Motu researchers on bookshops keeping close from a distance, cows and their unique moos, the best pandemic books, the gift of Fitbit data and how civic technology can help stop the pandemic

This week’s Top 5 comes from the team at economic research institute Motu.

As always, we welcome your additions in the comments below or via email to david.chaston@interest.co.nz.

And if you're interested in contributing the occasional Top 5 yourself, contact gareth.vaughan@interest.co.nz.

1. Staying close - at a distance.

With an increasing number of people in isolation, the importance of books is palpable. With this in mind, this article explores the creative ways bookshops are staying in contact with their customers from a distance. This has included community spaces on social media, running virtual events and bicycle delivery services. By gaining insights from a variety of book sellers, it is clear books are as much about community as they are about reading.

2. Cows communicate with unique moos.

Alexandra Green, a University of Sydney PhD student and cow enthusiast, spent five months studying how a herd of Holstein-Friesian cows communicate. She found that they use different moos in different emotional states and that it is "highly likely" they can recognise each other by their vocal signatures.

3. The best books on past pandemics.

This Nature briefing points readers to five reviews of the best books that analyse and discuss pandemics the world has previously faced. These include: Frank Snowden’s work on the impact of infectious diseases on society; the bubonic plague epidemic in San Francisco in 1900; how the 1918 Spanish influenza epidemic changed the world; lessons from the 2013–16 Ebola crisis; and John Snow’s work on the cholera epidemics of the 1800s.

4. Seeing Sleep: The gift of Fitbit Data.

Fitbits measure data on steps, heart rate, sleep, and other personal metrics involved with fitness. Alex Albright creatively used R to illustrate her sleeping patterns of both when she slept and how much she slept over a 425 day period. Albright demonstrates that Fitbit data can be presented through a variety of visualisation techniques that allow users to better understand their sleeping behaviour and essentially ‘watch themselves sleep’. While this research does not explore causal effects of sleeping behaviour, it shows readers the cool ways in which data can be displayed and interacted with.  Albright shares her code for others to give it ago.

5. How civic technology can help stop the pandemic.

In this Foreign Affairs article, Glen Weyl and Jaron Lanier attempt to explain why Taiwan has been so successful in fighting Covid-19. They argue that the remarkable effectiveness of the Taiwanese response is driven by Taiwan’s combination of tech-friendliness with a strong culture of democratic civic participation. Weyl and Lanier describe how Taiwanese communities, in cooperation with the Taiwanese government, created a range of apps designed to effectively allocate face masks and track exposure, all while protecting the privacy and rights of Taiwan’s inhabitants. By contrast, Weyl and Lanier argue, countries that are technologically advanced but undemocratic (China) and countries that are strongly democratic but somewhat technophobic (Germany) have been much less successful in containing the spread of the virus.