Enrique Tejeda Canobbio on LinkedIn: Can learning a foreign language prevent dementia? (2024)

Mapped: The Growth in U.S. House Prices by State in 2024https://ift.tt/ge1NQ9A See this visualization first on the Voronoi app.Use This Visualization The Growth in House Prices by State in 2024This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.In 2024, U.S. home prices are steadily rising across nearly every state in America. Overall, home prices rose 6.6% annually as of the first quarter of 2024, the highest increase since 2022. A combination of low inventory and homeowners’ reluctance to sell is driving up home values as interest rates remain persistently high. The above graphic shows the growth in house prices by state in 2024, based on data from the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Where Are Home Prices Rising the Fastest?Below, we show the states with the greatest year-over-year home price growth in Q1 2024: RankStateHouse Price ChangeQ1 2023 - Q1 20241Vermont12.8%2New Jersey11.6%3New York10.9%4Delaware10.7%5Kansas9.9%6Wisconsin9.9%7Connecticut9.6%8Illinois9.4%9New Hampshire9.4%10Maine9.1%11Massachusetts8.8%12Rhode Island8.5%13South Carolina8.5%14Nevada8.1%15Indiana8.0%16Ohio8.0%17Pennsylvania7.9%18Hawaii7.8%19Michigan7.8%20Missouri7.6%21Georgia7.3%22Nebraska7.1%23New Mexico7.0%24Maryland6.9%25California6.3%26Florida6.1%27Oklahoma6.0%28Tennessee5.9%29North Carolina5.8%30Utah5.8%31Virginia5.7%32Kentucky5.6%33Iowa5.4%34Montana5.2%35Arkansas5.1%36Washington5.1%37Arizona4.9%38Minnesota4.8%39Alaska4.7%40Idaho4.6%41South Dakota4.3%42Wyoming4.1%43Oregon4.0%44Colorado3.6%45West Virginia3.6%46North Dakota3.3%47Texas3.3%48Alabama3.2%49Mississippi2.7%50Louisiana2.2%51District of Columbia-1.5%Seasonally adjusted. Represents changes in single-family home values.Vermont leads in growth, with home prices climbing by 12.8% as home inventory dropped to its lowest point in over a decade.Next in line are Northeastern states New York, New Jersey, and Delaware—each with double-digit growth. Pushing up prices are the influx of buyers moving to more affordable metros nearby major cities along with a lack of inventory. On a metropolitan level, many of the nation’s hottest housing markets are in these states, including Camden, New Jersey and Syracuse, New York. While Florida and Texas saw home prices surge over the pandemic, their property markets are cooling amid robust inventory gains. Between 2019 and 2023, over 25% of the nation’s single-family building permits were found in the two states. As home building activity is accelerating, the number of active listings is increasing, most notably in San Antonio, Tex...

Extreme dormancy helps life survive on Earth — and possibly alien planetshttps://ift.tt/fS7Oq5PLots of living things are asleep most of the time. That’s one lesson to be drawn from a recent publication by Karla Helena-Buena of Newcastle University, who discovered a new natural protein called Balon, ubiquitous in bacteria, that helps them overcome environmental stresses by going dormant.Dormancy as an adaptation strategy isn’t unique to single-celled organisms. Many fungi, plants, and animals rely on it to survive tough environmental conditions. Plants in temperate zones lose their leaves and go dormant during cold winter months. Bears hibernate — a type of dormancy — to conserve energy when there is little or no food around.Extreme dormancyA dramatic example of this survival strategy is on display this summer in some parts of the United States, where large broods of cicadas have emerged from underground to swarm the countryside for the first time in more than a decade. This long-view lifestyle has two key advantages. It makes the cicadas less predictable prey, preventing the evolution of specialized predators that might, given a shorter reproductive cycle, make them a main part of their diet. And by the time the cicadas finally emerge from underground after as many as 17 years, there are so many of them that predators can’t eat them all, leaving plenty of survivors behind to reproduce and ensure the continuance of the species.Stretching out the reproductive cycle is just one way for organisms to play the long game. Some bacteria and fungi rely on specialized dormancy forms, such as spores, to weather long periods of environmental stress or lack of nutrients. Bacterial spores are essentially stripped-down cells with a thicker cell wall, which makes them extremely resistant to stressors like ultraviolet radiation, temperature extremes, and desiccation. In this mode, the cell is dormant, with little or no metabolic activity going on and no reproduction possible. Bacteria can keep “alive” in this way for extremely long times, with one study claiming a dormancy of 25 million years for an ancient bacteria closely related to Bacillus sphaericus.In the animal kingdom, a form of suspended animation practiced by tardigrades, called the tun state, allows these amazing creatures to withstand freezing temperatures close to absolute zero and exposure to space conditions for a substantial amount of time. Tardigrades are able to reduce their water content to less than 1% of the normal share and drop their metabolism to lower than a few hundredths of a percent of their normal active rate. It’s not clear exactly how long they can survive in the tun state, but it appears to be at least 30 years.Because environmental conditions on Earth are generally benign, most life forms on our planet don’t have to go dormant for longer than one season. If necessary, though, they can hold out for much longer. In one published case, a bacterium retrieved fro...

Map: Where are American Troops Stationed Overseas?https://ift.tt/ZULevK1 See this visualization first on the Voronoi app.Use This Visualization Map: Where Are American Troops Stationed Overseas?This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.With a military budget bigger than most countries’ GDPs, the U.S. military manages to station troops in nearly 170 territories, on every continent in the world. But which countries host the most troops? We map the territories where active duty American military personnel are stationed, according to March 2024 figures from the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC). Reserve troops and civilian personnel are also stationed overseas for support activities. They are not included on this map.Ranked: Top 10 Territories Hosting U.S. TroopsThere are nearly 170,000 active duty American troops stationed overseas.More than half of that number are in Japan (55,000) and Germany (35,000), a holdover from World War II after the Axis powers surrendered.Germany is now also home to the US European Command (EUCOM) headquarters in Stuttgart. It’s a key regional outpost, to help “keep the peace in Europe, parts of the Middle East, and Eurasia,” as stated by the government.RankCountryActive Duty American Troops1 Japan54,7742 Germany35,0683 South Korea24,2344 Italy12,3755 UK10,0586 Guam*6,5937 Bahrain3,4798 Spain3,2929 Türkiye1,69010 Norway1,438N/A Rest of World16,116N/A Total169,117*Guam is a U.S. territory.Meanwhile, the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty revised in 1960 allowed America to establish military bases in the country, in exchange for defending Japan in the event of an attack.South Korea also has a significant garrison, nearly 25,000 active duty personnel. This is also a legacy from the Korean War.Tellingly, however, six of the top 10 countries hosting U.S. troops are in Europe. For the decades since the Cold War, the American military had been reducing its European footprint. However after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, the buildup restarted.Finally, in the wake of the 2022 Russian invasion and the Israel-Hamas war, the U.S. military has increased the number of troops both in Europe and the Middle East.The post Map: Where are American Troops Stationed Overseas? appeared first on Visual Capitalist.INFOvia Visual Capitalist https://ift.tt/dlsbp7EJuly 1, 2024 at 08:06AM

Why architects need philosophy to guide the AI design revolutionhttps://ift.tt/zt7lUKmTwo decades ago Lord Norman Foster, one of Britain’s great architects, said that an architect designs for the present, with an awareness of the past, for an essentially unknown future. These days, architects are venturing deeper into the unknown as AI tools such as Dall-E and Midjourney create blueprints and turn them into photorealistic images within seconds, rather than weeks.Will these new AI tools put architects out of business? Not necessarily. But they should act as a wake-up call for the profession. Architects need to reevaluate their role within society and embrace interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches in their everyday work. Philosophical inquiry, in particular, can add innovative ideas to architecture and create spaces that resonate with deeper human experiences and values, something that AI tools cannot do well (yet).Architecture and philosophyScratch beneath the surface and you will find that architecture is an intrinsically philosophical enterprise grounded in aesthetics and ethics, including theories of human nature. Philosophy plays a pivotal role in shaping spaces that transcend mere functionality. It prompts architects to consider the ethical and moral implications of their work and think about the impact their designs have on individuals and communities, as well as on the natural environment. The way we think about our homes, and what makes a beautiful building, is deeply philosophical as it also reflects how we view ourselves and humanity at large. By weaving philosophical ideas with the art of design, architecture allows us to explore the essence of human existence, in doing so framing our values, beliefs, and aspirations.The relationship between architecture and philosophy remains deeply ingrained in both design practice and theoretical discourse. Leading 20th-century philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida made a big mark on famous buildings constructed in recent decades: from influencing Kenneth Frampton’s texts to inspiring modernist designs by Rem Koolhaas and Peter Eisenman. The profound, often discrete, influence of philosophy on architecture can also be seen in the recent practice of adaptive reuse, the process of transforming vacant buildings into schools, public parks, offices, or apartments. Adaptive reuse raises a number of prickly philosophical questions, not least: does a landmark lose its historical value if it has been radically transformed? Theseus’s Paradox regarding identity over time comes to mind here. If the ship Theseus sailed on was completely repaired with nearly every part replaced, is it still the same ship? This question was at the core of recent debates about historic preservation, with many people now arguing that it is preserving the idea, not the actual material, that matters most.New AI architecture tools will, in the short term, make good...

There is a formula for happiness — but it’s highly misunderstoodhttps://ift.tt/zdN2GVWHow does one become truly happy? Arthur Brooks, author and Harvard professor, explains.Throughout his career, Brooks has pinpointed the essence of real happiness. His key insight? Happiness is not just a feeling, it’s a state of mind.In this interview, Brooks shares three primary elements of well-being, and explains how each one – enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning – contributes to your own happiness factor. Enjoyment, he explains, involves more than mere pleasure—it’s about shared experiences and lasting memories. Satisfaction arises from overcoming challenges, and meaning comes from understanding life’s coherence, significance, and purpose.Brooks further breaks down the pursuits that genuinely contribute to happiness: faith, family, friendship, and meaningful work. He stresses that happiness is not a final destination but a continuous direction. By focusing on these core aspects, we can build a fulfilling and happier life.This video There is a formula for happiness — but it’s highly misunderstood is featured on Big Think.INFOvia Big Think https://ift.tt/3PcTF1eJuly 1, 2024 at 07:15AM

Death threats and imposter syndrome: social media star Carrie Berk on dealing with fame and successhttps://ift.tt/Yk7xzK1Being thrust into the spotlight is tough to deal with as an adult – but it’s even tougher for a child who is still trying to understand their place in the world. That was reality for Carrie Berk, who co-authored a series of children’s books alongside her mother in 2012 when she was just 8 years old.Fast-forward to 2024 and she’s now a 21-year-old journalist and social media influencer with a following of almost 4 million on TikTok.We spoke to the New Yorker candidly about the pressures and consequences of young success, touching on everything from unworthiness to trolling, and how she looked inward to change her outlook on life.In her mother’s shadowBerk has had three novel series published (Fashion Academy, Ask Emma and The Cupcake Club), with the latter selling over 300,000 books globally. But rather than fill her with confidence, these early achievements filled her with a sense of unworthiness.“A personal insecurity I have is that an 8-year-old cannot publish a book by herself; she needs help,” she says. “That negative voice in my head would be saying, ‘You’re nothing without your mom behind you…you’re never going to have your own voice as a writer…you’re always going to be in her shadow.’’’But Berk refused to let this inner critic get the better of her writing skills, proving it wrong by authoring her very own solo book: My Real-Life Rom-Com: How to Build Confidence and Write Your Own Relationship Rules, a coming-of-age guide for all those needing authentic advice on love and heartbreak.“If I’m ever doubting myself, I just look at my book and my byline,” she says. “This was something that I did by myself and I should be proud of it. People can think what they want to think. It’s about what you think about yourself that matters.”Out came the trollsLiving through a global pandemic significantly affected the mental health of adults and children, and the National Institute of Health has stated that nearly half of Americans surveyed reported symptoms of an anxiety or depressive disorder. Berk was unfortunately a part of the unlucky half.“It was the middle of the pandemic, so I was already dealing with a lot. I was class of 2020; no prom, no graduation. It was a really hard year for me,” she explains.During this time, her social media presence skyrocketed. But despite finding an engaged audience that loved her lighthearted lifestyle content, there were a few hellbent on bringing her down. One notable troll, Berk remembers, was a 12-year-old who repeatedly told her to “DIE” via direct messaging.Berk had had no prior dealings with the physical symptoms of anxiety (she even thought it could’ve been COVID-19), so she was surprised when she started experiencing them intensely. “It became so debilitating,” she says. “My heart was constantly racing, I couldn’t catch my breath, I wasn’t hungry.” It w...

Age differences between world leaders and the populations they servehttps://ift.tt/uLXnDfmThe ages of American presidential candidates are old when compared to the ages of world leaders. Some of that is related to the age of the populations the leaders serve but not a lot. For the Washington Post, Ruby Mellen, Kevin Crowe, and Artur Galocha charted the gaps for all countries.Tags: age, government, Washington PostINFOvia FlowingData https://flowingdata.comJuly 1, 2024 at 02:32AM

The epic race inside the Pillars of Creation is almost overhttps://ift.tt/CN6XeD7Some 6500 light-years away, an epic race nears its end.This ground-based, wide-field image of the Eagle Nebula shows the star-forming region in all its glory, with new stars, the blue glow of reflected starlight, and the red glow of ionized all present. Dusty, light-blocking features are also prominent. The reddish glow at the gaseous outskirts is a result of hydrogen atoms recombining, and a photon of precisely 656.3 nanometers being emitted every time an electron transitions from the n=3 to the n=2 energy state.Credit: ESOInside the Eagle Nebula, the last stores of neutral gas now face evaporation.A large section of the Eagle Nebula, with four of the Hubble Space Telescope’s iconic images superimposed atop the relevant region of the larger nebula. Although these features, highlighted by the central Pillars of Creation, are incredibly interesting because of the neutral matter still present, most of the Nebula is instead simply an empty, cavernous void littered with isolated stars and star clusters.Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA; Wikimedia Commons user FriendlystarLocated within the Milky Way’s plane, new stars form when cold gas collapses.The dense cores of protostar cluster G333.23–0.06, as identified by ALMA, show strong evidence for large levels of multiplicity within these cores. Binary cores are common, and groups of multiple binaries, forming quaternary systems, are also quite common. Triplet and quintuplet systems are also found inside, while, for these high-mass clumps, singlet stars turn out to be quite rare. It is expected that the stars forming in nebulae all throughout the Universe, including in the Eagle Nebula, have similar clumpy properties.Credit: S. Li et al., Nature Astronomy, 2024That collapse leads to fragmentation, and eventually, the formation of new stellar systems.Chandra’s unique ability to resolve and locate X-ray sources made it possible to identify hundreds of very young stars, and those still in the process of forming (known as “protostars”). Infrared observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory indicate that 219 of the X-ray sources in the Eagle Nebula are young stars surrounded by disks of dust and gas and 964 are young stars without these disks: combined, more than 1000 new stars and protostars have been found. And no, there were no indications of recent supernovae or supernova remnants discovered; the Pillars are not in the process of being destroyed.Credit: NASA/CXC/INAF/M.Guarcello et al.; Optical: NASA/STScIHowever, young stars are hot and violent: emitting huge quantities of ultraviolet radiation.Over the timespan of 27 years, our view of the Pillars of Creation has not only expanded in size and resolution, but also in terms of wavelength coverage. The longer-wavelengths of light, as revealed in unprecedented resolution by JWST, allow us to see features t...

Ranked: The Countries Sending the Most Remittances Abroadhttps://ift.tt/ToSlEjb See this visualization first on the Voronoi app.Use This Visualization Ranked: The Countries Sending the Most Remittances AbroadThis was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.We chart the top 10 countries by the most remittances sent, in current U.S. dollars, based on 2022 data from Knomad.Specifically, these transfer totals shown represent personal remittances, or money sent between residents in one country to another, including personal transfers and compensation for work done abroad. It does not include, and is separate from, foreign investment.Top 10 Countries by Personal Remittances Sent (2000-2022)The U.S. has consistently been home to the world’s largest immigrant population (45 million people in 2022), a key reason for topping the ranks of sending money abroad over the last two decades.As a result, countries with largest diasporas in the U.S.—including Indian, the Philippines, and Mexico—tend to be the biggest recipients of these flows.Top Countries Sending Money Abroad2000Top Countries Sending Money Abroad (2022)2022 U.S.$35B U.S.$82B Saudi Arabia$15B UAE$40B UAE$14B Saudi Arabia$39B Germany$9B Switzerland$34B Switzerland$6B China$18B UK$5B Kuwait$18B France$5B Germany$17B South Korea$4B Luxembourg$16B Israel$3B Netherlands$15B Luxembourg$3B France$15BNote: Figures rounded.Similarly, immigrants make up nearly 80% of the population in the UAE (ranked #2 with $80 billion sent), the highest proportion of any country in the world.Setting the countries sending the most money abroad side-by-side with those receiving money from abroad, reveals broad geographic patterns. Advanced economies (in North America and Europe) are the biggest senders to developing economies in Asia and Africa.Finally, Switzerland, Netherlands, and Luxembourg are considered offshore financial centers and can be used as intermediary stops in the movement of money through the world.Why are personal remittances important anyway? To start, a staggering one billion people (roughly one out of eight people in the world) depend on money sent back home. In 2022, 200 million migrant workers sent $800 billion to their families in home countries. Three-quarters of the money received is spent on basic necessities like food, medical, and housing expenses. Thus, personal remittances represent, perhaps, one of the biggest informal engines of social transformation.The post Ranked: The Countries Sending the Most Remittances Abroad appeared first on Visual Capitalist.INFOvia Visual Capitalist https://ift.tt/dlsbp7EJune 30, 2024 at 04:21PM

What will it take for smart glasses to replace smartphones?https://ift.tt/X3rSoiCThis article is an installment of Future Explored, Freethink’s weekly guide to world-changing technology. You can get stories like this one straight to your inbox every Saturday morning bysubscribing here.It’s 2030. You wake up, and instead of reaching for your phone, you pop on a pair of sleek smart glasses. Throughout the day, you converse with a powerful AI assistant that uses the specs to pepper your view with useful information, seamlessly merging your physical and digital worlds.The smart glasses eraIn the 1990s, mobile phones could make calls or text, and PCs (with a modem) could send email, surf the internet, or play games. The following decade combined them and gave birth to the smartphone — changing practically everything about how we navigate the world.Smartglassesthat combine personal computing, AI, and augmented reality could be the next life-changing consumer tech device. To find out how, let’s take a look back at the history of smart glasses and the trends that could lead us into a future where our tech literally alters how we see the world.Where we’ve beenWhere we’re going (maybe)Google Glass may have been anexpensivefailure for Google, but it was avaluable case studyfor the rest of the tech industry, teaching developers a lot about what people donotwant, and those insights are shaping the current crop of smart glasses.While Google Glass looked like a prop from “The Matrix,” for example, most of today’s smart glasses have a much more low-key design. This helps wearers avoid being stigmatized as modern-day “Glassholes” trying to film others without their consent (even if it doesn’tactuallystop this from happening).While the smart glasses market isgrowing, there’s still no guarantee the devices will ever become mainstream, let alone replace smartphones as our go-to personal electronics. The industry is still searching for its “killer app,” the feature that people just can’t get without the tech — and this might be the one thing Google gotrightabout smart glasses with Google Glass.When Epson released its smart glasses in 2011, itmarketedthe devices as being for “personal media enjoyment” — put on a pair, and you can browse the web or watch movies wherever you are — but Google’s 2012concept videofor Glass emphasized a very different kind of use case.Rather than providing passive entertainment, these smart glasses were going to behelpful. They’d send you text notifications, help you keep track of your schedule, and overlay useful graphics, such as walking directions, onto your field of view.The digital assistant in the Google Glass devices that actually shipped was nowhere near as useful — reviewers reported getting frustrated with thebuggy software, which often misunderstood what they said or wanted.Today, far better AI assistants are now a reality, thanks to advances ingenerative AI.It’s...

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