berghem - Slashdot User

Submission + - DeepSeek, China and the Japanese art of 'kaizen' (ft.com)

Submitted by berghem on Saturday February 01, 2025 @05:20AM

berghem writes: An Article on FT.com (paywalled) reports how behind China’s recent achievements — in LLMs like DeepSeek, electric cars, robotics, electronics, etc — some version of kaizen is at work.

Kaizen is a patient process of iterative improvement of product and process, which Japan made famous in the 70s and 80s.

According to Japanese recruitment agents, China these days employs older and experienced "Japanese semiconductor, railway and robotics engineers as consultants". Japan did not pay these engineers very much, and China has found that they can tempt them away from their own country with better pay and by valuing their expertise. "Kaizen is fundamentally a process of trial and error, and an experienced engineer can impart the invaluable, cost-saving nod on what was tried but didn’t work."

Submission + - PFAS increase likelihood of death by cardiovascular disease, study shows (theguardian.com)

Submitted by berghem on Wednesday May 01, 2024 @01:58AM

berghem writes: The Guardian reports:

For the first time, researchers have formally shown that exposure to toxic PFAS increases the likelihood of death by cardiovascular disease, adding a new level of concern to the controversial chemicalsâ(TM) wide use.

The findings are especially significant because proving an association with death by chemical exposure is difficult, but researchers were able to establish it by reviewing death records from northern Italyâ(TM)s Veneto region, where many residents for decades drank water highly contaminated with PFAS, also called âoeforever chemicalsâ.

âoeThis is the first time that anyone has found strong evidence of an association of PFAS exposure and cardiovascular mortality,â said Annibale Biggeri, the peer-reviewed studyâ(TM)s lead author, and a researcher with the University of Padua.

PFAS are a class of 15,000 chemicals used across dozens of industries to make products resistant to water, stains and heat. Though the compounds are highly effective, previous research has linked them to cancer, kidney disease, birth defects, decreased immunity, liver problems and a range of other serious diseases.

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