded a $15,000 Historical Archives Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Inc. The funds are for the continuing development of the Irma McClaurin Black Feminist Archive in Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA), in the UMass Amherst Libraries.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

OneZero: Data Thieves Are Targeting Dead People’s Social Media Accounts. “In 2012, the family of a deceased soldier in the United States was blindsided when they started seeing his face on ads for dating websites. His photo was being used to entice more people to visit the site. In another case, a woman received new Facebook messages sent from the account of a dead friend, says Faheem Hussain, a clinical assistant professor at Arizona State University who studies the digital afterlife. Someone was impersonating her friend and using his account to harass her. While she knew she could block the account, she hesitated because it was also her last remaining connection to her friend.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Functionize: Things that are called ML/AI that really aren’t. “So many products promise to be machine learning or AI when they are just an impressive algorithm. But smart is not the same as intelligent when it comes to the minds of machines. Can you spot the difference?” Good morning, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!