James' World 2

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The “language police” have a point: words matter. There are plenty of verbal habits or throwaway phrases that can undermine our credibility and ability to communicate.

Conversely, there are also words that throw open the doors to better communication. Few people know this better than Alexandra Carter, negotiation trainer for the United Nations and director of the Mediation Clinic at Columbia University Law School, and author of Ask for More: 10 Questions to Negotiate Anything. Carter started using the phrase “tell me” when she was trained as a mediator in the early 2000s, and she was astonished at the information it revealed.

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Wanting to understand how Einstein learned physics may, at first, seem as pointless as trying to fly by watching birds and flapping your arms really hard. How do you emulate someone who is synonymous with genius?

However, I think the investigation can still bear fruits, even if you or I might not have the intellectual gifts to revolutionize physics. Whatever Einstein did to learn, he clearly did something right, so there’s merit in trying to figure out what that was.

How Smart Was Einstein? (Did He Really Fail Elementary Mathematics?)

One of the most common stories about Einstein is that he failed grade school math. I think this is one of those ideas that sounds so good it has to get repeated, regardless of whether it is true or not.

Unfortunately, it’s not true. Einstein was a strong math student from a very young age. He himself admits:

“I never failed in mathematics. Before I was fifteen I had mastered differential and integral calculus.”

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Four years ago, organizers created the international AI City Challenge to spur the development of artificial intelligence for real-world scenarios like counting cars traveling through intersections or spotting accidents on freeways.

In the first years, teams representing American companies or universities took top spots in the competition. Last year, Chinese companies won three out of four competitions.

Last week, Chinese tech giants Alibaba and Baidu swept the AI City Challenge, beating competitors from nearly 40 nations. Chinese companies or universities took first and second place in all five categories. TikTok creator ByteDance took second place in a competition to identify car accidents or stalled vehicles from freeway video feeds.

The results reflect years of investment by the Chinese government in smart cities. Hundreds of Chinese cities have pilot programs, and by some estimates, China has half of the world’s smart cities. The spread of edge computing, cameras, and sensors using 5G wireless connections is expected to accelerate use of smart-city and surveillance technology.

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Photograph: Getty Images

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During last weekend’s deadly heatwave, some roads in the Pacific Northwest buckled. Workers ventured out in blistering conditions to put cracked concrete and asphalt byways back together. Steel drawbridges were doused with water to make sure they wouldn’t swell shut under the oppressive heat.

The heat dome that sat over the region provided a brutal stress test of its roadways, some of which couldn’t withstand multiple days of record-breaking temperatures. It’s something that’s happened before, in Washington, Wisconsin, South Dakota, and anywhere else experiencing extreme heat waves.

“You can design something to work in a very hot temperature or not. That’s not the problem.” Steve Muench, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Washington says. The problem is that the current heat defies engineering expectations. Fixing that bigger problem will take engineering, planning, and a whole lot of public willpower.

Why can’t these roads handle the heat?

Different kinds of roads behave very differently under heat. In the US, roads are typically made of one of two materials — asphalt or concrete.

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Washington State Department of Transportation North via Twitter

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