Category: Economics

Leapfrog Innovation May Solve Frustration of Multiple Charger Connectors, Without Government Regulations

(p. B3) LONDON — The European Union wants to make it easier to charge your cellphone and other devices.

This week, members of the European Parliament held a hearing on a measure to require smartphone makers to produce a common charger for all mobile and portable devices sold in the region, including tablets, e-readers and digital cameras.

The goal: no more frustration at borrowing a friend’s charger only to find it has a Lightning connector when you need a USB-C.

. . .

The European Commission is scheduled to publish a study in the coming weeks to deliberate the next legislative steps.

But device makers may eventually decide the issue before the legislators do. Each year, an increasing number of phones arrive on the market with another option: wireless charging.

For the full story, see:

Geneva Abdul. “E.U. Keeps Up Its Push For Common Chargers, Citing E-Waste ‘Ocean’.” The New York Times (Saturday, January 18, 2020): B3.

(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Jan. 19, 2020, and has the title “A Common Charger for All Phones? The E.U. Is on the Case.”)

The Odgers paper, mentioned in the passage quoted above, is:

Odgers, Candice L., and Michaeline R. Jensen. “Annual Research Review: Adolescent Mental Health in the Digital Age: Facts, Fears, and Future Directions.” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (published first online Jan. 17, 2020).

“You Can’t Donate People Out of Poverty”

(p. A9) Dr. Polak, . . . , found that poor people valued and cared for things they had bought. “You can’t donate people out of poverty,” he told The Wall Street Journal in 2007.

The trick was to figure out which tools were needed and how to make them at an affordable cost. For nearly four decades, Dr. Polak roamed the world’s poorest regions and quizzed farmers about their needs. “The small farmers I interviewed became my teachers,” he said in a video posted by one of the organizations he founded, iDE, formerly known as International Development Enterprises.

While visiting Somalia in the early 1980s, he noticed people lugging water and other items by hand or with awkward donkey carts. Working with local blacksmiths, he devised a better donkey cart, using parts from junked automobiles. From that point, he relied on market forces: Blacksmiths began making and selling the carts for the equivalent of about $450. Buyers of the carts could earn $200 a month for transporting goods, according to iDE.

. . .

Paul Polak (pronounced POLE-ack) . . .

. . .

He wrote or co-wrote two books drawing on his experiences, “The Business Solution to Poverty” (2013) and “Out of Poverty” (2008).

For the full obituary, see:

James R. Hagerty. “Roving Entrepreneur Built A Better Donkey Cart.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, October 26, 2019): A9.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date Oct. 25, 2019, and has the title “Paul Polak Built Better Tools for Farmers in Poor Countries.”)

The books authored, or co-authored, by Paul Polak, mentioned above, are:

Polak, Paul. Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2008.

Polak, Paul, and Mal Warwick. The Business Solution to Poverty: Designing Products and Services for Three Billion New Customers. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2013.

No Evidence Base that Smartphones Cause Anxiety and Depression in Teens

(p. B1) SAN FRANCISCO — It has become common wisdom that too much time spent on smartphones and social media is responsible for a recent spike in anxiety, depression and other mental health problems, especially among teenagers.

But a growing number of academic researchers have produced studies that suggest the common wisdom is wrong.

The latest research, published on Friday [January 17, 2020] by two psychology professors, combs through about 40 studies that have examined the link between social media use and both depression and anxiety among adolescents. That link, according to the professors, is small and inconsistent.

“There doesn’t seem to be an evidence base that would explain the level of panic and consternation around these issues,” said Candice L. Odgers, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, and the lead author of the paper, which was published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

For the full story, see:

Nathaniel Popper. “The Menace of Screen Time Could Be More of a Mirage.” The New York Times (Saturday, January 18, 2020): B1 & B6.

(Note: bracketed date added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Jan. 17, 2020, and has the title “Panicking About Your Kids’ Phones? New Research Says Don’t.”)

The Odgers paper, mentioned in the passage quoted above, is:

Odgers, Candice L., and Michaeline R. Jensen. “Annual Research Review: Adolescent Mental Health in the Digital Age: Facts, Fears, and Future Directions.” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (published first online Jan. 17, 2020).

“The Churning, Extravagant, Perfectionist Imagination of” Walt Disney

(p. A15) As understatements go, this one’s a doozy. Its source was Roy Disney, the less heralded, less handsome and—as gleaned from Richard Snow’s richly engaging “Disney’s Land”—less headstrong brother of Walt Disney. Since 1923, Roy had been the business brains of the Disney company was no stranger to his kid brother’s “screwy ideas.” But when he was informed after the war that his sibling had been, over his objections, slyly seeking funds to develop his own amusement park, Roy’s response was: “Junior’s got his hand in the cookie jar again.”

. . .

. . . when Roy first happened upon his brother’s maneuvering, amusement parks were passé at best, crime-ridden at worst and financial sinkholes at their core. Walt, having hired the Stanford Research Institute for a feasibility study, was told that he would fail if his park didn’t include such proven winners as a Ferris wheel, a roller coaster and games of chance—none of which Walt wanted cluttering his dreamscape.

Joining the chorus of dissent was Walt’s wife, Lillian. She had tolerated her hobbyist-husband taking over her backyard rose garden with his steam locomotive, but she “raised the dickens” (Walt’s words) when her perennially boyish 52-year-old spouse told her that he had sold their desert vacation home and borrowed $250,000 against his life insurance so that he could seed his plans for the sort of enterprise that looked to be, as she put it, “not fun at all for grown-ups.”

. . .

Roy, Mr. Snow acknowledges, “never lost his calm understanding that the company’s prosperity rested not on the rock of conventional business practices, but on the churning, extravagant, perfectionist imagination of his younger brother.” For Walt’s part, he is quoted saying in 1957, just as Disneyland was making him rich, that “if it hadn’t been for my big brother, I swear I’d’ve been in jail several times for checks bouncing.”

For the full review, see:

Stephen M. Silverman. “BOOKSHELF; A Day in the Park With Walt.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, December 13, 2019): A15.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date Dec. 12, 2019, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; ‘Disney’s Land’ Review: A Day in the Park With Walt.”)

The book under review, is:

Snow, Richard. Disney’s Land: Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World. New York: Scribner, 2019.

The Creative Destruction of Broadcast TV by Streaming, Increases Variety

(p. B4) It has been on a steep upward trajectory for years, and in 2019, it finally happened.

There were more than 500 scripted television series in the United States last year, a high. The estimated number: 532 comedies, dramas and limited series that were broadcast or streamed, according to the research department of the cable network FX, which tabulates and releases the figure every year.

It marked the first time the 500-show threshold had been crossed, representing a 7 percent increase over the number of scripted shows in 2018.

The 2019 total was 52 percent more than the 349 shows that existed in 2013, the year that streaming started to become a habit for many viewers, with the debut of “House of Cards” on Netflix. And it’s a jump of 153 percent over the 210 series available in 2009.

For the full story, see:

John Koblin. “It’s Not an Illusion: Peak TV Is Showing No Signs of Slowing.” The New York Times (Saturday, January 10, 2020): B4.

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Jan. 9, 2020, and has the title “Yellow or Blue? In Hong Kong, Businesses Choose Political Sides.”)

A.I. Makes Surgeons More Efficient, but Does Not Replace Them

(p. B6) Brain surgeons are bringing artificial intelligence and new imaging techniques into the operating room, to diagnose tumors as accurately as pathologists, and much faster, according to a report in the journal Nature Medicine.

The new approach streamlines the standard practice of analyzing tissue samples while the patient is still on the operating table, to help guide brain surgery and later treatment.

The traditional method, which requires sending the tissue to a lab, freezing and staining it, then peering at it through a microscope, takes 20 to 30 minutes or longer. The new technique takes two and a half minutes. Like the old method, it requires that tissue be removed from the brain, but uses lasers to create images and a computer to read them in the operating room.

. . .

Some types of brain tumor are so rare that there is not enough data on them to train an A.I. system, so the system in the study was designed to essentially toss out samples it could not identify.

Over all, the system did make mistakes: It misdiagnosed 14 cases that the humans got right. And the doctors missed 17 cases that the computer got right.

“I couldn’t have hoped for a better result,” Dr. Orringer said. “It’s exciting. It says the combination of an algorithm plus human intuition improves our ability to predict diagnosis.”

In his own practice, Dr. Orringer said that he often used the system to determine quickly whether he had removed as much of a brain tumor as possible, or should keep cutting.

“If I have six questions during an operation, I can get them answered without having six times 30 or 40 minutes,” he said. “I didn’t do this before. It’s a lot of burden to the patient to be under anesthesia for that long.”

Dr. Bederson said that he had participated in a pilot study of a system similar to the one in the study and wanted to use it, and that his hospital was considering acquiring the technology.

“It won’t change brain surgery,” he said, “but it’s going to add a significant new tool, more significant than they’ve stated.”

For the full story, see:

Denise Grady. “Speedy and Unerring, A.I. Comes to the Operating Room.” The New York Times (Tuesday, January 7, 2020): B6.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Jan. 6, 2020, and has the title “A.I. Comes to the Operating Room.”)

Jobs Return to “Creative Destruction Parts of the Country”

(p. B5) “If you look, there are a heck of a lot of successful manufacturing parts of the country right now,” Kevin Hassett, the departing chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said in an interview. “But look at where they’re being created.”

Mr. Hassett drew a distinction between “creative destruction” parts of the country, where the Great Recession wiped out jobs but others sprung up to replace them, and “destruction-destruction” parts, where jobs have been slow to return. Recent factory job growth, he said, was “not necessarily disproportionately in the destruction-destruction places.”

For the full story, see:

Jim Tankersley. “Growth in Factory Jobs Skips Traditional Hubs.” The New York Times (Friday, June 14, 2019): B1 & B5.

(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 13, 2019, and has the title “In the Race for Factory Jobs Under Trump, the Midwest Isn’t Winning.”)

Japan Records Fewest Births Since 1874

(p. A6) Japan has 512,000 fewer people this year than last, according to an estimate released on Tuesday by the country’s welfare ministry. That’s a drop of more than the entire population of the city of Atlanta.

The numbers are the latest sign of Japan’s increasing demographic challenges.

Births in the country — which are expected to drop below 900,000 this year — are at their lowest figure since 1874, when the population was about 70 percent smaller than its current 124 million.

The total number of deaths, on the other hand, is increasing. This year, the figure is expected to reach almost 1.4 million, the highest level since the end of World War II, a rise driven by the country’s increasingly elderly population.

For the full story, see:

Ben Dooley. “Japan Shrank by 500,000 People in 2019, as Births Hit Lowest Point Since 1874.” The New York Times (Wednesday, December 25, 2019): A6.

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Dec. 24, 2019, and has the title “Japan Shrinks by 500,000 People as Births Fall to Lowest Number Since 1874.”)

Communist China Building “a Digital Totalitarian State”

(p. A1) ZHENGZHOU, China — China is ramping up its ability to spy on its nearly 1.4 billion people to new and disturbing levels, giving the world a blueprint for how to build a digital totalitarian state.

Chinese authorities are knitting together old and state-of-the-art technologies — phone scanners, facial-recognition cameras, face and fingerprint databases and many others — into sweeping tools for authoritarian control, according to police and private databases examined by The New York Times.

Once combined and fully operational, the tools can help police grab the identities of people as they walk down the street, find out who they are meeting with and identify who does and doesn’t belong to the Communist Party.

For the full story, see:

Paul Mozur and Aaron Krolik. “China’s Blueprint for a Digital Totalitarian State.” The New York Times (Wednesday, December 18, 2019): A1 & A10.

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Dec. 17, 2019, and has the title “A Surveillance Net Blankets China’s Cities, Giving Police Vast Powers.”)

Greta Thunberg “Brushed Off” Need to Know Economics

(p. A7) DAVOS, Switzerland — Greta Thunberg, the 17-year-old Swedish climate activist, spent this week inside the halls of power at the World Economic Forum, . . .

. . .

Speaking to reporters just before the march set off, Ms. Thunberg and four youth activists from Europe and Africa rebuked business and government leaders at the World Economic Forum for not taking climate action and warned that they would continue to press them to stop investing in fossil fuels. Those demands, Ms. Thunberg noted, “have been completely ignored.”

Asked about a suggestion by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin that she learn economics in college before calling for divestment, Ms. Thunberg brushed off such criticisms as irrelevant. “If we care about that, we wouldn’t be able to do what we do,” she said.

For the full story, see:

Somini Sengupta. “Teenage Activist Joins Climate March on Last Day at Forum.” The New York Times (Saturday, January 25, 2020): A7.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Jan. 24, 2020, and has the title “Greta Thunberg Joins Climate March on Her Last Day in Davos.”)