Federal autonomous vehicle regulations and policies released

A long-awaited set of federal rules and regulations was released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) on Tuesday. In the Federal Automated Vehicles Policy, the U.S. Department of Transportation “sets the framework for the next 50 years with guidance for the safe and rapid deployment of advanced automated vehicle safety technologies.”
While stressing the primary importance of safety as autonomous vehicle technologies develop, the policy speaks to the potential of improving lives in several vital respects. In addition to improvements in mobility, energy savings, and reduced pollution, the most important potential benefit of the advanced technologies will be in saved lives. The NHTSA cites the oft-quoted figure that 94 percent of highway crashes are due to human error and result in more than 30,000 traffic fatalities each year.

We do not intend to write the final word on highly automated vehicles here.

U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) Secretary Anthony Foxx sets the tone of the new policy in his introductory statement. “As the Department charged with protecting the traveling public, we recognize three realities that necessitate this guidance. First, the rise of new technology is inevitable. Second, we will achieve more significant safety improvements by establishing an approach that translates our knowledge and aspirations into early guidance. Third, as this area evolves, the “unknowns” of today will become “knowns” tomorrow. We do not intend to write the final word on highly automated vehicles here. Rather, we intend to establish a foundation and a framework upon which future Agency action will occur.”
The Policy has four major sections: Vehicle Performance Guidance for Automated Vehicles; Model State Policy; NHTSA’s Current Regulatory Tools; and Modern Regulatory Tools. The primary focus is on what the DoT calls “highly automated vehicles” (HAVs), which it further defines as “those in which the vehicle can take full control of the driving task in at least some circumstances.” Parts of the policy also apply to driver assistance technologies including those currently in use.
The Vehicle Performance Guidance for Automated Vehicles outlines a 15-point “Safety Assessment” for design, development, testing and deployment of autonomous vehicles. The safety assessment will be — at least at first — a voluntary assessment of any new highly automated technology. The assessment will be completed by manufacturers and other entities such as component suppliers. It will document whether they are meeting or complying with 15 factors or areas. For each factor, the assessment will state that the technology meets the guidance, does not meet the guidance, or that the guidance area isn’t applicable.
It’s a long list, but the fifteen guidance areas in the assessment include data recording and sharing; privacy; system safety; vehicle cybersecurity; human-machine interface; crashworthiness; consumer education and training; registration and certification; post-crash behavior; federal, state, and local laws; ethical considerations; operational design domain; object and event detection and response; fall back (minimal risk condition); and validation methods. The DOT and NHTSA will review and update the guidance areas annually.
The Model State Policy delineates federal and state responsibilities. The goal is to have a consistent state-to-state framework for testing and deploying vehicles to ensure that as people travel around the nation they will be assured that vehicle technologies and safety factors are the same.
To further explain, while driver licensing and vehicle registration are state responsibilities, setting new vehicle safety standards for motor vehicles and enforcing compliance with safety standards are federal responsibilities.
The Current Regulatory Tools section outlines the Department of Transportation’s existing regulations and policies that can aid safe and timely development of HAVs. Modern Regulatory Tools looks to the future to identify potential ways to accelerate safe deployment of new technologies.
The purpose of the Federal Automated Vehicle Policy is to support the advance of highly automated vehicles while protecting public safety. The policy will be reviewed and updated annually. The DOT is open to public comment on the policy at this website.

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MIT scientists use radio waves to sense human emotions

There's a new trick to understanding someone's poker face -- radio waves.

Researchers at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have developed a device that uses radio waves to detect whether someone is happy, sad, angry or excited.

The breakthrough makes it easier to accomplish what scientists have tried to do for years with machines: sense human emotions. The researchers believe tracking a person's feelings is a step toward improving their overall emotional well-being.

The technology isn't invasive; it works in the background without a person having to do anything, like wearing a device. The device called EQ-Radio, which was detailed in a paper published online Tuesday, resembles a shoebox, as of now. In the future, it may shrink down and integrate with an existing computing gadget in your home.
It works by bouncing wireless signals off a person. These signals are impacted by motion, such as breathing and heartbeats. When the heart pumps blood, a force is exerted onto our bodies, and the skin vibrates ever so slightly.

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After the radio waves are impacted by these vibrations, they return to the device. A computer then analyzes the signals to identify changes in heartbeat and breathing.
The researchers demonstrated their system detects emotions on par with an electrocardiogram (EKG), a common wearable device medical professionals use to monitor the human heart.
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The machine's analysis of the radio waves relies on artificial intelligence, which learns how various heartbeats indicate certain emotions.
As a part of the testing, the machine bounced radio waves off actors who recreated a range of emotions. The more emotions the machine experienced, the better it identified what signals, such as a fast heartbeat, gave away their true feelings. By monitoring radio waves reflected off people who are happy, the machine is exposed to certain signs -- such as heart rate or a type of breathing -- associated with being in good spirits.
The machine is aware of the number of milliseconds between each heartbeat due to the radio waves. It's these subtle changes in our bodies that give away our emotional state.
MIT professor Dina Katabi, who led the project, believes the work could have significant impact on emotional well-being.
"Imagine if the machines around you can understand when you are stressed or your emotional state is negative," Katabi said. "[It could] try to detect depression."
As Katabi sees it, a device at home could one day email you if it notices you've been sad for awhile. It might suggest you spend more time with friends and family.
There's growing interest among researchers about how machines are qualified to understand our health. Earlier this year, Harvard and University of Vermont researchers found Instagram photos could be analyzed to detect depression. Meanwhile, Microsoft researchers have used web search data to help identify serious illnesses in their development stages.
The MIT device could also be useful for businesses looking to get a better sense of customer emotions. For example, an entertainment company may gauge people's feelings during test screenings of movies and shows.
However, the nature of such a device raises privacy concerns. A device like the EQ-Radio could be placed in a public or private space, and those present may not be aware (or want) information about their emotions is being collected.
In response, Katabi said her team would only use the technology where it had users' consent.
As for now, it's unknown when MIT's device could be used in the real world.

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Why VR matters, especially in rural schools

All children benefit from new experiences which expand their mental map of the world, but the need is especially acute for children from low-income families.

While they may have rich life experiences in their own communities, Harvard professor Robert Putnam in an NPR interview distilled his copious research: “The bottom line of all of the statistics […] is that poor kids are increasingly isolated.”

One of the most promising applications of technology in our public schools is the use of technology to transcend the physical classroom and combat this growing isolation.

Contrary to popular belief, most edtech is not foisted upon our schools from above as it was in decades past, but rather, classroom teachers are pulling it in — especially by those whose students are increasingly left behind by a global economy that favors the connected, the computer literate and the experienced.
The word experience is derived from the latin “experientia” meaning to try, to test. Watch a toddler for five minutes to see that childhood is about trying and testing the world around us. It starts in the home as children explore their kitchen cabinets, testing which pots and pans make the loudest noise.
As they grow older, children explore their neighborhoods and begin to try out new sports and activities. We know from Sean Reardon’s research that the richness and frequency of these experiences is correlated to a family’s income level.
Children from affluent homes get many more chances to try new sports, to explore their interests at science or art camp, to travel beyond their community and importantly, to take more risk. Affluent families spend triple the amount of money on enrichment goods and services for their children.
Naysayers tweeting on social media will complain that a virtual reality field trip to Egypt is no substitute for strolling Cairo’s markets, smelling the spices or touching the Great Pyramids, and they are right. But right now, most children are learning about Egypt from an outdated and expensive textbook.
There’s a world of difference between three lines of printed text on a page and virtual exploration of King Tut’s tomb. The potential to ignite curiosity and encourage discovery multiplies tenfold with a virtual reality field trip. These rich experiences become the fertile ground for teachers to nurture the learning that comes after.
One tool in high demand is Nepris, which connects professionals to classrooms for real-time conversations. In the words of teacher Kelly Margot from Royse City, Texas (population 10,000):

I really think the great equalizer for equity with children is experiences. Experiences bridge that gap to give them opportunities to know what is out there. Yesterday, my students were able to talk to a brain expert in New York. Today, a student came in fired up about his next research idea over “Cures for Neurological Issues”. The expert told the kids what happens in the brain that causes autism. This kid wants to know what is being done to fix it.

Nepris is especially popular in rural areas where exposure to jobs is limited. For example, the Nepris platform enables a teacher in rural Arkansas to quickly connect her classroom to a computer science engineer in Waterloo Canada by posting a request on LinkedIn. The process is fast and frictionless.
While dreams and ambition are bountiful across socio-economic classes, experience and opportunity are not.
New technologies like Nepris and our portfolio company Nearpod can begin to broaden our experiences and improve our connectedness.
We can imagine a time in the not-to-distant future when technology will enable our children to walk in the shoes of a child with Down Syndrome or spend a day as a Muslim 9th grader. I don’t know how far off that future is but if we tread carefully forward, technology can be a powerful tool for educational equity.

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China Confirms Its Space Station Is Falling Back to Earth

Chinese officials appear to have confirmed what many observers have long suspected: that China is no longer in control of its space station.

China's Tiangong-1 space station has been orbiting the planet for about 5 years now, but recently it was decommissioned and the Chinese astronauts returned to the surface. In a press conference last week, China announced that the space station would be falling back to earth at some point in late 2017.

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Normally, a decommissioned satellite or space station would be retired by forcing it to burn up in the atmosphere. This type of burn is controlled, and most satellite re-entries are scheduled to burn up over the ocean to avoid endangering people. However, it seems that China's space agency is not sure exactly when Tiangong-1 will re-enter the atmosphere, which implies that the station has been damaged somehow and China is no longer able to control it.

This is important because it means Tiangong-1 won't be able to burn up in a controlled manner. All we know is it will burn up at some point in late 2017, but it is impossible to predict exactly when or where. This means that there is a chance debris from the falling spacecraft could strike a populated area.

Fortunately, it's unlikely anyone will be injured. Most of the parts of the space station will burn up in the atmosphere, and the few that do make it to the ground probably won't land in any populated areas. (It's a big planet.) Still, watch the skies late next year. You never know what could be falling down on you.

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Detecting walking speed with wireless signals By measuring this emerging vital sign, CSAIL system could help monitor and diagnose health issues like cognitive decline and cardiac disease.

We’ve long known that blood pressure, breathing, body temperature and pulse provide an important window into the complexities of human health. But a growing body of research suggests that another vital sign – how fast you walk – could be a better predictor of health issues like cognitive decline, falls, and even certain cardiac or pulmonary diseases.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to accurately monitor walking speed in a way that’s both continuous and unobtrusive. Professor Dina Katabi’s group at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has been working on the problem, and believes that the answer is to go wireless.
In a new paper, the team presents “WiGait,” a device that can measure the walking speed of multiple people with 95 to 99 percent accuracy using wireless signals.

The size of a small painting, the device can be placed on the wall of a person’s house and its signals emit roughly one-hundredth the amount of radiation of a standard cellphone. It builds on Katabi’s previous work on WiTrack, which analyzes wireless signals reflected off people’s bodies to measure a range of behaviors from breathing and falling to specific emotions.

“By using in-home sensors, we can see trends in how walking speed changes over longer periods of time,” says lead author and PhD student Chen-Yu Hsu. “This can provide insight into whether someone should adjust their health regimen, whether that’s doing physical therapy or altering their medications.”
WiGait is also 85 to 99 percent accurate at measuring a person’s stride length, which could allow researchers to better understand conditions like Parkinson’s disease that are characterized by reduced step size.
Hsu and Katabi developed WiGait with CSAIL PhD student Zachary Kabelac and master’s student Rumen Hristov, alongside undergraduate Yuchen Liu from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Assistant Professor Christine Liu from the Boston University School of Medicine. The team will present their paper in May at ACM’s CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Colorado.
How it works
Today, walking speed is measured by physical therapists or clinicians using a stopwatch. Wearables like FitBit can only roughly estimate speed based on step count, and GPS-enabled smartphones are similarly inaccurate and can’t work indoors. Cameras are intrusive and can only monitor one room. VICON motion tracking is the only method that’s comparably accurate to WiGate, but it is not widely available enough to be practical for monitoring day-to-day health changes.
Meanwhile, WiGait measures walking speed with a high level of granularity, without requiring that the person wear or carry a sensor. It does so by analyzing the surrounding wireless signals and their reflections off a person’s body. The CSAIL team’s algorithms can also distinguish walking from other movements, such as cleaning the kitchen or brushing one's teeth.
Katabi says the device could help reveal a wealth of important health information, particularly for the elderly. A change in walking speed, for example, could mean that the person has suffered an injury or is at an increased risk of falling. The system's feedback could even help the person determine if they should move to a different environment such as an assisted-living home.
“Many avoidable hospitalizations are related to issues like falls, congestive heart disease, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which have all been shown to be correlated to gait speed,” Katabi says. “Reducing the number of hospitalizations, even by a small amount, could vastly improve health care costs.”
The team developed WiGait to be more privacy-minded than cameras, showing you as nothing more than a moving dot on a screen. In the future they hope to train it on people with walking impairments from Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s or multiple sclerosis, to help physicians accurately track disease progression and adjust medications.
“The true novelty of this device is that it can map major metrics of health and behavior without any active engagement from the user, which is especially helpful for the cognitively impaired,” says Ipsit Vahia, a geriatric clinician at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the research. “Gait speed is a proxy indicator of many clinically important conditions, and down the line this could extend to measuring sleep patterns, respiratory rates, and other vital human behaviors.”

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How Fidget Spinners Work: It's All About the Physics

Fidget spinners ― kids spin them and spin them ― and while parents may not "get" why the boomerang-shaped toys have caught on with such force, there's real physics to explain how the distracting devices work.
"I was introduced to fidget spinners a few months ago by professor Kenneth Brecher from BU [Boston University]," said Paul Doherty, a physicist at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. "He makes his own spinning toys and handed me a fidget spinner and asked me to guess what it was. I described what it did but had no idea why someone would buy one ;-)," Doherty told Live Science in an email.
For Doherty, the spinners are interesting for another reason: "To me, these show the coolness of ball bearings that reduce friction and allow things to rotate freely for a long time." (On a basic level, friction is the resistance to motion that occurs when one object moves relative to another.) [Why Fidget Spinners Are So Hot (and Where to Buy Them)]
Here's a look at what's happening when your child, or you, balance a fidget spinner on your finger and give it a whirl.
Ball bearings are key to this spinning toy. To understand why, try this: Slide a block of wood or other material across the floor. Then do the same with a marble. "I bet the marble goes farther," Doherty said. That's because friction associated with rolling motion is typically less than so-called sliding friction.
This same principle can be applied to the spinners. At the center, and on each of the three "wings" of the spinner, is a bearing race, which is a circular channel around which tiny balls roll with low friction, Doherty said. [The Cool Physics of 7 Classic Toys]
To get any object to rotate, you need to exert a twisting force, known as torque, on it. That's where a set of little hands comes into play: "In a fidget spinner, you hold the center of one ball bearing, the outer bearing race spins around, and the outer parts of the fidget spin with the outer bearing race," Doherty said. "One flick of the fidget with a finger or a rapid twist of the wrist sets the fidget in motion, and it keeps going because of the low friction."
And when it comes to spinning, shape matters. "If you put the ball bearing at the center of a disk, you must start the spin by pushing on the outer part," Doherty said, referring to the fact that the object's center of mass would be at the center. (The center of mass is the point at which you can balance an object, like the pivot point of a seesaw.)
"However, if the object has protrusions so the ball bearing is not at the center of mass, you can start it spinning with a flick of your wrist," he added. The ball bearings on the outer parts of the spinner are mainly their for weight.
To understand how this works, Doherty offered a simple example. "Think of the ball bearing at one end of a short, thick tongue depressor. Hold the bearing between your thumb and forefinger and let the depressor hang down. Move your hand forward parallel to the floor, then stop suddenly, and the stick will flip around in a circle."
You can make your own fidget spinner, albeit a bulkier version, Doherty said. Here's how he did it, and though he didn't use ball bearings, he said, it still works.
With a parent or other adult supervising:

• Cut a 1.5-inch long (nearly 4 centimeters) section off a smooth cylindrical Bic or other similar pen, with the ink insert removed.
• Drill a hole slightly larger than the pen into a half-inch PVC 4-way connector, slightly off-center.
• Slide the cylindrical pen segment into the hole.
• With the pen held between your thumb and finger, it should take just a few seconds to get the "fidget" to spin, Doherty said.

(The Exploratorium has loads of other fun experiments and science-y activities like the one above.)
Original article on Live Science.

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Why you'll send a digital avatar to a meeting by 2020

In the future, you might not have to attend a meeting in person.
Instead, you’ll send an avatar who knows what you’d normally say, your opinions on important topics, and even finalize plans on a project. The “bot” might appear on a screen or as a robot that can look at the person speaking, walk up to the whiteboard, and make gestures.
And, here’s the good news. For anyone who has used the old joke about cloning yourself so you can become more productive, the avatar could handle multiple meetings, all at the same time. This will free you up to do the actual work that comes out of the meeting. You could dispatch an avatar to meet with a sales team in New York and in Omaha at the same time.
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This is not a far-fetched idea or something from a science-fiction movie. In fact, it’s possible you’ll send an avatar to your meetings by the year 2020 -- or even sooner.
Today, a telepresence robot can already fill in for you in a meeting. The downside is that the bot has no intelligence of its own; it’s more like a live video feed on wheels (that is, you still have to be the talking head). Some companies provide a virtual receptionist that can greet you and direct you to a meeting location. An avatar would be more like the virtual human that appears on the UK version of Match.com or a virtual resume that can share your work history.
A few companies are building the next step: an avatar that fills in for you.
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One is called Soul Machines. In a demo, an avatar can respond to questions or share opinions. The company is building the bot to use the bone structure and muscle movements of a real person. This avatar could mimic your word choices, your tacit knowledge, and even your facial expressions. It would work like an FAQ on a website initially, providing stock answers.
“I imagine this avatar will be authorized to answer questions and give positions, and defer to you if the response requires consideration,” Soul Machines CEO Mark Sagar told Fox News.
What comes next? An avatar from Soul Machines could carry on a conversation with other humans or with a group of avatars in a real (or virtual) meeting location. The goal would be exactly the same as it is now in meetings -- to reach a consensus, to elaborate on a topic, to make plans that become action points. When all of the avatars reach a resolution, the meeting would end.
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Another company called Oben is building a 3D virtual reality avatar. You’d use one to communicate for you in a virtual setting. The avatar uses Natural Language Processing (or NLU) to listen to conversations, process what everyone is saying, and respond. A bot like this could be trained to give the right response in a meeting according to a vast database of your viewpoints.
Of course, you might wonder if a meeting avatar will really work. Soul Machines’ Sagar explained that there will be a testing period and some glitches at first. If the bot gets confused, it could tap into a live feed for you to respond in real-time. Using machine learning, the bot could adapt to conversations. The bot would at least know the basics -- where you are traveling, which projects you have in your queue, what you’ve said on social media recently.
A meeting avatar could become so valuable that it could even put an end to meetings, although that will take even more work. It is far easier to share a few opinions about a project, but much harder to mimic the human brain and our ability to resolve conflict or theorize.

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Meet the 'Bat Bot': Scientists unveil robot that flies just like a bat

In what would make an excellent sidekick for Batman, scientists have built a fascinating, unconventional flying robot that moves its wings and flies just like a bat.
Covered with a thin, silicon skin, the flexible wings of this mechanical creature— called Bat Bot—  can move like bat wings do, making use of nine different artificial joints (real bats have far more joints). Anyone who’s ever seen a bat flap around at dusk knows they are incredible flyers, and Soon-Jo Chung, one of the flying robot’s creators, said that he gets “mesmerized” by bats’ impressive flight skills, with their quick turns and perching.
“Bat flight is the holy grail of aerial robotics,” Chung, an associate professor at CalTech and a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said during a conference call with reporters on Tuesday.
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The flying robotic creation is very different from a typical artificial flying device, like a quadrotor drone that uses spinning propellers. Bat Bot mimics a real species of bat from nature: Egyptian fruit bats.
“We have challenged ourselves to reverse engineer bats’ unrivaled agility with an aim to build a safe, energy-efficient soft-wing robot that can fly like a bat,” Chung said.
The bat bot can fly nearly 100 feet in a straight line, flapping its wings to create lift and propulsion. It weighs less than a quarter of a pound and has a wingspan of about a foot and a half.
Its creators say that a flying bat-like robot has advantages over traditional drones. For one, it’s safer to use in close proximity to humans, because it doesn’t have spinning props. Another possible advantage is the ability to maneuver in tight spaces. Its flexible wings are energy-efficient.

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'Security Fatigue' Complicates the Battle Against Data Breaches

With the news of a second, even bigger hack of Yahoo user data, common sense might conclude that consumers would be scurrying to batten down their Internet hatches. But a new study indicates otherwise, concluding that “security fatigue" has made many of us numb to the dangers lurking in cyberspace.

“Users are tired of being overwhelmed by the need to be constantly on alert, tired of all the measures they are asked to adopt to keep themselves safe, and tired of trying to understand the ins and outs of online security,” a team from the U.S. National Institutes of Standards and Technology concluded in an article for IT Professional, which is published by IEEE Computer Society. “All of this leads to security fatigue, which causes a sense of resignation and a loss of control.”

The study by Brian Stanton, Mary F. Theofanos and Susanne Furman, all of NIST, along with independent consultant Sandra Spickard Prettyman have indeed reached this saturation point.

So, the announcement in December by Yahoo that it has identified another security breach, from 2013, that compromised passwords, birthdays and other personal information from more than 1 billion accounts, will likely do little to bolster Internet security – at least among average users.

In fact, with the rise of mobile, the Internet of things and the continued linking of just about everything in our personal and professional lives to global networks, the study underscores what many have long warned will be a growing number of increasingly bigger security breaches, from distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks, to hacks of retail, banking, healthcare and other sites that we freely share our personal information with on a daily basis.

The report is based on an analysis the authors did of a larger study of average computer users in the Washington, D.C., and Central Pennsylvania in 2011.

Although that original study did not specifically address security fatigue, the authors say they began to notice “many indicators in which fatigue surfaced as participants discussed their perceptions and beliefs about online privacy and security.”

 After recoding the data, they said, security fatigue surfaced in 25 of 40 interviews, and was one of the most consistent codes among the dataset.

“I think I am desensitized to it,” one respondent is quoted as saying. “I know bad things can happen. You get this warning that some virus it going to attack your computer, and you get a bunch of emails that say don’t’ open any emails, blah, blah, blah. I think I don’t pay attention to those anymore because it’s in the past. People get weary of being bombarded by ‘watch out for this or watch out for that.’”

The authors said the data shows participants often don’t feel personally at risk, or assume they are not important enough for anyone to care about stealing their information. They highlight several comments in which they say the “frustrated tone, minimization of risk and devaluating of information is evident. 

“It doesn’t appear to me that it poses such a huge security risk,” one wrote. “I don’t work for the state department, and I am not sending sensitive information in an email. So, if you want to steal the message about (how) I made blueberry muffins over the week, then go ahead and steal that.”

Another wrote: “If someone needs to hack into my emails to read stuff, they have problems. They need more important things to do.”

What many of the respondents apparently don’t realize, is that while their personal communications and information may be of little value to hackers and cyber thieves on its face, their lax security practices enable the bad guys to hijack their computers and networks and use them in broader attacks, such as DDoS attacks that can cause huge crashes across the Internet.

So what can the IT community do? The researchers said it’s time to “rethink the way we currently conceptualize the public’s relationship to cybersecurity.”

They make three specific recommendations:

(i) limit the decisions users have to make related to security,
(ii) make it easier for them to do the right thing and
(iii) provide consistency whenever possible.

For example, in the workplace, they suggest offering different ways for users to log into the system, including an option between a traditional user name and password or the use of a personal identification and verification card.

“As IT professionals, it is our responsibility to take up this challenge and work to alleviate the security fatigue users’ experience,” they write.

“…We must also continue to investigate users’ beliefs, knowledge, and use of cybersecurity advice and the factors, such as security fatigue, that inform them, so we can ultimately provide more benefit and less cost for adopting cybersecurity advice that will keep users safe online.”

In other words, improving online security is going to require a concerted effort to not only educate computer users about the need to follow security guidelines, but also provide them much easier ways to keep their data safe on an ongoing basis.

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NDSS 2017 Deadlines Approaching

NDSS 2017 is almost here! The Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) symposium fosters information exchange among researchers and practitioners of network and distributed system security. The target audience includes those interested in practical aspects of network and distributed system security, with a focus on actual system design and implementation. NDSS 2017 takes place February 26 through March 1, 2017, at Catamaran Resort Hotel & Spa in San Diego, California.
Here are some upcoming deadlines you should know about:

• 18 JANUARY: DNS Privacy Workshop Call for Participation deadline (extended)
• 26 JANUARY: Call for Posters deadline
• 1 FEBRUARY: Hotel Reservation Cut-off Date
• 3 FEBRUARY: Early-bird Registration deadline

The List of Accepted Papers is online now, with a full schedule coming soon. There are also two workshops happening, one on DNS Privacy and the other on Useable Security.
NDSS brings together leaders in cybersecurity -- university researchers and educators, chief technology and privacy officers, security analysts and system administrators, and operations and security managers – to encourage and enable the Internet community to apply, deploy, and advance the state of available network and distributed system security technology. In order to have the greatest impact, peer reviewed papers are freely available and reproducible (for noncommercial purposes).
I hope you will be able to join us in San Diego next month for what promises to be an exciting and educational event!

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Nepal’s Economic Situation: A State of Perpetual Poverty, Stagnation, and Regional and Ethnic Disparities

This paper compares Nepal’s economic performance with its neighbours India and China, and examines regional and ethnic, language, and caste (ELC) group disparities, and intra-region and intra-ELC group disparities in the economic standing and educational attainment of Nepal. The regions and ELC groups considered in the paper are the same 12 regions and groups previously identified as building blocks for a federal Nepal (Acharya, 2007). Results show that Nepal’s productivity has stagnated and that it contains alarming levels of poverty. There are wide disparities in economic standing by region and ELC group. The wealthiest region and group is approximately four times richer than its poorest counterpart. However, these disparities come mainly from the income differences between people at the highest strata. The poorest are equally poor across all regions and ELC groups, but the share of people living in poverty varies greatly by region and group. This makes poverty a national and, to some extent, a regional and group issue. Nowhere in the country is the rate of illiteracy less than 46% (in some cases it is up to 59%), indicating that basic education is also mostly an outcome of economic disparity rather than of regional and ELC group division. However, there are wide regional and group disparities at the higher levels of education attainment. Furthermore, the female illiteracy rate is at least 20% more than that of males in all regions and ELC groups. Taken together it appears that while poverty, illiteracy, and gender inequality have certainly been influenced by regional and ELC group disparities, they penetrate across all regions and groups in Nepal. One of the causes of these problems is the alarming amount of intra-region and -group income disparities, especially in the wealthier regions and groups. The current state of the Nepalese economy indicates that there is a failure of past economic and social policies. This failure warrants an immediate and new national strategy with appropriate regional and group dimensions in order to address these problems.
Introduction
Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world, and its economic growth performance in the last half a century has been disappointing. Not only does it lag behind the global, and fastest-growing, economies of its neighbours India and China, it lags behind many other countries in the world. There are actually very few developing countries that are growing at a slower pace than Nepal in this period. Equally appalling is the fact that the economic opportunities in the country are asymmetrically distributed across regions and ethnic, language and caste (ELC) groups. The wrong economic and social (e.g. education) policies of the past have locked the country into perpetual poverty and economic stagnation. In order for Nepal to be a peaceful, stable, and prosperous society it is essential for there to be economic policies that unleash the forces of growth and uplift the poor.
Although though there has been much talk of political restructuring, there is no discussion of whether different economic and social policies are needed for a federal Nepal, let alone how they should be packaged. Thus, it seems likely that most of these policies will continue. Considering the piteous state of the economy today, it is obvious that no matter what political restructuring takes place, past policies neither can maintain peace in Nepal nor unleash the forces of growth. Continuing past economic policies is a recipe for furthering the socio-economic disparities among people in different regions and ELC groups.
Nepal is currently at the crossroads political restructuring. Conducive political restructuring is necessary for economic growth and equitable opportunity, but that alone is not sufficient. There must be a set of complementary economic policies to go along with political restructuring. There economic policies should address the root causes of poverty and stagnation. Thus, we need to understand the state of the economy at the national and regional levels. Since there are large differences in the economic standing of various ELC groups, which are the vital forces behind political restructuring, we must understand this dimension as well. There are no papers on this topic as far as we know. Thus, the objective of this paper is to fill in the gaps and provide an overview of the state of stagnation, poverty, and economic disparity across regions, ethnic groups, and gender in economic possession and education attainment. Although the paper stops short of outlining the economic and social policies needed to break the poverty perpetuation and stagnation, it will provide a vital and novel analysis that will be necessary for successful economic and social policies in a federal Nepal. The specific objectives of this paper are to answer to the following questions:
1. What has been Nepal’s developmental trajectory in the last three decades‌
2. How does Nepal lag in comparison to its neighbours India and China in terms of economic growth, education attainment, and fiscal prudence‌
3. How equitable is Nepalese society‌ How deep and widespread is poverty in Nepal‌
4. How great are the regional, ethnic, and gender disparities in Nepal‌
5. What is the root cause of the current state of the nation‌ Is it due to regional, ethnic, and gender disparities, or to the poverty across the board‌
6. What will it take to turn the nation from a state of gloom to a state of bloom‌
We have used the data from the Population Census of 2001 and Nepal Living Standard Survey II of 2003/2004 to answer these questions (for survey details see the Central Bureau of Statistics, 2004). The regions and ELC groups considered in the paper are the same 12 regions and groups that are identified as building blocks for a federal Nepal (Acharya, 2007). The main findings of the paper are as follows.
Nepal’s productivity is stagnated and the level of poverty is alarming. It will take 49 years or one generation, for per capita income double in Nepal compared to only eight and half years in China and 14 years in India. Nepal’s per capita gross domestic product (GDP) is at 20% of China and 41% of India. In 2006, Nepal’s per capita GDP of US$ 234 was only 36% of India’s per capita GDP and 15% of Chinese per capita GDP. Poverty has penetrated all regions and ELC groups. About 31% of people live below the poverty line as conservatively defined at 7,696 Nepalese Rupee (NR) per person.
There are large disparities in economic plight both by region and ELC group. The wealthiest region and group is approximately four-times richer than its poorest counterparts. However, these disparities come from the income differences of people at the higher strata of the income distribution – the poor are equally poor across all regions and ELC groups. This fact makes poverty mostly a national, and to a limited extent, a regional and group issue. There are intra-region and -group income disparities, wider in richer regions and richer groups. Nowhere in the country is the rate of illiteracy less than 46% (in some cases it is up to 59%), indicating that basic education is also mostly an outcome of economic disparity rather than of regional and ELC group division. However, there are wide regional and group disparities at the higher levels of education attainment. For example, about one-quarter of highly educated people live in a region with only 7% of the nation’s population. Furthermore, the female illiteracy rate is at least 20% more than that of males in all regions and ELC groups. Taken together it appears that while poverty, illiteracy, and gender inequality have certainly been influenced by regional and ELC group disparities, they penetrate across all regions and groups in Nepal. One of the causes of these problems is the alarming amount of intra-region and -group income disparities, especially in the wealthier regions and groups. The current state of the Nepalese economy indicates that there is a failure of past economic and social policies. This failure warrants an immediate and new national strategy with appropriate regional and group dimensions in order to address these problems.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In the following section, we describe the data used in this paper. We then compare Nepal’s achievement with that of India and China. We will describe how the regions used for this study are formed and which ethnic, language, and cultural groups are considered for comparison. We will analyse poverty by region and group, with the educational situation of those regions and groups is provided later. Finally, we will conclude the paper by providing policy suggestions.

Data
The paper uses macro level data compiled by the World Bank (the database called World Development Index) using different sources, data from 2001 Nepal’s Population Census and Nepal’s Living Standards Survey (NLSS II), conducted in 2003/2004. The Population survey data are used to identify the regional blocks and ethnic, language and cultural groups that we want to study as regional and group economies. Once the regions and groups have been identified, we use the individual level data from NLSS (II).[1] The survey used a two-stage stratified sampling approach: a nationally representative cross-section survey to estimate trends and levels of socio-economic indicators in the country and its different geographic regions; and the second component was a panel survey to track exact changes experienced by those previously enumerated households during last eight years. In the paper, we will use the data based on cross-section survey only. A brief discussion of how the survey was designed in provided in Appendix A.
We use NLSS II extensively because this is the only survey that provides information on consumption, incomes, assets, housing, education, health, fertility, migration, employment, and child labour by different ELS groups in Nepal. This survey can be used not only to assemble information based on the regions but also based on different ethnic, language and caste groups.

Nepal and Its Neighbours

In 2006 Nepal was an economy of 583 billions NR, which converted at the official exchange rate of NR 73 per US$, is an economy of US$ 8 billion. With purchasing power parity (PPP) conversion factor to NR vis-à-vis US$ official exchange rate of 0.182, Nepal’s GDP in 2006 was US$ 44 billion in PPP.[2] In terms of US$, Nepal’s GDP is about one-fifth of the province of Manitoba. And in terms of PPP, Nepal’s GDP is 10% higher than that of Manitoba or Saskatchewan. However, in terms of population, Nepal’s 28 million populations is 24 times the population of Manitoba and 28 times of Saskatchewan.[3]
Nepal, which is bordered with India and China, has been a lost case in terms of both economic growth and equity. For the last 40 years, Nepal’s GDP per capita increased only by 1 percent annually whereas that of India and China increased by 3% and 6.8% respectively. Taking decade as a sub-period, as the Chart 1 shows, Nepal’s average annual growth rate has been substantially lower than those of two neighbours in each decade Chart 1). For example, in the last decade (1996-2006), Nepal’s per capita income increased only by 1.4%, whereas that of India increased by 5% and that of China by 8.4%. In this rate, it will take 49 years, a generation, to double the per capita income of a Nepali, whereas for an Indian it will take 14 years and for a Chinese it will take less than nine years. By the time the per capita income of a Nepalese doubles it will increase by 4-folds for an Indian and by 6-folds for a Chinese.
As a result of growth stagnation, per capita income of a Nepalese lags far behind that of its neighbours. Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world with per capita GDP of US$
234 (at constant 2000 US$), ranking at 163 out of 179 countries in the world, all 16 countries with less than Nepal’s GDP are sub-Saharan countries. As shown in chart 2, in 2006 Nepal’s per capita GDP of US$234 was only 36% of India’s per capita GDP of US$ 634 and 15% of Chinese per capita GDP of US$ 1,595. In terms of PPP, Nepal’s per capita GDP of US$ 1,397 is 41% of India and 20% of China. In other words, income of a Chinese is equal to that of five Nepalese and income of an Indian is equal to two and half Nepalese.
That is the story of overall growth. What about the social development in terms of education and health‌ Nepal’s record in terms of its neighbours is at least as bad as its record in economic growth. For example, in education, still more than half of Nepalese are completely illiterate compared to 40% in India and 9% in China (Chart 3).
In terms of gender equality, even though in primary and secondary education, female to male enrolment ratio in Nepal is about 90%, the situation in tertiary education is alarming. Female which slightly out number male in total number represents only 40% of tertiary education. Both India and China fair far better than Nepal in female enrolment ratio. This is just the macro national picture; we will have much more on education while we discuss regional, group and gender inequalities in education attainment in the coming section.
There has been no structural change in Nepal from agriculture to other sectors of the economy; it still remains predominantly an agrarian economy. However, India is emerging as a global service centre, whereas China is transformed into a global manufacturing powerhouse. With such emerging economies in its doorstep, a tremendous opportunity for Nepal’s prosperity is missed because of Nepal’s wrong economic and social policies.
One could argue that the fiscal structure of Nepal perpetuates poverty and discourages growth. The data on Table 1 shows the following. First, share of taxes on income, profits and capital gains in total government revenue is very low (11.4%) in Nepal compared to 35.4% in India. This means that there are basically no taxes on income and other property. Second, taxes on international trade are very high (21.9%) and that comes mainly from taxes on customs and other import duties. As most of the necessities are imported, the incidence of tax on trade falls on ordinary people. Third, one third of Nepal’s revenue is contributed by grants and other revenue (which is mainly grants as the aid to central government budget is 40%) from outside. This should have reflected at lower tax to GDP ratio, but that is not the case. This ratio of 9.7% in Nepal is comparable to 10.2% in India which does not have any aid money at all. Fourth, despite this heavy grants, the debt to GDP ratio in Nepal is not low, it is as high as in India.

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Poverty Alleviation in Sarlahi

Sarlahi is one of the Terai districts of the Central Development Regions having six constitutional areas; seventeen area (Ilaka) divisions, one municipality and ninety-nine VDCs. Hempur and Jamuniya, which are the working areas for PAF, projects Hempur and Jamuniya are in the mid part of Sarlahi and the other 2 VDCs Ramban and Rohuwa are near the border of India. Hempur and Jamuniya are both neighboring VDCs. These two VDCs are located about 20 km south from the East West Highway and 7 km south west from Nawalpur. The location of Ramban and Rahuwa is about 20 km. west from Malangwa. There are gravel roads in all VDCs. We can get Haempur and Jamuniya via Gair- and Salempur chowk, which lie on the way to Nawalpur- Malangwa road. Personal and public ponds are the sources of irrigation in addition to water from rain in these VDCs, which are almost dry in other than rainy season. Public wells and private hand pumps are the major sources of drinking water. The level of water is available near about 25/30 ft. under the ground, and the quality of water is good. The household settlement of the VDCs is dense with mostly wooden houses.
People from different walks of life are living together making these VDCs a multi cultural, multi caste and multi practice holding VDCs. Majority of the people are making their livelihood operating with agriculture and livestock farming where as some are making their living on employment business and wages-labor. People are lagging behind in every sector of life because of the miserable economic condition, illiteracy, lack of awareness and employment problem. People are compelled to live their livelihood with labor wages as majority of the people are from dalit, janajati and marginalized sections of the community. It is difficult even to manage food from their own production for 12 months. In spite of 80-90 percent people living below the poverty line these VDCs are getting some sorts of economic support as there has been running three events local bazaar near the VDCs in a week. Local people are taking that bazaar as main centre to selling their products and buying their daily needs.
In the project areas, there is presence of Yadav, Paswan, Mahara, Mahato, Sah, Khatwe, Majhi, Brahmin, Kayastha, Lohar-Thakur, Hajam, Dom and Dhobi. Almost all people respect and follow Hinduism and likewise traditions. Maithili is spoken mostly as a local language and 25 percent of the residents are unfamiliar with the Nepali language. Although caste discrimination is highly prevalent in the area, however, instances of caste-based discrimination are significantly on decline due to greater awareness on the part of youth and civic society interventions. There is a strong prevalence of patriarchal dominance in the working VDCs of this project. Indeed, women are primarily involved in the household chores and have fewer educational opportunities, which is one of the main reasons for their low presence in social work and also hindering their advancement. Due to low literacy rate among people, there is difficulty in developing a culture of team spirit and community work. The area has a very hot climate; nearly 9 months remain hot. The area is flood prone as the Lakhanti River is close to the area causing frequent flood during the rainy season. The economical situation has been improving steadily in recent years through the PAF program. Locals depend heavily on the agricultural production for their livelihood.
The educational status of the area is very poor and is characterized by an overall weak educational system. There are 4 primary and 2 secondary schools running in the area with 35 teachers, including 3 female teachers. Two private boarding schools are also being operated in the area. Due to availability of educational facilities only up to secondary level, people generally go to Malangwa, Janakpur, Birgunj, Kathmandu and foreign countries for their further and advanced education. The public/government schools are characterized with low infrastructure facilities, poor student-teacher ratio and quality education programs, insufficient educational materials and lack of child-friendly teaching learning environment (source: DDC Profile, Sarlahi).

Purpose:

Reduce poverty through supporting poor targeted community

Target:

Sarlahi district

Target Groups:

70 organized COs of Hempur Jamuniya, Ramban, Rohuwa, Godaita, Sisautiya and Laxmipur Sukchaina VDCs and 1954 HHs

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Terai Region Of Nepal Divison of Terai

Nepal is divides into 3 regions. i.e. Himalayan region, Hilly region and Terai region. Terai region is located on the bottom part of Nepal. Terai is usually known as the grain house of Nepal since most the crops that are sold throughout Nepal are farmed from Terai region. The land area of Terai region is also very plain i.e. it is most suitable for growing crops and other food items. The Terai is a region of grasslands, savannas and forests between the foots of the Hilly region.

Terai region covers about 17% of the total area of Nepal. The Terai stretches from the international border with India in the Far-Western region to the Easter region. It is located at an altitude of 67-300m (220-980 ft.). The terai region consists of many small and seasonal rovers, most of them which originate straight from the Himalayan regions. The Terai’s soil is alluvial and moist so that various species of food crops can cultured and harvested. Main crops that are cultivated are paddy, wheat, pulses, moong, sugarcane, jute, tobacco and maize. Many agro-based industries like jute factories, sugar mills, are established throughout the region.

 

In Nepal, Terai is differentiated in “outer” and “Inner” Terai. The Outer Terai  starts from the southern edge of the Siwalik Hills. In Nepal, it extends to the border with India and includes drier, mostly cleared agricultural land. The major towns that are located on outer terai of Nepal are:

Bhadrapur, Mechinagar, Biratnagar, Inaruwa, Itahari, Lahan, Rajbiraj, Janakpur, Birjgung, Butwal and Siddharthanagar.

Inner Terai refers to elongated valleys lying between the Siwalik Range and the Mahabharat range. These valleys are known as “Duns”. Like for example Dehra Dun. Most of the valleys extend east-west to enclosing ranges. Inner Terai valleys historically were agriculturally productive but extremely malaraial. Indigineous Tharu people had resistance towards the disease due to the presence of sickle cells present in them. Some important towns in Inner Terai are Triyuga, Kamalamai, Bharatpur, Hetauda, tandi, Tulsipur, Tribhuvannagar, Deukhuri and Birendranagar.

Since the Terai region usually consists of forests it is more prone to diseases.

Ethnic Groups:

Tharu people have been the inhibitants of the Terai region from the very beginning. They had resistance towards malaria. After the launch of Malaraial eradication program many people from the Hilly region started to migrate towards the Terai region and hance sttled there. The eastern part has been occupied by castes and ethnic groups that migrated from India- the Madhesi people, a term that sometimes also includes the Tharu people. People from Hilly region were wealthier and hence purchased large amount of Land for themselves for irrigational purpose.

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Impact The Benefits of Addressing Hearing Loss

Better Hearing = Better Lives

Providing access to affordable hearing aids not only improves quality of life, it also allows children to attend school and improves their chances of finding a good job. World Wide Hearing creates the opportunity for hearing-impaired individuals to realize their full potential as productive members of society. Read on to learn about the different ways hearing affects a person's life.

Social

The connections we form with others and the quality of our relationships are possible thanks to our ability to communicate. Communication allows us to study, find work, relate to others, and participate in social activities.
Hearing is a critical aspect of communication. It’s crucial to developing meaningful relationships and fully enjoying life, whether participating in a conversation between friends or enjoying music or the sounds of nature.
People who can’t hear are cut off from their family, friends, and community. They often suffer from discrimination, stigmatization, and inferior educational and social services. In some countries they are seen as a source of shame and hidden away from view. As a result, they are more at risk of developing mental health problems like depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem.
Better hearing enables people to connect to those around them and participate in community life. Children who have access to hearing aids are able to grow up healthier and happier, and are better equipped to face the future as adults.

Economic

Hearing aids can reduce poverty while enabling individuals to realize their full potential as productive members of their communities. A child with a hearing aid can to do better in school, get a diploma, and have access to a better job.
The annual financial cost of hearing loss in the United States alone has been estimated between $122 billion and $186 billion, equivalent to 2-3% of its GNP.¹ In Australia, the financial cost of hearing loss in 2005 was $11.75 billion AUD, or 1.4% of its GDP.²
The bulk of this impact is due to lost productivity (higher unemployment and lower wages), which accounts for 57% of all costs associated with hearing loss. However, hearing loss also costs society billions of dollars each year in unrealized tax revenue and specialized health programs. Developing countries trying to lift themselves out of poverty are weighed down by the financial burden of this untreated disability.
In the United States 50% of the costs of hearing loss could be recovered simply by providing hearing aids.³ In Australia, every $1 invested in early-intervention hearing care and speech therapy for children results in an economic return of $1.91.⁴ Affordable hearing care can be a powerful force to stimulate economic development in the developing world

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Information & Communication Technology

Information and communication technology (ICT) has proved to be a key enabler of many human rights.  But there are profound questions about how to respect and protect human rights in the digital age.
IHRB identifies and analyses challenges to human rights arising from the use of ICTs, in particular impacts on freedom of expression and privacy.  We recommend actions companies, civil society and governments can take to protect human rights in the digital realm, which in turn affects human rights in the real world.
Our past projects have focused on hate speech in Kenya, global surveillance reforms, cybersecurity exports, the growing ICT sector in Myanmar, and network shutdowns in Pakistan.
IHRB is currently exploring the global phenomenon of ‘Big Data’, which has the potential to do a lot of good but raises concerns about how governments and companies should act responsibly in the collection, storage, processing and sharing of data.

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Top 10 Education Tech

Education is evolving fast. Every day, we hear about some new technology that will change the world and the way we learn in it. At Brainscape, we are dedicated to improving the way you learn with our own innovative smart flashcard technology (check out our subjects here), but there are many other educational technologies that are key to improving learning around the world. Because these rapid changes offer us the chance to improve education at every level for all people, it is more important now than ever before for teachers and students to have access to the best new methods, programs, and devices in the field right away.
Luckily, many dedicated educators blog about some of the best education technologies available and the evolution of their uses. These 10 blogs are our favorites here at Brainscape. Smart, pithy, and immediately useful, these blogs will teach you plenty about the best and most up-to-date technologies for use inside classrooms, at home, and wherever there are students who want to learn.

Top 10 Education Tech Blogs

1. The Innovative Educator

If you have ever felt that school was boring or irrelevant, the Innovative Educator, Lisa Nielson, understands how you feel. Motivated by her own disillusionment with the way public schools today approach teaching, Nielson focuses on showing other educators ways that they can use freely available resources and technologies already within students’ grasps to make classes more engaging and relevant. Not only does Nielson deal with broad ideas about technology in the classroom, but also the nitty gritty details of implementation, so that teachers will be able to use her ideas without having to struggle against a budget process or other restrictions.

2. The Daring Librarian

Gwyneth Jones, the Daring Librarian herself, knows that librarians can have lots of fun. Approaching ed-tech with a sense of humor and plenty of Vines and cartoons to illustrate her stories, Jones writes a blog that entertains as it informs. Not only does she provide plenty of excellent content on new apps and ideas on how to use everyday websites as learning opportunities, but also a good measure of fun stories that will have you laughing out loud.

3. EdTech RoundUp

With weekly posts on the state of technology in education, EdTech RoundUp is the best place to go to find out the latest news related to education tech. The comprehensive coverage of news and recently released apps and devices allows you to find out the latest happenings in just one place every week. While this blog may not have as many original ideas as some other blogs in the field, the RoundUp provides you with the best place to keep informed on progress in the field.

4. Edudemic

Easily the largest hub for education content out there, Edudemic provides teachers with advice, ideas, and lesson plans to better integrate technology in the classroom. While a visit to this site may be a bit overwhelming at first due to the sheer amount of attention-grabbing content, you will always be able to find new ideas that make your visit worth your time.

5. MindShift

When you are tired of reading the same ideas over and over again written in different words on different blogs, head over to MindShift for something unique. Focusing on slightly edgier, more fringe topics within the educational technology field, MindShift opens your eyes to totally new ideas. With its wide scope and its dedication to sharing all unique opinions on education, MindShift will give you plenty to talk about with your colleagues.

6. Free Technology 4 Teachers

While ideas are great, implementation remains the biggest challenge for many teachers. A lack of resources and tools plagues many schools, making it more difficult to use technology in the classroom. Richard Byrne addresses this in his blog, Free Technology 4 Teachers. His well-organized site is a treasure trove of free apps, software, videos, and graphics that teachers can use in the classroom right away. Practical and clear, Byrne gives suggestions that even the least tech-savvy teacher can use.

7. Cycles of Learning

Who doesn’t like a good life hack? Ramsay Musallam recognized how useful hacks could be in classrooms, so he set up Cycles of Learning to share practical education tech hacks to make teachers’ lives just a bit easier. Once you see his TED Talk on sparking learning, you won’t be able to get enough of his content. By focusing on simple ways to inspire real learning in students using technology in the classroom, Musallam shows us that even learning can be hacked.

8. Edutopia

Hosted by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, Edutopia has plenty of well-indexed information on how technology can be used in classrooms. Since information is filed by age group and topic, teachers can easily get practical ideas that are relevant to their current curriculum without wading through lots of ideas that won’t quite work for their individual situations. With plenty of videos and fun quizzes, Edutopia can be a fun place to browse even if you aren’t looking for anything specific. Make sure to click on their “Trending Topics” section to find out what the hottest topics are currently in education technology.

9. Steve Hargadon

Don’t let the simple design and lack of flash fool you; Steve Hargadon’s blog provides plenty of worthwhile current information on educational technologies. A true ed-tech leader, Hargadon is the director of the Web 2.0 Labs, host of the Future of Education interview series, chair of the Social Learning Summit and the Learning 2.0 Conference, and co-chair of the annual Global Education and Library 2.0 worldwide conferences. As Hargadon is one of the top experts on educational technology, you can be assured that reading his blog will give you plenty of innovative ideas.

10. My Paperless Classroom

Sam Patterson, K-5 tech integration specialist, talks about his own experiences trying to implement tech ideas in classes in My Paperless Classroom. Not only does Patterson have some excellent ideas on how to effectively use technologies less commonly allowed in classes, including MineCraft worlds, toys, and video games, but he also candidly reveals some of the challenges and pitfalls of these technologies. Be prepared to learn what tech integration really means in the classroom.

*****

While all of these favorites are worth bookmarking in our opinion, every day more creative education tech blogs pop up with new approaches and unique ideas. At Brainscape, we love reading any education technology blog we happen upon, because we always learn something new. Do you know any excellent education technology blog we didn’t mention? Let us know in the comments below, because we’d love to hear from more brilliant educators. Education technology never stops changing, but by following some of the leaders in the field, we can make sure that we are in the know about the best ideas out there to help our students. And if you’re interested in education technology, make sure to check out all the smart, adaptive flashcards from Brainscape!

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Design, Code & Build Exciting Wearable Projects Using Arduino Tools

If you're interested in designing and building your own wearables, the Arduino platform is perfect for you. With this e-book, you'll learn to create your own wearable projects by mastering different electronic components--such as LEDs and sensors--then applying your learnings through practical projects. You'll consolidate your new skills in your final project, utilizing all the concepts you've learned to create a smartwatch complete with fitness tracking, Internet-based notifications, GPS, and time-telling.

• Develop a basic understanding of wearable computing w/ 218 pages of content
• Learn about Arduino & compatible prototyping platforms suitable for creating wearables
• Understand the design process surrounding the creation of wearable objects
• Gain insight into materials suitable for developing wearable projects
• Design & create projects w/ various kinds of electronic components: interactive bike gloves, GPRS locator watch, etc.
• Dive into programming for interactivity
• Learn how to connect & interface wearables w/ Bluetooth & Wi-Fi
• Get your hands dirty w/ your own personalized designs
• 
  Details & Requirements
  

  • Length of time users can access this e-book: lifetime
  • Access options: download for offline access
  • Certification of completion not included
  • Redemption deadline: redeem your code within 30 days of purchase
  • Experience level required: all levels

  Compatibility
  

  • Internet required (for download)
  • Basic knowledge of Arduino programming recommended
   

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Docs much bettter than internet or app-based symptoms checkers Head-to-head comparison reveals human physicians vastly outperform virtual ones

Increasingly powerful computers using ever-more sophisticated programs are challenging human supremacy in areas as diverse as playing chess and making emotionally compelling music. But can digital diagnosticians match, or even outperform, human physicians?

The answer, according to a new study led by researchers at Harvard Medical School, is "not quite."
The findings, published Oct. 10 in JAMA Internal Medicine, show that physicians' performance is vastly superior and that doctors make a correct diagnosis more than twice as often as 23 commonly used symptom-checker apps. The analysis is believed to provide the first direct comparison between human-made and computer-based diagnoses.
Diagnostic errors stem from failure to recognize a disease or to do so in a timely manner. Physicians make such errors roughly 10 to 15 percent of the time, researchers say.
Over the last two decades, computer-based checklists and other fail-safe digital apps have been increasingly used to reduce medication errors or streamline infection-prevention protocols. Lately, experts have wondered whether computers might also help improve clinical diagnoses and reduce diagnostic errors. Each year, hundreds of millions of people use Internet programs or apps to check their symptoms or to self-diagnose. Yet how these computerized symptom-checkers fare against physicians has not been well studied.
In the study, 234 internal medicine physicians were asked to evaluate 45 clinical cases, involving both common and uncommon conditions with varying degrees of severity. For each scenario, physicians had to identify the most likely diagnosis along with two additional possible diagnoses. Each clinical vignette was solved by at least 20 physicians.
The physicians outperformed the symptom-checker apps, listing the correct diagnosis first 72 percent of the time, compared with 34 percent of the time for the digital platforms. Eighty-four percent of clinicians listed the correct diagnosis in the top three possibilities, compared with 51 percent for the digital symptom-checkers.
The difference between physician and computer performance was most dramatic in more severe and less common conditions. It was smaller for less acute and more common illnesses.
"While the computer programs were clearly inferior to physicians in terms of diagnostic accuracy, it will be critical to study future generations of computer programs that may be more accurate," said senior investigator Ateev Mehrotra, an associate professor of health care policy at HMS.
Despite outperforming the machines, physicians still made errors in about 15 percent of cases. Researchers say developing computer-based algorithms to be used in conjunction with human decision-making may help further reduce diagnostic errors.
"Clinical diagnosis is currently as much art as it is science, but there is great promise for technology to help augment clinical diagnoses," Mehrotra said. "That is the true value proposition of these tools."
Co-investigators included Hannah Semigran, former research assistant in the HMS Department of Health Care Policy; David Levine, HMS research fellow in medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital; and Shantanu Nundy, an employee of the Human Diagnosis Project, the creators of Human Dx.

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