DPL Reading List – January 11, 2019
Here are some of the new and interesting articles we found this week.
To Cope with Stress, Try Learning Something New – “So what else can employees do to temper the ill effects of stress? Our research suggests a third option: focusing on learning. This can mean picking up a new skill, gathering new information, or seeking out intellectual challenges. In two recent research projects, one with employees from a variety of industries and organizations, and the other with medical residents, we found evidence that engaging in learning activities can buffer workers from detrimental effects of stress including negative emotions, unethical behavior, and burnout.”
5 Emerging Cyber Threats to Worry About in 2019 – “We’re going to see more mega-breaches and ransomware attacks in 2019. Planning to deal with these and other established risks, like threats to web-connected consumer devices and critical infrastructure such as electrical grids and transport systems, will be a top priority for security teams. But cyber-defenders should be paying attention to new threats, too.”
The Return of Handwriting – “Letter Writers Alliance, a league of letter-writers, now boasts 15,000 members. Arizona and North Carolina have returned to requiring that elementary school students learn cursive. Crane Stationery is promoting that celebrities, including Tom Brady and Jimmy Fallon, write personal notes by hand. There are monthly get-togethers in a bar in Brooklyn, called Pints & Postage nights, at which stationery is laid out for patrons to send handwritten messages; they may feel inclined to mail off a note wishing friends and family a happy National Handwriting Day on January 23.”
How Mindfulness Can Help Engineers Solve Problems – “Decades of research demonstrate that mindfulness can be improved through practice. As a result, many pioneering Fortune 100 companies such as Google, Cisco, P&G, Facebook, are integrating mindfulness training in the workplace to promote creativity and innovation, as well as emotional intelligence and well-being in their employees.”
How Hearables Could Change Everything – “Edward Cornish’s book, Futuring: The Exploration of the Future, identifies several “supertrends” applicable to the prospect of hearables taking us into a new age of connectivity. His first three supertrends—technological progress, economic growth, and improving health—all support the rise of hearables.”
IBM’s quantum computer is now a quantum computing system – “Unlike classical computing, quantum isn’t relentlessly binary; a quantum bit, or “qubit,” can be on and off at the same time and “entangled” with other qubits in complex relationships. That gives machines built with qubits the potential to someday solve computing problems at a clip far beyond that of any system that deals only in mundane ones and zeroes. The technology has a long way to go before it’s ready for full commercial deployment–and even then, it will be a tool for new kinds of industrial-strength number crunching rather than a rival for computers in their familiar form.”
Being present, managing time, and avoiding distractions – “In this article, I’ve put together some of the changes I’ve made in the past few months to enable myself to do more of what matters to me, and to be more present in my day-to-day activities. I’ve tried to focus on incremental changes and avoid dramatic overhauls like deleting all of my social media accounts.”
