Financial Markets and Economy
An index that China's leaders use to measure economic growth looks horrible (Business Insider)
The office of China's Premier, currently Li Keqiang, has traditionally been tasked with monitoring the economy.
And in the past, Li Keqiang has said openly that he doesn't necessarily use GDP to track how fast it's growing. He uses a combination of metrics put together — a composite of electricity output, rail freight and loan growth.
The sharing economy is booming, and these 16 companies are ideally positioned to benefit (Business Insider)
Uber and AirBnB aren't the only companies that stand to benefit from the growing, sharing economy.
Credit Suisse published a report Friday listing 16 companies that will benefit, directly or indirectly, from the burgeoning sector.
Venture capital investors say sharing firms are worth more than $220 billion, according to PWC, with their value set to reach $335 billion by 2025.
Mobileye in Short Sale Tug-of-War as Citigroup Says Time to Buy (Bloomberg)
Shares of Mobileye NV are locked in a tug-of-war between short sellers and the company’s Wall Street backers.
Barron's said Alibaba's numbers look unreal. We looked into it … (Business Insider)
Last weekend, Barron's published a brutal 3,000-word cover story on why Alibaba's business and stock looked like trouble.
In addition to saying the stock could experience "a decline of up to 50%," author Jon Laing suggested the Chinese online marketplace and its CEO, Jack Ma, were actually making up some of its flashy performance numbers.
Is the stock market holding Janet Yellen hostage? (CNN)
Normally the financial markets dance to the tune of the all-powerful Federal Reserve.
But now the tables have turned. The Fed's decision last week to delay raising rates was caused at least in part by turmoil in the financial markets.
Its a New World: How China Growth Concerns Kept the Fed on Hold (Bloomberg)
Here’s the latest sign of China’s arrival as a global economic power: It’s roiled financial markets enough to nudge the Federal Reserve away from raising interest rates.
Fed policy makers left their benchmark rate near zero Thursday, saying the U.S. economy and inflation may be restrained by “recent global economic and financial developments.” Fed Chair Janet Yellen elaborated in a press briefing, saying the financial turmoil reflected investor concerns about risks to Chinese growth.
Emotional Volatility and Emotional Volatility of Volatility (Trader Feed)
Suppose the volatility of markets is a proxy for the emotional volatility of market participants. In an ultra low volatility market, nothing is moving very much. There's not much to get excited or worried about. In an ultra high volatility market, things are moving much more than normal. That is an environment ripe for fear, greed, uncertainty, overconfidence, and underconfidence.
Ocado is ready to fight Amazon Fresh (Business Insider)
Ocado is in fighting shape despite price wars between supermarkets and is ready to take on Amazon when it launches its grocery delivery service Fresh in the UK.
Online grocer Ocado said in a statement on Tuesday that sales jumped 17.3% to £272 million ($419.8 million) in the third quarter, thanks to a 16.6% rise in the average number of orders per week to 190,000.
People in China have stopped buying cement (Business Insider)
If China's economy is growing at 7% or more per year, why has the price of cement there dropped by 25% in the last two years?
Politics
Obama was right when he said 'this type of mass violence does not happen in other developed countries' (Business Insider)
In the aftermath of a tragic shooting Wednesday at a Charleston, South Carolina, church in which nine were killed, President Barack Obama spoke out about a recent scourge of gun violence in the US.
"Once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun," Obama said.
Later, he added a point he has made before: "At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other developed countries."
Economic View: Donald Trump and the Art of the Public Sector Deal (NY Times)
“I wrote ‘The Art of the Deal,’ ” said Donald Trump, introducing himself at the beginning of Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate, before moving on to his next qualification for the nation’s highest elected office. “I say, not in a braggadocious way, I’ve made billions and billions of dollars dealing with people all over the world.”
On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump frequently calls “The Art of the Deal,” published in 1987, his second-favorite book in the world after the Bible. He has repeatedly said it’s the best-selling business book of all time, a claim that isn’t true but might be an example of what he terms “truthful hyperbole” on Page 58 of “The Art of the Deal.”
Technology
Navigation System Will Guide You To Your Destination Like a Local (PSFK)
Mapkin is a driving app that can help you get around tricky maze roads like a local. Built with collaborative drivers in mind, it accepts and verifies tips from users so the voice navigation sounds more human than machine.
Instead of just saying “Turn right in ten meters”, Mapkin will say “Turn a left at the light, just pass the gas station”. These kind of instructions pay particular attention to things someone behind the wheel might notice instead of what an orbiting satellite might find.
This mind-controlled robotic arm can relay the sensation of touch (Venture Beat)
Here’s something you might have missed: the latest mind-controlled, robotic prosthetic arm can communicate the sensation of touch back to a user’s brain.
You read that correctly. While the whole world was foaming at the mouth over a moderately improved iPhone this week, the Washington Post reported on an actualbreakthrough.
Health and Life Sciences
Neuroscience backs up the Buddhist belief that “the self” isn’t constant, but ever-changing (Quartz)
While you may not remember life as a toddler, you most likely believe that your selfhood then—your essential being—was intrinsically the same as it is today.
Buddhists, though, suggest that this is just an illusion—a philosophy that’s increasingly supported by scientific research.
“Buddhists argue that nothing is constant, everything changes through time, you have a constantly changing stream of consciousness,” Evan Thompson, a philosophy of mind professor at the University of British Columbia, tells Quartz. “And from a neuroscience perspective, the brain and body is constantly in flux. There’s nothing that corresponds to the sense that there’s an unchanging self.”
New findings help explain speedy transported into and out of the cell's nucleus (EurekAlert! )
A cell does everything it can to protect its nucleus, where precious genetic information is stored. That includes controlling the movement of molecules in and out using gateways called nuclear pore complexes (NPCs).
Now, researchers at The Rockefeller University, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and the New York Structural Biology Center have identified the molecular mechanism that makes both swift and cargo-specific passage through the NPC possible for large molecules. Their work appeared September 15 in eLife.
The extraordinary case of the Guevedoces (BBC)
The discovery of a small community in the Dominican Republic, where some males are born looking like girls and only grow penises at puberty, has led to the development of a blockbuster drug that has helped millions of people, writes Michael Mosley.
Life on the Home Planet
How You Should Be Preparing for El Niño (Gizmodo)
There are people preparing for pretty much anything these days. Solar storms. Zombie apocalypses. And yes, there are even preppers who are getting ready for the gargantuan El Niño set to befall the US this winter. This is their advice.
Rainwater capture is often performed by simply diverting the flow of rainwater from the roof to a rainwater tank. However, in order to safely do so and minimize the risk of contaminants, it is important to allow the initial flow of rainwater to go to waste, as dust, dirt, and even animal feces can accumulate on the roof beforehand.
