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How technology is making healthcare more human

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As the world goes through digitalization at a rapid pace, fears of the dehumanizing aspect of technology are pervasive—and these fears are no exception in the healthcare industry. Certainly, no one wants robots directing their healthcare needs. With the pandemic highlighting just how vital empathy and humanity truly is, people’s reservations around adopting new, technology-driven ways of treating patients have been reinforced. But as the world turns towards more technology, we’ve uncovered something truly unexpected in healthcare. Contrary to our initial fears, digitalizing healthcare is proving to be even more human-centric than we could have imagined. Even through virtual connections, we have maintained and often intensified the human element of healthcare Read More …

Don’t buy new gadgets. Used or refurbished is just smarter—and greener

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A couple of years ago, I made a conscious decision to stop buying new phones. While I used to always stay on the cutting edge when choosing a new iPhone or Android phone, I realized that buying used or refurbished devices made more sense. These days, one- or two-year-old phones aren’t much different from the latest models, and buying them second-hand lets you save money without getting locked into long-term wireless carrier contracts. Buying used or refurbished tech also helps make a tiny dent in the world’s e-waste problems . By purchasing an older device, you’re delaying its journey to the scrap heap and reducing demand for new products. The idea seems to be catching on; a survey from February commissioned by Backmarket found that 25% of people listed environmental reasons for buying refurbished gear, up from 16% in May 2019. For me, the used phone lifestyle has been working out pretty well. I’ve been able to bounce between a few different phones before selling them back into the used market, and I never have to get AT&T involved with activation. Read More …

Inside Hulu’s Disney-style future

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Just over a year into Hulu’s full integration with the Walt Disney Company—thanks to Disney’s $71 billion acquisition of 20th Century Fox in 2019—the seeds of that partnership are starting to bear significant fruit. This year’s Best Picture Oscar winner, Nomadland , is available on Hulu, because it is a Searchlight Pictures title. FX, meanwhile, created one of Hulu’s most popular series last year, The Teacher . And the upcoming How I Met Your Mother spin-off— How I Met Your Father , which will star Hilary Duff—is based on the hit sitcom from 20th Century Fox Television. As Hulu continues to grow—it added 2.2 million domestic subscribers in the most recent quarter, bringing its total to 41.6 million—its strategy is simple: lean even harder into the creative hubs of its parent company. And not just the Fox arteries. Hulu is working more closely with ABC News on content, such as the exclusive one-hour special, 24 Hours: Assault on the Capitol , that streamed last January. Through a new deal that Disney signed with the National Hockey League in March, select hockey games will stream not just on ESPN Plus but also on Hulu. More football is also coming to the streamer thanks to its parent company, which owns ESPN. Read More …

Meet the mystery woman who mastered IBM’s 5,400-character Chinese typewriter

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I had seen this woman before. Many times now. I was certain of it. But who was she? In a film from 1947, she’s operating an electric Chinese typewriter, the first of its kind, manufactured by IBM. Semi-circled by journalists, and a nervous-looking middle-aged Chinese man—Kao Chung-chin, the engineer who invented the machine—she radiates a smile as she pulls a sheet of paper from the device. Kao is biting his lip, his eyes darting back and forth intently between the crowd and the typist. As soon as I saw that film, I began to riffle through my files. I’m a professor of Chinese history at Stanford University, and I was years into a book project on the history of modern Chinese information technology—and the Chinese typewriter specifically. By that point, I had amassed a large and still-growing body of source materials, including archival documents, historic photographs, and even antique machines. My office was becoming something of a private museum. As I thought, I’d encountered the typist previously in my research, in glossy IBM brochures and on the cover of Chinese magazines. Who was she? Why did she appear so frequently, so prominently, in the history of IBM’s effort to electrify the Chinese language? Read More …

This incredible miniature technology powers everything from printers to COVID-19 tests

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When you think of micro- or nanotechnology, you likely think of small electronics like your phone, a tiny robot, or a microchip. But COVID-19 tests—which have proven to be central to controlling the pandemic—are also a form of miniaturized technology. Many COVID-19 tests can give results within hours without the need to send a sample to a lab, and most of these tests use an approach called microfluidics . Anything that moves or processes tiny amounts of fluid is a microfluidic device. [Photo: Chris Neils/Albert Folch, CC BY-ND ] I am a professor of bioengineering and work with microfluidics for my research. Everything from pregnancy tests to glucose strips to inkjet printers to genetic tests rely on microfluidics Read More …