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Were looking at ways software can help address equity/health outcomes/climate adaptation through the lens of cities and the urban environment.

He added: Obviously software is a just a tiny part of that space. We have not officially raised anything right now, still working on strategy.

If Eland does decide to raise capital then it might not be too hard to convince investors to back the company. Last month, Sifted reported that venture capital funds are lining up to back ex-DeepMinders.

I think its a great training ground for people who are interested in founding their own business, said Chris Smith, a partner at Playfair Capital. I dont think weve backed any [ex-DeepMinders] yet but were certainly starting to see founders coming through.

DeepMind was acquired by Google in 2014 for around 400m but today it sits as part of Google parent company Alphabet.

In February 2016 The Guardian reported that no one had ever left DeepMind, but fast forward to 2019 and its a different story.

DeepMind now has around 1,000 staff and this year there were a number of high-profile departures, with the most notable being DeepMind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman, who went on leave for several months before announcing last week that he plans to join Google in 2020.

Overall, churn remains low at DeepMind and relatively few people have left (which may have something to do with the six-figure salaries there), but ex-DeepMinders do exist now.

Other notable DeepMind exits this year include Jack Kelly, who left in Januaryto run a non-profit product development lab called Open Climate Fix, which aims to develop technologies to combat climate change.

Open Climate Fix is entirely focused on using open-science to mitigate climate change, Kelly told Sifted. The aim of our first project is to reduce emissions from the electricity system by building the best near-term solar electricity forecasting system. Were using machine learning, satellite imagery and numerical weather predictions.

Research scientist Edward Grefenstette also left in January to join Facebooks Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR) division as a research scientist. Grefenstette was one of the most senior researchers at DeepMind.

People who worked there a few years ago felt they were having massive impact, says Smith. Now its sort of a little bit like walking through treacle and it makes life a little bit more difficult.

DeepMind did not provide a comment.

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DeepMind exec Andrew Eland leaves to launch startup - Sifted

Its often said the most powerful tools for taking care of our wellbeing are the ones that already exist within us and breathing is prime example.

Breathing techniques feature in countless therapeutic forms and practices, from yoga, mindfulness and meditation, to self-help exercises for managing anxiety, insomnia and overwhelm. How we breathe can have profound physiological effects, triggering changes in our heart rate and brain chemistry and in turn our conscious state.

And its been catching on in the mainstream, particularly over this past year. According to Google, 2019 saw a 219% rise in searches for breathing apps a trend thats predicted to keep growing.

Even better news? Breathing exercises are something all of us can do for free, by ourselves, whenever and wherever we feel like it. There are lots of different techniques and approaches out there and they might not all be for you if something isnt working or doesnt appeal, try something else.

Here, three breathing experts talk through some simple ways to give it a go

1. To help tackle high-stress situations

When we are under pressure or in the midst of a high-stress situation, the breath naturally becomes fast and shallow, and more centred in the chest. This happens as a result of the bodys fight or flight response, which is crucial in times of imminent danger, but not helpful in other everyday situations, says Dominique Antiglio, a sophrologist at BeSophro clinics and author of The Life-Changing Power Of Sophrology (be-sophro.com).

To relax the nervous system, use a technique called abdominal breathing to shift the breathing from your chest down to your tummy, where you can breathe more deeply, slowly and calmly. This in turn helps to relax your muscles and slow down any racing thoughts, so you can think more clearly. The next time you experience an intense or anxiety-inducing experience, engage this form of deep breathing and notice how much calmer and controlled you feel after only a few minutes.

To do it, she suggests finding a seat if possible, although it can also be done standing up or lying down if needs. Place one hand on your chest, the other on your tummy, and close your eyes. Breathe in and out naturally a few times to establish your rhythm and as you do so, notice the movement of your hands, Antiglio adds. Then, when youre ready, imagine you have a balloon where your tummy is, and as you inhale, the balloon starts to inflate, then as you exhale, the balloon deflates.

Count the length of your in-breath and breathe out to twice the length so in for three counts and out for six. Repeat this process mindfully for two to three minutes and you will notice your breath naturally starts to shift from the chest to the tummy. You can also continue to do this for as long as you need in order to feel calm and re-centred again.

2. If youre curious about mindful meditation

For yoga teacher and breathwork leader Sapphire Leena Brown, who runs group breathwork workshops across the UK and beyond (@sapphire.leena), breathing techniques are at the centre of her personal approach to wellness and working with clients.

For those curious about harnessing the breath in mindfulness meditation, she suggests giving this exercise by international lecturer, researcher and author Dr Joe Dispenza a go.

Begin by sitting down, with your back straight, and start to focus on your breath. As you inhale, breathe in long and slow. During the in breath, pull in your perineum (the muscles beneath your tailbone and pelvic floor), then your lower abdomen and finally your upper abdomen, she explains. Do all this while imagining that you are pulling up the kundalini energy from your sacrum like sucking it through a straw. When your lungs are full to the max, you pull in the perineum and the belly muscles even more. Squeeze and hold the breath here for as long as you can. Exhale and start all over again.

She suggests starting with doing this for just three minutes then slowly building up as you become more familiar and relaxed with the technique.

3. If youre prone to anxiety

Joel Jelen, founder of Reset Breathing which runs workplace wellbeing workshops (resetbreathing.com), notes that hyperventilation, or over-breathing, is a big factor in anxiety. But this is something we can all benefit from keeping in mind, and Jelen says its not just the pace of your breathing that matters but also using your nose.

The foundation of good health is to breathe slowly, through the nose only, silent never take deep breaths, sigh or yawn with your mouth open, he says. In fact, breathe as often through your mouth as you eat through your nose! Mouth breathing when not exercising causes anxiety and puts us in a state of fight or flight.

A great way to reduce anxiety is to regularly employ a Buteyko (pronounces boo-tay-ko) breathing technique involving many small breath holds, Jelen suggests. Exhale through the nose, pinch your nose with fingers and thumb, breath hold for three to five seconds, resume breathing for 10 seconds, repeat for up to six repetitions. This can kill off panic attacks within 30 seconds. The key is to learn and commit to breathing techniques that enable you to breathe much slower and optimally for example, during your sleep that will set you up perfectly for the day.

More here:

3 breathing exercises to reduce stress, anxiety and a racing mind - Irish Examiner

Limitless Mind: Learn, Lead, and Live without Barriersby Jo BoalerHarperCollins, 2019, $26.99; 256 pages.

As reviewed by Daniel Ansari

Perhaps its true that you cant judge a book by its coverbut the bright splashes of color on the cover of Limitless Mind certainly suggest that this book will be full of positive messages. And it is. Jo Boaler, a professor of mathematics education at Stanford, devotes a chapter to each of six learning keys. Each key is a variation on the overall theme of the book, which sets out to make the case that intelligence is not a fixed entity, and that most everyone has the potential to learn most anything. In parts, this volume reads like a self-help book for developing positive self-beliefs and unleashing ones previously unknown intellectual powers. It contains touching anecdotes and examples of how to apply the keys to achieving a limitless mind, with particular attention to math. However, while the books content is a mile wide, its substance is little more than an inch deep.

The central themes of the book are aligned with Boalers previous volume, Mathematical Mindsets, but here she recasts her message to address audiences beyond K12 math educators. As in the earlier book, Boaler grounds her main thesis in Carol Dwecks highly popular mindset theory, which holds that many children and adults have fixed mindsets: they believe they have limited competencies and will hit a distinct ceiling in what they can learn and do. Individuals with a growth mindset, by contrast, believe that if they apply themselves and work hard, they can overcome challenges and continue to acquire new knowledge and skills. There is, of course, much to like about the notion that students can change their mindsets, alter the way they view their own learning, come to realize that with work and practice they can build their skills, and ultimately understand that learning involves struggle.

Unfortunately, Boalers review of the empirical literature on efforts to change mindsets uses outdated studies and overstates the effects of the interventions. Some of the early studies on this subject did indeed suggest that mindset interventions among students had large transfer effects on their academic learning, but subsequent work with larger, more representative samples of students has shown that these effects are, at best, modestand possibly, nonexistent. A recent study with more than 12,000 U.S. 9th graders showed that, following less than an hour of computerized mindset intervention, lower-achieving students raised their grade point averages by 0.1 points in subjects such as math, science, and Englishrepresenting a small but significant transfer effect. In contrast, a randomized controlled trial conducted by the United Kingdoms Education Endowment Foundation found almost no evidence for a positive effect of a mindset intervention targeted at both students and their teachers. In sum, the evidence from these large-scale trials is mixed, and the positive effects reported are smaller than those conveyed in some of the earlier work on mindset intervention that Boaler cites in her book. The newest research does not support the books strong claims about mindset.

Ironically, despite reviews and blog posts pointing out Boalers clear errors of interpretation and inference in her previous writings, she adopts a fixed mindset when it comes to scientific evidence, continuing her past tendency to play fast and loose with these findings and to ignore those that run counter to her narrative.

In Chapter 2, for example, the author discusses research on neuronal plasticitythe ability of the brain to change in its structure and activity as a function of learning and skills acquisition. She uses evidence that the brain changes when we learn and that it can recover (at least partially) from injury as support for her assertion that all humans can do anything they put their minds to and that there are no differences between them in terms of their learning potential. In so doing, Boaler paints brain plasticity as invariably positive. However, brain plasticity is a biological mechanism by which organisms adapt to their environments. It is neither positive nor negative, and it offers no direct implications for the way scientists think about learning and education. Certainly, if brains were not capable of changing there would be no point in having schools and other places of learning, but beyond this basic fact, the tangible implications of brain plasticity are limited. Our brains are changing all the time, but it does not follow that our learning capabilities are limitless.

Similarly, Boaler takes evidence that brain regions are connected to one another to suggest that people benefit from a multidimensional approach to teaching and learning. In teaching math, for instance, such an approach would focus not just on solving problems and applying formulas but also on building such skills as asking good questions, interpreting a problem in various ways, using logic and reasoning, and explaining concepts to others. The author states that anyone can learn the content of any subject with a multidimensional approach. Not only is this a very strong claim about the equipotentiality of learners, but its link to research on brain connectivity is nothing but tenuous.

Boaler also presents a ringing endorsement of the educational approaches of Barbara Arrowsmith, who has developed a commercial program to help students with learning disabilities. The program is based on an idiosyncratic interpretation of brain plasticity inspired by Arrowsmiths own experience with brain injury. In her enthusiastic discussion of Arrowsmiths approach, Boaler does not mention that the program has not been supported by rigorous empirical evidence, such as a randomized controlled trial, and has been widely criticized by leading developmental psychologists.

Throughout the book, Boaler adopts such an extreme nurture bias that I almost expected her to endorse the tabula rasa view of child development: that children are born as blank slates without biological constraints on how they learn and develop. In overemphasizing nurture, Boaler ignores mountains of research showing that nature does influence differences between people: our genetic makeups do make us different from each other. Boaler briefly acknowledges that at birth everyone is born with their own unique brain, and there are differences between peoples brains, but she undercuts that by going on to say, but the differences people are born with are eclipsed by the many ways people can change their brains. This argument, and the even more startling assertion that less than 0.001 percent of individuals are influenced by the capabilities they were born with, are offered without any substantiating evidence.

The messages of Limitless Mind might leave some readers feeling positive and upliftedbut ignoring the truth that people vary in their abilities and learning potential could leave others frustrated that, even after adopting a growth mindset and a multidimensional approach, they still dont succeed in their learning as fully as others. It is unscientific to ignore the well-established fact that both nature and nurture have complex effects on learning and development and indeed are related to one another. Claims to the contrary set up dangerous and unrealistic expectations. Instead of buying in to the irresponsible message that we all have exactly the same potential, educators might do well to embrace the diversity of human skills and ability and seek to design educational environments that allow individuals to express who they are. Rather than proclaiming the limitlessness of all minds, teachers and parents might choose to place no limits on their appreciation of, and compassion for, the numerous, fascinating differences among people.

Daniel Ansari is a professor in the Department of Psychology and the Faculty of Education at Western University, Canada.

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The Case for Limitlessness Has Its Limits: Review of Limitless Mind by Joe Boaler - Education Next - EducationNext