Microsoft’s Jeannette M. Wing: Basic research is ‘the foundation of American prosperity and progress’

By Allison Linn, Senior Writer, Microsoft
Photo credit: Scott Eklund/Red Box pictures

Jeannette M. Wing, Microsoft’s corporate vice president in charge of the company’s basic research laboratories, appeared Wednesday before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee. She was speaking at a hearing on Leveraging the U.S. Science and Technology Enterprise.

Wing spoke on behalf of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Committee on New Models for U.S. Science and Technology Policy, which was formed out of concern that America is increasingly losing ground to other nations in research and development.

In her testimony, Wing noted that basic research plays a central role in American innovation. This type of scientific study, which aims to advance our fundamental understanding of the world but does not have a specific goal or product, has led to major advances in fields including biotechnology, computer science and aerospace. That, in turn, has fueled considerable economic growth.

“I hope it is evident that while basic research may have no intended end goal, it is in fact the foundation of American prosperity and progress,” she said in written testimony.

Despite the clear benefits of basic research, Wing said the federal government’s investment in basic research has been slowly eroding over the past two decades. She said the United States’ total public and private investment in R&D continues to fall short of the national goal of totaling at least 3 percent of GDP, and it lags many other developed countries.

In her testimony, she urged lawmakers to take specific steps to ensure that Americans receive the maximum benefit from federal investments in research. She also offered lawmakers ways they could work to regain America’s standing as an innovation leader.

“Steady, sustainable increases in federal investment would go a long way to restoring American leadership,” she said.

Wing’s full testimony is available on Senate Commerce committee website.

Related:

Here’s why Microsoft cares about basic research – and you should, too

Computational thinking, 10 years later

Allison Linn is a senior writer at Microsoft. Follow her on Twitter

Source : https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/msr_er/2016/05/11/microsofts-jeannette-m-wing-basic-research-is-the-foundation-of-american-prosperity-and-progress/

UW researchers secure prestigious MURI grants for self-cooling lasers and fluid mechanics

In April the U.S. Department of Defense announced awards to 23 research teams across the country to support groundbreaking projects at the intersection of engineering and scientific disciplines.

University of Washington scientists are participating in three of these endeavors, known as Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grants. One, an effort to develop novel defenses against cyberattacks, is a collaboration among five universities led by UW electrical engineering professor Radha Poovendran. UW professors Peter Pauzauskie and Alberto Aliseda are part of two other MURI-funded efforts to develop innovative approaches to cutting-edge fields of engineering.
In the Department of Materials Science & Engineering, assistant professor Peter Pauzauskie and his team have their eyes focused on laser innovations. Last year they unveiled an approach to cooling liquids using laser light. Now, as part of a MURI grant led by Mansoor Sheik-Bahae at the University of New Mexico, Pauzauskie’s research group is joining a larger collaboration to develop self-cooling lasers. Their efforts would address a major limitation in today’s laser technology.

“Because of the heat they generate, every laser based on optical fibers will melt down at high operating powers,” said Pauzauskie. “As a result, today we have to either limit the power at which lasers operate or accept that they’ll eventually burn out.”

But new laser designs using self-cooling materials could operate at a much higher powers. UW is one of four universities collaborating on this MURI grant, and they hope to create a prototype self-cooling laser that is significantly more powerful than what’s possible today.

In a laser pointer, a battery generates an electric current, which is converted into laser light through a semiconductor crystal. Researchers have also shown it is possible to amplify the power of conventional lasers by “stretching” laser materials into long optical fibers.

But even these devices are limited by the heat they generate. The MURI team will investigate materials that could both protect the fibers from mechanical damage and actively cool them as they operate. That, Pauzauskie says, could unlock a number of new applications for laser technologies, such as cutting and processing industrial materials or launching micro-satellites to remote parts of the solar system using the “radiation pressure” of light.

Out of the $7.5 million MURI grant to be shared among the five participating institutions, Pauzauskie’s group will receive $1.3 million over five years for experiments, equipment and personnel.

“I was over the moon to hear that we got the MURI grant,” said Pauzauskie. “This support will make it possible to bring at least three new graduate students or post-docs to our materials-science team to work specifically on this project.”
Over in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, associate professor Alberto Aliseda expressed similar elation. He and his team are part of a separate $7.5 million MURI collaboration among scientists at five universities to control the tiny liquid droplets that make up sprays.

“We want to take concepts from different approaches and disciplines and bring them together to address fundamental problems in controlling sprays,” said Aliseda. “Sprays form in many fast-moving liquids, and we want to control the droplets when they form and keep them from causing disruptions.”

While the sprays from ocean waves and spray bottles are generally harmless, sprays disrupt mechanical systems that depend on the reliable, predictable flow of liquids. Jet engines can stall if liquid fuel is injected improperly.

Led by Olivier Desjardins at Cornell University, the team wants to build upon past research in spray formation and apply that knowledge toward practical devices that can control the size and distribution of droplets in sprays.

One practical route for controlling sprays is the atomizer, the device that a liquid passes through to form a spray. Researchers can manipulate droplet size and concentration by modifying the atomizer’s design, such as the size of the injection needles. But the MURI team wants to explore other avenues to control the spray.

“We also want to take existing designs and modify their control, such as varying the pressure of the liquid or using acoustics or electrostatic forces to control spray droplets once they’re generated,” said Aliseda.

The team’s approaches will also include new sensors to monitor droplets and computational simulations of different sprays. The microscopic scale of manipulation they seek could increase control of liquid systems in a variety of settings, from diesel engines to ship wakes. Aliseda and his UW team will receive $2.2 million over five years. Like Pauzauskie, he plans to recruit and hire several researchers to work on this project.

“People have been thinking about these ideas for over 50 years,” said Aliseda. “What we’re trying to do is to advance the state of the science and technology so we can reach manufacturers soon through better and more practical scientific practices.”

And that is precisely what the MURI grants are designed to do.

Source : http://www.washington.edu/news/2016/05/11/uw-researchers-secure-prestigious-muri-grants-for-self-cooling-lasers-and-fluidic-mechanics/

Play Science Museum of Virginia’s Speed Challenge for shot at New York City trip for two!

Featuring the SR-71 Blackbird supersonic jet, Speed unveils the mind-blowing intersection of motion and time across a world of science and technology – displaying audacious demonstrations of the superfast to the incredibly slow.

Speed features over 50 exhibits with hundreds of unique experiences, including an interactive light race that travels along the ceiling of the striking 10,000 square-foot exhibition. The Speed experience is categorized into five major areas:

Speed of Sound and Light
Learn about super speeds and astounding technological advances that have taken us to some of the greatest places in the universe. Find out how to stay safe at Mach 3, see an actual Moon rock, touch a meteorite and find out what is so special about special relativity.

Sports Speed Matters
Uncover the speeds behind your favorite sports – from curling to badminton. Take a look at Michael Phelps’ racing cap, Arthur Ashe’s tennis racket and Jeff Burton’s NASCAR helmet as you discover the science behind some of our favorite pastimes.

Too Fast to See 
Reveal details that are almost invisible by slowing down processes that are normally too fast to see. Can you identify the point at which you stop ‘seeing’ individual pictures and start seeing a continuous moving image? Take a glimpse into the hidden world around you!

Machines Fast and Slow 
Explore a variety of surprising machine speeds. See how cell phones and stock market trading have evolved through the decades – remember when your cell phone was as big as a brick? Build your own devices, uncover the equipment developed for high-speed bike racing and take a turn around the track with Secretariat, the greatest racehorse of all time.

Too Slow to See
Get a new perspective on time and human history. How has life in Virginia been affected by evolution? Discover the speed at which Earth’s geography has changed. Compare the relative speed of change over long periods of time and explore a variety of surprising growth rates in real-time.

Source : http://wtvr.com/2016/05/11/science-museum-of-virginia-speed-challenge-advergame/

The Catholic Imagination: A Sophiology Between Scatology and Eschatology

The Catholic Imagination is a strange and wonderful thing. My fascination with it goes all the way back when I first came to the States to stay in 1986. Before that I might’ve seen a Lutheran church or two, but never participated in a Protestant service. Even at this point I can still count my attendance at such events on my hands, perhaps even only one hand. What always strikes me is how much the emphases of Catholicism are from the more dialectical, frequently world denying, anti-sacramental, Protestant, especially Calvinist, Protestant Imagination. I cannot understand the sparse interiors and lecture-like liturgies. I lack training in them. They do no correspond to the comprehensive view of the world that the Catholic Imagination has inculcated in me. I would have to become a different person in order to fully engage Protestant services and Protestant ways of thinking. Things might be different for American Catholics who have either grown up exposed to Protestantism, or have converted from it. This is how they stand with me.
Such discoveries a major obsession of mine that developed into my doctoral dissertation on the Catholic imagination of the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz. Michael Martin recently gave me the opportunity to think about the Catholic imagination once more with an essay that appears in the collection, The Heavenly Country: An Anthology of Primary Sources, Poetry, and Critical Essays on Sophiology. I’m still developing my thoughts on this topic and am trying to figure out how to classify the Eastern Orthodox tradition
Here’s a rather large appetizer from The Heavenly Country for you:
The Irish philosopher Richard Kearney differentiates the literary imagination of James Joyce as one where “the scatological and the eschatological rub shoulders.” In turn, James Joyce, in Finnegans Wake imagined that a “truly catholic assemblage” would be one where H.C.E. reigns, that is, “Here Comes Everybody.” How are we to imagine such a boundless Catholicism, capable of embracing the wisdom (sophia) of God’s world like Bernini’s colonnades in St. Peter’s Square? The concept of the imagination is fundamental to revitalizing such a properly Catholic way of hospitably engaging the world beyond superficial liberal and conservative labels that only serve the status quo. The imagination should not be confused with mere fancy; rather, an imagination has its own specific parameters that issue in an intellectual, physical, and material comportment to God, the world, and fellow man. I will provisionally venture the thesis that the concept of the imagination—more specifically the nature of the Catholic imagination—should be one of the foundations for anchoring the emerging discipline of Catholic Studies in a rigorous manner. Answers to the following basic questions will help us orient ourselves: What is an imagination? What are its implications? What is so unique about a Catholic imagination?
The symbolist poet Oskar Milosz provides a preliminary answer to the first question in his Epistle to Storge. Here he speaks of a basic human need for placement within the cosmos: “It could be said of the compulsion to situate all things (including the space and time in which we situate them) that it is the first of our life’s mental manifestations. Certainly there is no thought and emotion which does not derive from this essential activity of being.” The dynamic and intimate tie between the human mind, emotions, and the world—close in its thrust to what phenomenology understands by intentionality—is what we will understand as an imagination. The imagination’s compulsion to situate all things does not come in one variety. Every intellectual-spiritual-material formation marks its members in its own unique ways.

One useful way of conceptualizing how an imagination works was outlined in David Tracy’s now classic The Analogical Imagination. There he describes how an imagination arranges the relationship between three fundamental concepts: God, man, and the world. Tracy characterizes the Catholic assemblage of things as “analogical,” because it stresses the close interplay, the analogies, between God, man, and the world. This issues in a stress upon the immanence of the divine within (frequently painful and suffering-filled) human affairs and the cosmos. That is the eschatological in the scatological, if you will. Czesław Miłosz describes the thrust of the analogical imagination in a more poetic idiom in his Visions from San Francisco Bay:
All humanity, past and present, is, in truth, a Church persisting outside ordinary space and time, a Church opposed to the necessity built into the universe. Catholicism is the most anthropocentric of religions and, in some sense, through its own excess of divine humanity, it resists the exact sciences which annihilate the individual. Thus, paradoxically, it is less susceptible than other religions to the disintegrative influence of science and technology. In Catholicism, even Heaven and Earth, the Descent and the Ascension of God are not like relations between worlds but like those between human forms [and their suffering, tragic dimension].
Yet, the eminence of science and technology, even in our late modern world, is undeniable. It is undeniable even when Bultmann’s Lutheran project of demythologizing the scriptures in the wake of mid-century scientific progress seems hopelessly out of date, “The world-view of the Scripture is mythological and is therefore unacceptable to modern man whose thinking has been shaped by science and is therefore no longer mythological.” In a late modern context, with a global ecological disaster looming, we are much more inclined, like Pope Francis in Laudato Si’, to demythologize science and its frequently less than salutary intentions and effects.
Czesław Miłosz is also an invaluable guide here. Here is how he describes the corrosive effects on the Catholic imagination of divorcing mind from matter, spirit from the body in Road-side Dog:

Instead of leaving to theologians their worries, I have constantly meditated on religion [in my poetry]. Why? Simply because someone had to do this… I lived in a time when a huge change in the contents of the human imagination was occurring. In my lifetime Heaven and Hell disappeared, the belief in life after death was considerably weakened [and so on]… After two thousand years in which a huge edifice of creeds and dogmas has been erected, from Origen and Saint Augustine to Thomas Aquinas and Cardinal Newman, when every work of the human mind and of human hands was created within a system of reference, the age of homelessness has dawned. How could I not think of this?
Michael Martin points out in his The Submerged Reality this state of affairs goes back much further than the Scientific Revolution. It is the end-result of a post-nominalist sundering of nature from grace. It is impossible to avoid thinking about this, because that great divorce structures our possible ways of imagining and inhabiting the world. In some ways, the Protestant imagination—followed by the scientific, literary-critical, neoliberal and other modern imaginations—institutionalized these tendencies through a dialectical emphasis of God’s transcendence over and against man and the world.
What does it mean to speak of the dialectical emphasis of the Protestant imagination? Tracy’s tripartite schema is useful here as well. The dialectical imagination places God over, above, and against humanity and the world. God’s transcendence of creation is accentuated so as to almost form a complete break. The metaphors the Calvinist theologian Karl Barth uses in The Epistle to the Romans are a paradigmatic 20th century example of what we mean when we speak of a Protestant dialectical imagination:

The effulgence, or, rather, the crater made at the percussion point of an exploding shell, the void by which the point on the line of intersection makes itself known in the concrete world of history, is not—even though it be named the Life of Jesus—that other world which touches our world in Him. In so far as our world is touched in Jesus by the other world, it ceases to be capable of direct observation as history, time, or thing.
Here not even the ascents or descents of the God-man form relations between this world and the other world, which only touches us with a void rather than a human presence. In Oskar Milosz’s (and later Czesław’s) terms this imagination of reality makes God homeless in the world. To be fair to Barth, later in his career he does say in The Humanity of God that the position he occupied in The Epistle to the Romans could not and “was not the last word.” It would only be fair to say that not all forms of Protestantism gravitate toward his earlier extremely dialectical position; some, like high Anglo-Catholicism, are not infrequently more analogical than most mainstream forms of Roman Catholicism. But it is also true that, if we go back to Czesław Miłosz’s analysis of the breakdown of the Catholic edifice, a drift away from an analogical imagination toward a dialectical imagination is the source of the contemporary crisis of the Catholic imagination and its theologies…

Source : http://www.patheos.com/blogs/cosmostheinlost/2016/05/09/the-catholic-imagination-a-sophiology-between-scatology-and-eschatology/?ref_widget=trending&ref_blog=standingonmyhead&ref_post=archived-articles-2

Shared passions fuel scholarships in School of Kinesiology and Recreation

Until last week Judith (Sancken) Rothermel ’72 and Matthew Mugavero had never met, their lives separated by a few generations and 130 miles between their hometowns. But they share a passion.
That passion is for quality physical education in public schools. Rothermel is a retired PE teacher, so committed to the profession that she set up a scholarship at Illinois State University to support future PE teachers. Mugavero, a junior from Tinley Park whose parents are both educators, is the fourth recipient of the Judith Sancken Rothermel Scholarship

Rothermel and Mugavero were one of several student-donor meetings at the School of Kinesiology and Recreation’s Academic Achievement and Services Awards ceremony April 22 at Bone Student Center.

“It’s a prestigious award. It means a lot to me,” said Mugavero, president of the Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) Club and a school ambassador. “I’m happy that all my hard work has paid off in some way.”

Private giving impacts every part of Illinois State, including the School of Kinesiology and Recreation. In all, 30 students will receive scholarships and awards this year through the ISU Foundation and its donors, totaling $19,000.

Another scholarship recipient is Tony Rossi, a senior athletic training major. He received the Joyce Morton Kief Future Professional Award, established in 2006 to honor the retired School of Kinesiology and Recreation faculty member and former women’s track and field coach.

Rossi, the president of Illinois State’s Athletic Training Club, graduated in May and plans to pursue his master’s degree in applied exercise science at Oklahoma State University. The former high school athlete will work as a graduate student athletic trainer for Oklahoma State’s football team.

The scholarship money will help Rossi make the transition to grad school.

“It’s an incredibly humbling moment for me to be honored by one of the most successful educators and leaders that this institution has ever had,” said Rossi, who researched Kief’s career before meeting her at the ceremony. “There are no words to thank her enough or say how meaningful this is to me.”

Two years ago Kief created a second award, the Robert “Doc” Kief Scholarship, in honor of her late husband (a former Redbird athletic trainer). Joyce and Doc met at Illinois State.

“It is a way for us to give back to Illinois State, which played a major role in our professional careers,” said Joyce. “Bob’s award helps a nontraditional student who has an interest in athletic training and plans to work in an educational setting. Hopefully his legacy will inspire future students who have these same goals. I always look forward to the spring awards ceremony to learn of the accomplishments and goals of the scholarship recipients.”

Private giving impacts the School of Kinesiology and Recreation in many ways, including funding equipment, professional development opportunities for students, and alumni activities.

“In challenging financial times, continued financial support is critical to maintain premier undergraduate and graduate programs,” said Interim School Director Dan Elkins. “We are honored to be regularly supported by our generous donors and very much appreciate the support.”

The awards ceremony was a showcase for the School of Kinesiology and Recreation’s top student leaders and student researchers, with each awardee given the opportunity to make a short speech in front of their parents, faculty, and College of Applied Science and Technology leaders.Seated with the other donors in the front row was Professor Emerita Doris Henderson, who continued serving students in retirement by setting up the Doris E. Henderson Physical Education Teacher Education Academic and Professional Leadership Award. Two students received the award this year: Katherine Chalmers and Melissa Marcus.

Henderson is especially proud that her endowed scholarship will live on forever.

“It just gives you such a wonderful feeling on the inside,” said Henderson. “You meet the students and they’re so grateful and happy, and they’re so excited about you meeting their parents too.”

“I believe that if you can afford to do it (give), you should,” she said. “I’m just glad I can.

Souce : https://news.illinoisstate.edu/2016/05/shared-passions-fuel-scholarships-school-kinesiology-recreation/

Technology sector and Non – Aligned Movement’s policies towards its development

Technology and innovation have become key factors which contribute to the economic growth in both advanced and developing economies. In the world of economy, information circulates at the global level through trade in goods and services, direct investment and technology flows, and the movement of people. Information and communication technologies (ICT) have been at the heart of economic changes for more than a decade. ICT sector plays an important role, notably by contributing to rapid technological progress and productivity growth. However, it has been observed that there is a vast digital divide between the developed and the developing countries, and as such the economic and social benefits of the global ICT regime have not been distributed equally among nations.

The Non Aligned Movement representing one of the largest groups of the developing countries has constantly undertaken steps to ensure that developing countries modernize and revitalize their economies taking full benefit of advancements in ICTs. Further, NAM has also stood up against the discriminatory practices and policies that hinder access by developing countries to the benefits of information and communication technologies and to networks established in developed countries. In the Tehran Declaration of 2012, NAM reaffirmed its commitment of ensuring universal, inclusive and non-discriminatory access to information and knowledge related to ICT in order to strengthen all aspects of the information society and the knowledge economy. NAM stands for a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society based on free and fair information. An example of the above was the meeting of the Governing Council of the Centre for Science and Technology of the Non Aligned and Other Developing Countries (NAM S&T) held at Sandton City, South Africa in September 2013.

The event highlighted the significance of South -South cooperation and collective self reliance amongst member states. In the event, India expressed its active commitments towards the achievement of the principles and assured that the country was always ready to expand its scientific engagements and extend support for South- South technological collaboration. The Non- Aligned Movement stands not only for eliminating the unjust divide in the international economic and political order, but also strives to promote the growth of science and technology among its member states that primarily consist of the developing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. At the 2015 NAM Ministerial Conference on Science, Technology and Innovation for Sustainable Development held at Tehran in February, President Rouhani, emphasized that having access to science, technology and innovation was a fundamental right of each country.

The chair echoed the position of the NAM that science and technology lead to the advancement of countries and create the necessary conditions to fight against violence and extremism and work towards peace. Dr. Farhadi, Minister of Science, Research and Technology of the Islamic Republic of Iran stressed on the importance of increased South-South cooperation among NAM Member States to promote and further develop their scientific knowledge, and to tackle common challenges such as brain-drain, disease outbreaks, the digital divide and others.

The Non-Aligned Movement has reaffirmed that in order to transform the digital divide to digital opportunities, these activities should ensure the imperative of universal, inclusive and non-discriminatory access to information and knowledge related to ICT, and should result in supporting national efforts in developing countries in the area of building, improving and strengthening capacities to facilitate their genuine involvement in all aspects of the information society and knowledge economy.

NAM has encouraged all the States to contribute actively to ensure that the Information Society is founded on and stimulates respect for cultural identity, cultural and linguistic diversity, traditions and religions and ethical values. At the Tehran Summit in 2012, NAM gave a call to the developed countries for the full implementation of the commitments in eight priority areas, namely, providing enhanced financial and technical support to develop productive capacities, meeting and reviewing quantitative official development assistance targets for the least developed countries, improving the quality of aid, implementing duty-free quota-free market access, enhancing the share of assistance for Aid for Trade, continuing with the provision of debt relief and the consideration of debt cancellation for the least developed countries in view of the impediment that debt constitutes for their development, implementing investment promotion regimes, enhancing transfer of technology, providing enhanced concessional start-up financing for innovative enterprises in the least developed countries and improving governance at all levels.

As the most prominent collective voice of the global South, NAM is striving to promote a New World Information and Communication Order, based on universal, inclusive and non-discriminatory access to information and knowledge relating to ICT, as an essential requirement to reduce the growing digital divide between developed and developing countries.

Source : http://www.newdelhitimes.com/technology-sector-and-non-aligned-movements-policies-towards-its-development123/

Five Science and Technology Predictions for the Next 10 Years

Radical science and technology are changing everything around us. The field of transhumanism is dramatically growing in size and impact—and the implications for our species are enormous. In just a decade’s time, many things may change in how we live our lives. The coming innovation is going to be startling.

In an interview with award-winning journalist Anthony Cuthbertson, I recently made some tech and science predictions. I wanted to share them:

1. Within a decade, babies with augmented intelligence will be alive

There’s already technologies out there that may improve or outright replace CRISPR gene editing technology but, no matter what happens, genetic editing of the human embryo is here to stay.

What’s more, it may well prove to be the most important scientific advancement of the 21st century. Through these technologies we will be able to eliminate hereditary disease and improve human performance, but perhaps most importantly, we will be able to improve human intelligence and boost our own IQ - even potentially creating a new generation of Einsteins.

2. Exoskeleton suits will allow quadriplegics to run faster than Olympian sprinters

Exoskeleton technology is at its infancy right now but because a third of the worlds population suffers from mobility issues, a massive amount of money is going to be poured into these technologies. Recently, a quadriplegic person at the World Cup kicked the first soccer ball, and this is just a sign of things to come.

In 10 years time, through improved EEG technology and new exoskeletons., even someone who once couldn’t walk could run at speeds faster than the fastest natural sprinter. Such incredible technology will enable a whole new form of competitions and perhaps even a transhumanist Olympics one day.


3. Within a decade, half of Americans will have microchip implants in them

As the world becomes more technologically orientated, fewer people will want to carry around purses and wallets, when all this info can be contained in a microchip the size of a grain of rice that can be implanted in a person’s hand.

Besides identification and improving day-to-day efficiency, one of the most important reasons a person will have a chip is for health reasons. They could alert people about irregularities with their pulse or a drop in body temperature, or monitor glucose levels - as well as contain a person’s entire medical history when they are admitted to hospital in the event of an accident.

4. A third of people will post on Facebook and other social media after they die

In 10 years time, Facebook won’t just be Facebook, it will be a virtual reality system, and personal avatars will continue to post after a person is dead - and even keep wandering around VR worlds mimicking the person.

Companies like ETER9, Terasem and Lifenaut will provide the type of software where people can download themselves and the amount they want to contribute to social media, giving family members and loved ones still alive a sense that the deceased is still present in their lives. Furthermore, new types of algorithms may not only contribute to social media but could develop some form of their personality to continue the essence of the deceased.

5. Robotic hearts will become the holy grail of medicine

The artificial heart, and other robotic organs, have been around for decades but only in the last few years has a company actually permanently replaced a heart with this technology. French-based Carmat has already successfully installed two completely artificial hearts in people. The world’s number one killer is heart disease, responsible for 35% of the world’s population’s deaths.

Within 10 years, people will begin to electively replace their biological heart with a mechanical heart in order to stave off a possible heart attack out of the blue. The artificial heart business is the holy grail of medicine and eliminating heart disease could change the very nature of being alive, as the heart is so responsible for the function of all organs, Additionally, artificial hearts will be Wi-Fi enabled and could be sped up with a smartphone to have wild sex when you want it and sped down to sleep better at night. The greatest challenge with artificial hearts is making sure they don’t get hacked.


10-minute Fusion TV video on Zoltan Istvan’s presidential campaign

A version of this interview first came out in International Business Times UK in December 2015

Source : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zoltan-istvan/5-transhumanism-predictio_1_b_9825660.html

Students use science, technology to investigate fictitious crime scene

Walled Lake Central High School students work on processing a fictitious crime scene as part of a program to encourage interest in science and technology. Photo courtesy of Oakland Schools. 

In an effort to encourage interest in science and technology, student crime scene investigators from three Oakland County high schools analyzed fingerprints, hair, blood spatter patterns and more to solve a fictitious death.

The fourth annual CSI: Oakland Crime Scene Competition was held recently at Pontiac High School.

Students worked to solve the “Case of the Unlucky Ladder,” and determined that fictitious wallpaper hanger O.B. Chwari died accidentally.

The Oakland Schools Career Focused Education Department works with nine partner schools in the CSI league.

Pontiac High School teacher Justin Brantley hosted and staged the “suspicious death” scene for three of the top forensic science teams in the county: Birmingham Marian, Walled Lake Central and North Farmington.

The competing teams took turns processing the crime scene and sharing their findings with the audience and a panel of judges.

North Farmington High School scored three awards: judges’ award for best use of technology, best biological analysis and most observant.

Walled Lake Central won two awards: best physical science analysis and presentation professionalism.

Marian also won awards in two categories: fingerprint analysis and best forensics.

For more information, contact Mike McIntyre, science, technology, engineering and math coordinator for Oakland Schools, at 248-209-2039 or visit the league website at www.oakland.k12.mi.us/csi

Oakland Schools is an intermediate district that supports all the public schools in the county.

Source : http://www.theoaklandpress.com/general-news/20160505/students-use-science-technology-to-investigate-fictitious-crime-scene

Angel Investors Target Science, Technology Startups

A Propel(x) survey finds that nearly one-third (31 percent) of investors cite solving some of the world’s biggest challenges as their main motivation.


An overwhelming majority (94 percent) of active investment angels believe it helps to have subject-matter experts weigh in when they evaluate a startup investment opportunity, according to a Propel(x) survey of 200 aspiring and active angel investors in the United States.
The survey found the majority of active angels have invested in a science and technology startup (68 percent), but half of respondents very frequently (21 percent) or somewhat often (29 percent) decide not to invest because they don't believe they understand the technology well enough.
"I was pleased to see an overall high interest in science and technology startups, and it’s good news that only 1.32 percent of those who haven’t invested are not interested in science and tech companies," Swati Chaturvedi, CEO and co-founder of Propel(x), told eWEEK. "The disconnect often comes down to a lack of understanding the technology well enough to invest; helping investors overcome this information or knowledge gap is crucial to facilitating investing."
When asked to rank the top three types of science-based companies that are of most interest, the three categories receiving support from more than half of angels were information technology and communications (66 percent), life sciences (56 percent) and energy and green technologies (53 percent)

Survey results found that while nearly half of active angel investors (49 percent) ranked the potential for investment returns as their top motivator for investing in startups, nearly one-third (31 percent) ranked solving some of the world’s biggest challenges as their main motivation.
"Angels will continue to play a larger and more important role in funding early-stage startups," Chaturvedi said. "There is a huge funding gap in the early stages—this is a well-researched phenomenon—called the ‘valley of death’ and other more colorful terms. This gap is being filled by angels. This is a great thing for speeding up innovation."
Less than a quarter of active angel investors (21 percent) cited a legacy of other investors among their top three reasons for investing in a specific opportunity.
Three-quarters of active angels cited the management team as their top reason for choosing to invest in a specific company. More than half (52 percent) noted their ability to understand the technology and 42 percent claimed the potential return on investment.
"Investing goes in waves and we are coming off a huge wave in life sciences that's not abating," Chaturvedi said. "We are now also seeing a re-emergence in energy. This sector had been dormant, but we’re seeing an increased interest and investment in clean tech, with almost half of the angels surveyed having already invested in clean tech. This tells us to expect some clean tech startups coming down the line for VC funding.

Source : http://www.eweek.com/small-business/angel-investors-target-science-technology-startups.html

Angel Investors Target Science, Technology Startups

A Propel(x) survey finds that nearly one-third (31 percent) of investors cite solving some of the world’s biggest challenges as their main motivation.


An overwhelming majority (94 percent) of active investment angels believe it helps to have subject-matter experts weigh in when they evaluate a startup investment opportunity, according to a Propel(x) survey of 200 aspiring and active angel investors in the United States.
The survey found the majority of active angels have invested in a science and technology startup (68 percent), but half of respondents very frequently (21 percent) or somewhat often (29 percent) decide not to invest because they don't believe they understand the technology well enough.
"I was pleased to see an overall high interest in science and technology startups, and it’s good news that only 1.32 percent of those who haven’t invested are not interested in science and tech companies," Swati Chaturvedi, CEO and co-founder of Propel(x), told eWEEK. "The disconnect often comes down to a lack of understanding the technology well enough to invest; helping investors overcome this information or knowledge gap is crucial to facilitating investing."
When asked to rank the top three types of science-based companies that are of most interest, the three categories receiving support from more than half of angels were information technology and communications (66 percent), life sciences (56 percent) and energy and green technologies (53 percent).
Xi emphasizes role of science, technology in powering development

Survey results found that while nearly half of active angel investors (49 percent) ranked the potential for investment returns as their top motivator for investing in startups, nearly one-third (31 percent) ranked solving some of the world’s biggest challenges as their main motivation.
Hixon science and technology park plans do not compute with parish councillors

FG to use science technology to explore Nigeria’s potential – Minister

"Angels will continue to play a larger and more important role in funding early-stage startups," Chaturvedi said. "There is a huge funding gap in the early stages—this is a well-researched phenomenon—called the ‘valley of death’ and other more colorful terms. This gap is being filled by angels. This is a great thing for speeding up innovation."
Less than a quarter of active angel investors (21 percent) cited a legacy of other investors among their top three reasons for investing in a specific opportunity.
Three-quarters of active angels cited the management team as their top reason for choosing to invest in a specific company. More than half (52 percent) noted their ability to understand the technology and 42 percent claimed the potential return on investment.
"Investing goes in waves and we are coming off a huge wave in life sciences that's not abating," Chaturvedi said. "We are now also seeing a re-emergence in energy. This sector had been dormant, but we’re seeing an increased interest and investment in clean tech, with almost half of the angels surveyed having already invested in clean tech. This tells us to expect some clean tech startups coming down the line for VC funding."

Source : http://www.eweek.com/small-business/angel-investors-target-science-technology-startups.html

Hixon science and technology park plans do not compute with parish councillors

PLANS to earmark farmland for a science and technology park in Hixon have branded a "red herring" by parish councillors.

Proposals for a phased development of a science, technology and commerce park for research and development on land next to Hixon Airfield's former runway have been submitted to Stafford Borough Council.

The application area covers 12.9 hectares (31.5 acres). But it is outside the industrial estate boundary defined in the emerging Hixon Neighbourhood Plan and there is already 10.6 hectares (26 acres) of undeveloped land on the airfield with approval for industrial uses, a newsletter produced by Hixon Parish Council said.

At a recent Hixon Parish Council meeting councillors questioned the need and demand for the park in the area, particularly in the wake of Staffordshire University removing its computing, engineering and science courses from Stafford's Beaconside campus.


Councillor Nigel Baxter said: "If you compare Beaconside's technology park, it seems mainly to be service industry offices for care companies. There seems to be very little IT or science there."

Councillor Claire Murdoch said: "If they can't fill that close to the M6, what makes the applicant think he will fill a park near a village?

"It's a red herring. Planners have described Hixon as off the main roads, peripheral and not well-served by public transport."

Council chairman Brendan McKeown told the meeting the Plan for Stafford Borough, which provides a blueprint for development in the borough in the years leading up to 2031, had earmarked 50 hectares of land outside of Stafford and Stone for employment. If the latest plan was approved, 47 per cent of that target would be met in the first five years of the 20-year plan in Hixon alone, he said.

"This seems grossly unfair when the plan for Stafford Borough set out that Hixon is not a target area for development or employment land. Raleigh Hall and Ladfordlands were identified as growth areas," he added.

"This 10.6 hectares that has got permission has not been developed. I would suggest having another 12.9 hectares added on is going to be a crazy decision."


Source : http://www.staffordshirenewsletter.co.uk/Hixon-science-technology-park-plans-compute/story-29194729-detail/story.html

FG to use science technology to explore Nigeria’s potential – Minister

The federal government has promised to use science, technology and innovation to fully explore the potentials of the country’s diverse resources for its growth development, and diversification of the entire economy.
The Special Assistant to the Minister of Science and Technology, Mr. Ogbonnaya Onu, Mr. Sunny Onyeukwu, in a signed statement on behalf of his boss made the disclosure yesterday in Abuja.
According to the statement, Onu expressed confidence that the proposed Assumpta Science Centre, Owerri, (ASCO), Imo state, would stimulate and sustain the interest of young Nigerians, in choosing careers from Science, Engineering and Technology-related disciplines.
Onu, who had just returned into the country from Rome, Vatican City, sealed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the President of the Pontifical Council for Culture, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi.


The minister thanked the Holy See for choosing Nigeria as headquarters of the Centre in Africa and pledged the commitment of the federal ministry of Science and technology to honour her obligations as contained in the MoU for the take-off of the Centre.
He reiterated the commitment of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration to fully explore the potentials of science and technology in the task of nation building.
The statement also added that in his remarks, Cardinal Ravasi said the Assumpta Science Centre, though an informal science learning centre, was borne out of the need to deepen the culture of science, technology innovation and engineering in Africa.
On why Nigeria was chosen, he said: “Nigeria was chosen as the headquarters of the programme for Africa due to her leadership role and position in the continent.”

Source : https://www.today.ng/news/national/114691/science-technology-explore-nigerias-potential-minister

Xi emphasizes role of science, technology in powering development

For the second time in a week, President Xi Jinping has emphasized the important role of science and technology in powering China's development
 

President Xi Jinping visits the Institute of Advanced Technology in University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, east China's Anhui province, on April 26, 2016, where he was introduced to different innovative technologies.[Photo/Xinhua] 

Speaking at a symposium on internet and cyberspace security on April 19 in Beijing, he called for China to make a breakthrough in next-generation internet technologies.

On Tuesday, at one of the events highlighted most by Chinese media during his field-study tour of Anhui province, Xi visited the University of Science and Technology of China, in Hefei, the provincial capital.

He visited the province from Sunday to Wednesday.

At the university's Institute of Advanced Technology, Xi was shown achievements in areas ranging from artificial intelligence to public security, and from drones to alternative energy.

He visited the control center of the 2,000-kilometer Beijing-Shanghai quantum communication main network, due to become fully operational in the second half of this year, and the university's Laboratory of Physic Science for Advanced Medical Application.

Talking to faculty members, researchers and students, Xi praised the university's recent progress in innovation and new technologies.

He urged his audience to show a greater "sense of mission" by educating more people and making greater achievements in the new frontiers of science and technology.

An economy of China's size would be unsustainable if it relied entirely on imports for its new science and technologies, Xi said.

Zhang Xiaojun, vice-president of Anhui Huami Information Technology, which has investment from Chinese mobile phone producer Xiaomi, was one of the high-tech company leaders who met with the president.

He said he thinks Xi's comments will greatly encourage technology companies like his, and he is more confident in serving the Chinese economy with smart wearable gadgets.

Yao Hongyu, CEO of Beijing-based cloud computing and big data company Yoyo Systems, said he thought the president was saying in Anhui that the next 10 years is the best time for China to build up its power in new technologies.

He said the country's current scientific research capability still lags behind many developed nations, and most of the core components of China's industrial robots are imported.

Yao added that it will be "a long and tough journey" for the country to improve its capability on core technologies.

He said State-owned companies and government departments should buy domestic brands to support the development of China's science and technology, and the nation needs to develop core technology in fields such as cloud computing and big data.

During his Anhui trip, Xi visited the village of Xiaogang, which was one of China's poorest four decades ago and took a lead in the country's economic reform and opening-up in the late 1970s.

He also visited mountainous Jinzhai county, where many farmers are beginning to use solar power to change their lives under the government program to eliminate poverty.

Souce : http://www.china.org.cn/china/2016-04/28/content_38340977.htm

APNewsBreak: Sushi alert: Grim outlook for bluefin tuna

FILE - In this Jan. 5, 2015, file photo, Kiyoshi Kimura, president of Kiyomura Co., poses a bluefin tuna at his Sushi Zanmai restaurant near Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo. The latest assessment by scientists paints a likely bleak future for the Pacific bluefin tuna, the favorite of sushi-lovers whose population has dropped by more than 97 percent from its historic levels. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)

The latest scientific assessment paints a likely bleak future for the Pacific bluefin tuna, a sushi lovers' favorite whose population has dropped by more than 97 percent from its historic levels.
A draft summary of a report by the International Scientific Committee for Tuna and Tuna-like Species in the North Pacific Ocean seen by The Associated Press shows the current population of bluefin tuna is estimated at 2.6 percent of its "unfished" size. A previous assessment put the population at an already dire 4.2 percent.
Overfishing has continued despite calls to reduce catches to allow the species to recover. In some areas, bluefin tuna is harvested at triple the levels considered to be sustainable.
"The situation is really as bad as it appears," said Amanda Nickson, director for Global Tuna Conservation at The Pew Charitable Trusts.
Limits imposed after the previous estimates actually allowed some countries to up their catches, she said.
"If those managers again fail to act in a conservation-minded way this time, it may be time for other actions, such as an international trade ban or complete fishing moratorium," Nickson said.
The independent scientists who compiled the report said improved data make them more confident in their latest estimates than in previous ones. The report is due to be reviewed by the committee in July.
The report estimated that in 2014, the total recruitment level of the fish, or the percentage of new fish that survive each year, was below 3.7 million fish, the second lowest level ever.
Under current levels of reproduction and management of the fisheries in the Pacific, the likelihood of rebuilding stocks to healthy levels is only 0.1 percent, the report says.
Cutting catches by a fifth would improve those odds to only 3 percent.
Japanese eat about 80 percent of all bluefin tuna caught worldwide, and stocks of all three bluefin species — the Pacific, Southern and Atlantic — have fallen over the past 15 years as demand for the luscious, buttery pink-to-red fleshed fish has soared globally.
Organizations charged with helping to manage bluefin fisheries have set a goal of rebuilding the species' population to 6.4 percent, or 42,592 metric tons, of unfished levels by 2024.
But 6.4 percent levels for a species like the Pacific bluefin, which can live for up to 40 years, are no guarantee of a recovery. Many experts believe 20 percent of historic levels is the minimum size for a sustainable fishery.
The international body that monitors fisheries in most of the Pacific Ocean, the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, was unable to reach consensus last year on either short-term or long-term measures to help restore the bluefin population.
In Europe, officials have agreed last month on implementing a recovery plan for bluefin tuna in the eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
A next step by conservationists could include efforts to get Pacific bluefin tuna banned from international trading.
Pacific bluefin tuna are spawned in the western parts of the northern Pacific but migrate throughout the ocean, complicating management of catches. The population of the species is estimated to have peaked in 1960.
An earlier estimate put the 2014 population of the bluefin at 26,000 tons. The most recent reduced that estimate by 9,000 tons, to 17,000 tons.
If the population of Pacific bluefins drops much further, it may no longer be economically feasible to fish for them.
At that point, "Pacific bluefin would be considered commercially extinct," Nickson said.

Source by : http://www.heraldstandard.com/science_ap/apnewsbreak-sushi-alert-grim-outlook-for-bluefin-tuna/article_e881381e-1568-578f-8ea7-c70f7e1b0b30.html

Australian cybersecurity to take 'big science' approach

Jackie Craig, chief of the Cyber and Electronic Warfare division of Australia's Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG), told a recent conference that blue sky scientific projects with "audacious" goals often lead to practical inventions "along the way", ZDNet has reported.
"There's a tremendous opportunity within a big-science approach to have what we would call 'off-ramps' to produce technology that could be exploited within Australia, and also go out for export," Craig said.
Cybersecurity needs a profound, multi-disciplinary approach so the whole science and technology community will have to work together to tackle the problems, she said.
Scientific researchers also tend to have good outreach programmes that cybersecurity experts can learn from, Craig said.
"The more we outreach and educate people about cybersecurity, the better our overall cybersecurity will be, because they will begin to take on the behaviours that make us more secure in the cyber domain," she said.
The Australian government is due to release a new version of its Cyber Security Strategy this week. Its release was originally planned to coincide with the Australian Cyber Security Centre conference where Craig spoke, but was delayed, according to ZDNet.
Gary Blair, chief executive officer of the Australian Cyber Security Research Institute told ZDNet that the strategy will help Australia to gain "a lot of new intellectual property in cyber" that it can commercialise.
"That will have some major effects for Australia. One is that it will improve the national cyber resilience, and two, it'll have an economic effect, because we'll be able to displace some of our reliance on imported technologies, and indeed build up an industry that has export potential," he told the news site.
In November 2015 the Australian government identified cyber security as one of the country's nine strategic research priorities and issued a cyber security capability statement that identified four practical needs that had to be solved: highly-secure and resilient communications and data acquisition, storage, retention and analysis for government services; secure technologies for software applications, mobile services, cloud computing and critical infrastructure; new technologies and approaches to support the nation’s cyber security; and an understanding of the scale of the cyber security challenge for Australia.

Source by : http://www.out-law.com/en/articles/2016/april/australian-cybersecurity-to-take-big-science-approach/

Undersea sensors open new frontier for marine science. Can they save fisheries, too?

You can’t manage what you can’t measure – true in business and true in environmental protection.

Fortunately, what can and can’t be measured is changing fast, thanks to a new generation of sophisticated sensors combined with powerful data analytics. They’re giving people the power to see and track the invisible like never before.

Nowhere is this trend advancing more rapidly than in the oceans, which cover 71 percent of our planet.

Next-generation sensors – including robots and drones in a wide variety of shapes and sizes that sail through the seas – are collecting information on everything from salinity, oxygen levels and temperature to seismic tremors, undersea volcanic eruptions and even the abundance of schooling fish.

This sophisticated technology can help us make smarter decisions as we work to improve ocean health and the communities, large and small, that depend on oceans – while we’re also learning to better use the data that already exists.

Ocean observatories transmit real-time data

My organization, Environmental Defense Fund, is guided by science and technological innovation. Twice a year, we select a cutting-edge topic and convene experts to brief us on the latest advances, with a recent “science day” being devoted to advances in sensor technology.

John Delaney, a professor of oceanography at the University of Washington and one of the presenters that day, is a world authority on how to collect ocean data. He has spearheaded the development of an impressive network of sensors linked by fiber-optic cable that stretches for 300 miles across the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate in the Northeast Pacific.

Once built out to cover the global ocean and complemented with mobile robots mapping habitats and counting fish, this sensor network will create a virtual underwater observatory. It can track what happens below the seafloor, on the seafloor, in the ocean and where the ocean intersects with the air.

This observatory will advance our scientific understanding of a resource on which an estimated 3 billion people depend for protein, and maybe one day help transform struggling fisheries worldwide.

Fishermen worldwide can benefit

An international web of 38 million fishermen and women in communities big and small make up the wild fishing sector today, contributing more than $270 billion to global gross domestic product.

Because they produce relatively small revenues individually, however, governments won’t typically invest in expensive data collection programs to track their business. As a result, many of these fisheries are poorly known and mostly unmanaged, depleting fish populations and leading to low yields and profits.

Fishermen making the best use of low-cost information creates the potential for tremendous improvements in ocean health.

EDF and our partners are overcoming this data limitation by promoting the use of analytical and interpretation methods that make the most of whatever data exists, or can be readily collected by fishermen themselves. Creating a stake in improved future fisheries also helps to repay their investment in such data.

Taken together, cutting-edge technology and new partnerships with fishermen making the best use of low-cost information creates the potential for tremendous improvements in ocean health. By harvesting smarter, not harder, we can increase yields, incomes and fish populations all at the same time.

From the moon to the bottom of the sea

More and better data is an important piece of the puzzle, and the emergence of a new generation of ocean sensor technologies that are inexpensive and easy to operate could be a key to unlocking the full potential of the world’s fisheries.

Let’s put ocean sensor pioneers in the same room as the practitioners who are trying to save the ocean and improve human welfare, but need more data to do their jobs. Working arm-in-arm with fishermen, we can steer the technology to making a real contribution in meeting these needs.

We have put 12 people on the moon, four times as many as have visited the deepest reaches of the Marianas Trench. Realizing the promise of the ocean frontier is also within our grasp.

Source by : https://www.edf.org/blog/2016/04/19/undersea-sensors-open-new-frontier-marine-science-can-they-save-fisheries-too

Meet Jiajia, China's New Interactive Robot

Engineers in China have created a highly realistic female robot specially designed to interact with humans in a submissive manner.

The robot companion, nicknamed "Jiajia", was conceptualized and developed by a team of researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC).

Technologically, Jiajia doesn't introduce any new breakthroughs when it comes to robotics. The developers instead focused on making the robot act submissively to her owner. She's even programmed to talk to humans using words that are sexist in tone.

During Jiajia's presentation to the local Chinese media on Friday, she introduced her male creators as her "lords". She also shied away when journalists tried to take pictures of her, stating that it would make her look fat if they pointed their cameras too close to her face.

Chen Xiaoping, director of the USTC that created Jiajia, explained that it took them three years of research and development in order to make her act very realistically, from the movement of her lips and body to showing micro-expressions on her face.

He said that compared to other interactive robots previously developed, Jiajia is capable of rolling her eyeballs naturally and move her lips in tune with her speech. She was also designed to have a body that highly resembles that of humans.

Chen added that so far, Jiajia is still not able to show emotions such as laughing or crying, but they are already working on giving these features to her.

"We hope to develop the robot so it has deep learning abilities," Chen said. "We will add facial expression recognition and make it interact more deeply with people."



The researchers hope that Jiajia would turn out to be a "robot goddess". They said that she is priceless and that they currently have no plans to make more ultrarealistic robots like her.

Source by : http://www.techtimes.com/articles/150827/20160416/meet-jiajia-chinas-new-interactive-robot.htm

Economic development linked to research, technology

LAHORE: Economic development is directly linked to research and technology; therefore, special attention is being given to strengthen research institutions.

The budget for research and development in PCSIR is being increased from Rs65 million to Rs250 million.

This was stated by Federal Minister for Science and Technology Rana Tanveer Hussain, while speaking at the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI).

The minister said that all resources are being utilised to promote research culture so that dream to join the club of technologically advanced nations could come true.

He regretted that the low allocations for the vital sectors such as science and technology had kept the country dependent on the developed world, despite the fact that the country has no dearth of resources.

He said special concentration is focused on the need-based and result-oriented research, which would save valuable time and money.

The minister said that innovation is a key to economic competitiveness and research institutions and researchers would have to come forward to address the gaps in the current scenario by developing world-class technologies.

There is a close link between science and technology and industry; therefore, interaction is being enhanced with the chambers of commerce and industry of the countries.

He said that a Common Facility Center has been established at Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which would provide one-window facility to the businessmen.

He said that 16 organisations are working under the ministry. The system is being made efficient and result-oriented, while all appointments are being made on merit to achieve the growth target.

Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry Senior Vice President Almas Hyder said the Ministry of Science and Technology holds key importance, as it is responsible for maintaining the much-needed culture of applied and academic research and development in the country.

Technology commercialisation, development of standards for quality control, accreditation, education and effective linkages between industry and academia, etc, are some of the key functions of this ministry, he said.

However, the performance indicators of all the organisations working under the Ministry of Science and Technology need to match with the requirements of the modern era.


Source by : http://www.thenews.com.pk/print/113152-Economic-development-linked-to-research-technology

Your iPhone will expire in three years, says Apple

New York, April 17 (IANS) US electronic giant Apple has said the iPhones have a life expectancy of three years and so does the Apple watch, while AppleTV devices expire in four years.

In a recent update to its environmental policy, Apple addressed the question of how long an Apple device is expected to remain in use.

According to a report on Forbes.com, iPhone's productive life cycle will be up at the three-year mark, as will the Apple Watch, while your OS X -- a series of operating systems developed and marketed by Apple Inc. -- and AppleTV devices will get an extra twelve months to reach the four-year mark.

"To model customer use, we measure the power consumed by a product while it is running in a simulated scenario," Apple was quoted as saying.

"Daily usage patterns are specific to each product and are a mixture of actual and modelled customer-use data. Years of use, which are based on first owners, are assumed to be four years for OS X and tvOS devices and three years for iOS and watchOS devices," the company added.

These numbers are in harmony with Apple's strategy of rolling out operating system updates to older devices and the hardware offered to replace older units.

For example, the recently launched iPhone SE, which is designed similar to iPhone 5S, can be upgraded from new iOS 9 to the next three years of iOS updates -- something the iPhone 5S would be unable to do.

The time-scale between the release of the 5S and the SE is just inside that three-year window.

However, Apple does provide compatibility of its operating systems to older hardw

Source by : http://ianslive.in/index.php?param=news/Your_iPhone_will_expire_in_three_years_says_Apple-507021/SCIENCE%20and%20TECHNOLOGY/36

Frederick County reentering negotiations with Comcast

Frederick County residents in rural areas say they are frustrated that county officials have not intervened more to help them secure internet services with Comcast, especially with the perceived necessity of internet service in this day and age.

Their push for internet comes at a time when the county has started renegotiations on an agreement with Comcast that’s nearly a decade old.

County Executive Jan Gardner said that at the time the franchise agreement was signed — when she was president of the Board of County Commissioners — the county wanted to avoid becoming a cable customer service arm that would directly assist county residents with complaints about cable services. As the county prepares to enter into negotiations with Comcast, Gardner said, she’s not interested in the county taking on that role.

Franchise agreements

The previous board of commissioners signed the franchise agreement with Comcast in 2007 after the broadcast company purchased the now defunct Adelphia.

The agreement provides Comcast access to county rights-of-way for cable installation. In return, the county can broadcast on three cable channels.

Under the agreement, the county could choose to collect fees for residents in the county’s unincorporated areas. But Gardner said the commissioners chose not to, because it would create an expectation that the county would assist in customer service complaints, such as getting service.

Some county municipalities collect franchise fees from Comcast under their own franchise agreements, Gardner said. These franchise fees are levied on Comcast, but rolled back and charged to the subscribers. Should the county charge franchise fees, the agreement doesn’t specify if they would need to be directed to the general fund or a particular purpose.

“Collecting money would mean a greater ownership,” Gardner said.

County residents who live within areas where Comcast has built out its cable lines can get Comcast internet. This is because Frederick County’s franchise agreement mandates that Comcast provide cable service — which allows access to internet, television and phone — to those residents only.

But if potential subscribers in an area with fewer than 25 homes per cable mile from the nearest active cable plant request services, then the costs to add the necessary cable lines are split between Comcast and the prospective customers.

The current franchise agreement doesn’t require Comcast to pay for those cable extensions. And it’s not yet negotiated if Comcast will be required to expand its footprint under a new agreement.

Frederick County’s agreement doesn’t prevent other companies, such as Verizon’s Fios network, from taking root in the county, Gardner said — they just haven’t so far.

Verizon does not plan to expand Fios to Frederick County, spokesman John O’Malley wrote in an email to The Frederick News-Post. The company wants instead to focus on areas with existing franchise agreements with Verizon.

Montgomery County has signed franchise agreements with not only Comcast, but also Verizon and RCN Corporation for cable services.

All three corporations may build on Montgomery County rights-of-way. The county has opened the Office of Cable and Broadband Services, which specifically assists in resolving problems related to cable services. The office employs more than a dozen staff members whose duties vary from oversight of the franchise agreements to investigating and mitigating subscriber complaints, and maintaining channels for use by Montgomery County government and subsidiaries.

The office handles approximately 1,000 complaints a year, which are split evenly among the providers, said Marjorie Williams, the office’s franchise manager.

Montgomery County collects franchise fees which amount to 5 percent of the overall gross revenues from all three providers, Williams said. The county also charges an additional 3 percent of the providers’ overall gross revenue to pay for channels used by the county for local broadcasts. Both of these fees are tacked on to subscribers’ bills.

“We have residents that aren’t thrilled about the fees,” Williams said.

The office expanded about eight years ago, when Verizon began building out in Montgomery County, Williams said.

Typically, when Gardner receives a complaint for service — usually once a month — she forwards it to Josh Bokee, a Frederick city alderman and a director of government affairs for Comcast. Gardner said a complaint might not just be the quality of the service, but a county resident seeking an option other than Comcast, such as Verizon Fios.

Bokee directed questions to Comcast’s public relations department.

Gardner said that even with the impending negotiations — which consultant CBG Communications is helping with — she does not want to launch an office like Montgomery County’s, which would entail hiring additional staff members. The revised agreement, under the new form of charter government, would be routed through the Frederick County Council.

Council President Bud Otis said he had not heard anything about the agreement.

“Generally, our staff has been happy with the arrangement we’ve had in place,” Gardner said. “I would not say every consumer is happy with it. I think we got what we intended to get from the contact.”

County residents

press forward

Linda Schilling has campaigned Comcast and Frederick County elected officials for more than a year to extend cable and internet service to her rural home outside Thurmont. But she was told that her home is three-tenths of a mile outside Comcast’s current range. She can walk less than a minute down her wooded road to where a Comcast line is located. Some of her nearby neighbors take advantage of Comcast.

She and her family use HughesNet satellite service, which imposes a data cap, and is not ideal, Schilling said.

In an interview, Schilling expressed frustration with the franchise agreement. Schilling’s home falls in an area where she, and her neighbors, under the terms of the franchise agreement, would be required to pay for a cable extension. Comcast has quoted her different numbers for the extension, but always thousands of dollars. She said she never received a quote in writing from Comcast.

Schilling is angry about the situation, especially because her two children, who both attend Frederick County Public Schools, are often assigned work that requires a computer and internet connection. The school district is slowly advancing to a “one to one” system, in which students are assigned a personal device, like a laptop or tablet, just for their use for lessons throughout the day.

Schilling said her children could burn through in a single day the amount of data the family is allotted by HughesNet.

“We’re talking about technology. Technology advances all the time,” Schilling said. “Something that worked back in 2007 no longer works in 2016.”

Tami Hardesty, Schilling’s neighbor, said she was surprised when she moved from outside the city of Frederick last year and was only allowed the single option for Comcast. She too signed up for HughesNet, which she said did not meet her expectations.

She finds HughesNet slow, Hardesty said.

“I kind of felt like I was in a corner,” she said. “I didn’t have anything else to go with.”

HughesNet representatives did not respond to requests for comment in time for publication.

Over the years, other areas of the county have made the same plea to Comcast and county government.

In 2008, for example, Gambrill Park residents signed a petition requesting that Comcast offer internet access to the area.

Comcast spokeswoman Jamie Debole emailed a statement in response to a request for comment:

“Nationally, Comcast has built out broadband to over 99.5 percent of the homes we pass, and that number continues to grow. We want to serve as many customers as is geographically and economically feasible, and continuously evaluate opportunities to deliver our innovative technology to new and existing customers. However, there are some low-density areas where it is not economically feasible to build out.”

Internet access

Maryland jurisdictions, both rural and suburban, have prioritized expanding broadband internet access for a while, said Michael Sanderson, executive director of the Maryland Association of Counties.

“I think there’s a move toward, and not just in county governments, seeing reliable internet access,” Sanderson said. “It’s increasingly a fundamental service for a fully functional family and community — for education and emergency and a variety of things like that. This is not a conversation that’s unique to Frederick County.”

A bill from Delegate Mark Fisher, a Calvert County Republican, would have required that all franchise agreements signed across the state include mandated wired broadband service. The bill didn’t make it out of the House of Delegates Economic Matters Committee.

“There’s one thing that we all know: Everything needs a wired broadband connection, whatever that might be,” Fisher said at the committee hearing in February.

In 2014, a contingent of federal lawmakers, including U.S. Sens. Ben Cardin and Bernie Sanders, wrote to the FCC, requesting that the commission reclassify broadband internet as a utility, which it eventually did. This was a measure to ensure “net neutrality,” the principle that service providers should provide open access to the web, without discriminating against certain applications or digital content.

“Broadband is a more advanced technology than phone service, but in the 21st century it performs the same essential function,” the lawmakers wrote. “Consumers and businesses cannot live without this vital connection to each other and to the world around them

Source by : http://www.fredericknewspost.com/news/science_and_technology/frederick-county-reentering-negotiations-with-comcast/article_06b9aa80-c385-5ef9-9bc5-099bc869bf03.html

Young engineer encourages kids to create robots

 

Chandigarh, April 17 (IANS) He is all of 23 years but that has not stopped Akshay Ahuja from guiding and training even nine-year-olds with his engineering skills and helping them create robots. He's even planning a mega-event where 20,000 children will be part of the country's largest robotics show to create technology marvels.

Ahuja, an engineer himself, through his 'Robotics Education World' start-up, wants to make science fun for children and help them with robotics.

Having started his company in 2013 to train engineering students, Akshay soon figured out that with a bit of tweaking to suit the interests of young minds, even school children could be imparted engineering and technology skills.

"The idea was to make things more practical than theoretical. On doing research, I realised that the education system doesn't encourage students to explore how the theories are derived. As a test of my observation, I trained one student who happened to be cited in India Book of Records for creating his own robot," Ahuja, who hails from the industrial city of Ludhiana, told IANS here.

"Our company had only 29 engineering students who joined the workshops. It was during these workshops that I realised that the workshops, which were crafted for engineering-level students, if modified a bit, can also interest a school kid," Ahuja pointed out.

Having obtained his engineering degree in 2015, Ahuja, who started working on this project when he was in his second year, now heads a team of around 40 to fulfil the vision of 'RoboChamps' - to revolutionise the education system.

"While working with college students in 2013, I asked a nine-year-old kid to join the same training that college students are undergoing. At the end of the training, which was of six months, I found that the kid had learnt more than engineers. I trained some more nine-year-old kids and they went to IIT-Delhi and competed with engineers. Out of 32 teams they stood third over there," Akshay excitedly pointed out.

"It was one of these youngsters who, at nine years of age, figured in the India Book of Records as the youngest boy in the country who created a line-following robot using an Atmega 16 chip," he said.

Ahuja does not want to stop at that.

He is working to hold the biggest robotics event, Build Your Bot (BYB), in July in which over 20,000 school children will participate in the national capital New Delhi.

"There is also a social cause attached to it as several hundred underprivileged children from slums are being trained free of cost by the 'RoboChamps' team and would be a part of the record-breaking event," Ahuja said.

'RoboChamps' is engaged in providing robotics and technology-based education to young minds through the school education system.

"Over 500 children from other countries, including Bhutan, China, Nepal, Pakistan and the US, are also expected to be a part of the event to compete with students from across India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be invited to be the chief guest," he said.

"Students will start from scratch and make their own line-following robot. While making the robot, they will come to know many concepts practically rather than theoretically. The idea is to enhance the science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills of the children," Ahuja, who is passionately working for the mega-event, concluded.

Source by : http://ianslive.in/index.php?param=news/Young_engineer_encourages_kids_to_create_robots-507007/SCIENCE%20and%20TECHNOLOGY/36