#U s. State department and Coursera partner to support free education in over 30 countries The State departments goal is having more foreigners learn English and experience the U s. education system.
U s. embassies around the world this fall are hosting weekly discussions for students enrolled in free online courses, called MOOCS, in partnership with Coursera, the Silicon valley-based platform with over 5 million users.
Embassy employees and Fulbright fellows (Fulbright being an academic exchange program sponsored by the State department) will volunteer to host the discussions.
There will be over 30 sites to begin with in countries like India, China, and Bolivia. Topics include English, science, technology, engineering, business, and U s. civics.##
###The State department and USAID promote a more peaceful, prosperous world, and we all know one of the best ways to get there is to ensure that all people have access to high-quality education,
##says Meghann Curtis, deputy assistant secretary for academic programs at the U s. Department of state s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs,
which is running the##MOOC Camp##program.####We saw MOOCS as this great tool to achieve a number of goals,
##she says.####It gave me, like, a taste of what is first world education, ##said Alejandra B,
. a 21-year-old student studying business at a Catholic university in La paz, Bolivia. She started the MOOC Camp in September,
meeting weekly with other students who were taking#Foundations of Business Strategy, a Coursera course taught by Michael Lenox at the University of Virginia s Darden School of business.
Alejandra liked learning the real-world case studies and how to write a business plan. The La paz example was an exceptional one.
In addition to going over the materials in the MOOC facilitator Yuki Kondo-Shah, an assistant cultural affairs officer in her first post, arranged video chats with U s. entrepreneurs,
like the founder of Disqus and Fundly. And the embassy is following up with a business plan competition for local students, with an#ipad#Mini as the prize.
Alejandra is working on a website that gathers data about rural areas in Bolivia.####I ve been fascinated with MOOCS
ever since they came out, ##says Kondo-Shah.####I thought this would be a great opportunity to work with Bolivian students
and get them exposed to American-style education.####The State department s sponsorship of this project isn t all altruistic.
They have the official goal of having more foreigners learn English and experience the U s. education system.
Every participant in a##MOOC Camp##will meet with an advisor from State seducationusa#program, which helps international students go to U s. colleges.
For its part, Coursera is providing training resources for facilitators. It will be tracking students success through the platform.
The idea is that people will find it easier to persist and succeed in the online,
video-based interactive courses when they have the chance to get in-person support from facilitators and from peers.
Increasing student success through this so-called##blended learning##approach is pretty important for Coursera and the other MOOC platforms.
Globally, 90%of those who enroll in the online courses created by professors at universities like Stanford, Pennsylvania State university, Wesleyan,
and Yale don t finish. There s some interesting political undertones to this experiment. Although MOOC platforms have partner institutions located around the world,
the very idea of MOOCS has been labeled###cultural imperialism###for broadcasting courses created at elite institutions.
This impression can only be enhanced when a MOOC program is sponsored literally by the U s. government for U s. diplomatic reasons.
Also, MOOC Camp is running in some countries not known for freedom of speech like China and the former Soviet republic of Georgia,
and it ll be interesting to see how the American liberal arts approach to classroom discussion flies in such settingsespecially
when the topic is U s. power itself.####We see this as an opportunity to draw an audience
and create a forum for open and spirited discussion, ##says Curtis.##One of the classes is American foreign policy.
I think that will make an extremely rich forum to debate the issues.####Photo credit: The News Tribe Via Fast Company Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorat
#Lockheed martin s SPAN spy rock could be the military s new secret weapon The surveillance technology is so small it can fit in a rock.
Lockheed martin showcased developments in their surveillance technology called SPAN (Self-Powered Ad hoc Network) at the annual AUSA Army meeting in Washington, D c. last week.
SPAN, a##covert, perpetually self-powered wireless sensor network##that can provide##unobtrusive, continuous surveillance##in units so small they can fit in a rock.##
##SPAN is a mesh network of self-organizing sensors that, when triggered, can cue a camera
or an unmanned aerial vehicle to further study an area, or summon an engineer when a pipeline or bridge structure is in danger or fractured.
It uses proprietary algorithms to reduce false alarms. Lockheed touts the##field -and-forget##technology as providing maximum coverage at minimal costs,
claiming that the sensors can remain in the field for years at a time without maintenance, powered by solar technology.
The defense contractor is hoping to sell its spy rocks for surveillance, border protection pipeline monitoring and bridge security, among other things.
The SPAN system was introduced originally last year, but this isn t the company s first attempt at making smart rocks.
Earlier this year, a former Lockheed martin subcontractor made headlines for attempting to sell on ebay for $10 million#an early 2000s prototype of the surveillance rock before Lockheed pulled the plug on the project.
Included in the package were hundreds of pages of detailed development instructions, two years of emails with Lockheed and some hardware##but no rock.##
##Selling this collection of information is an attempt at recouping all or a portion of my investment of time, effort, personal monies,
and sweat equity,##Gregory Perry#told#Mother Jones. The auction ended with no bids. And although Lockheed claims that SPAN s inconspicuous sensors##reduce the likelihood of discovery and tampering,
##it s a safe bet that British intelligence didn t think a rock would be the cause of a diplomatic row.
Last year, Tony blair s former chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, admitted that British secret service agency MI6 had planted a spy rock#in a Moscow park to communicate with secret agents in 2006 (as depicted below by Taiwanese animators.
Powell said that the##embarrassing##discovery by Russian officials caused a severe diplomatic strain between the two countries,
despite the UK s best efforts to laugh off the accusations as absurd Russian propaganda. Via Wired Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorat i
#Google hopes to cure death with its new health startup Calico Google is planning to launch a new company with the absurdly ambitious objective of extending our lives. alicois the name of the company
and will be run by Arthur Levinson, chairman and ex-CEO of biotech company Genentech. Google gave exclusive access to Time magazine for a story on the new venture.
Underscoring the scope of Google ambition, the cover of Time asks, an Google solve death?
That, in a nutshell, is the goal of Calico. Sounds like a joke, but it not. On Google+,Google CEO Larry page wrote, K so youe probably thinking wow!
That a lot different from what Google does today. And youe right. But as we explained in our first letter to shareholders,
there tremendous potential for technology more generally to improve people lives. So don be surprised if we invest in projects that seem strange
or speculative compared with our existing Internet businesses. And please remember that new investments like this are very small by comparison to our core business.
Levinson is current the chair of Apple board. He has the blessing of Apple CEO Tim cook to start this new Google-y company.
In a release Cook said, or too many of our friends and family, life has been cut short
or the quality of their life is too often lacking. Art is one of the crazy ones who thinks it doesn have to be this way.
There is no one better suited to lead this mission and I am excited to see the results.
So, how is Calico going to go about extending our lives, and perhaps, ultimately curing death? Page doesn lay out any specific plan.
On Google+he says, t still very early days so there not much more to share yet.
Of course when Art has something more substantial to communicate (and that will likely take time),
hel provide an update. Time reports, hile the company is holding its cards about Calico close to the vest,
expect it to use its core data-handling skills to shed new light on familiar age-related maladies.
Sources close to the project suggest it will start small and focus entirely on researching new technologies.
It fine Calico doesn have an exact plan. It tackling a huge challenge. If there were some straight line
simple solution, this would have been cured long ago. This is an outlandish project, but it the kind of project Page loves.
That why Google is doing self driving cars, and balloons floating in the air with Internet connections. Google which boatloads of cash,
and limitless ambition sees itself as the only company willing to take big risks like this. not proposing that we spend all of our money on those kinds of speculative things,
says Page in an interview with Time, ut we should be spending a commensurate amount with
what normal types of companies spend on research and development, and spend it on things that are a little more long-term
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA September 18, 2013 Google today announced Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being, in particular the challenge of aging and associated diseases.
Arthur D. Levinson, Chairman and former CEO of Genentech and Chairman of Apple, will be Chief executive officer and a founding investor.
Announcing this new investment, Larry page, Google CEO said: llness and aging affect all our families.
With some longer term, moonshot thinking around healthcare and biotechnology, I believe we can improve millions of lives.
It impossible to imagine anyone better than Artne of the leading scientists, entrepreneurs and CEOS of our generationo take this new venture forward.
And here his Google+entry: I excited to announce Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being, in particular the challenge of aging and associated diseases.
Art Levinson, Chairman and former CEO of Genentech and Chairman of Apple, will be Chief executive officer. OK so youe probably thinking wow!
That a lot different from what Google does today. And youe right. But as we explained in our first letter to shareholders,
there tremendous potential for technology more generally to improve people lives. So don be surprised if we invest in projects that seem strange
or speculative compared with our existing Internet businesses. And please remember that new investments like this are very small by comparison to our core business.
Art and I are excited about tackling aging and illness. These issues affect us allrom the decreased mobility
and mental agility that comes with age, to life-threatening diseases that exact a terrible physical and emotional toll on individuals and families.
And while this is clearly a longer-term bet we believe we can make good progress within reasonable timescales with the right goals and the right people.
Our press release has a few more details though it still very early days so there not much more to share yet.
It hard for many companies to make long term investments. So I tremendously excited about the innovative new way wee funding this project.
Now for the hard work! And Arthur Levinson is also on Google+with an announcement:
You may have seen the news (http://goo. gl/Kjre4q) that Google and I will be starting a new company focused on health, aging and well-being, called Calico.
I honored and incredibly enthusiastic about this opportunity, and eager to get started. I suspect there are a lot of questions,
such as how this came about, what we hope to accomplish, and why alico. When I served on Google board,+Larry page and
I got to know each other wellnd when he and Bill Maris approached me about a venture that would take the long term view on aging and illness,
I was intrigued deeply. For example, what underlies aging? Might there be a direct link between certain diseases and the aging process?
We agreed that with great people, a strong culture and vision and a healthy disregard for the impossible,
and many are beginning to think in terms of houses that generate their own water supply, self-irrigating crops,
and even aterlesscities. The earth atmosphere is a far more elegant water distribution system than rivers, reservoirs,
and other forms of passive energy, our future water networks will be operate with far more efficiency and convenience than anything imaginable today.
and superhydrophobic (water hating) surfaces, on the nanoscale. Together these surfaces dramatically increased the efficiency of moisture condensation and
Submissions ranged from self-filling water bottles, to extreme dehumidification, to a large-scale water sources for greenhouse drip irrigation, to emergency water for lifeboats, to self-filling canteens for the military,
presented a simple elegant design for the emerging aquaponics and hydroponics industries. These small-scale agricultural operations require high humidity environments,
and The Aquamist produced a water-replenishing environment to satisfy those needs. A new breed of companies has begun to spring up around the world,
looking to the skies to solve the world looming water issues. These companies are using a variety of technologies to drive costs down for extracting water from air.
Fogquest is a Canadian nonprofit that uses modern fog collectors to bring drinking water and water for irrigation and reforestation to rural communities in developing countries around the world.
But to work, they do require fog and light winds. Living in the Caribbean in 1997, inventor Marc Parent came up with the idea of using a windmill to extract water from the air.
With a French venture capital investment, Parent moved the company to Sainte Tulle France. After many years of development and testing, the WMS1000 (shown above) became the world first wind turbine able to produce 1, 000 liters of water a day from air condensation.
The first unit was shipped to Abu dhabi for extended testing in the extreme weather conditions of the Middle east.
Developed by James Dyson Award winner, Edward Linnacre, the Airdrop irrigation concept was developed for poor agricultural conditions in periods of severe drought.
Extensive research into droughts revealed an increase in soil evaporation and trans-evaporation (plant and soil) due to the increasing temperatures.
Airdrop Irrigation works to provide a solution to this problem. Moisture is harvested out of the air to irrigate crops through an efficient system that produces large amounts of condensation A turbine intake drives air underground through a network of piping that rapidly cools the air to the temperature of the soil where it reaches 100%humidity
and produces water. The water is stored then in an underground tank and pumped to the roots of crops via sub surface drip irrigation hosing.
Developed by Joe Ellsworth in Seattle, the A2wh system uses a desiccant to absorb moisture from the air.
A small Photo Voltaic solar panel provides power for the micro controller, sensors, various valves, etc.
Ecoloblue has created an off-grid water harvester/dispenser specifically for the home or office. The unit shown above, the Ecoloblue 30,
and is designed to work with PV solar panels and batteries, to continually generate water even in emergency situations.
It works well for collecting water in virtually any environment even in polluted areas. About 12 gallons of fresh water can be extracted from air in a single day from one 300 sq ft unit.
Imke Hoehler, an inductrial design student at Germany Muthesius Academy of Fine arts has turned a lot of heads with her thesis project, the Dropnet fog collector.
the ater Gardensare groupings of water-extracting towers for high volume and high quality water. Some of the planned uses are for forests, camping, fire suppression, agriculture, livestock,
and human consumption. The Atmospheric Water Collector shown above is still not a functional product,
but Canadian design student Thomas Row gives us an idea of what it may look like.
and trucks, only to be discarded, thrown into landfills, and onto our streets. And most of our current bottles don degrade.
A high percentage of the products we buy in grocery stores contain water. Everything from pop to juice, to vegetables, to beer, to soup,
and much more. Transporting water is expensive, so what if the containers automatically added the water directly from the atmosphere once we took it home?
Is it possible to add a water extracting ground spike next to every plant or tree in our garden?
and every soldier, sailor, and construction worker to have within arm reach at any given moment?
Will atmospheric water extractors replace city reservoirs, dams, water towers, and our elaborate network of fire hydrants throughout every community?
To me, the handwriting is on the wall. Today steel pipes will soon be replaced with tomorrow air pipes,
and we will forget what life was like when chlorine-tasting water was an everyday occurrence n
#Precision agriculture moves farmers into the high tech age The U s. has seen record-setting drought in recent years.
So, the The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has joined forces with America beer brewers to change how farmer irrigate their crops.
the convergence of digital technology that allows farmers to apply just the right amount of fertilizer and water on their fields.
Humans have practiced a rather crude form of agriculture for millennia: we douse fields to give them as much water
and fertilizer as we think they need. Yet field conditions may differ drastically within a few feet.
farmers can use precisely the right amount of resources on every square foot of a field.
Experimental projects are even testing how to dispatch farm drones (crop-spying quadcopters for example) that measure everything from reflectivity to water loss to optimize the efficiency of a farm operations. rom our perspective:
what good for the farmer is good for the environment, writes Lisa Park, a spokeswoman for TNC.
The Conservancy first started working with farmers in Georgia while trying to protect freshwater mussels in the Flint River.
It found that if it could divert water from fields, more remained for threatened wildlife. hat wee doing in Georgia
In Idaho, the nonprofit is collaborating with Millercoors to support farmers who upgrade their irrigation systems to new precision agriculture systems.
Farmers have begun installing new sprinklers nozzles, and computer-controlled irrigation covering thousands of acres that conserve millions of gallons of water each day. s a brewer, we know that the area we can have the biggest impact in reducing water usage is within the agricultural supply chain,
wrote Kim Marotta, Millercoors director of sustainability. he learnings and savings in the first two years of the pilot project farms were significant cumulative 270 million gallons of water reduced.
Farmers and the environment profit. Yet the central technology in this effortariable rate irrigation (VRI) asn a commercial endeavor delivered directly to farmers clamoring for the technology.
It took almost a decade of academic research before an unusual alliance of NGOS and local and state government agencies sought to commercialize the VRI technology in the private sector.
A successful grant-funded pilot project caught on among other farmers who are now applying it across acres in a dozen states,
while major agricultural equipment manufacturers are promoting it. Change in agriculture comes slow. Yet the promise of precision agriculture is to find the right mix of profit
and environmental protection. e are also seeing a changing of the guard, writes TNC manager of Idaho Silver Creek Preserve. he old timers are retiring
(or dying) and the new farmers are looking for new and better ways of doing things
#Battery-free Wifi devices that run on radio waves What if devices could pull enough power wirelessly from the air to run themselves
and send signals? Mobile devices have become radically smaller and more powerful in the past 10 year. The list of#tech-related tasks that the mobile devices we all carry around has grown longer by the#year.
The next step in technology s great disappearing act? Absorption into our clothes, body, and environment.####The question of how best to power that next step,
however, remains an open one. Wearable and Internet-of-Things technologies need to be on all the time.
In the former case, taking something on or off for recharginglike a health monitoring devicecauses data loss and increases the chances it won t be used as much as it should or at all.
And you don t want to wire or charge sensors embedded throughout#smart homes, offices, cities. But what if these devices could pull enough power wirelessly from the air to run themselves
and send signals? Sound like sci-fi? Not so#according to a group of University of Washington engineers#who are building a communication system called Wifi backscatterthe system powers devices using radio waves
and connects them to laptops or smartphones over#Wifi networks. Previous research had shown it possible to run low-power devices off radio, TV,
and wireless wavesthe most recent work, however, took these devices a step further by allowing them to send their own signal using far less power than is required usually.
If Internet of things devices are going to take off, we must provide connectivity to the potentially billions of battery-free devices that will be embedded in everyday objects,
said Shyam Gollakota, a UW assistant professor of computer science and engineering. We now have the ability to enable Wifi connectivity for devices
while consuming orders of magnitude less power than what Wifi typically requires. How does it work?
The team made a tag that listens for Wifi signals being sent from a local router to a laptop or smartphone and vice versa.
The tag s antenna encodes data#by selectively reflecting or absorbing the signals. This selective reflection makes tiny changes in signal strength that can be detected
#and decoded#by other devices. Using this method, more powerful central devices#like smartphones, tablets,
or laptops can communicate with a range of low-power devices and sensors within about two meters and at a rate of one kilobit per second.
A pair of smart socks could for example, relay data about your jog to a jogging app on your phone.
Or temperature sensors throughout your house could communicate with thermostats to maintain an optimal temperature inside.
Joshua Smith, a co-author of an upcoming paper on the system and UW associate professor of computer science and engineering and electrical engineering, says that
although the signals are tiny and could well be lost in noise, the devices in the system are#able to detect them
because they#know which specific patterns to look for. The team will present their findings at the#ACM Sigcomm#annual conference#in Chicago.
They#are working to extend the system s range to 20#meters have filed patents, and hope to start a company based on the technology.
Given the prevalence of Wifi, this provides a great way to get low-power Internet of things devices to communicate with a large swath of devices around us, Ranveer Chandra,
#a senior researcher in mobile computing at Microsoft Research,#told the#MIT Technology Review. Via Singularity Hub Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorati swfobject. embedswf (http://www. youtube. com/v/snzwgazqo2c&
rel=0& fs=1& showsearch=0& showinfo=0, vvq-119904-youtube-1, 425,355, 9, vvqexpressinstall, vvqflashvars, vvqparams, vvqattributes) t
#Robobees will pollinate crops instead of real bees As soon as 10 years from now these Robobees could artificially pollinate a field of crops.
Honeybees pollinate nearlyone-third of the food we eat but they have been dying at unprecedented rates because of a mysterious phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder (CCD).
The situation is so dire that in late June the White house gave a new task force just 180 days to devise a coping strategy to protect bees and other pollinators.
The crisis is attributed generally to a mixture of disease, parasites, and pesticides. Other scientists are pursuing a different tack:
replacing bees. While there s no perfect solution, modern technology offers hope. Last year, Harvard university researchers led by engineering professor Robert Wood introduced the first Robobees,
bee-size robots with the ability to lift off the ground and hover midair when tethered to a power supply.
The details were published in the journal Science. A coauthor of that report, Harvard graduate student and mechanical engineer Kevin Ma, tells Business Insider that the team ison the eve of the next big development.
Says Ma: The robot can now carry more weight. The project represents a breakthrough in the field of micro-aerial vehicles.
It had previously been impossible to pack all the things needed to make a robot fly onto such a small structure and keep it lightweight.
A Bee-Placement? The researchers believe that as soon as 10 years from now these Robobees could artificially pollinate a field of crops,
a critical development if the commercial pollination industry cannot recover from severe yearly losses over the past decade.
The White house underscored what s at stake, noting that the loss of bees and other speciesrequires immediate attention to ensure the sustainability of our food production systems,
avoid additional economic impact on the agricultural sector, and protect the health of the environment.
Honeybees alone contribute more than $15 billion in value to U s. agricultural crops each year. But Robobees are not yet a viable technological solution.
First the tiny bots have to be able to fly on their own andtalk to one another to carry out tasks like a real honeybee hive.
Robobees will work best when employed as swarms of thousands of individuals, coordinating their actions without relying on a single leader,
and the threat it poses to agriculture were part of the original inspiration for creating a robotic bee,
the project s website says. Harvard s Kevin Ma spoke to Business Insider about the team s progress in building the bee-size robot since publishing its Science paper last year.
so that it can can carry the battery, electronic centers, and all the other things necessary for autonomous flight.
BI: Last month, Greenpeace released a short video that imagines a future in which swarms of robotic bees have been deployed to save our planet after the real insects go extinct.
It s a cautionary story rather than one of technological adaptation. What is your reaction to that?
Will robot bees eventually be able to operate like honeybee hives to pollinate commercial crops? Ma:
You could replace a hive of honeybees that would otherwise be working on a field of flowers.
In theory, they would just have to come back to something to recharge their batteries. But we re very early on in working this out.
With continued government funding and research we could see this thing functional in 10 to 15 years.
That s important for the battery and other electronics and sensors. Once the robot can stay aloft on its own,
increasing its battery life, and making it fly faster. Then there are a whole host of issues to work out dealing with wireless communications s
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011