Could teachers soon be replaced by technology

Thanks to the rapid development of technology over the last few decades, we’ve seen dramatic changes in the way technology impacts our daily lives. Today, a person can get their degree by taking online classes and newspapers now have the ability to share stories with the world within minutes after an event occurs. With technology developing at such a fast pace, it appears as if it can do almost anything. Can technology teach though? As computers continue to get not only smarter but also cheaper, it seems entirely possible that they could eventually replace teachers. Computers and technology already serve as teaching aides. Whether it’s
teaching children their ABC’s or helping a college freshman memorize the periodic table, technology for educational purposes is already available. There is one glaring problem with computers being used to teach though, and that’s intelligent communication.

A computer can regurgitate information and teach new material, but it presently lacks the ability to truly interact. Perhaps Kim Bochicchio, an English teacher from Pennsylvania, sums it up best in a short piece published by the National Council of Teachers of English. Bochicchio states, “only an English teacher can properly grade an essay and conference with a student afterward.” Bochicchio presents a valid point discussing the shortcomings in computers and the way they interact with humans now. “Now,” being the keyword.

In the near future, it’s entirely feasible that computers could be used to teach. Technology is already on the brink of being able to communicate intelligently, such as in the case of Apple’s Siri and IBM’s Watson. Bochicchio’s point about computers not being able to conference with a student could soon be rendered incorrect. Over the next decade, it seems likely that computers will advance to the point of being able to have natural conversations. When that happens, there’s no reason that they won’t be able to teach. A computer that can pull information from the Internet in an accurate manner and do so while conversing naturally with a student would possibly be the best teacher that the world has ever seen, but there is still one pitfall.

The final step for technology to replace teachers has to do with another aspect of intelligent communication. For computers to be able to teach, they need to be able to adjust to the student. Not everyone learns in the same manner, so it’s necessary for a computer to have the ability to alter its teaching style. Thus a computer that completely replaced teachers would need to have the ability to read into our subliminal methods of communication. A computer that can have a natural conversation with a student and pull endless amounts of data from the Internet still needs to be able to read into hints from the student’s facial expressions or body language in order to adjust its teaching style. However, strides are being taken to improve this aspect of computer communication. In 2008, a Ph.D. student namedJacob Whitehill developed a system to alter a computer’s methods on the go, based on facial expressions. If this technology were in place along with natural conversation and the ability to pull information from the internet, then the computer would be doing everything that a teacher can do as well.

So, it seems possible for teachers to be replaced by computers, but will they? It’s still widely open to speculation. We can guess that the proper technology to do so will be in place within the next decade or so. It is highly possible. However, whether computers will be sophisticated enough to teach efficiently remains in question. It may be that in the future, technology is only good for low-level learning, but we do need to keep an open mind to the possibility that teachers might be replaced by technology.

Living Technology

Sustainability is an important part of our lives, not only because we have to take it under consideration to save our planet, but also because we want to feel good about our jobs and because we want to be effective members not only in our societies but also in
the whole planet. Thinking about it, we couldn’t reach this far, in recycling and sustainability level, without technology. Now, with the technology use in the design and architecture fields, we were able to come up with green energy, multi-functional spaces, and the smart house expression.

30 years ago, green energy was just a dream, but with the technology revolution, it became possible to build green energy projects. While I was doing research about technology and its role in sustainability, a lot of green energy projects came up in my research, but I’m going to mention two projects, which grabbed my attention the most. The first project is called energy islands (figure 2). This project based on taking advantage of the ocean’s waves and the wind energy in the oceans. The idea of this project is simple; it’s about placing turbines under the water, which connected generators on the surface of the island to create clean, renewable energy. Next to placing turbines under the water, they place number of Windmills and solar cells on the surface of these islands, which also contributes providing clean power source.

Technology

RIST believes that Advice and Communication Technology is an capital accomplishment for activity in the 21st century, a apparatus for teaching and acquirements and an bookish discipline. Our ambition is to advice all associates of the RIST association accomplish the a lot of of acquirements with adapted technologies.
RIST is a baton in educational technology. We are alive in the educational technology and acquirements community. We are a approved area for the International Schools Technology Exchange Committee (ISTEC).


The laptop computers use wireless Internet admission in our classrooms, with technology getting a apparatus that is allotment of all applicative acquirements situations. In accession to computers, classrooms aswell accept projectors which accommodate acceptance with bright admission to their advisory materials. Media monitors are displayed school-wide to accommodate acceptance admission to academy announcements and appropriate events.
Students at RIST use Advice Technology (IT) to apprentice in a advantageous and able manner, to accurate their account and appearance creativity, to assay and break problems, to acquaint their allegation and to authenticate their acquirements outcomes.
Subscribing to the latest in online analysis portals, RIST acceptance accept admission to a wide-array of capital advice to conduct their research. Our investment in technology is on a continuum and is consistently getting revised and added to accept the best accoutrement accessible for our association of learners.
RIST believes technology abilities are best abstruse in the ambience of the students’ circadian learning. RIST believes that application technology can enhance the acquirements of the classroom agreeable knowledge. RIST has put in abode an chip technology acquirements model. Acceptance apprentice IT abilities throughout the advance of their curricular learning.

Introducing Technology Plans

Individuals accepting casework from Imagine!, including all of the association of our SmartHomes, accept anniversary planning affairs area the individuals, forth with ancestors members, affliction providers, and added key associates of the individual’s abutment aggregation altercate what casework will best accommodated the needs and goals of the individual. During these meetings, the aggregation develops what are accepted as Alone Affairs (IPs). These affairs focus on the issues discussed in the affair and outline the strategies for acclamation them.
To added our adeptness to see how technology can appulse the lives of the association active in our SmartHomes, we accept amorphous to advance citizen Technology Affairs to abutment and enhance anniversary resident’s IP. The Technology Affairs will focus on how to use technology to aerate residents’ ability and superior of activity while optimizing the ability and capability of caregivers in the account environment.

The Technology Affairs will analyze baseline accomplishment levels at assorted tasks, analyze cold milestones that will announce an access above those baseline skills, and again actualize methodologies and motivational affairs advised to accommodated those cold milestones.

The cold milestones will body on anniversary added in such a way that association will be able to use technology to yield incremental accomplish against accommodated bigger goals articular in IPs – absorption on what is important to and important for anniversary alone resident.
The abstracts from the Technology Affairs will be tracked, so we can accept bigger abstracts of the success ante of the abounding technologies already in use in the SmartHomes.

The new citizen Technology Affairs are addition archetype of how Imagine! is affective advanced with Phase II of its SmartHomes project, area we are application the homes as active laboratories to analyze and advance the a lot of able accoutrement for confined humans with adorning disabilities and accompanying altitude – so we can accommodated the needs of abounding added in the future!
Posted by Imagine! SmartHomes at 12:

Face recognition technology is ramped up

PERTH: A dot-sized part of a face may soon be all that is needed to identify a person, according to an Australian face recognition expert.

Ajmal Mian from the University of Western Australia in Perth is investigating how to use satellite technology to identify facial features that lie under the skin - a technology that could one day be used to identify people who have used cosmetic surgery to alter their face.

"Multi-spectral imaging can be used to measure light reflected off a face at hundreds of discrete wavelengths in the visible spectrum and beyond," he said. "Recognition based on sets of facial images from surveillance cameras, YouTube videos, Google Images or personal photo albums is more accurate because they contain more information."

Better than fingerprinting

Mian said that face recognition technology was better than fingerprinting because it didn't require special equipment or an expert to verify the results. Plus any part of a face can be used, and many images of a person's face - including different expressions and poses - could be merged to make a composite image that was more meaningful to the machine.

"Humans can recognise a person regardless of whether they're laughing, frowning, crying or sleeping. Machines may soon be able to do the same," he said. "Humans are very good at finding a familiar face in a crowd but less able to identify someone they may have seen only once. This is where machines outperform people because they can memorise images and never tire of matching them to faces in a crowd."

Mian added that face recognition technology is being used increasingly for computer log-ons, identity checks and surveillance. He said it can be used in any kind of machine such as mobile phones, computers and robots. "It's the most user-friendly way to authenticate someone and is now so sophisticated that machines can identify a face no matter what the expression."

Technology: A gift or A curse

Lately I accept apprehend abounding online writing on technology and internet issues.In the accomplished anniversary there accept been the following: Some of Google had been afraid in China, Nintendo server getting afraid into. A few weeks back, the case of Sony getting afraid into and claimed advice of users were stolen. As technology advances, we acquisition ourselves application it added and added in accustomed life, relying on it added and if put into acute context, we accept become absolutely abased to it and may at times become disciplinarian to technology. Who can candidly say they do not analysis their phones or emails at atomic 2-3 times or added a day? How abounding of us would say the aboriginal affair we grab in the morning afore we deathwatch up is our phone?

I am academic if we in fact recorded our own time acceptance of technology in just one day, we will be shocked. If you anticipate about it this will include: phones, PC, internet, television, gadgets

Learning first, entertainment second. Technology in the classroom.

Lots of talk lately has been whether or not technology can improve student learning.  I believe, when used correctly, technology can drastically improve understanding of concepts .  Using the virtual world destroys the boundaries we encounter in the physical classroom.  In all fields of education, we need to start using all tools available and not just the "traditional" tools that were around when we were in high school. 

When my SmartBoard was first installed in my class, I truly believed I was utilizing technology to its full potential everyday, by writing my notes on the SmartBoard.  Sadly, I have then realized all I had in my classroom was a glorified whiteboard.  This then caused to me think, "Even though I might have technology in my class, unless I am using it in a way that requires that certain technology, I am not using it correctly".


How do we utilize such technology?  Below are apps described by "eSchoolNews", and what the sites claims to be the top 10 iPad, iPhone, or iTouch apps.  The list could go on and on, as more and more educational apps are created daily.   No matter what technology we use, however, we need to be aware that its use should be promoting student learning and not just for entertainment.

Researchers Trying to Give First Supersonic Biplane Some Lift

Return of the Biplane Shigeru Obayashi/Tohoku University

In the 1930s engineer Adolf Busemann conceived of a supersonic biplane that produced no sonic boom—the shock waves would bounce off the plane’s two wings at opposing angles, nullifying each other. But the design created so much drag that the plane wouldn’t have been able to fly. Now two groups are trying to improve the concept with computer simulations. Engineers at Japan’s Tohoku University devised wings with shifting flaps that adjust for drag at different speeds. And researchers from MIT and Stanford University widened the air channel between the wings and tilted their leading and trailing edges. If either design gets built, it could be the first supersonic biplane to take off.

NASA Successfully Tests its Inflatable Heat Shield in Reentry

IRVE-3 During Vacuum Testing at NASA's Langley Research Center NASA Langley/Kathy Barnstorff

NASA’s inflatable heat shield took another big step forward early this morning when its Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment (IRVE-3) came screaming through the atmosphere and splashed down in the Atlantic after spending 15 minutes undergoing the intense heat and pressure of atmospheric reentry. Launched from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, the IRVE-3 mission further demonstrated that an inflatable heat shield can protect a space capsule as it enters the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds.
IRVE-3 consists of a series of un-inflated rings packed into a cone and wrapped in layers of heat resistant materials, creating a kind of thermal blanket around an incoming spacecraft. At 7:01 a.m. local time this morning, this package was hurled skyward aboard a Black Brant rocket to suborbital altitudes at speeds reaching 7,600 miles per hour. About six minutes in, the 680-pound aeroshell separated from the rocket at about 280 miles up.At this point, IRVE-3 rapidly pumped nitrogen into its aeroshell, expanding it from a conical package that fit inside the Black Brant’s 22-inch-diameter nose cone into a 10-foot-diameter mushroom-like heat shield. Onboard cameras and sensors captured the entire 20-minute mission in realtime--a mission that NASA is calling an unqualified success.
IRVE-3 is part of NASA’s Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (HIAD) Project, which aims to provide the agency with a less-expensive and modular means to return space capsules--those carrying cargo from the International Space Station, for instance--to Earth safely despite the high forces and temperatures that act on them during reentry. Doing so could make travel to and from earth orbit far more economical while also providing a tested and certified platform that could be readily adapted to various spacecraft to ensure safe reentry.

Speedo's Super-Fast, Shark-Skin-Inspired Fastskin Swimsuit Is Actually Nothing Like a Shark's Skin

Speedo LZR Suit Speedo

Speedo's Fastskin line (including the banned-as-of-2009 LZR suit) of high-tech, high-performance swimsuits were inspired by the skin of a shark--shark skin's sandpaper-like texture is thought to reduce drag, hence its usefulness in swimming gear. But an ichthyologist at Harvard performed a study and found that Fastskin is "nothing like shark skin at all," and that its surface properties do not reduce drag one bit.
Shark skin, as well as the skin of related fish like rays and chimaeras, is covered with dermal denticles, almost like little teeth. George Lauder, a professor of ichthyology at Harvard, performed experiments to analyze the purpose of these dermal denticles, and tested the Speedo suits as well, to see how similar they are.

 hark Skin Closeup:  Creative Commons
What he found was that while the Speedo Fastskin suits may enhance a swimmer's speed, it's not due to the reduction of drag. Says Lauder:

“What we found is that as the shark skin membrane moves, there is a separation of flow. The denticles create a low-pressure zone, called a leading-edge vortex, as the water moves over the skin,” he said. “You can imagine this low-pressure area as sucking you forward. The denticles enhance this leading-edge vortex. So my hypothesis is that these structures that make up shark skin reduce drag, but I also believe them to be thrust-enhancing.”

But that drag reduction only occurs when the skin is attached to a flexible body. Human bodies, which are far less flexible, receive no benefits at all from the surface of the suit. Of course, Lauder speculates that the suit could still have speed benefits--it enhances a swimmer's posture, and its tightness could have a beneficial impact on circulation. But swim like a shark? Nope--it's going to take more than some artificial shark skin for that.

Sally Ride, America's First Female Astronaut, Has Died

Sally Ride Aboard Challenger U.S. National Archives and Records Administration 

Sally Ride, America’s first female astronaut, died today in La Jolla, Calif., after a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer. Ride was a doctoral candidate in physics at Stanford University in 1977 when she answered an ad placed by NASA seeking astronauts. She flew aboard the space shuttle Challenger in 1983, becoming not only America’s first woman in space, but at 32 years of age, also the youngest American to have traveled in space at that time. She left NASA in 1987, spending much of her time thereafter encouraging students--especially young women--to pursue careers in science and engineering. She was 61.

12 Reasons I Use Technology in my Classroom

This was going to be my top ten list of reasons, but then I came up with two more. (Maybe that makes me an overachiever?) There are many excellent posts and articles out there on why teachers do (or should) use technology in their classrooms. I've read many, but I wanted to write down my own reasons, and I thought I'd record them here:

1. Because you can play with it. When was the last time you played with a textbook? I know some kids do, because I've had to remove inappropriate drawings from some I've had handed back at the end of the semester, but playing with technology can lead to learning, while drawing genitalia in a textbook really does not!
2. Because the wealth of second language resources available online can't be beat. As a second language teacher, this reason is important enough that you really don't need any others.
3. Because many kids already use it. If you want to engage them on the level of their interests, you've got to go there.
4. Because many kids don't use it and are scared of it or don't have access to it at home. Technology is not a fad, and it's not going away. I might be the only person to open that door for a student, and it's an opportunity I don't want to miss.
5. Because it's especially engaging for boys. As the mother of two boys, I know the value of keeping them engaged in school. The number of boys who continue with language classes at the senior level tends to drop sharply as they get towards the senior years, and if there's something I can do to keep them interested, I'll do it because I want as many kids as possible to get that second language education.
6. Because it can be alienating for girls. It was for me when I first encountered it, and as the aunt of three lovely nieces, the last thing I want for them (or any other girl) is to be alienated by technology in school.
7. Because I like it, and teaching from your strength is always a good idea.
8. Because it's challenging. Technology is dynamic and always developing, and it's one of the ways I hope to foster a love for lifelong learning in my students. Being open to change is not easy, but I believe it's going to be an essential life skill for this generation.
9. Because it lends itself beautifully to critical thinking and inquiry learning. You have to design your projects carefully  in order to ensure that students can't Google the answers, but it's well worth the effort.
10. Because it offers choice and flexibility. There are many tools that are available for students to use, and giving them the choice of what to use, as well as the tools to evaluate which one might be a good option, is a wonderful way of engaging them in the process.
11. Because there are many free tools available. Let's face it - in this day and age of fiscal restraint, free is a good price!
12.  Because if I choose the right tools, the technology  I use in my classroom will have applications in other classes my students take, or other areas of their lives. Getting them to see what they do in my classroom as important and useful is exciting!

A Plan For Airships That Might Finally Take Off

"Some kids wanted to be firefighters,” Igor Pasternak says. “I always thought about blimps.” Pasternak grew up in Lviv, Ukraine, near a weather station. When he was six, he convinced the Soviet meteorologists there to let him launch one of their balloons. “I was hooked,” he says. “I wanted to build airships.”

We are standing in the vast wood-beamed hangar where one such vessel, a 400-foot-long “variable buoyancy functional cargo airship” called the Aeroscraft, is being assembled. The looming aluminum and carbon-fiber skeleton, not entirely unlike a half-completed Death Star, is the prototype for what Pasternak says will be a new and better kind of flying machine: one that can carry substantial cargo to any place on Earth. The reason there are so few blimps flying today, he says, is that “no one has improved the concept. I am solving a problem more than a century old.”

Pasternak is wearing a T-shirt that says Ballast Control Matters, which pretty much sums up that problem. “Blimps fly with buoyancy,” Pasternak says. “But when the blimp is empty, if you don’t hold it down, the ship flies into space. I realized we could compress the helium inside special chambers and give the ship more or less lift.”

Hot-air balloons are completely at the mercy of the winds, and even dirigibles (a general term for all steerable airships) still require ground crews—guys with ropes and ballast. If Pasternak’s variable-buoyancy system works, the pilot will be able to maneuver in all directions, vertically and horizontally, with no external assistance. He will be able to go anywhere and land anywhere, and take a very big cargo along with him. “Then you have progress,” Pasternak says.

Revolutionizing transportation with airships is an old idea but a persistent one, and it’s usually the military that brings it closer to reality. More than a century after George Griffith described armed conflict fought with “war balloons” in his popular novel The Angel of the Revolution, the U.S. military was considering the merits of transporting materiel with airships. In 2005 Darpa, the Pentagon’s experimental branch, initiated Project Walrus and set about finding a contractor to build a “hybrid ultra-large aircraft” that could transport 500 tons of cargo at least 12,000 nautical miles. Pasternak’s Aeros got the biggest contract of the project. (“There is only one solution,” Pasternak had explained to the Los Angeles Times, “and we have that one solution.”) But in 2010, the Pentagon chose not to renew Project Walrus, a fate not uncommon to airship schemes.

Builders around the world nonetheless continue to investigate various ways to get airships off the ground. Northrop Grumman, Lockheed and other major aviation companies, alongside such smaller entrepreneurs as Cargolifter and Aeros have all at various times participated in the race to build a commercially viable airship.

Bill Crowder, a logistics expert who is inspecting the Aeros prototype with us today, has been following Pasternak’s efforts for years. Logistics is the industry term for the business of getting the world’s freight and equipment where it needs to go. Imagining the sky filled with Titanic-size dirigibles induces “the giggle factor,” Crowder now says, craning his neck up toward the frame, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea. And in fact, a ship like this could stay in the air for a week and then deliver a substantial payload—a 50-ton crane, say, that’s needed in the Arctic.

Pasternak launched Worldwide Aeros Corp. in Ukraine in 1987 and at first made just unmanned “aerostats,” small tethered blimps. He moved the company to the U.S. shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union and, in a moment of détente, became the lead Pentagon contractor for the development of lighter-than-air vehicles. Aeros is the biggest seller on Earth both of aerostats and manned blimps—its customers include the U.S. Department of Defense and authorities in several foreign governments—but all of that, Pasternak says, is a means to an end. “I always wanted to build the Aeroscraft,” he says. “I put all the profit of my company into this new ship. Everything.”

Flying Hotels: The first customers for Aeroscraft airships will be cargo companies, but the vehicles could eventually be developed into flying hotels that silently transport guests from New York to Los Angeles overnight.  Worldwide Aeros Corp.

For the moment, his ship is leading the race. Cargolifter went out of business, as did Advanced Technologies Group, the U.K.’s main firm attempting to revive airship innovation. Lockheed and Northrop have fixed their sights on a type of airship that still requires a runway. “None of them have the capability of the Aeroscraft,” Pasternak says.

The widely used C-17 cargo plane can carry 75 tons. The one-off Soviet AN-225 can carry a record-breaking 275 tons. But if the Aeroscraft prototype works and Pasternak completes plans to build an 800-foot model, he will advance the capacity of airborne transportation to 500 tons, delivered anywhere. “This is a lovely sight to a logistics guy,” Crowder says. “I’ve been waiting for something like this for a long time.

Technology’s Dark Side – How It Can Be Used Against Us

Few can argue about the benefits of technology. It has allowed us to save time, work on the go, and get more done in a day than our grandparents ever dreamed of. There are many benefits that technology has brought us, such as locating lost children, assisting patients en route to hospital via ambulance, and detect dangerous illnesses long before they can become life-threatening.

But what about the dark side of technology? That last web site you visited to kill a few spare minutes may be really interesting, but it may also be a way for someone to keep tabs on you. While there are many sites out there that outline common (and not-so-common) conspiracy theories, this article isn’t meant to become part of them. But it certainly will make you wonder.

Popularity x Prestige in science – what matters most?

In my endure blog commodity I wrote that science is in a moment of “transformation” like any added acreage mainly because of the Web 2.0 anarchy – which implies that the user has the ability to admit and annul whatever he wants in websites, mainly amusing networks and advice sites such as Wikipedia, Facebook, blogs, and etc. Association is ambidextrous with a lot of aloofness issues apropos these new internet advances. Some humans anticipate this is not a acceptable sign, about any evolving acreage brings acceptable and “evil” outcomes and association has to accord with it. In its aboriginal years, for example, the aggregation Google declared that they would never play “evil” and aggregate clandestine abstracts from humans application their seek engine. It looks like this is not the case now that we apperceive they are adverse some problems with privacy, abnormally in China and in Europe. In the aforementioned fashion, Facebook faces accretion aloofness issues and problems. Anyway, the point of this new blog commodity is focused in the accurate field. The point is that our analysis and acceptability (and by our I beggarly every scientist in the world) is basically abstinent by the analysis we do. This agency that if we can get our after-effects to be appear in top appulse accurate journals our “prestige” in the accurate association will be good. The Appulse Agency or IF of a annual was developed by Eugene Garfield of the Institute for Accurate Advice (ISI) and it has been the capital adjustment to actuate the appulse of a accurate analysis discovery. However, in the “Google age” we accept been adverse a actual absorbing trend which is the actuality that the seek after-effects or baronial that Google gives for a specific commodity or annual is altered from the IF affected by ISI. This is explained by the actuality that these two sources use altered methods and algorithms to annual the appulse of online writing and journals. It is bright now that “popularity” that Google searches gives us does not overlap with the IF provided by ISI. The cessation is that we charge to appear up with altered methods to annual the appulse agency of analysis discoveries and journals. In that regard, currently accessible methods for appraisal of the superior of accurate affidavit and cachet are ability a abstruse re-evaluation. The catechism now is what affairs most? Acceptance or Prestige? A contempo
commodity is proposing a blueprint for this complicated affair (for added data see: “Impact Agency Page Rankled” by Hascall, Bollen and Hanson, 2007). A new blueprint that takes into annual the algorithm from Google for web searches and the IF from ISI can be accumulated in a actual affected manner. Larry Page, one of the Google founders appear the algorithm (see article: “The analysis of a all-embracing hypertextual Web seek engine” by Brin and Page, 1998) they use in Google Seek Engine. The baronial acclimated by IF is mainly based in their own adjustment for adding which evaluates the amount of citations a annual receives over a 2 year aeon disconnected by the amount of analysis affidavit and reviews appear in that journal. It is acceptable bright that as the accurate actual becomes accessible for chargeless download in the Web 2.0 era with Open Access Journals bustling up everywhere, and appropriately become searchable through Google, our acumen of commodity acceptance will change as a aftereffect of the afresh appropriate Page Rankled and not the IF alone. I am absolutely abiding that a new anarchy in the annual and commodity allocation industry has already started. Now we just charge to seek our online writing application Google and see how accepted they are absolute in which annual they were appear in…

Web 2.0 and the democratization of science

Science was declared to be all about accord to accomplish our capital goals – try to accept the basics on how bacilli and beef plan and use this advice to aid in the advanced ambit of diseases that affect humankind. Unfortunately, the accurate apple is not all about administration information. In fact, it was consistently the opposite; a big antagonism in which the ones with added assets get to the discoveries aboriginal and prevail. To be able to do a nice analysis in science and accomplish it attainable to the accomplished accurate association is added difficult than anyone would imagine. Accurate account commodity appraisal and peer-revision, as I already acicular in my antecedent blog posts, is an arbitrary and arresting action that can yield months and even years. There is a lot of antagonism and the journals are not attainable to all scientists in the apple back they allegation for commodity download. This is somehow
alteration with the anarchy of the Web 2.0 in which there is added alternation of the individuals with the advice attainable online. Chargeless amusing media networks such as Podcasts, YouTube, endless blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and others accept been facilitating the “spread” of the accurate discoveries faster than it was absurd let’s say 10 years ago. The accepted “migration” of the printed media to the basic apple is absolutely facilitating the democratization of science all over the world. Several accurate journals that are Open Admission and chargeless of allegation accept emerged, so anybody is able to download online writing and commentaries about specific topics. The trend is that even the added “traditional” journals will charge to acquisition means to get acquirement and become advisedly attainable so everybody can accept admission to “first class” accurate discoveries. This blazon of democratization is not necessarily new, but now it will action faster and will affect humans all over the apple in an era that advice is the a lot of admired product. In a ample action like science, this can accomplish a big difference. Web 2.0 is already alteration the accurate association and I achievement this will absolutely appulse in the change of our acreage and facilitate the appliance of our discoveries.a

Computers, internet and our brain – the extended mind?

The history of the Internet started in the 1950s and 1960s with the development of computers. The alpha of the web was mainly point-to-point advice amid mainframe computers and terminals and it was added broadcast to point-to-point admission amid computers. The internet has acquired back again and some even say that the web as we apperceive it is dying or is already asleep (see the Wired Magazine commodity about it – “The web is dead”). The web was actual chaotic (and still is) until the barrage of seek engines with several links and lots of advice advance all over the “cyberspace”. Seek engines such as Google afflicted this by facilitating us in award whatever we ambition in the web. If you ambition to seek for a specific chat or name, you just charge to acquisition a computer affiliated to the internet and blazon it. It is like abracadabra and you get several webpages accompanying to your query. The contempo actualization of altered types of amusing media such as Facebook, Twitter and others has fabricated accessing advice even easier and added organized. The web is evolving appear beneath entropy, and by anarchy I beggarly disorganization. The advice is acceptable added abundant and the “socialization” of it is helping. Interestingly, the advice stored in the web, abnormally in seek engines such as Google and added databases has become our alien anamnesis antecedent that we can eventually admission at any time. Although the abstraction of ability seems to prime thoughts of computers, even if answers are known, we are acceptable abased on the computers and internet (see the commodity “Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Advice at Our Fingertips” in Science, 2011). Studies accept been assuming that we are acceptable accommodating with our computer accoutrement growing into commutual systems to bethink beneath by alive advice area it can be found; for archetype googling it. Another archetype of affiliation amid our accuracy (or mind) and the computers are studies that the brazilian built-in scientist Miguel Nicolelis and colleagues at Duke University are conducting. They were able to accomplished monkeys to use academician signals to ascendancy the movements of a apprentice on the added ancillary of the apple (Nicolelis MA. Brain-machine interfaces to restore motor action and delving neural circuits. Nat Rev Neurosci. 4: 417-422, 2003). The advisers accomplished some of the monkey’s neurons to “adopt” the machine’s locomotion as its own. This is a able and concrete archetype on how we can become added and added affiliated not just to the advice that computers accommodate us today but, to a added extent, amalgam systems of man associated to machines. Our association is acceptable absolutely abased on the computers and how they accompany us the advice we charge at the exact moment we want. This affinity of our academician with the machines (computers in this case) is boring demography abode and alteration animal evolution. I ambition I could reside for added than a aeon to see what is traveling to appear then…But I am just a animal getting like any other, not a machine-man.

Illinois – a hub state for technology development and creation?

We were consistently told that big technology drivers in the US are institutions such as MIT, Harvard, Caltech, Stanford and added able-bodied accepted for their confusing inventions and creations. They are absolutely actual important with their artistic ambiance and technology development. Companies such as Google and Facebook were built-in in Stanford and Harvard, respectively. Others such as Bose were created in MIT, and the account is extensive. Well, I reside in Chicago, Illinois, in the Midwest breadth of the US and anybody would anticipate the ambiance actuality is not actual artistic or abounding of innovations. I had no abstraction that Illinois was aswell a hub for creations and inventions, abnormally in actual important areas of Advice Technology (IT) and the internet. Since the alpha of the 1950s, for example, The University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign (and not University of Chicago or Northwestern, as anybody would think… has a bequest of IT Excellence at Illinois with several game-changing breakthroughs in hardware,

software,algorithms, and networking. The adventure of re-imagining how bodies collaborate with computers and with one another, and the ability of accepting actual admission to millions of sources of advice was developed in this ambiance (for added data analysis the link:http://www.it.illinois.edu/legacy These breakthroughs awning the apparatus of the transistor in 1947, which is the forerunner of the chip acclimated in computers today. John Bardeen co-invented the transistor while at Bell Labs and after abutting the Illinois engineering adroitness and physics faculty, area he co-developed the approach of superconductivity. Professor Bardeen became the aboriginal being to win two Nobel Prizes in the aforementioned acreage (in 1956 for inventing the transistor and in 1972 for his plan on superconductivity). The aboriginal computer absolutely congenital and endemic by an educational academy was aswell amid in the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Added examples in the accomplished awning Illinois alum Jack Kilby (BS, 1947) that invented the chip circuit, for which he was after awarded a Nobel Prize. Interestingly, the LED abstraction and PLASMA screens that are acclimated today in collapsed awning TVs were invented in the aforementioned university. The aboriginal applied arresting spectrum LED was invented by Nick Holonyak, Jr. Don Bitzer and Gene Slottow, two Illinois alumni and professors, and Illinois alum apprentice Robert Willson invented the claret affectation while alive on the PLATO arrangement (the aboriginal computer-assisted apprenticeship system). In the 1970s, added technologies included the aboriginal alongside supercomputer, the UNIX arrangement authorization from Bell Labs (which after became the LINUX Operating System). Importantly, in the 1990s, the aboriginal accepted graphical Web browser called Mosaic (which after became Netscape and again Firefox) was developed by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina while alive for this university. It was initially beheld as an agitative new tool, but no one at the time could accept predicted that its advanced acceptance would advance to e-commerce, online classrooms, downloadable music and films, and new common communities of humans with aggregate interests that we see today. Marc Andreessen after became an figure in Venture Capital investments and after founded a VC Fund that helps advance several added interfaces and technologies that are acceptable companies of success today (see Marc Andreessen’s TIME Magazine awning if he invented the Netscape browser). Finally, alum Max Levchin co-founded PayPal, acceptance payments and money transfers to be fabricated via the Internet. In 2005, two Illinois alumni, Jawed Karim and Steve Chen, forth with Chad Hurley, were co-creators of YouTube, which has had all-around appulse on aggregate from accepted ability to authoritative behavior on video administration in the internet. I did not brainstorm how abounding acceptable technologies came out from Illinois and maybe several humans out there did not apperceive either. But, Illinois is an important hub for inventions and creations in several aspects of IT and the internet. Who knows what confusing technology will be invented in Illinois in the approaching and

How new web technologies and innovations are impacting our society

The blog column today will focus on the appulse that atypical web technologies such as amusing media and seek engine accoutrement (i.e.: Google) accept in our society. These accoutrement accept been acclimated to clue diseases and to bigger accept altered trends online. If you are like millions (or billions) of humans about the apple that can admission the internet, you somehow appoint in internet-enabled self-diagnosis for diseases (among added types of queries) application seek engines and added web tools. In
today’s hyper-connected world, these accoutrement are not just acclimated to do self-diagnosis or clue diseases in populations but to appraise altered capacity that are discussed in amusing media (for example, trend capacity in amusing medias such as Twitter, Facebook and others). Aboriginal let’s assay how a seek engine can be accessible in admiration catching outbreaks of a ache acquired by bacilli or bacteria. Google Inc. did a actual absorbing abstraction to appraise if their seek engine was able to ascertain areas that an affliction catching could be eminent (for added abstracts see the commodity “Detecting affliction epidemics application seek engine concern data” on Nature). The abstraction was actual aboveboard back it evaluated queries that were done at Google application keywords absolute annihilation accompanying to influenza. Application this approach, they were able to clue areas that could be accepting an catching of influenza. Their after-effects were compared to the CDC (Center for Ache Control, a United States government organization) in agreement of which of them could get areas afflicted beforehand and Google’s algorithm won. Google web seek logs could accommodate one of the a lot of timely, broad-reaching ache ecology systems to date.
Whereas acceptable ecology systems acclimated by CDC and the government crave 1-2 weeks to accumulate and action the data, Google’s estimates are in a circadian basis. Now both Google and CDC plan calm in any ache beginning assuming how this apparatus can advice the government in tracking ache outbreaks. The additional apparatus that is revolutionizing assorted sectors in our association is amusing media. Two contempo studies were able to show, application the Twitter platform, that we can adviser trends based on the posts of users. PacSocial, which is a association that is focused on the development of technologies that accredit all-embracing abstraction of amusing communities online was able to use “socialbots” to access access and interactions amid two users (see “PacSocial: Field Test Report” for added details). They were able, for the aboriginal time, to appearance how accoutrement such as “socialbots” can access animal affiliation online. This abstraction is acute for a bigger compassionate on how amusing media is abstraction our society. Another abstraction focused on Twitter users advised by advisers from MIT (see “Modeling the acceptance of innovations in the attendance of geographic and media influences” afresh appear in PLoS ONE) advised the furnishings of amusing arrangement anatomy addition acceptance creating a archetypal based on cartography and accumulation media. The authors showed that accumulation media was amenable for accretion Twitter users with time. Interestingly, the authors aswell appearance how able is the mouth-to-mouth advance of these medias amid the young. Cities with the a lot of aboriginal adopters of Twitter tended to accept ample universities or technology centers alluring adolescent people. Twitter was launched in the Bay breadth in San Francisco and the added users started to appear from the east cost, basically Cambridge and Boston area both MIT and Harvard University are located. These letters on new technologies influencing association and decisions, abnormally in catching outbreaks, appearance how allotment seek engines and amusing media accept become to our society. I accept that several added accurate studies, abnormally application the Facebook belvedere that now accept added than 800 actor users will be done. I achievement that these new web accoutrement will advice our association in altered ways, abnormally for ache monitoring. This could be important to accept the trends that are influencing our association online. (Image credits: Sociology World)

Technology: “Surface” another New Idea from Microsoft

The arrival of Microsoft into the world of the tablets with the presentation of the “Surface” that accompanies the software Windows 8, is giving a lot of talk in the world of technology and technological fields.

Some experts say the company is cannibalizing its own market of sale software since Microsoft programs are used by other manufacturers of tablets could resent his abrupt entry into an industry, where Microsoft would have significant advantages in power adjust the price of their licenses.

Others see it as a smart offensive aimed to convert the Surface in the main competitor of Apple iPhone. Several experts say about what is behind the strategic shift from the software giant, which until this time had shown no interest in breaking into the field of laptops.Microsoft has more than 90% of the desktop market, compared with 6% of Apple. But in the laptop world, the roles are exactly reversed. Microsoft only covers a fraction of the mobile market, while Apple and Google continue to grow in this expanding sectorIt is expected that the number of mobile Internet users exceed that of desktop computer users in early 2014, as reported by the technology firm ComScore.

Microsoft got the message by entering a line of portable Surface, facing the overall control strategy Apple product.

The Impact of Technology on the Federal Government

This is the first in a blog series focusing on the impact of technology on the federal government. In future posts I will discuss the growth of Information Technology (IT) contracting,emerging technologies, and the challenges faced by federal agencies and federal IT contractors resulting from the recent federal budget crisis.

So, where do we begin? The impact of technology on the federal government operations and the delivery of citizen-centric services are undeniable. Developing and implementing any technology is a complex undertaking. Developing and implementing technology for the federal government, can and usually does, increase this level of complexity. These efforts usually involve multiple stakeholders and interests such as the prime contractor, subcontractor(s), consultants (technical and/or management), other federal agencies, federal budgeting constraints, cumbersome procurement processes, state, local, tribal ,or federal laws and statutes, Congress, and citizens. These efforts are also well-known for their size, complexity, staggering budgets, mismanagement, poor planning, and failures. A 2008 Government Accountability Office report stated:

OMB and federal agencies have identified around 413 IT projects—totaling at least $25.2 billion in spending for fiscal year 2008—as being poorly planned, poorly performing, or both. Specifically, through the Management Watch List process, OMB determined that 352 projects (totaling about $23.4 billion) are poorly planned. In addition, agencies reported that 87 of their high risk projects (totaling about $4.8 billion) were poorly performing. Twenty-six projects (totaling about $3 billion) are considered both poorly planned and poorly performing.

Since it is no fun to lead with the bad news, let’s look at “the good” of one federal government IT effort with the goal of increasing agency efficiency and effectiveness in delivering citizen-centric services.

In 1986 the IRS piloted its electronic tax filing program (e-file).  In 1990, e-file became nationally available.  By June 2011, a Treasury Press Releases (Issue Number: IR-2011-64) touted individual e-file tax returns had surpassed the one billion mark since 1986. Also, reported was more than “100 million individual tax returns were e-filed during the 2011 filing season”. And, in a December 2010 report , the GAO stated for fiscal year 2009, the IRS reported an e-file return cost 19 cents to process compared to $3.29 for a paper return. The report cited in 2005, the IRS processed 62 million paper fillings and 68 million electronic fillings and in 2010, only 40 million fillings were paper compared with 94 million electronic fillings.

However, the e-file program has not been all wine and roses. The IRS began a program to modernize the original e-file system in 2004. Now called, Modernized e-File (MeF), the December 2010 GAO report also suggested “although IRS began using MeF to accept individual returns for the first time in 2010, the system was underutilized.” The report states IRS officials cited several reasons such as the system is “unproven compared to the current legacy e-file system” and “the legacy e-file system had a lower rejection rate than MeF and return filers may have stopped using MeF after encountering performance problems.”

Here’s where things get complicated. Congress has set an 80% e-file adoption goal for major returns. So, how might the issues and challenges faced by the MeF modernization effort impact e-file adoption? A July 2010 study in Computers in Human Behaviordiscussing a model of e-file adoption suggested adoption of electronic filing is significantly influenced by factors such as “trust in the internet and trust in the e-file provider”. Also, a 2011 study inTransforming Government: People, Process and Policy, highlighted factors such as level of effort, social influence, security and an individual’s belief in their own competence to successfully use the e-file system all played a role in “predicting taxpayers’ e-filing intentions.” And, a 2011 report by The Electronic Tax Administration Advisory Committee (ETAAC) discussed the following five groups of recommendations on issues in electronic tax administration:

• Standards for security and accuracy for the electronic tax community
• 1040 Modernized e-file (MeF) platform
• Barriers to e-filing employment tax returns
• Tax filing simplification
• Collaboration and partnership with the electronic filing community

What does all of this mean? Like I said, IT development efforts are complex and Federal IT efforts only add to this complexity. And, in reality, most technologies are not completely perfect. With all of this complexity and imperfection, I like to think in all of the confusion, things will somehow work themselves out.

I need to stop writing and get working on my 2012 taxes. In my next post…the growth of federal IT contracting.

Information Technology and Definition Information Technology

Information technology can advice you to advance your sales, for advance your armamentarium you can accept band-aid by no acclaim analysis payday loans.
Information technology has been authentic by the Advice Technology Association of America, or the ITAA as getting the study, design, development, accomplishing abutment and/or administering of any computer based advice systems. This relates decidedly to software applications and computer hardware. Advice technology deals with application cyberbanking computers and software to convert, store, protect, process, retrieve with aegis or address any information. What began abounding years ago as a appellation that abounding had no acquaintance of to a appellation that has skyrocketed to cover several aspects of accretion and technology. Advice technology is a advanced based appellation and encompasses abounding areas. Professionals in advice technology may accomplish a advanced array of tasks that ambit from installing computer applications to designing broadly circuitous computer networks and advice databases.
Everything from abstracts management, networking, engineering computer hardware, software design, database architecture and administering and administering of systems is included in the appellation of advice technology. When accoutrement the aspects of advice technology as a whole, the use of computers and advice are about associated.

The history of advice technology goes aback several years. In adjustment to accomplish the functions associated with the acreage of advice technology the avant-garde acreage will use computers, servers, database administering systems and cryptography

Technology for the Candidate Experience

The candidate experience is affected by a number of different aspects in the recruiting process.  From candidate attraction to the apply process to interviewing candidates to on-boarding new employees, the candidate experience spans a diverse group of functions.  For each of these functions, different technologies are used to improve and manage them.  So let’s look at the technologies that help control the candidate experience in the recruitment process.

Here are technologies that have some impact on the Candidate Experience and can be used to improve it:

Applicant Tracking System:  Nearly every recruiting organization has one and it has a considerable impact on the candidate experience especially from an apply process standpoint.  With the ATS, you are able to control your full apply process, candidate notification settings, manage the entire interview process and in some cases utilize for your Career Site.  This is the main hub for your recruiters and is one of the first places you should look when trying to improve your candidate experience.

Career Site SEO solution: There are a number of technologies out there that provide much more flexibility and SEO optimization forCareer Sites than what a typical ATS solution provides.  These solutions enable organizations to create better targeted messaging for specific candidate populations.  Whether you use your ATS or a Career Site solution this technology is important in providing relevant information to candidates before and after the apply process.  This is where most of your branding also occurs.

Job Distribution: A global job distribution provider helps you get your jobs from an ATS to the recruiting channels you use (job boards, niche sites, social networks).  In these technologies you are able to control what you deliver in terms of recruitment messaging as well as use the recruitment metrics captured this messaging to see what’s most effective.

Survey solutions: These solutions can help you capture information at every step in your recruitment process.  From your Career Site design, initial apply process, interview process and post-hire review. This data can help you determine where your process needs to improve and what candidates really care about in the process.

Social Recruiting:  Social technologies like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn (not to mention Pinterest, Instagram and others) provide the opportunity to engage with candidates on a personal level.  If you are able to dedicate resources to these technologies they can have a tremendous impact on identifying potential qualified candidates, dealing with customer (the candidate!) service issues and providing information on the process in general.

Content Delivery Tools: From CMS tools for blogging or video creation services, there are a number of technologies that help your organization create content for your recruiting efforts.

Take a look at the technology you currently have in your recruitment marketing process.  Make sure to determine how can you use it to improve your candidate experience and start implementing the technology to make your recruiting process better.

Technology startups hiring seasoned HR executives

BANGALORE: With talent being their most critical asset, technology startups that have acquired a certain scale and growing rapidly are beginning to hire experienced HR professionals to better organize their HR functions. Fast growing startups also need to continuously foster new talent and align them to their business goals.

Take Bangalore-based In-Mobi, the mobile advertising network, which according to one estimate is the world's second largest such network. Some months ago, the company's founder Naveen Tewari told TOI that 60% of his time was spent on getting and retaining high-quality talent.

Now the company has created the position of a vice president of global people operations. Monisha Tambay, who previously worked for Subex, Genpact , StorageTek and HewittAssociates, has been appointed to that role. Her mandate is to develop a strategic approach to talent management and establish HR processes across geographies.

Till recently, online bus ticketing company redBus had outsourced its HR function to a firm called The HR Practice. But the company is now scouting for an HR head to manage talent and drive a culture of innovation.

"We have 480 employees across 26 cities. We want to map talent and engage employees in a more systematic way. We are also setting up the redBus Academy, focusing on skill upgradation and employee engagement as part of our training sessions," says Phanindra Sama, CEO of redBus, a company that has sold 1 crore seats so far, making it perhaps the highest transaction volume for a B2C company.

Media technology company Komli Media recently hired Anjali Shrivastava, who has over 18 years of experience in HR, talent strategy, business planning, training and development, and who was the former country talent head at ad agency Ogilvy & Mather.

"We hired Anjali as the global head of HR to create a career path for our employees and provide the right level of opportunity to top performers," says Prashant Mehta, CEO of Komli Media. Komli Media has over 400 employees across 18 offices in India, Australia, New Zealand , South East Asia, Middle East, Hong Kong, North America and the UK. It plans to grow its headcount to 500 by this year-end .

Seasoned HR professionals also appear keen to work with startups. Startups give them the space to innovate. "Start-ups give them the opportunity to design off the rack processes relevant to the culture of the company. Many experienced HR professionals are willing to give their time to build size and value into the company," says Venkat Shastry , office managing director in executive search firm Korn/Ferry Bangalore.

Tambay of InMobi says she took up the job because it gave her a global exposure to start HR processes from scratch customized to different countries.

Some HR professionals are even willing to compromise on their compensation if the opportunity is really good. "They are willing to trade-off immediate fixed salary for a stock option that may be given to them down the line," says Gaurav Lahiri, MD of HR management consulting firm Hay Group India.

Aparna Ballakur, who left Yahoo India, where she was head of HR, to join e-commerce portalFlipkart in May this year, says she joined Flipkart because of the complexity of the business and the fact that the company was changing the way people shop in India.

"It provides me a unique opportunity; it combines the agility and growth of a start up with the complexity and size of a midsize company," says Flipkart's chief people officer who has 4,800 people to handle, and adds, "It tests all you have learnt about building for scale and teaches you to do so in a fast changing, high growth environment."