NEW RESOURCES

PR Newswire: Lost Women of Science Launches Podcast Series to Promote the Remarkable Women of Science You’ve Never Heard Of (PRESS RELEASE). “Journalist and author Katie Hafner, and bioethicist Amy Scharf, today announced the launch of the Lost Women of Science podcast series on November 4th, in partnership with public media organization PRX and the award-winning Scientific American magazine. The first season will include four in-depth episodes centered on Dr. Dorothy Andersen (1901-1963), a pediatric pathologist who identified and named cystic fibrosis in 1938. It will be available free on-demand across all major podcast listening platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Amazon Music.”

InPublishing: Railway Modeller magazine completes digital archive back to 1949. “Published monthly by Peco Publications, Railway Modeller is a guide to creating railscapes of every era of train, from steam to electric, and caters for modellers of all abilities, says Exact Editions. Each issue features the best from the hobby for those modelling Britain’s railways in all the popular scales and offers a blend of articles by experts and beginners alike, including a special section for newcomers wanting to learn all about the hobby and model making in general.”

Slate: We Are Everywhere. “Mapping the Gay Guides is an online exhibition that shows the growth of queer spaces for “community, pleasure, and politics” from 1965 to 1980 in all 50 states as well as Washington, DC. Built using data from the Bob Damron Address Books, a collection of travel guides that offered detailed information on spaces welcoming to queer people, MGG’s centerpiece is a map that places these bars, bathouses, restaurants, and churches as close to their original locations as possible.” This project launched in early 2020 but I only found out about it recently thanks to a Cal State Fullerton announcement of a grant related to the project.

University of Rhode Island: URI launches ‘Plastics: Land to Sea’ web platform. “A new University of Rhode Island web platform, ‘Plastics: Land to Sea,’ has been launched to provide the science community with a burgeoning array of data resources and tools designed to inform and support dialogue concerning research focused efforts to start addressing plastics pollution.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

BBC: Yahoo pulls out of China over ‘challenging’ business conditions. “Yahoo has become the latest US tech company to end its presence in mainland China as tougher regulations are imposed there.The firm said its decision was due to an ‘increasingly challenging business and legal environment’ in the country.”

CNET: Microsoft Teams is getting avatars, launching in VR and AR next year. “There really isn’t a ‘Zoom for VR’ yet, despite many companies aiming for it. The mainstream work tools most people use haven’t made the leap. Facebook, which is trying to push its entire company into the metaverse, doesn’t have one yet. Meanwhile, Microsoft is finally pushing Teams into a VR/AR-bridged tool that’s arriving, in beta form, in the first half of 2022.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Europeana Pro: Engaging students with audiovisual heritage through Subtitle-a-thons. “A Subtitle-a-thon is a crowdsourcing initiative which invites the public to create and add subtitles to archival audiovisual clips from European heritage collections available on the Europeana website. We share how this tool can be used by educators to help students engage with and explore audiovisual heritage.”

BNN Bloomberg: Google, Snap and Dozens Of Tech Companies Coordinate New Diversity Push. “Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Twitter Inc., Snap Inc. and about two dozen other major technology companies are banding together to focus on improving workplace diversity and strengthening the pipeline of underrepresented workers in Silicon Valley.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Brookings Institution: The gendered disinformation playbook in Germany is a warning for Europe. “Gendered disinformation attacks online are a well-known tactic that illiberal actors around the world—including Russia, Hungary and Brazil—have developed to undermine their opponents. By building on sexist narratives these actors intimidate women in order to eliminate critics, consolidate power, and undermine democratic processes. Such disinformation tactics are being imported to the West and are increasingly being adopted by both foreign actors and the far right in Europe.”

CU Boulder Today: How Black Twitter has become the new ‘Green Book’—and more. “In 1936 in Harlem, New York, a Black postal worker named Victor Green bound together a green, 15-page booklet listing New York City businesses that were welcoming to African Americans. In the coming decades, The Negro Motorist Green Book, a.k.a. The Green Book, expanded to include everything from hotels and restaurants to state parks and barbershops, with editions as far away as Bermuda and Mexico providing guidance on how to resist discrimination and threats of violence. Green discontinued the guide in 1966, after the passage of the Civil Rights Act presumably rendered its content obsolete. But more than a half-century later, a modern-day version is flourishing in the online community of Black Twitter, suggests new CU Boulder research.” Good afternoon, 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!