Grant Gochnauer: Awesome Humans — Issue #193
Awesome Human
The Benefits of Playing Music Help Your Brain More Than Any Other Activity — getpocket.com
“Learning an instrument increases resilience to any age-related decline in hearing. Science has shown that musical training can change brain structure and function for the better. It can also improve long-term memory and lead to better brain development for those who start at a young age.
Furthermore, musicians tend to be more mentally alert, according to new research from a University of Montreal study.”
The real midlife crisis confronting many Americans — theconversation.com
“What was once imagined as a time of exploration and reinvention has become marked by financial and emotional strain.”
Healthy Human
Cutting 300 Calories a Day Shows Health Benefits — www.nytimes.com
“Calorie restriction led to weight loss, lower cholesterol and less inflammation. Whether it extends life span and wards off disease long-term remains unproven.”
Human Builders
Google AI Could Challenge Big Pharma in Drug Discovery — www.bloomberg.com
“Alphabet’s DeepMind cracked a problem that long vexed biologists, heating up a technological arms race in health care”
Mastering the Art of the Outcome: How Guru Turned Customer Success Into a Company Cornerstone — firstround.com
“Guru’s approach to proving customer outcomes is meticulously quantified, rigorously unambiguous, and integrated into every facet of the company. From defining the market and designing the product, to communicating success metrics to customers and employees alike, Guru has been built on the goal of mastering the art of the outcome. “For us, ‘success’ means being able to tell a customer that Guru’s resulted in a 20% reduction in handle time and a 34% reduction in repeat questions for their sales team,” says Nucci. In this exclusive interview, Nucci shares how a doggedly results-oriented ethos shaped Guru’s strategy from Day 1. He lends founders a page from his playbook for mastering the art of the outcome, sketching out the steps he takes to prove value to each client from the first conversation and sharing the strategies he uses to cultivate an outcome-oriented culture across all teams.”
What Makes a Strong Startup CEO — www.nfx.com
“As a startup CEO, you have two different tasks that may seem the same but are actually different — being a manager and being a leader. And you must excel at both to succeed.”
Future Humans
A (Very) Close Look at Carbon Capture and Storage — spectrum.ieee.org
“A new kind of molecular-scale microscope has been trained for the first time on a promising wonder material for carbon capture and storage. The results, researchers say, suggest a few tweaks to this material could further enhance its ability to scrub greenhouse gases from emissions produced by traditional power plants.”
Has humanity reached ‘peak intelligence’? — www.bbc.com
“Are our IQs set to increase forever, or are we on the cusp of decline? David Robson explores the past, present and future of intelligence.”
AI analyzed 3.3 million scientific abstracts and discovered possible new materials — www.technologyreview.com
“A new paper shows how natural-language processing can accelerate scientific discovery. The context: Natural-language processing has seen major advancements in recent years, thanks to the development of unsupervised machine-learning techniques that are really good at capturing the relationships between words.”
One More Thing
What you look like as a Renaissance painting, according to AI — www.fastcompany.com
“A new project lets anyone play with an AI to create stunning portraits.”
