More Americans have confidence in scientists, but there are political divides over the role of scientific experts in policy issues... six-in-ten Americans say scientists should play an active role in policy debates about scientific issues... but Americans are divided along party lines in terms of how they view the value and objectivity of scientis…

For those who have grown up with social media... childhood, an era that was fruitfully mysterious for the rest of us, is surprisingly accessible. ... this is certain to have some kind of profound effect on the development of identity... children and teen-agers have gained a level of control that they didn’t have before... Humans have always tried …

half a dozen specialist curators ... find speakers in two ways: ... applications ... through the TED website ... scouting for talented speakers by going to conferences and asking their network ... they create short lists... The TED curators’ advice ... can apply to any conference where you aspire to be a speaker,

free online ratings are less trustworthy than those that have some cost to them... In ecology, costly signaling theory argues that displays that “cost” more — like elaborate peacock tails, or strenuous displays of hunger from baby birds — are more likely to reflect reality... making rating goods or services as easy as possible... is counterproduct…

there are big issues with tags that limit their usefulness... tags are scattered... over 1 million unique tags. Many ... duplicates ... or so close that they have the same audience... represent each tag by a vector of numbers in a multi-dimensional vector space...find the meaning of these thousands of tags in a way that can represented by vector…

show how the nature of diversity in our urban areas around the world has been changing over the past few decades... the use of sentences in data visualization is one of my favorite things. You’re adjusting a sentence using these dropdowns, which gives it a narrative component and tells you some really basic things... there’s no reason to not use t…

Most successful entrepreneurs are older—and the ones running the highest growth businesses, according to research at MIT and the Kauffman Foundation, are nearly twice the age Zuckerberg was... I consistently see five traits that give older founders an edge. The takeaway, though, is that there are ways to hone that edge, even if you’re younger.

our team of researchers and policy analysts work together to analyze new data and create a platform for local stakeholders to make more informed decisions.... We arm local policy-makers with customized and data-driven insights so they can craft tailored, hyperlocal solutions.

a sophisticated and intuitive balance between vision, curiosity and passion; and a continuous process of experimentation and iteration... Grow the Ecosystem, and It Will Grow You... providing an ecosystem platform to others ... would allow Amazon to grow exponentially faster than if he poured all the company’s energy and capital into simply growin…

from 2010 to 2014, five American metro areas had the same level of business creation as the rest of the country...Rapid technological change, along with other drivers like the Great Recession and decreased dynamism are creating three economic challenges: Divergence between geographic regions... Concentration of startups and their value ... conc…

Your subconscious never rests... your goal is to direct your subconscious mind to create the outcomes you seek... unlock connections and solutions... Here’s a simple routine to get started:... Take a few moments before you go to bed to meditate on and write down the things you’re trying to accomplish. Ask yourself loads of questions ... Write tho…

How seeing the other side’s narrative can de-polarize your mind... the heart of polarization is often not a disagreement about the facts of a particular narrative, but about whether that story is somehow representative... in a big, diverse and complicated society, multiple narratives can all be true at once...

we’ve conflated data with truth. And this has dangerous implications for our ability to understand, explain, and improve the things we care about... data is not a perfect representation of reality: It’s a fundamentally human construct... subject to biases, limitations, and other imperfections... Data doesn’t say anything. Humans say things.... Dat…

We’re about to start testing new online designs to make scientific evidence more accessible to policymakers. Volunteers needed! - recruiting wireframe testers via K4P

the bubble machine creates a politics of purity... I am not telling anyone to be mates with racists or stop being leftwing. I am just asking that we be less comfortably numb. The result of not speaking to those who don’t inhabit our precious bubbles will confront us this week

Steve Bannon and the conservative group CatholicVote used cell-phone location data for people who had been inside Roman Catholic churches ... target them with get-out-the-vote ads...“geofencing” or “ring-fencing.”... data ... is anonymized. But ... potential to reveal personal information about individual phone users... virtual fence around a geog…

2017 study ... showed that voters in Britain highly satisfied with their lives were 1.6% more likely to support the party in power... a 10% rise in family income was associated with a mere 0.18% increase ... happiness seems more important to the outcome of elections than money... in 15 European elections ... Life satisfaction... twice as important…

Europeans feel disenfranchised ... alternative forms of active citizen engagement in democracy must be experimented with... Our approach combines ... random sample voting (RSV) with secure digital identities... if anyone in Europe, from the European parliament to a local government or NGO, wants to find out how people in a certain region feel abou…

Quora has around 300 million active monthly users... The overall number of topics discussed on Quora comes to around 400,000...content relevancy on Quora is almost evergreen... be looked upon as an authority in your field... Before answering a question... When was it asked? recent questions are best ... How many answers ... Aim to be among the …

Sweden plans to cut its emissions to net zero. A new digital visualization shows exactly what it’s doing to reach that goal—and is designed to help policymakers move faster to fill in gaps in the current plan and make sure it actually succeeds. It’s also fully open to the public, so anyone can hold the government accountable... A typical governmen…

for anyone who’s eager to control their entrepreneurial destiny, bootstrapping can be an excellent choice... payoffs can include freedom (both financial and personal) and a better sense of work-life balance. You can grow at a sane pace and maintain a healthy personal life.

You never know what your falling apple will be, but you have to be out of your office to see it.... put on your calendar that you’re going to take unstructured thinking time ... When all else fails, take a shower. Showering ... can help cultivate creativity... release dopamine... relax us, which lets our attention turn inward to find free associa…

Notd brings you micro-subscriptions, where publishers and writers can offer ad-free streams of notes that are focused on one or several topics... In place of ads, we are offering micro-subscriptions to these streams, where the cost is in cents per month... the contributors get most of the revenue

Mozilla announced a new anti-tracking strategy... make it harder to track users across websites ... on by default for all users... There needs to be a profitable revenue ecosystem on the web... Our third-party cookie restrictions will allow loading of advertising ... will prevent the cookie-based tracking ... a better balance for publishers than…

Scroll gives you special ad-free versions of all your favorite news sites. From cleaner pages to handy reading tools, Scroll lets you experience great content with new focus – and pays publishers more than advertising.

the primary battle many Content Strategists fight every day... While the boarding pass was the single most important thing to the passenger... it seemed to be the least important thing to the airline. The passenger became more frustrated with the airline with each passing offer and informational screen thrust in their way... We need to shift our …

novelty and newness of these teams has worn off... growing acceptance ... that these teams are useful tool in driving new practices ... Less clear... is whether these units can enable the deeper digital transformation... ~ two key pieces of the puzzle: ... creating common platforms to power governments services is key to digital transformation o…

to actually grow as an adult, you have to play like a kid

POLITICO asked eight of the European Parliament's youngest members... how do you make the EU more relevant to young people?... " letting them into the decision-making process and giving them a better sense of what it is they do"... "The EU is designed to be impervious to citizens’ influence... led by an unelected Commission and its Parliament has …

Jobs to be Done is a theory of consumer action. It describes the mechanisms that cause a consumer to adopt an innovation... a process: it starts, it runs, and it ends... a JTBD describes how a customer changes or wishes to change...: the process a consumer goes through whenever she aims to change her existing life-situation into a preferred one, b…