Thomas Lecocq, et al. 
Science  11 Sep 2020:
Vol. 369, Issue 6509, pp. 1338-1343
DOI: 10.1126/science.abd2438

 

Human activity causes vibrations that propagate into the ground as high-frequency seismic waves. Measures to mitigate the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused widespread changes in human activity, leading to a months-long reduction in seismic noise of up to 50%. The 2020 seismic noise quiet period is the longest and most prominent global anthropogenic seismic noise reduction on record. Although the reduction is strongest at surface seismometers in populated areas, this seismic quiescence extends for many kilometers radially and hundreds of meters in depth. This quiet period provides an opportunity to detect subtle signals from subsurface seismic sources that would have been concealed in noisier times and to benchmark sources of anthropogenic noise. A strong correlation between seismic noise and independent measurements of human mobility suggests that seismology provides an absolute, real-time estimate of human activities.

Source: science.sciencemag.org

As the U.S. heads toward the winter, the country is going round in circles, making the same conceptual errors that have plagued it since spring.

Source: www.theatlantic.com

Bradley A. Maron, Lucia Altucci, Jean-Luc Balligand, Jan Baumbach, Peter Ferdinandy, Sebastiano Filetti, Paolo Parini, Enrico Petrillo, Edwin K. Silverman, Albert-László Barabási, Joseph Loscalzo & International Network Medicine Consortium
npj Systems Biology and Applications volume 6, Article number: 29 (2020)

 

Network Medicine is now an established scientific discipline, having generated key insights on integrated mechanisms underlying complex human diseases. The next discovery phase will emphasize innovating analytics that optimize networks for advancing precision medicine. Accomplishing this goal will require organizing a scientifically diverse team studying big datasets shared globally.

Source: www.nature.com

János Kertész and Johannes Wachs discuss how complexity science and network science are particularly useful for identifying and describing the hidden traces of economic misbehaviour such as fraud and corruption.

 

Nature Reviews Physics (2020)

Source: www.nature.com

Luciano Floridi 
Philosophy & Technology volume 33, pages1–3(2020)

 

The trouble with seasonal metaphors is that they are cyclical. If you say that artificial intelligence (AI) got through a bad winter, you must also remember that winter will return, and you better be ready. An AI winter is that stage when technology, business, and the media get out of their warm and comfortable bubble, cool down, temper their sci-fi speculations and unreasonable hypes, and come to terms with what AI can or cannot really do as a technology (Floridi 2019), without exaggeration. Investments become more discerning, and journalists stop writing about AI, to chase some other fashionable topics and fuel the next fad.

Source: link.springer.com