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Opinion: Access your brain? The creepy race to read workers’ minds

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:46:00 GMT

Modern workers increasingly find companies no longer content to consider their résumés, cover letters and job performance. More and more, employers want to evaluate their brains.Businesses are screening prospective job candidates with tech-assisted cognitive and personality tests, deploying wearable technology to monitor brain activity on the job and using artificial intelligence to make decisions about hiring, promoting and firing people. The brain is becoming the ultimate workplace sorting hat — the technological version of the magical device that distributes young wizards among Hogwarts houses in the “Harry Potter” series.Companies touting technological tools to assess applicants’ brains promise to dramatically “increase your quality of hires” by measuring the “basic building blocks of the way we think and act.” They claim their tools can even decrease bias in hiring by “relying solely on cognitive ability.”But research has shown that such assessments can lead to racial dispariti...

Beethoven’s hair: How a San Jose State museum docent turned genetic researcher debunked a famous relic

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:46:00 GMT

SAN JOSE — Tristan Begg was an anthropology student at UC Santa Cruz and a Beethoven fanatic when he volunteered as a docent at San Jose State University’s Beethoven center in the summer of 2009.He would pull out the drawer holding a lock of hair and tell visitors, “This is real” and that it once was on the head of the greatest composer who ever lived, the one whose music changed Begg’s life when he heard the first notes of Moonlight Sonata on Christmas morning at age 17.“It was instantaneous. I was astounded. I’ve never heard anything like it,” he said. “It was an instant sort of obsession.”Now, 14 years later, Begg, a Ph.D student at the University of Cambridge, is the lead author on a genome research study that debunked the story he once told. The hair is a fake.The findings, published this week in the journal Current Biology, revealed new insights about the life and death of Ludwig van Beethoven. Five other locks of hair were authenticated, including another one rece...

Suspected of DUI, woman strikes, severely injures 11-year-old girl near Bay Area school

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:46:00 GMT

A 32-year-old Fairfield woman jailed Thursday for an alleged DUI collision that severely injured an 11-year-old girl is scheduled for arraignment in the coming days in Solano County Superior Court.Elena Lindsey McGraw-Ogans was booked into Solano County Jail in the midafternoon on suspicion of DUI causing bodily injury, a felony; willful cruelty to a child, a misdemeanor; and driving without insurance, a violation of the Vehicle Code, according to jail records. She faces arraignment at 1:30 p.m. Monday.Fairfield police dispatchers began receiving calls at 8:30 a.m. about a child struck by a vehicle. Officers and firefighter/paramedics responded to the area of East Tabor and Blossom avenues, where the collision occurred, in front of Grange Middle School.The child, who was not identified because of her age, was transported to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries. The Solano County Coroner in the early afternoon confirmed the child was severely injured but still alive.“While...

Marin County landslide stabilizes, but significant work remains, officials say

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:46:00 GMT

A mudslide that severely damaged a Novato road and threatened utility lines along Highway 101 has stabilized, and work is underway to prepare for another potential storm next week, officials said Thursday.“The hillside is not actively sloughing,” said Battalion Chief Jeff Whittet of the Novato Fire Protection District. “It has significantly slowed but there is still movement because the ground is very saturated with all of the rain.”The incident Tuesday evening caused about 75 to 100 feet of a hillside to fall 20 feet. The slide caused significant damage to a 100-foot section of Redwood Boulevard near Buck Center Drive and has blocked access to Olompali State Historic Park indefinitely.A crew works to clear a fallen utility pole at the scene of a mud slide on Redwood Boulevard near Buck Center Drive in Novato on Wednesday, March 22, 2023. The slide also buckled part of the roadway. (Alan Dep/Marin Independent Journal) “If you’ve ever seen photos of Loma Prieta earthquake, it re...

Opinion: VTA is spending $500 million to add 10 minutes to your commute

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:46:00 GMT

VTA is ready to spend $500 million of taxpayer money to connect a train station to San Jose Mineta International Airport, ignoring a second option that would cost one-tenth of that price. The plan is to connect San Jose’s Diridon Station to San Jose’s Mineta Airport. While both the airport and the Diridon Station are in San Jose, the two are separated by 4.1 miles. VTA’s proposal is to dig a four-mile tube under the city. This might make sense if it were the only option.It is not. Directly across the street from the airport is the Santa Clara Transit Station. For $40-to-$50 million, a connection from the Santa Clara station to the airport would require one undercrossing and a fleet of above-ground trolleys. Our group has timed the Santa Clara option and found that this solution would beat a commuters’ time to the airport by 10-15 minutes when compared to the Diridon option.With this $500 million option, Peninsula commuters would view Mineta airport as they whisked by and continued f...

Is job market turmoil shades of Triangle Fire, 112 year ago?

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:46:00 GMT

On March 25, 1911, my Great Aunt Fannie went to work in a high-rise garment factory in New York City.The workday ended with Fannie Lansner jumping from a ninth-floor window to avoid the scorching flames that killed her and 145 coworkers.The workplace horror known as the Triangle Fire became a rallying moment in America’s labor movement. The revolution greatly bettered the workplace in terms of routines, compensation and safety.Just think about why Great Aunt Fannie was on the job on that fateful Saturday. Because in 1911, a six-day workweek was a common requirement.So let me honor my great aunt’s memory with a history lesson that shows us the enduring struggle between worker and boss.At the start of the 20th century, sweatshops like the one run by Triangle Waist Co. took advantage of an ample supply of young, immigrant female workers. As one could expect, bosses didn’t take kindly to unhappy workers.Two years earlier, New York employers throttled a large garment workers’ strike. Jus...

Ukraine pushes for continued Russian Olympic exclusion

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:46:00 GMT

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine renewed its push to keep Russian athletes out of the Olympics on Friday ahead of an International Olympic Committee board meeting next week which is expected to set the framework for their return to international sports events. Vadym Guttsait, who is Ukraine’s sports minister and leads the national Olympic committee, was sharply critical of the IOC’s push to reintegrate Russia and its ally Belarus into world sports. Any return, Guttsait said, would highlight the inequality caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.“We do not have normal conditions for training and preparation for the Olympic Games. At the same time, the Russians have all the essentials to train and perform inside their country. They sleep at night, but we don’t sleep at night,” he told reporters.The IOC is expected to set out criteria for Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete next week as qualifying events for the Paris Olympics ramp up. The IOC recommended excluding Rus...

30 years after ruptured pipeline, search for drinking water backup for Potomac River continues

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:46:00 GMT

After the 1993 rupture of the Colonial Pipeline in Reston, Va., oil flowed into Sugarland Run, and then the Potomac River. (Courtesy Interstate Commission on Potomac River Basin)Next week marks 30 years since the rupture of the Colonial Pipeline launched a geyser of oil in Reston, Virginia, before flowing into the Potomac River — D.C. area’s main source of drinking water.On March 28, 1993, the Colonial Pipeline, which runs from Houston to New York, ruptured and spilled 407,736 gallons of No. 2 fuel.“A 50 to 100 foot geyser of oil was observed behind the Reston Hospital Center,” recalled Michael Nardolilli, executive director of the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin. “The oil flowed into Sugarland Run, which a tributary of the Potomac River, and then entered the Potomac at Algonkian Regional Park.”More Local NewsMore Lifestyle NewsFairfax Water — one of three water suppliers in suburban Virginia, Maryland, and D.C. — had to shut down its d...

Fauquier Co. group files lawsuit to stop Amazon data center in Warrenton

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:46:00 GMT

Opponents of constructing an Amazon data center in Warrenton, Virginia, haven’t given up their pursuit of ending the project and have filed a new lawsuit.Filed by the Citizens for Fauquier County, the lawsuit states that the town council ran roughshod over numerous state and local zoning and planning requirements and seeks to stop the construction.More Virginia NewsMore Local NewsIn addition, several citizens like Dave Winn said at a recent town council meeting that Amazon has already started clearing trees at the site, violating town zoning rules.“They have cleared several acres, they are indiscriminately clearing it,” Winn said.In response to a question from Council member William Semple, Tommy Cureton, Warrenton’s acting town manager, acknowledging that there are some missing parts to Amazon’s plan.“We have not received a site plan at this time from the land owner, but the tree preservation plan will be included within that site plan once we are in receipt...

Kim Jong Un prueba un peligroso dron submarino capaz de causar tsunamis radiactivos

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:46:00 GMT

Corea del Norte anunció que probó un dron submarino nuclear capaz de generar tsunamis radiactivos, afirmación que plantea dudas en los expertos pero que supone un nuevo golpe sobre la mesa en un tenso panorama marcado por las maniobras de Seúl y Washington y los test de armas de Pionyang.El objetivo de estos sistemas lanzados desde un submarino es penetrar en aguas costeras y provocar una gigantesca ola radiactiva que elimine flotas enteras, destruya puertos y demás infraestructura y genere un daño terrible en las regiones litorales, que quedarían altamente contaminadas durante al menos varias décadas tanto tierra adentro como en sus aguas circundantes.Los medios norcoreanos informaron que el régimen hizo la prueba esta semana en presencia del líder Kim Jong-un. Se trata de un nuevo tipo de dron submarino o torpedo guiado que al estallar es capaz de provocar gigantescas olas contaminantes al igual que el sistema ruso conocido como Poseidón. Corea del Norte lanza dos mi...