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This virtual nurse can tell you a prayer and where to get a coronavirus vaccine – News@Northeastern

May 14, 2021 | Author: admin

Clara is a healthcare provider who works with Black communities in Boston. Clad in a magenta blouse and a striped head scarf, she greets her patients by name and makes small talk before delving into questions about their diet and exercise. A small, framed cross is visible on the office wall behind hershes Christian herself and works predominantly with Black parishes around the city.

Clara isnt actually a person, though. Shes an animated virtual nurse developed by Timothy Bickmore, a computer science professor at Northeastern. Clara cant take vital signs or treat wounds, but she can make suggestions and help patients stay on track when it comes to general wellness matters, such as diet, exercise, and mental health.

Timothy Bickmore, a professor of computer sciences at Northeastern, received an NIH grant for his project to promote the COVID-19 vaccine among Black communities in Boston. Photo by Ruby Wallau/Northeastern University

Now, as COVID-19 vaccines become more accessible in Massachusetts, Clara will have a new jobto provide information about the vaccine to Black Bostonians, many of whom are distrustful of the vaccine, not least because of a long history in the United States of medical abuse and unethical clinical trials involving Black participants.

Theres a mistrust of the medical establishment based on generations of now-documented mistreatment of African Americans by doctors and the healthcare system in the United States, says David Wright, executive director of the The Black Ministerial Alliance of Greater Boston, a Christian community organization Bickmore partners with.

These vaccines were also created under an administration known for not telling the truth and using racist and xenophobic language, Wright says. Unsurprisingly, theres a mistrust of anything made under that administration.

For the past few years, Bickmore has worked with the alliance to promote spiritual and physical health throughout almost 30 Black parishes using his animated healthcare program. The vaccine project will be a continuation of this partnership.

We hope to provide information about where people can get vaccinated, and what they can expect, says Bickmore. We already have a relationship with the community, and they asked if we could help promote COVID-19 vaccines.

With funding from the National Institutes of Health, Bickmore and his team will launch the vaccine program within the next two months. New vaccine-related phrases will be added to Claras wordbank, and participants will be able to ask questions about the vaccine from the comfort of their own homes.

Even for individuals who dont have high computer literacy, the program is still easy to use, he says. Weve gotten great feedback. It seems to be working, and most people like it. Most of the time, theyre able to suspend their disbelief and really engage with the program.

Limited access to smartphones or computers could be an issue for some seniors, but overall, Wright doesnt think the technology aspect of the program will pose too much of a problem.

Id say a significant number of seniors regularly use smartphones, Wright says. I suspect the application will catch on as more and more people use it for church and community activities.

Bickmore and his team go to great lengths to tailor the program to the demographic of people they hope to help, in this case, Black Christians living in Boston. To build rapport, Clara incorporates Bible stories and spiritual language into the sessions.

The same way any good doctor would build trust with a patient, Clara shares personal information about herself with her patients and remembers things about their lives in order to build a social connection, Bickmore says.

The program is intended to last four years. In the coming years, if promoting the COVID-19 vaccine becomes a less-pressing issue, the team will also work on promoting influenza vaccines, another inoculation many Black people in the U.S. are hesitant to receive.

If you look at the literature, the most successful way to gain a patients trust is through face-to-face conversation, says Bickmore. Our animated counselor simulates just that, and shes actually particularly good at it.

For media inquiries, please contact media@northeastern.edu.

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This virtual nurse can tell you a prayer and where to get a coronavirus vaccine - News@Northeastern

Cal Poly seniors to launch second weather balloon into space with Project OWL – Mustang News

May 14, 2021 | Author: admin

In 2019, aerospace senior Evan Agarwal teamed up with technology company Project OWL to test out a device that would provide cheap, limited Wi-Fi in disaster zones by launching it into space on a giant weather balloon and now they want to do it again.

The device, or payload, which they are calling a DuckLink is designed to be attached to a weather balloon and launched up to 100,000 feet into the upper atmosphere, reaching temperatures around minus 51 degrees Fahrenheit.

Following the initial launch, the Cal Poly team and Project OWL have wanted to do it again, but were halted with the start of the pandemic.

By the time we were about ready to say okay we kind of got all the pieces in place, you know, eight to 10 months later, COVID[-19] happens, Project OWL CEO Bryan Knouse said.

Since initially connecting with Agarwal, Project OWL has worked with two teams from computer science capstone courses, this years dubbing themselves the Quackheads team.

What started as a small team of about three to four Cal Poly students has become a dedicated group of 10 to 15, according to Knouse.

One of the big changes the team has made since the last launch, is transitioning from using off-the-shelf components largely from China, to making some of the electronics internally.

According to Knouse, the student team this year were able to build custom electronics for the device.

This is the first custom electronics board weve ever had, Knouse said. And weve been trying to do this for years and this computer engineering group is the first team that actually pulled it off.

By making the electronics in-house, Knouse said it can all be tailored to do exactly what needs to be done for their project that is, if they work.

The launch, which is tentatively set to happen May 14 and May 16 depending on weather patterns that week, is acting as a field test for some of these electronics.

For the Cal Poly team this is like the grand finale of their year-long effort designing this, Knouse said.

According to computer science senior and self-dubbed Quackhead Kevin Nottberg, who is in charge of hardware stuff and designing the board, he believes they were able to accomplish the task due to a global chip shortage.

When they were unable to outsource the parts they needed, the team was forced to make the electronics in-house. The team in the course a year prior was tasked with the same job, but unable to complete it.

Part of it I think was because the pandemic had shut a ton of stuff down with China, around end of February, March last year. So it totally screwed them over, but it actually helped us, Nottberg said.

The board, which the team calls the Quackerboard, took them approximately five weeks once they started building it and three revisions to get right.

According to Nottberg, the stakes were high if they were not able to get the board to work in time and they would not be able to test their electronics on the payload device.

Holy shit, this might actually turn out, Nottberg said when they finished it.

Computer science senior and fellow Quackhead Kevin Dixson has taken charge of the software aspect and writing all of the code that makes the board work.

Weve yet to make a board that didnt work, so props to Kevin [Nottberg] for that, Dixson said.

When it comes to the May launch, Dixson said a perfect launch would be if it all went off without a hitch.

If we never lose communication, and we know where it is the whole time, and it pops at 100,000 feet thats the ideal scenario, Dixson said.

According to Dixson, the balloon will go into the air for about a two-hour duration, during which time they should be able to communicate with the device. When the balloon pops, the team should get a notification and it should remain in contact while descending. Finally, the team should be able to locate the device and it should be in-tact, if all goes well.

And also we get cool pictures, Dixson said.

For Dixson, he said he has learned more doing this project than he has in any class he has ever taken at Cal Poly.

Thats kind of the best way to learn is just drop in the deep end and see if you swim, and I guess we swam, Dixson said.

Quackhead and a founding member of the project Agarwal said that what they are working on has the potential to impact a lot of people in a really positive way.

The team, along with Cal Poly and Project Owl, has won a contract with the U.S. Air Force that is currently being approved by the University and provides the team with the funding they need to get the project off the ground quite literally.

Right now, they are in a phase one contract, but if they can complete this technology demonstration, then they will receive a phase two contract and receive a lot more money, according to Dixson.

When asked why balloons? Agarwal said the balloons offer them an easy and effective way to test the range of their devices.

If we really want to stress test these things and say, lets keep going and going and going until we drop out, the best way for us to do that is just to go up, Agarwal said.

According to Nottberg, the payload devices could potentially be utilized as disaster relief networks, where they can build a network out of nowhere and provide connection where there might be hills or other forms of disruption in a provided area.

So its cool and really exciting to be working on something that actually has real positive potential, and that was kind of the same feeling we had last time and its grown a lot since then, Agarwal said.

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Cal Poly seniors to launch second weather balloon into space with Project OWL - Mustang News

Novel Tandon-designed microchip will allow data to be processed without being decrypted – Newswise

May 14, 2021 | Author: admin

Newswise A research team at the NYU Center for Cyber Security (CCS) at NYU Tandon are participating in a major initiative in collaboration with data security company Duality supported by a $14 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to design a revolutionary new microchip (codenamed Trebuchet). The microprocessor, to be designed by CCS researchers Mihalis Maniatakos, research assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering; and Brandon Reagen, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and computer science and engineering, will accelerate and enable practical applications of an emerging type of encryption, called fully homomorphic encryption (FHE).

Typically, data encryption protects data in transit: its locked in an encrypted container for non-secure transit, then unlocked by the other party for analysis. But outsourcing to a third-party is inherently insecure. FHE is an advanced cryptographic technique, widely considered the holy grail of encryption, that enables multiple users to process encrypted data while the data or models remain encrypted, preserving data privacy throughout the analytics process.

The hardware Maniatakos and Reagen are developing as part of the 3.5 year project is of particular value to AI systems because it allows data scientists to train some of the most advanced machine learning (ML) models on encrypted data, enabling organizations to leverage greater amounts of diverse sensitive data for training.

With increased privacy concerns and tightening data protection regulations, organizations acrossindustries are looking for secure computing methods to train and execute AI models without exposing sensitive or confidential data, said Maniatakos.

FHE also secures outsourcing to a third party for processing, without that entity being able to unlock that data. One example of secure data outsourcing is the use of privacy-preserving machine learning, critical for such applications as personal DNA sequencing to scan for predisposition to some diseases.

FHE lets you encrypt your genome, send it to a service that predicts your predisposition to diseases, and you get the result back and decrypt it. The outsourced service cannot see your genome and cannot use it against you in any way, said Maniatakos.

Over the course of the project, Reagen will focus on hardware architecture, and Maniatakos the logic units for a feature called Large Arithmetic Word Sizes (LAWS) which can be used to accelerate FHE to practical speeds.

The Hardware to handle the numbers

The underlying mathematics behind FHE, developed in 2009, involve operations on polynomials of very high degrees (in the order of thousands) and with very big coefficients, requiring resource- and time-consuming computation. The solution lies in hardware that can natively process these very big numbers. Reagen, a computer architect who designs chips that can do very specific things to make them run much faster than general purpose hardware, is tasked with laying the groundwork for this chip.

To enable homomorphic encryption, my job is to take the building blocks of this unit not just memory, but a lot of parallel functionality as well as the LAWS units Mihalis is designing and customize, organize and allocate them on chip for a given area to maximize performance, which, at the end of the day, is the fundamental inhibitor of this encryption process. In fact, if performance were not an issue, everyone would be using FHE for the simple reason that you would never have to decrypt data. My job is to reclaim that performance.

Function-specific hardware (think of a graphics card, for example, or processing units designed for machine learning operations) is nothing new. For FHE, the key is in the bits a computer uses to represent numbers for the rapid calculations it performs. A typical processors architecture, organized for 32 bit operations, would take far too long and use too many resources to process the huge numbers required for FHE, explained Maniatakos.

You could do it, but it would be incredibly slow. It would be six orders of magnitude slower than unencrypted computation. Our task is to bring down the slowdown to maximum one order of magnitude.

At 32 bits, he explained, the largest number a chip can process is two to the power of 32 four billion which is fine for most applications. The problem is that with FHE the numbers processed are much bigger than 32 bits, in the order of thousands of bits and cant be represented natively, so computer has to split these numbers up, which incurs a lots of overhead.

Imagine we have a list of numbers, say one through 10, explained Reagen. Lets say that we first encrypt this data in such a way that this very small list of numbers turns into two lists where each element is 10 to 100 times as big. And suddenly, right off the bat, you increase the number size by a factor of 20 to 200. Now if you want to execute, say, multiplication functions on this bloated data you are not just going to be doing multiplication, you have to do many other functions that transform representations of the data. These meta-functions, in fact, take longer to run than the actual multiplication.

He added that designing customizations such as parallel hardware helps vastly increase computation speed by allowing multiple processes to happen at once at maximum throughput. Working as a team is important.

The key challenge in designing effective architectures is how to balance all of these processes and keep them fed with data, and collaboration with someone designing LAWS for the functional hardware units is critical to making sure performance is not left on the table.

The CCS team, in 2018, was actually the first to develop an early version of a homomorphic encryption chip that accelerated partial HE, allowing expression of a limited set of algorithms. This earlier version, making CCS the first to create a homomorphic encryption ASIC accelerator, allowed such applications as vote aggregation, and smart grid data applications.

For this project, the NYU Tandon team, after designing the chip, will hand the baton to collaborators at the University of Southern CaliforniaInformation Sciences Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, SpiralGen Inc.,Drexel University, and TwoSix Labs Inc. for integration, prototyping, fabrication and other processes.

The project at NYU Tandon will also fund four graduate students: Deepraj Soni, under the guidance of CCS Director Ramesh Karri; Homer Gamil, a research assistant under Maniatakos, who begins his Ph.D. work at NYU Tandon in September; and Karthik Garimella and Benjamin Heyman, doctoral and masters students, respectively, under Reagens guidance.

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Novel Tandon-designed microchip will allow data to be processed without being decrypted - Newswise

Inside the Economics of Science Papers – Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

May 14, 2021 | Author: admin

When a scholarly paper is published, someone has to pay.

Publishers like Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), my professional society, and Springer charge big bucks to read their papers. The fees are billed to individual subscribers and, more commonly, to companies and universities who want to give their employees access to the papers. My own university, Baylor, like most research universities, has a considerable library budgets on account of these publisher fees.

There is growing pressure to kill these fees in favor of open access to scholarly papers. Thus, anyone can read a scholarly paper at any time for free. Free access takes the money from the pockets of publishers so they push back. Someone has to pay, eventually, so open access, as it is called, means that the author bears the cost.

The author doesnt always bear the cost personally. Sometimes, the authors institution foots the bill. Cash cow organizations like Google readily pony up. In the U.S., if a public university coughs up the money for their employee author, the fees are paid indirectly either by the states taxpayers. When the fees are paid by government granting agencies like the NSF, NIH or NIST, they are paid by the US taxpayer.

MDPI, an open access publisher, charges authors between 1000 to 2000 Swiss Francs (over US$1000 to $2000) to publish in their open access journals.

Where do these fees go? At IEEE, paper authors, reviewers, and associate editors are not paid a dime. All is volunteer. When I was Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, I was voted money to support one part-time clerical position but I personally received no compensation. A prevailing view is that the prestige of being an editor or author is payment enough. In academia in general, a major component in a professors promotion and pay raises is paper count. As the saying goes, the Dean cant read, but the Dean can count.

Professionally sponsored conferences also feed the cash-hungry publisher. I have been the Organizational Chair for numerous conferences, big and small. Volunteers from universities and companies run the conference but are paid nothing. The publications from these conferences are handed over to a publisher who then sells them.

There is an old joke that graduate students are machines that turn coffee into papers. Publishers take these papers and turn them into cash.

I am currently the Editor-in-Chief of the open-access journal BIO-Complexity and, yes, we have a publication fee. After thorough peer review, we have waived the fee for every paper thus far published in BIO-Complexity. Because the journal is small, we have been able to run it with all volunteers.

There are ways to avoid the publication cash grab described above. A popular tool is arXiv.org (pronounced archive where the X is pronounced like a k, as in the Greek chi. The site, managed by Cornell University, will post almost any scholarly work for free without peer review, at the request of an author. Someone, of course, reads it in advance, to be sure it is not whacko. But there is no peer review as such. Paper topics are physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics. I am aware of no bias in the acceptance of papers for arXiv, but in these days of blatant censorship by places like Amazon, YouTube, Twitter, and even Paypal, one never knows.

A second way to get hold of a paper for free is Google Scholar. Enter a topic like artificial intelligence ethics and you get a search of papers addressing the topic. To the right of many of these listings, you will find a link to a free copy of the paper. Many authors will also post copies of their papers on their own web sites. Google scrapes the web and then nicely links them here.

At one time, publication count was limited by paper supply. Each paper was typeset and printed, and a hard copy was sent to subscribers via snail mail. Printing runs were fixed. There was no print-on-demand. These physical constraints are all gone. Many conferences and journals no longer even generate hard copies. Everything is on line. Even older hard copy has been digitized and made available. For a price.

When web access became ubiquitous, publication count exploded. The graph of the IEEE publication count is revealing.1

Here are my speculations about the story this graph tells. Publication count increased linearly about 2500 papers per year until about 2000 when there is a sharp uptick. From 2001 to 2010, the increase was, on average, about 19,000 papers per year or roughly four times larger than before. The break point occurs when papers became available electronically. Without the requirement of hard copy publication, making a paper available became cheaper. When I came to Baylor from the University of Washington in 2003, the Baylor library had yet to subscribe to IEEE Xplore.

There is a dip in the curve for a few years, starting in 2010. I cant think of a reason why. But the upward trajectory starts again in 2014, breaking through 300,000 in 2019. Thats over a thousand papers every weekday. There was also a COVID dip in 2020 that is not shown on the graph.

Supply and demand pushes publication counts up and up. Academia rewards professors who publish and publishers are more than happy to accommodate the demand. For a price.

[1] Heres how I got the data. I went to IEEE Xplore and did a search year by year. IEEE, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, subsumes electrical and electronic engineering and computer science. At over 400,000 members, IEEE is the worlds largest professional society. In Xplore, I entered the year 2000 and Xplore responded with 69,762 papers. This was repeated from 1980 to 2019. The search is not perfect but gives reasonable numbers.

You may also wish to read: Why its so hard to reform to reform peer review. Reformers are battling numerical laws that govern how incentives work. Know your enemy! (Robert J. Marks)

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Inside the Economics of Science Papers - Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

Acting Secretary Joins Students, Teachers Across the State for Innovative Learning, Workforce Readiness Festival – Pennsylvania Pressroom

May 14, 2021 | Author: admin

Harrisburg, PA - Continuing the commitment to STEM education and career advancement, Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) Acting Secretary Noe Ortega participated in the Remake Learning Days Across America (RLDAA) Festival, designed to provide students in kindergarten through high school with learning experiences to build their employability skills and prepare them for future careers. Over the course of eleven days, more than 600 events will take place in-person and virtually across the commonwealth. Preparing students for in-demand careers, especially in the growing fields of science and technology, is a priority for the Wolf Administration.

With event themesranging from planets to pixels to paleontology to pig farms and more, students across the commonwealth have a variety of unique opportunitiesto explore STEAM during Remake Learning Days, said Acting Secretary of Education Noe Ortega. This annual festival offers learning experiences that will help students strengthen their skillsets and prepare them for dynamic careers of the future.

Acting Secretary Ortega joined students virtually and offered remarks for the Ask the Patent Agent - PPG Scientist Series event. During the event, middle and high school students also heard from PPG Patent Agent Linda Anderson on her role as a patent agent, the importance of patents, and what skills are necessary for the career.

The RLDAA Festival is May 6-16 and focuses on providing numerous learning activities where students can express their creativity, increase their collaboration and critical thinking skills, and create connections between their educational experiences and their futures. PDEs Career Ready PA program has collaborated with organizers of this years RLDAA Festival to help elevate and increase awareness around employability skills and career readiness. This collaboration includes the Career Ready PA Backpack challenge, which provides students with opportunities to earn badges submit an artifact for their career portfolio. Remake Learning is a stakeholder in the Career Ready PA Coalition supported by the 10 Career Ready PA regional liaisons.

The Career Ready PA Backpack Challenge creates opportunities for students to obtain artifacts for their career portfolios by participating in Remake Learning Days events in school or at home. The Challenge connects learners to free, live community events offering hands-on learning opportunities that help build employability skills, such as collaboration, critical thinking, and teamwork, said PDEs Special Consultant to the Secretary for Career Readiness, Dr. Laura Fridirici. Students document their meaningful engagement in these events, which could include meeting a scientist or making their own invention, as they explore and learn more about the skills needed for a variety of careers.Students who participate earn a Career Ready PA Backpack Challenge digital badge. PDE will track participation in these events, and when a school earns 100 badges, theyll receive a banner recognizing this accomplishment.

This year, many of the programs offered to students are virtual, which creates and expands access opportunities for students while maintaining health and safety guidelines. Students can participate in the RLDAA events in their classrooms or individually at home. Pennsylvanias seven PBS stations have also joined the festival to provide media support, assist with promotions, increase access, and offer events.

The pursuit of artifacts is student-driven, very active and inquiry-based, and offer a deeper reflection on the skill sets needed in todays workforce which helps students understand how their academic learning is preparing them for adult life, said Remake Learning Director Tyler Samstag. Remake Learning Days allow organizations to open their doors so that young people can go into that environment and engage with people who use STEM skills and practice hands-on creating for a living.

For more information on Remake Learning Days Across America, visit their website.

The importance of STEM education has been strongly implemented in the Wolf Administration.

For Pennsylvania to perform as one of the nations leaders in STEM education, the Wolf Administration has dedicated several resources to the expansion. Recently, Governor Tom Wolf announced $10.8 million in PAsmart Advancing Grants to expand access to computer science and STEM education for Pennsylvania learners. Combined with PAsmart Targeted Grants announced in 2020, the Wolf administration has awarded nearly $20 million to bolster STEM and computer science (CS) in schools during the 2020-21 school year. Over the last three years, the Wolf Administration awarded 453 PAsmart grants to expand computer science classes and teacher training at over 765 schools across the commonwealth.

For more information about Pennsylvanias education policies and programs, please visit the Department of Educations website at http://www.education.pa.gov or follow PDE on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.

MEDIA CONTACT: Kendall Alexander, kenalexand@pa.gov

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Acting Secretary Joins Students, Teachers Across the State for Innovative Learning, Workforce Readiness Festival - Pennsylvania Pressroom

Class of 2024 declares majors – The Tech

May 14, 2021 | Author: admin

By ron Ricardo Perez-LopezMay. 13, 2021

The Class of 2024 major declaration form was due April 30. The first, second, and third most popular major choices were consistent with last years classs choices: 201 first-year students (18.8%) declared Course 6-3, Computer Science and Engineering; 92 (8.6%) declared Course 6-2 (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science); and 78 (7.3%) declared 2-A (Engineering as recommended by the Department of Mechanical Engineering).

Course 20 (Biological Engineering) and Course 18 (Mathematics) were fourth and fifth in popularity; 74 students (6.9%) declared Biological Engineering, while 60 students (5.6%) declared Mathematics. They were fifth and fourth last year, respectively. Course 20 also saw the largest absolute increase in first-year enrollment; its share increased two full percentage points from last year (4.9%).

Courses 10 (Chemical Engineering) and 10-B (Chemical Biological Engineering) saw the largest absolute increases after Course 20, as well as two of the largest relative increases in first-year major declarations. Course 10s share tripled from just under 0.6% of first years (7 students) last year to almost 2.0% of first years (21 students). Similarly, Course 10Bs share doubled from 0.9% (10 students) to 1.9% (20 students).

Other majors with large relative increases in enrollment include Course 17 (Political Science) which was only declared by one first year last spring but three students this spring; and Course 12 (Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences) which saw first-year enrollment jump from three last year to seven this year. Course 21A (Anthropology), Course 24-1 (Philosophy), and Course 2-OE (Mechanical and Ocean Engineering) saw no new students last year, but had one or, in the case of 2-OE, two new students each this year.

Courses 2 (Mechanical Engineering) and 6-2 each decreased by over one percentage point in popularity from last year: 3.1% (33 students) compared to 4.6% (51 students) and 8.6% compared to 9.9% (110 students). Courses 6-1 (Electrical Engineering) and 6-3 also saw smaller numbers; for Course 6-1, this represented a 40% reduction from 15 first years (1.4% of the class) to nine (0.8% of the class), Course 6-3 remained the most popular major with a 0.6 percentage point reduction from 19.4% (215 students) to 18.8% of first years.

Courses 9 (Brain and Cognitive Sciences) and 4-B (Art and Design) were declared by a third as many students this year as last year, four (0.4% of students) compared to 12 (1.1% of students) for Course 9, and one compared to three for 4-B.

Four majors saw no new first-year students this year but one (Course 21, Humanities), two (Courses 21M-1, Music, and 24-2, Linguistics), or three (Course 21S, Humanities and Science) first years last year. Courses 10-C (Bachelor of Science as recommended by the department of Chemical Engineering), 21G (Global Languages), 21H (History), 21L (Literature), 21M-2 (Theater Arts), and CMS (Comparative Media Studies) had no first-year students either this year or last year, although all of them have upper-year students enrolled.

The School of Engineering retained its first place in terms of first-year enrollment, with its share increasing from 67.9% (751 students) to 69.5% (744 students). The School of Science captured 20.4% of this classs major declarations (218), slightly more than those of the last, at 19.3% (214 students). The Sloan School of Management was chosen by fewer first-years: 2.8% (30 students) compared to 3.0% (34 students) last year. The School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences and the School of Architecture and Planning each saw substantial decreases in enrollment, from 22 (2.0%) to 15 (1.4%) first years and from 15 (1.4%) to 11 first years, respectively, although these numbers tend to fluctuate significantly across years.

First-year students in Courses 6-1, 6-2, 6-3, 6-7, 6-9, 6-14, and 11-6 are also enrolled in the Schwarzman College of Computing and together comprise 39.7% of this years major declarations (421 students) and 40.7% of last years (449 students).

Eight first-years (0.7% of the class) designated no major, a decrease from 20 (1.8% of the class) last year. 44 students (4.1% of the class) did not submit a major declaration form, a decrease from last years 50 students (5.0% of the class).

The Class of 2024, with 1070 students, is slightly smaller than the Class of 2023, with 1106 students.

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Class of 2024 declares majors - The Tech

How the Coronavirus Spreads: Biggest Threats Are in Air, Not on Surfaces – AARP

May 14, 2021 | Author: admin

But experts who have long championed for this most recent change say the update really pushes the need for good indoor ventilation to the forefront especially at a time when schools and offices are bringing people back to meet in person.

This is because ventilation, where indoor and outdoor air is exchanged, helps to ensure that the virus is not building up, thereby increasing the likelihood that others in the space will breathe it in, explains Linsey Marr, the Charles P. Lunsford professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech and an expert in aerosol science. Her advice? If the weather allows it, open windows are great. If not, then it involves adjustments to the HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) system so you're bringing in as much outdoor air as possible, she tells AARP.

Opening windows can also keep your home environment healthy especially if you've having people over who are not part of your household, says Richard Corsi, dean of Portland State University's Maseeh College of Engineering & Computer Science and an expert on indoor air quality. Upgrading filters in indoor spaces aim for MERV 11, 12 or 13 and firing up portable high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) cleaners can also lower the concentration of virus particles in the air, Corsi adds. (MERV, or minimum efficiency reporting value, ranges from 1 to 16; the higher the rating, the better the filter is at capturing smaller particles.)

Just make sure you select an air cleaner, also known as an air purifier, that is right for your space by paying attention to the clean air delivery rate (CADR): You want it to meet or exceed the square footage of the room. Let's say a room is 100 cubic feet. If the air cleaner only does 20 cubic feet per hour, that's not enough, Marr says. Look for the CADR rating on the cleaner itself or on its packaging, or check the manufacturer's website.

One more tool that works: Upper-room ultraviolet radiation, where you just sterilize the air, says Donald Milton, M.D., a professor of environmental and occupational health at University of Maryland's School of Public Health. This can be especially helpful in school lunchrooms, for example, where kids are eating without masks on, he says. The CDC notes this intervention also makes sense in areas where there's an increased likelihood of sick people like a hospital waiting room or school clinic.

Another takeaway from the CDC's latest update on COVID-19 transmission: Masks are still an important tool in indoor settings, especially if you are unvaccinated or not yet fully vaccinated. (Some experts encourage masks for everyone in indoor public spaces, especially if you are going to be around unvaccinated people, but the CDC on May 13 updated its guidelines to say that fully vaccinated individuals no longer need to wear a mask indoors, except in certain situations like in health care settings or on planes, trains, buses and other forms of public transportation. They should also be worn where required by local businesses and workplaces.)

How the Coronavirus Spreads: Biggest Threats Are in Air, Not on Surfaces - AARP

RC3’s Pam McClendon named ‘Sweet 16’ finalist for Alabama Teacher of Year – Hoover Sun

May 14, 2021 | Author: admin

Pam McClendon, the leadteacher for the Cyber Innovation Academy at the Riverchase Career Connection Center, has been named among the Sweet 16 finalists for Alabama 2021-22 Teacher of the Year.

The Alabama Department of Education announced the finalists Tuesday. They were chosen from among 138 educators from across the state who submitted applications.

McClendon, who is Hoovers Secondary Teacher of the Year this year, was the secondary teacher finalist chosen from Alabama Board of Education District 3. The elementary finalist from District 3 is Allison Phelps from Shades Cahaba Elementary School in Homewood.

McClendon came into education as a second career. She spent time as a U.S. Marine and about 10 years putting her business degree to work before realizing she needed to be in education.

She went back to school and got a masters degree in education in 2002 and is now in her 19th year as a teacher. She spent four years at Bottenfield Middle School (now Minor Middle School), seven years at Hueytown High School, seven years at Oak Grove High School and one year at Minor High School before being recruited to the Cyber Innovation Academy at RC3 when it started in the fall of 2019.

When the lead teacher of the academy had to leave, McClendon stepped into that role in January 2020 and now teaches introduction to computer science, Advanced Placement computer science and a Java computer programming course.

McClendon established the computer science programs at Oak Grove and Minor high schools and helped develop Jefferson Countys career prep curriculum. She is on Gov. Kay Iveys Computer Science Advisory Council and is a trainer for the A+ College Ready Advanced Placement computer science program.

She was named the 2020 Computer Science Teacher of the Year by the National Center for Women & Information Technology and was a 2015 finalist for Jefferson County Teacher of the year.

McClendon said she was inspired to teach by her 10th and 11th grade English teacher, who saw abilities in her that no one else saw, encouraged her and changed the way she saw herself.

Now, she loves working with students and helping them see their worth, power, strength and abilities, she said.

We may have something different to offer, but we all have something to offer, McClendon said. Every student can be successful. It may take a different path. Some go to college. Some go straight into the workforce.

But she wants all of them to know they can be successful, she said.

McClendon lives in McCalla with her husband, Isiah. They have two sons: Darius, an environmental scientist in Dayton, Ohio, and Matthew, a junior at Shelton State Community College.

Here is the complete list of the 16 finalists for 2021-22 Alabama Teacher of the Year:

District 1:

District 2:

District 3:

District 4:

District 5:

District 6:

District 7:

District 8:

The 16 finalists soon will be narrowed down to the final four," and the 2021-22 Alabama Teacher of the Year will be announced in August, the Alabama Department of Education said.

Engineering Ag Tech Solutions Just One Element of Annual Innovate to Grow Expo | Newsroom – UC Merced University News

May 14, 2021 | Author: admin

You cant avoid seeing grazing cattle in Californias Central Valley, where UC Merced has its own pastured cows on campus. Now imagine if those cows were kept secluded without the use of a fence, or at least not one visible to the eye.

This is just one of the experimental projects teams of undergraduate students are working on and will demonstrate during Innovate to Grow (I2G), a biannual experiential learning program which culminates in a presentation expo. Students showcase solutions theyve engineered to problems posed by real-world companies, organizations and agencies. This years projects offer solutions for issues in a range of industries, including agriculture, transportation, pest control, cycling and more.

California AG Solutions proposed the project on cattle fencing, which five students collaborated on for the past semester, mainly via Zoom. The team comprises Francisco Michel (third-year transfer, Mechanical Engineering), Neel Patel (fourth-year, Computer Science and Engineering), Jacob Nesslage (fifth-year, Environmental Engineering), Habibatu Mboka (fourth-year, Computer Science and Engineering) and Enrique Lpez Santoyo (fifth-year, Mechanical Engineering).

The team came up with a virtual fence that keeps cattle within a specified area but is keeping the technology proprietary until after team members present at I2G. The team even created a prototype for the expo on Friday.

We looked at what is currently on the market and research papers on the topic to implement a virtual fencing technique and created our own, said Mboka.

Its an alternative to stakes on the ground with barbed wire, Michel said.

Fencing for cattle can be expensive. Prices run from $2 to $10 per linear foot, team members said. That can easily amount to a hefty investment for farmers to protect their cattle.

The aim is to get rid of physical fences, added Patel.

Without physical barriers in place, the cows would graze rotationally, which has added benefits for the soil.

Nesslage, who has worked with the USDA before and has an active interest in agricultural engineering, said the virtual fences would also promote carbon sequestration.

A virtual fence based on software and without human intervention would be able to improve soil health, Nesslage said.

I2G began in 2012 to encourage School of Engineering students to collaborate with industry, nonprofit and government agencies that could benefit from their innovative ideas. Nine years later, the program is still going strong.

This is an experiential learning program that I like to say is a win-win-win, said Stefano Foresti, director of innovation for the School of Engineering. Foresti works year-round to cultivate and maintain industry partnerships for the campuss program. Its a win for the students because they have the opportunity to work on real-world problems with clients, which also opens up future opportunities for them. Its a win for our industry partners because they may get solutions to their problems, and also an opportunity to view and potentially hire graduates by seeing them at work. And its a win for our campus because it allows UC Merced to build a unique and stronger education program in engineering.

Its a mandate of the engineering program to apply classroom learning to real-world problems. The I2G expo is just the final piece of a semester-long endeavor. The students represent one of three classes: Engineering Capstone, Engineering Service Learning and Software Engineering Capstone. They are each grouped into teams of three to five and each team is assigned a project that matches the students areas of skills and majors. This year, multiple teams were assigned to each idea, tasked with finding a host of solutions to a singular problem.

The I2G event, one of UC Merceds largest, is the culmination and showcase for our School of Engineering graduating seniors, said Dean Mark Matsumoto. In this virtual expo, viewers from our sponsoring partners and the community will see that the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic have been met with the spirit of determination, innovation and creativity that define UC Merced students.

The spring 20201 expo is made possible by several industry sponsors, including: Morning Star, E&J Gallo Winery, Omron, Oportun, Farm Data Systems, Veracruz, Blue Diamond Almond Growers, Waymo, Sensient Natural Ingredients, Cisco, Agrecom, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), Milano Technical Group, Corigin, Jatco, California Ag Solutions, Sweep, Merced College, Diamond J Farming, The PI Shop, United Way of Merced County, Healthy House, The Discovery Center, Fresno Institute of Technology and the National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center for the Internet of Things for Precision Ag.

This year the event will be virtual for the third time, meaning students and community partners can engage from the comfort of their own homes. Those interested in learning more about I2G and registering to attend this years expo can do so here.

Link:

Engineering Ag Tech Solutions Just One Element of Annual Innovate to Grow Expo | Newsroom - UC Merced University News

Two-Day-Old Cryptocurrency Surges to $45 Billion Market Value – Bloomberg

May 12, 2021 | Author: admin

A digital token that was launched Monday and goes by the name Internet Computer is already one of the largest cryptocurrencies in the world, with a market value of about $45 billion.

That makes it the eighth-largest digital asset among the top 10 in CoinMarketCap.coms rankings. The token and its related digital ledger are supposed to help anyone -- software developers or content creators -- publish anything they want onto the internet, without having to go through digital giants such as Amazon.com Inc. or Facebook Inc., or to use servers or commercial cloud services. The idea is to avoid corporate walled gardens and to reduce costs, according to Dominic Williams, founder of the project. Users could potentially build social-media and other services that compete with internet titans.

The coins underlying network uses smart contracts, or software programs that execute tasks, competing with the likes of bigger rival Ethereum. Its joining many other coins and related networks -- Polkadot, Binance Coin among them -- trying to steal Ethereums thunder.

Internet Computers debut is happening as cryptocurrencies ranging from Bitcoin to Dogecoin are being discussed everywhere from dinner tables to Saturday Night Live, and prices of many coins are surging. The total market value of all cryptocurrencies now stands at $2.48 trillion, up from less than $1 trillion at the beginning of the year. But as in the run-up of 2017, many of the so-called alt-coins likely will come down to earth with a thud.

Read more: Bitcoin and Ethereum - How Are They Different?: QuickTake

Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal.

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Inside the Economics of Science Papers – Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

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Class of 2024 declares majors – The Tech

How the Coronavirus Spreads: Biggest Threats Are in Air, Not on Surfaces – AARP

RC3’s Pam McClendon named ‘Sweet 16’ finalist for Alabama Teacher of Year – Hoover Sun

Engineering Ag Tech Solutions Just One Element of Annual Innovate to Grow Expo | Newsroom – UC Merced University News

Two-Day-Old Cryptocurrency Surges to $45 Billion Market Value – Bloomberg

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