Cap with built-in solar-powered fan sure to keep you cool

By Jahanzaib Bin Liaquat

Correspondent, SAM Daily Times

TOKYO —The Japanese people are using their head to come up with eco-friendly ways of keeping cool, net retailer Rare Mono Shop has started selling a baseball cap with a solar-powered fan built into it. It’s called the Solar Fan-Embedded Hat and is available in a total of four equally-embarrassing colors. The fan is built into the visor of the cap and blows a cool breeze at the user’s face through a small hole. It can be purchased online from Rare Mono Shop and goes for 1,260 yen.
While wearing the Solar Fan-Embedded Hat probably won’t make you look cool, it’ll certainly make you feel cool, and under the scorching summer sun that’s all that really matters, right?

16-year-old boy attacked by knife-wielding man in Chiba

By Jahanzaib Bin Liaquat

Correspondent, SAM Daily Times

CHIBA — A16-year-old boy was attacked by a knife-wielding man in Chiba City early morning.
According to police, the boy was talking with four friends in the grounds of an apartment block in Hanamikawa Ward at about 3 a.m. They told police that a man they did not know suddenly came up to them and slashed one of the boys on his left cheek, man fled and the knife, used in the attack was found nearby.

Police said that other residents in the apartment block told them that the boys were making a lot of noise; Investigators believe the assailant might be a resident who became exasperated over the noise.

Days of Blood and Starlight (Daughter of Smoke and Bone, #2) by Laini Taylor

In this stunning sequel to the highly acclaimed "Daughter of Smoke and Bone," Karou must come to terms with who and what she is, and how far she'll go to avenge her people. Filled with heartbreak and beauty, mysteries and secrets, new characters and old favorites, Days of Blood and Starlight brings the richness, color and intensity of the first book to a brand new canvas.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone was declared a "must read" by Entertainment Weekly, was named a Best Book of the Year by Amazon.com, and The New York Times called it "a breath-catching romantic fantasy."

The Walking Dead (TV series)

The Walking Dead is a post-apocalyptic drama television series developed for television by Frank Darabont. It is based on the comic book series The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard.

The series stars Andrew Lincoln as sheriff's deputy Rick Grimes who wakes up after being in a coma to find the world dominated by "walkers", resembling the zombies of George A. Romero's horror movies. He sets out to find his family and other survivors along the way. The Walking Dead premiered on October 31, 2010 on the cable television channel AMC in the United States. Based on its reception, AMC renewed the series for a second season of 13 episodes which premiered on October 16, 2011. Two episodes into the second season, AMC announced that the show would return for a third season.

The series has been well received by critics, and has received many award nominations, including a Writers Guild of America Award nomination and a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Television Series Drama. The series has also attained strong Nielsen ratings, beating various records for a cable series, including receiving 9 million viewers for its season two finale to become the most-watched basic cable drama telecast in history.

Nicole Richie launches Polyvore guest editor series

Nicole Richie has launched a new guest editor series on fashion website Polyvore, which will see an array of style icons offering advice, inspiration and their personal clothing and accessories picks.

The social-commerce website allows users to assemble sets of clothing from its database of items, with reality star turned designer Richie kicking off the new series by revealing the contents of her Balenciaga handbag for the ‘What's In Her Bag?' set.

Contents featured in the fashionista's bag include beauty essentials such as lip balm and bobby pins, as well as items by luxury labels including Goyard and multiple choices of sunglasses.

Throughout this month, Richie -- founder of fashion lines Winter Kate and House of Harlow 1960 -- will curate a collection of her favorite products based on specific weekly themes: ‘What's In Her Bag?,' ‘Morning/Getting Ready Routine,' ‘Beauty Products' and ‘Style Icons.'

It's a busy time for Richie, who announced last month that she will be launching her debut fragrance this September -- the same month she launches a capsule clothing collection for department store Macy's.

Among future Polyvore monthly guest stars are an array of experts including designers and beauty gurus, with online retailer Net-a-Porter's fashion director Holli Rogers set to be the guest editor next month.

Most students 'will be paying off loans into their 50s' after fees hike

More than half of students starting university under a new tuition fee regime this autumn will still be paying off their loans into their 50s, a study has revealed.

A report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies showed that those from families earning £43,500 a year would face the highest level of debt, which would take longer to pay off.

The new funding system coming into force this September will see maximum tuition fees rise to £9,000 and a real rate of interest charged on loans.

Figures from the IFS showed that 56% of all graduates will take so long to repay their loan that they will qualify it to be written off after 30 years when they are at least 52.

It means that for three decades they will effectively have been paying an extra "tax" via payroll deductions, according to the report, details of which were published in a newspaper.

The study warned that seven in ten students would be worse off over their lifetime than under the current system. Average debts would rise to £37,658, up from £22,127, it found.

Middle-class students will be the worst hit because they may need to take out the maximum loan for living costs and no longer qualify for student grants which would reduce their need for loans, while they were also less likely to be eligible for reductions in fees, the Daily Mail reported.

Those from the poorest families will graduate with the least average debt, £34,848, partly because they are less likely to go to universities charging the highest fees.

Debts for the richest students will average £37,433 because most will be able to pay for some of their education and therefore will not need to take out a full loan.

The study also showed that "the average graduate will be significantly worse off over their lifetime" while taxpayers will save £3,000 per student and that universities will be better off, despite cuts to direct public funding.

Analysis of fees charged by 90 universities showed the average fee would be £8,660 a year, while 64% of students would be charged £9,000 a year.

The report said they would be "significantly better off while they study" because of the "increased generosity of student support" but that once they graduate they face paying back much bigger loans for longer.

David Willetts, the universities minister, said the study vindicated the Government's reforms.

He said: "Students still at university, institutions, taxpayers and poorer graduates will be better off under the new system.

"The poorest 30 per cent of graduates pay back less, public expenditure is saved, and universities gain more funds."

Original source here

Early ADHD Treatment May Ward Off Problems In School

New research suggests kids who get early treatment for their attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) don’t have as much trouble on national standardized tests as those who aren’t prescribed medication until age 11 or 12.

Common medications used to treat ADHD include stimulants such as Vyvanse, Ritalin and Concerta.

“Their short-term efficacy in treating the core symptoms of ADHD -- the symptoms of hyperactivity and attention and impulsivity -- has been established,” said Helga Zoega, the lead author on the new study from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

“With regard to more functional outcomes, for example academic performance or progress, there’s not as much evidence there as to whether these drugs really help the kids academically in the long term,” she told Reuters Health.

NOT MUCH HELP?

To try to answer that question, Zoega and colleagues from the United States and Iceland consulted prescription drug records and test scores from Icelandic elementary and middle school students between 2003 and 2008.

Out of more than 13,000 kids registered in the national school system, just over 1,000 were treated with ADHD drugs at some point between fourth and seventh grade - 317 of whom began their treatment during that span.

Kids with no record of an ADHD diagnosis tended to score similarly on the standardized math and language arts tests given in fourth and seventh grade. Those who were medicated for the condition were more likely to have their scores decline over the years — especially when stimulants weren’t started until later on.

For math exams in particular, students who started on stimulants within one year of their fourth grade tests had an average score decline of less than one percent between that and their seventh-grade exam — compared to a more than nine percent drop for those who didn’t get treated until sixth or seventh grade.

The difference was especially clear for girls, Zoega and her colleagues reported Monday in Pediatrics.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, parent reports suggest close to one in 10 kids and teens in the U.S. have ever been diagnosed with ADHD, and two-thirds of those with a current diagnosis are treated with medication such as stimulants. J. Russell Ramsay, who studies ADHD at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia, said kids’ trouble in school is usually one of the top reasons parents seek help for their ADHD.

When it comes to school perf ormance, “There are obvious benefits of getting started sooner rather than later,” he told Reuters Health” Especially if students are struggling later on, this study would suggest it may be at the very least useful to explore and consider certain treatment options.”

NOT ALL NEED MEDICATION

Families can see a mental health professional and discuss the pros and cons of medication and other treatments, he added.

The researchers noted they didn’t have information on kids’ exact underlying ADHD diagnosis or its severity, and they also couldn’t tell whether youngsters were getting behavioral treatment or extra school help along with stimulants.

“Not all kids need medication,” Zoega said. “It’s important to think about whether alternative treatment options, whether earlier intervention with those could have a beneficial effect.”

ADHD drugs can come with side effects, including appetite loss, sleep problems and stomach aches.

One of the other researchers on the study has received funding from pharmaceutical companies, including those that make stimulant drugs for ADHD.

“Medications are probably still the reflex response, with a good evidence base,” said Ramsay, who wasn’t involved in the new research. “But there are other things that can be added in later or concurrently that can also provide support to the child, to the family and to the educators.”

Original source here

Differentiation In The Learning Environment Of Children

MANILA, Philippines – In a recent workshop I attended, teacher-participants were asked to describe what they see in front of a mirror as they wake up in the morning.

Brilliant answers were dished out by participants. But what caught my attention was a response which sounded a bit off but nonetheless sensible and real. The person who answered said he saw, not himself, but a huge mirror fronting him.

Although, the response drew a lot of laughter from the audience, it somehow allowed an ample room for circumspection among us.

For one, the anecdote suggested that teachers, in front of their students, should be mindful of the fact that they are not their students and should not expect their students to think, learn and perform the way they do.

Every student who enters a classroom brings with her/ him a different set of expectations, learning experience, learning style, cultural background, goals and perceptions which are completely different , from those of the teacher who also has her own set of expectations, teaching style, learning experience, and perception of what works. Howard Gardner once said, “The biggest mistake we have made in past centuries in teaching has been to treat all children as if they were variants of the same individual and thus to feel justified in teaching them the same subjects in the same ways.”

ALL CHILDREN ARE DIFFERENT

In his book, “Young Gifted and Bored,” David George (2011) emphasized that differentiation is not a way of helping slow learners or dissatisfied pupils, but it is about all children because all children are different.

Differentiation has become a common concern not just for teachers but also for schools that find difficulty in coping effectively with the wide range of students who come to their school.

Interestingly, classrooms have become more diverse and the tendency of teachers to cover as much materials, regardless of the background, interest, disability, learning style and experience of students, has become obviously a futile exercise.

Carol Ann Tomlinson, the leading researcher on differentiation, says, “Differentiation is simply a teacher attending to the learning needs of a particular student or small group of students, rather than teaching a class as though all individuals in it were basically alike” (Tomlinson, 2000).

EFFECTIVE DIFFERENTIATION PRACTICES

Advocates for differentiation like John Dewey, Piaget, Jerome Bruner and Erickson (2001), Wiggins & McTighe (1998) also underscored basic educational principles, e.g., student-centered, meaning making, and active approaches to learning.

However, effective differentiation practices according to Parke (1989) should meet the following guidelines:

1. The program should be characterized by a flexibility to respond to the individual needs of students;

2. Program options should be in place so that the varying skills, abilities, and interests of the students can be accommodated;

3. Patterns of grouping students should be based on the unique needs of the students and should allow students to progress at their own pace; and

4. Decision making should be based on students’ needs. differentiated instructional style

The individual needs of students can be readily captured in the student’s learning profile, which refers to ways in which he/she best processes information and ideas, and ways in which learning style, gender, culture and intelligence preference influence the student (Tomlinson, 2000). Brimijoin (2005) identified a set of principles that would lead to a successful differentiated instructional style:

1. Clarity of learning goals - Using the process of backwards designs, teachers who differentiate well always define learning goals and outcomes first, while also considering data about students’ prior knowledge, performance, interests, learning preferences, and misconceptions;

2. Ongoing assessment - When designing learning experiences, assessment data help teachers assure that every student has equal and adequate access to content, increasing the chance that high-stakes testing support equity (Darling- Hammond, 2003);

3. Informing instruction - Responsive teachers use data about diverse thinking styles to adjust assignments and design assessments that maximize student performance (Sternberg and Grigorenko 1997);

4. Respectful tasks - Ensuring the respectfulness of each task requires careful analysis of the link between assessment data and learning goals, reflection about students’ developmental levels, and constant monitoring of student response to a variety of classroom contexts (Tomlinson, 1999);

5. Appropriate Strategies - Research shows that instructional strategies influence student learning almost as much as aptitude, with data indicating achievement is higher when students focus on concepts and relevant tasks (Stronge 2002);

6. Flexible grouping - When differentiation is working well, specific task assignments, the placement of students in learning groups, the use of materials, the pacing of instruction, and the social context of learning are all modified in a variety of ways to meet student needs (Tomlinson, 1999); and

7. Classroom community – Differentiated classrooms are a community founded on trust, shared management, self-governance, a balance of teacher-directed and student-centered learning, and high expectations (Connell & Wellborn, 1991).

By addressing the individual students’ school readiness, interest, and profile the differentiations of content, instructional process, and learning environment; students’ performance and achievement significantly improve.

Howard Gardner mentioned once, “The biggest mistake we have made in past centuries in teaching has been to treat all children as if they were variants of the same individual and thus to feel justified in teaching them the same subjects in the same ways.” This was propounded further by a distinguished educator Theodore Sizer, who said, “Adapting to that diversity is the inevitable price of productivity, high standards, and fairness to the students.”

The author is an advisory board member and former president of the AD/HD Society of the Philippines. He served as a college president, school director, mobile school head and faculty member of graduate programs for years.

Original source here

University applications from the UK fall 8.9%

University applications from UK students for courses starting in the autumn are down 8.9% on last year, according to the latest figures from the admissions service.

This will be first year group to face higher tuition fees of up to £9,000 per year.

The biggest drop was in England, where applications are down 10%.

This means that about 50,000 fewer people are applying to university compared with the previous year.

Universities Minister David Willetts said the application figures were "the second highest on record" - and that tens of thousands more people were still expected to apply.

"This will still be a competitive year like any other as people continue to understand that university remains a good long term investment for their future," said Mr Willetts.Deterring applications?

Labour's universities spokeswoman, Shabana Mahmood, said "the decision of the Tory-led government to treble tuition fees to £9,000 is hitting young people and their aspirations".

These updated figures from the Ucas admissions service show the level of applications up to the end of June.

While England has seen the most substantial reduction, down 10% compared with the same point last year, there are also declines of 2% in Scotland, 3% in Wales and 5% in Northern Ireland.

The biggest fall for the 2012 intake is among the over-18 age group - for example, applications from 19 year olds and those aged between 25 and 29 are down by 12%.

Among 18-year-old school leavers, the fall has been less marked, approaching 3%.

The raising of tuition fees had been criticised as a deterrent to poorer students - but the latest figures show a mixed picture.

The biggest reduction in England is among students from the 20% most advantaged areas - although whether this means they are not going to university, or studying outside the UK, is not certain.

Applications from the most disadvantaged areas fell marginally.

Wealth gap

But the rate of applications remain strongly tied to family income.

The 18 year olds living in the most advantaged areas are many times more likely to apply to university than their counterparts in the poorest - with all the income bands in between following this same stratification.

This social divide has remained in place throughout the decade - and appears to be continuing through this latest fee increase.

There have also been questions about how the growing differences in fees between countries within the UK will affect cross-border applications.

The latest figures show fewer English students applying to Scottish universities and fewer Scottish students applying to England - from an already low base.

Northern Ireland has had the highest proportion of students going elsewhere in the UK - but this round of applications shows a fall of 14% for applications to English universities and 15% down for Scotland.

Wales bucks this trend - with more applications to England, Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Temporary fall?

This year will see the first fall since 2006 - when a previous increase in tuition fees pushed down applications.

That proved a temporary drop - with numbers recovering the following year.

Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of Universities UK, said: "These figures confirm that the fall in applications is far less dramatic than some were predicting for this year."

Sally Hunt, leader of the UCU lecturers' union, attacked "the folly of hiking up tuition fees to £9,000".

"This government can talk all it likes about improving social mobility but how will erecting punitive financial barriers help our best and brightest get on?"

Pam Tatlow, chief executive of the Million+ group of new universities, challenged the idea that the fee system should be assessed on the basis of applications from 18 year olds going into full-time degrees.

"They now make up less than half of the student cohort and it is premature to reach any conclusions about the impact of higher fees on the background of students. This will only be known much later," said Ms Tatlow.

Original source here

North Dakota Oil Town's Prosperity Doesn't Reach Teachers

BISMARCK, N.D. -- Jobs paying $80,000 or more abound in North Dakota's booming oil patch, but when Molly Lippert came home from college, she gladly accepted a $31,500-a-year position teaching first grade.

"I'd really like to stay in the field of study I went to college for," said Lippert, 23. "The happiness that comes with teaching outweighs the price of anything else."

The cost of living has skyrocketed in Williston as job-seekers flock to the hub of western North Dakota's booming oil patch. Officials say the city's population has doubled in the past decade to some 30,000 residents and the average wage has risen from about $32,000 in 2006 to about $80,000. Pay for teachers hasn't kept up, although they are desperately needed.

Williston expects an influx of about 1,200 students this year, bringing enrollment to about 3,800 from about 2,600 last year. School officials are hiring 52 new teachers to add to the 190 they already have. They also are adding dozens of mobile classrooms and reopening an elementary school that closed a dozen years ago when the region's first oil boom went bust and enrollment fell.

North Dakota has risen from the nation's ninth leading oil producer to No. 2 in just six years, with advanced horizontal drilling techniques in the rich Bakken shale and Three Forks formations in the western part of the state. More than half of Williston's residents now work in oil-related jobs, and the city's unemployment rate is just 1 percent. There are some 3,000 unfilled jobs in the city.

There's also an extreme housing shortage. Lippert, who got married last month, will be staying with her in-laws. Her husband, Nick, another recent graduate, was hired as an architect by a construction firm in Williston. The newlyweds hope to eventually buy a townhome in the city.

"These are exciting times," Lippert said.

Others have not been so lucky. About 15 people have turned down teaching jobs due to the lack of housing or because they can't afford to live in Williston, school superintendent Viola LaFontaine said. To help address the problem, the district has leased two buildings with four apartments each for single teachers. Two teachers will share each apartment, LaFontaine said.

Lanny Gabbert, a high school science teacher and president of the Williston Education Association, said the salary for new teachers went up by $1,500 under the present contract. But that sum has been more than offset by the increased cost of living in Williston. Gabbert said rent for one of his fellow teachers jumped from $500 per month to $900 this year for the same apartment.

"Even with the bump in salary, technically he has less money that he did the previous year," Gabbert said, adding that improving pay will be a top issue when bargaining for a new two-year contract starts in September.

"We are a long way from where we should be," Gabbert said.

Dakota Draper, president of the North Dakota Education Association, said teacher salaries and lack of housing are big issues throughout the oil-producing region and have made it difficult to attract and retain teachers. He said more money will be needed for education in the oil patch, although lawmakers are still talking about "how much, where it will come from and who will pay for it."

"People want good schools and teachers for their kids," Draper said. "It costs a lot more in the oil patch."

Yet Williston has been flooded with teaching applications despite the high cost of living, lack of housing and comparatively low salaries for the jobs, LaFontaine said.

"I count my blessings," she said. "Not only have we gotten a lot of applications, we've gotten a lot of good applications. There are people who want to teach in Williston."

School administrators have hired about 40 teachers already this summer. About half have ties to the city and some will be living with family or friends, LaFontaine said.

One of the new hires is Kim Henneberry, 57, of Miles City, Mont. He's taught everywhere from one-room country schoolhouses to large public and Roman Catholic schools. In Williston, he'll teach reading, English and spelling.

Henneberry's wife, Cathie, has been living in Williston for the past 15 months, working at a Veterans Administration clinic. They sold their home in Montana last week and are buying a new house from one of Cathie Henneberry's co-workers.

Their new home costs three times what their old home sold for in Montana, Kim Henneberry said. Still, he and his wife feel lucky to have found a home in Williston.

"I have no idea where beginning teachers are going to live," Henneberry said. "This is an unforgivably difficult place to find a place to live."

Henneberry also is fortunate to be earning more with his experience and a master's degree. Still, he said, it's nothing compared to what others are making. He recently bumped into a former student from Montana who landed a job in the oil patch.

"The guy has zero college and walks out of high school and is making 90-grand," he said. "To me that seems to be an injustice."

Original source here

More Public Schools Splitting Up Boys, Girls

MIDDLETON, Idaho -- Robin Gilbert didn't set out to confront gender stereotypes when she split up the boys and girls at her elementary school in rural southwestern Idaho.

But that's exactly what happened, with her Middleton Heights Elementary now among dozens of public schools nationwide being targeted by the American Civil Liberties Union in a bitter struggle over whether single-sex learning should be continued. Under pressure, single-sex programs have been dropped at schools from Missouri to Louisiana.

"It doesn't frustrate me," Gilbert said of the criticism, "but it makes the work harder."

While Gilbert's school is believed to be the only one in Idaho offering single-sex classes, the movement is widespread in states like South Carolina, which has more than 100 schools that offer some form of a single-gender program.

Single-sex classes began proliferating after the U.S. Education Department relaxed restrictions in 2006. With research showing boys, particularly minority boys, are graduating at lower rates than girls and faring worse on tests, plenty of schools were paying attention.

In 2002, only about a dozen schools were separating the sexes, according to the National Association for Single Sex Public Education, an advocacy group. Now, an estimated 500 public schools across the country offer some all-boy and all-girl classrooms.

Proponents argue the separation allows for a tailored instruction and cuts down on gender-driven distractions among boys and girls, such as flirting. But critics decry the movement as promoting harmful gender stereotypes and depriving kids of equal educational opportunities. The ACLU claims many schools offer the classes in a way that conflicts with the U.S. Constitution and Title IX, a federal law banning sex discrimination in education. Researchers also have weighed in.

Diane F. Halpern, a former president of the American Psychological Association, co-authored a review of studies last fall in the journal Science that found research doesn't support the benefits of single-sex education. Additionally, there are lots of problems whenever you segregate people into groups, Halpern said.

"Stereotyping increases so we really do have lots of data that says it's just not supported," she said.

However, proponents have put out their own studies, showing the benefits of separating students. Middleton Heights Elementary cited the research when it first piloted single-sex classes in a few grades. The goal was to address the struggles boys were having in reading.

The idea proved so popular that single-sex classes have expanded throughout the school. Parents can opt out, a choice required by law, if they want their kids in a traditional coed classroom.

In the single-sex classes, teachers use microphones that allow them to electronically adjust the tone of their voice to match the level that research suggests is best for boys. When preparing for a test, the boys may go for a run, or engage in some other activity, while the girls are more likely to do calming exercises, such as yoga.

On a recent tour, Gilbert peeked into a classroom of third grade boys, who had decorated their walls with a camping theme, complete with construction paper campfires and a sign that read "fishing for books."

Next door, the third-grade girls opted for an "under the sea" motif. When they spotted Gilbert in their classroom door way, a few of the girls jumped from their seats and ran to give her a quick embrace.

They learn the same curriculum, they still lunch and play at recess together, but the differences in their learning environments are apparent, from the blue chalkboards in the boy classrooms, to the red paper hearts that decorated the wall of one of the girl's classrooms.

These environments are driven by student interests and what they're learning at the time, Gilbert said.

Dr. Leonard Sax, the founder of the Pennsylvania-based National Association for Single Sex Public Education, contends the movement is about breaking down gender stereotypes, not promoting them.

"We want more girls engaged in robotics and computer programming and physics and engineering," Sax said in a telephone interview. "We want more boys engaged in poetry and creative writing and Spanish language."

For advocates like Sax, the increase in this form of learning is exciting, but it's troubling for others.

The ACLU launched a national campaign, Teach Kids, Not Stereotypes, in May and sent cease-and-desist letters to school districts in Maine, West Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi and Virginia. The group also asked state officials to investigate single-sex programs in Florida, while sending public record requests to schools in another five states, including to Gilbert's school in Idaho.

Doug Bonney is legal director of the ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri, where he successfully challenged single sex classes in Missouri's Adrian R-III School District. He argues there's no proof single-sex classrooms work while there's plenty of evidence they actually enhance gender stereotypes and lead to sexism.

"This isn't the right step to address higher dropout rates by boys," Bonney said. "They promote false stereotypes about sex-based differences that don't exist. Promoting sex stereotypes can harm both girls and boys."

Both sides agree the idea is not new and has a long history in private schools. But Galen Sherwin, staff attorney with the ACLU Women's Rights Project, said its history in public schools is much darker and has roots in the South, where it was broadly instituted in an effort to evade the desegregation requirements of Brown v. Board of Education to try "to prevent black boys from being in the same room as white girls."

"In the wake of Brown, many schools in the south integrated racially but segregated on the basis of sex," Sherwin said.

Nancy Levit, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, addressed this issue at a meeting of the Association of American Law Schools: "Think about it, in terms of race," she said. "What would people say if the state paid for an all-white school or an all-black school? As long as there was a racial element nobody would have a problem seeing a constitutional difficulty."

The analogy drew a heated reaction from Sax, who argues that a federal judge in Kentucky debunked this notion when ruling last year against parents who tried to block single-sex classes at a Breckenridge County school. Critics like the ACLU are out of line when they draw parallels to Brown v. Board of Education, Sax said.

"Either they're really stupid and not able to grasp what the judge is saying in the ruling, or they're being deliberately misleading," he said.

Original source here

Students Develop Gloves That Translate Sign Language Into Speech

Ukraine: There is no dearth of impressive student projects here at the finals of Microsoft’s Imagine Cup in Sydney, but one of the six finalists that caught my attention was a project called EnableTalk by the Ukrainian team QuadSquad. There are currently about 40 million deaf, mute and deaf-mute people and many of them use sign language to communicate, but there are very few people who actually understand sign language. Using gloves fitted with flex sensors, touch sensors, gyroscopes and accelerometers (as well as some solar cells to increase battery life) the EnableTalk team has built a system that can translate sign language into text and then into spoken words using a text-to-speech engine. The whole system then connects to a smartphone over Bluetooth.

The team has built a number of prototypes and tested them with sign language-users in the Ukraine. The idea for the project, said team member Osika Maxim, came from interacting with hearing-impaired athletes at the groups’ school.

The few existing projects that come close to what EnableTalk is proposing generally cost around $1,200 and usually have fewer sensors, use wired connections and don’t come with an integrated software solution. EnableTalk, on the other hand, says that the hardware for its prototypes costs somewhere around $75 per device.

Besides the cost, though, another feature that makes this project so interesting is that users can teach the system new gestures and modify those that the team plans to ship in a library of standard gestures. Given the high degree of variation among sign languages, which also has regional dialects just like spoken language, this will be a welcome feature for users.

This being a Microsoft competition, the system obviously mostly uses Microsoft technology, but as the EnableTalk team pointed out, Windows Phone 7 doesn’t allow developers access to the Bluetooth stack, the current version actually runs on Windows Mobile, the predecessor to Windows Phone that even most people at Microsoft would rather not think about anymore.

Original source here.

Recruiting Rules Everything Around You

Recruiters suck! On this we can all agree. You don’t need to set up a honeypot to know the majority are just lurking LinkedIn and spamming software engineers for their next lottery ticket. Most people think recruiting is about “hiring talent”, but founders should be actually building a cult.

Now that you’ve raised some money – Congrats! – the first thing your new bosses will ask is that you “grow the team”. We’ve got the future to build! And it’s gonna require a lot of bodies. And that’s why you’ll fail.

Recruiting isn’t about filing seats. By the time most founders think about recruiting – approximately 3-6 months after funding and not being able to hire anyone – it’s too late. You need to create a solid recruiting process that reflects your unique personality and company culture, and one that’s scalable and repeatable. Oh, you’ve already been using external recruiters? Or you’ve got someone doing recruiting but not delivering results. Now you have to call in a specialist to fix everything wrong with your recruiting process, do what I call ‘catch-up-recruiting’ and that’s a really rough road. I’ve done it. And it’ll cost you more (time and money) for me to clean up someone else’s mess.

So how should you think about recruiting? Well let’s go back in time…

Stages Of Growth

1) 0 to 2 – You’ve got an idea and you’ve got a partner (or two). Most startups end up in divorce. Marry well. The core/founding team is your foundation and every subsequent hire will reflect this. This is why VCs like to fund Founders from Stanford, Harvard or MIT.

2) 2 to 20 – Building the base, hire all your friends! Search your natural network until it’s tapped out. Then go outside your comfort zone.

3) 20 to 100+ – Create the recruiting machine, keep it running, feed the beast. Don’t let HR take over. No, it’s not the same thing as recruiting.

You Got Recruiting Problems

And I feel bad for you son. I got 99 engineers and you all want one. “Just get us one.” That’s what the emails all say. We just need one Google Engineer, one Facebook Hacker, one ex-YC Founder who almost made it and is now dead broke. If you think about recruiting one hire at a time, you’ll never build a proper team. There are some common pitfalls that Founders fall into, and they are:

1) Hiring too slow. Talent > Capital. VCs breathing down your neck. I’ve never met a startup that’s hiring “on plan”. Even the most popular startups with awesome teams and unlimited press mentions have trouble recruiting quickly while maintaining the highest quality that made them the hot startup in the first place.

2) Hiring too fast. Scaling before you’re ready. More engineers != more code shipped. Founders who brag about the size of their team are doing it wrong. More people means more burn, which requires more money, which usually means fundraising, which puts you on the hook for more hiring. Having 5 engineers in the earliest stage pre-funding doesn’t actually mean you’ll code 5x as fast, or ship product that’s 5x better. Don’t grow before you’re ready, but be ready to grow at all times.

3) Hiring poorly. This will be the death of your startup, guaranteed.

Save Us From Ourselves

So what do we do now? No one’s doing recruiting right. If you’re not a big company, why are you using big company recruiting? Pipeline, filters, resumes, reviews, phone screens, code challenges and interviews. Volume doesn’t naturally bring quality. Once HR is involved your startup is now a “company” for better or for worse. “But Google hires the best engineers!”, you’ll protest. Okay, but does your startup do *anything else* exactly like Google?

1) Always Be Recruiting. It’s Job #1 for Founders. People join your startup because of you, not because of salary, funding, equity or perks.

2) Recruiting is too important to be left to Recruiters. How many recruiters do you need? Well how many employees do you have? It’s everyone’s job to grow the company. Give them the tools and responsibility to do so.

3) Build strong teams. Strong teams get stronger over time, weak teams get weaker.

Retention is half the battle in this current “war for talent”. Even your friends and Co-Founders will leave you. Make sure you’re okay with that. Better yet, plan for it.

Original source here.

Freelancer.com Buys Scriptlance, Now Numbers 4M Users

A bit of consolidation in the world of online IT outsourcing: Freelancer.com has bought one of its competitors, Canada’s Scriptlance, in an all-cash deal to spearhead its move into the country and expand its global footprint in other new markets. Prior to the acquisition, Scriptlance had been the fifth largest freelance marketplace in the world; adding its 360,000 users to Freelance.com now brings the total number of enterprise and professional users on the main site to 4 million.

Freelancer.com says that to date it has seen 2.3 million projects posted on its site covering areas like website design, graphic design, copywriting and SEO. But as the market for outsourcing has grown, and the economy has continued to remain tight, other skillsets have also entered the mix. These include astrophysics, aerospace engineering, biotechnology, manufacturing and industrial design.

Other financial details of the transaction were not disclosed, but in the deal Freelancer is getting not just a rival IT outsourcing company with global reach — some 600,000 projects across 244 countries, with $43 million paid out to freelancers in that time — but also some IP and customers in the area of crowdfunding.

Scriptlance’s founder and chief exec, René Trescases, developed Scriptlance’s crowdfunding platform himself — one of the world’s first, the company claims — and one recent project saw users putting money into buying equipment for a computer learning centre in India; the project, Scriptlance says, tripled its target in goal within 24 hours. Matt Barrie, the CEO of Freelancer.com tells me that this will be incorporated into Freelancer’s existing crowdfunding business — a small but healthy part of its overall revenue mix.

He also adds that Trescases is not staying on post-acquisition and is “moving on to other things.” The rest of the team – including half a dozen people in India — will join Freelancer.com.

“We are tremendously excited to acquire Scriptlance, which is truly one of the great trailblazers and most widely recognised brands in the online outsourcing industry,” said Barrie in a separate statement. “Today we launch in Canada, and we couldn’t think of a better way to announce this than by buying one of Canada’s top technology websites.”

The acquisition follows several others that Freelancer.com has made since being founded in 2009 to expand into new territories.

The web properties now owned by Freelancer.com include GetAFreelancer (Sweden); LimeExchange (United States); Freelancer.co.uk (United Kingdom); Freelancer.de Booking Center (Germany); Freelancer.com.au (Australia) and Freelancer Hong Kong (China), as well as the Freemarket.com virtual content marketplace (United States) and the Webmaster Talk (United States) forums.

Freelancer.com claims that these user numbers make it almost double the size of its closest competitor. Today people can hire out their services in some 11 currencies, with particular popularity in countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan, home to highly skilled IT workers in countries short in on-the-ground jobs.

Original source here.

Back to the future in 1897- an age of electric taxis and lightbulb moments

It looks like a horse-drawn carriage, but this beautiful machine is actually Britain's first ever electric taxi.

The 'Bersey cab' first appeared on London's streets in 1897, and it's now part of a fascinating new exhibition at the Science Museum that seeks to show how nineteenth century inventions paved the way for today's new technologies.

The Bersey cab challenges the common perception of electric cars as a modern invention, according to Selina Hurley, curator of Climate Changing Stories.

She said: "We think of electric cars as something really futuristic, something we're really investing in to cut emissions for climate change, but they are actually a lot older than we think."
The exhibition showcases bright ideas from the past (Picture: Science Museum)

Commissioned by General Manager of the London Electric Cab Company, Walter Bersey, there were 12 cabs to begin with, but the fleet had expanded to 75 by the first decade of the 20th century.

Ms Hurley explained that originally they were powered by batteries with fragile glass plates on top and would be recharged in the one recharging station in existence at the time in Lambeth.

"The taxis had a range of about 30 miles, so drivers had to plan their routes to make sure they'd get back to the station in time," she said.

"It originally started about 9mph and with a few tweaks and developments they got it up to 12mph, so probably about the same as you'd go in a London taxi today!"

The exhibition combines science, artwork and artefacts to show the ways humans have responded to the changing world around them.

Entry to the display is free and it runs until June 2014.

Yahoo and Facebook form web advertising alliance

The companies said they will work together to bring advertisers new ways to promote their products across Yahoo and Facebook’s websites. The settlement includes a cross-license agreement, according to a statement today.

Yahoo filed the original patent lawsuit under the leadership of Scott Thompson, who resigned as chief executive officer in May amid pressure from investors, after failing to correct “misstatements in his academic record”.

Although Facebook is the world's largest social network, Yahoo is still a major player in America and its news service remains one of the biggest in the UK. The combined access for advertisers to both sites will, the companies claim, work to their mutual benefit.

In the March lawsuit, Yahoo alleged that Facebook infringes patents covering such functions as internet privacy, advertising and information sharing. Facebook, the largest social-networking service, countersued in April, accusing Yahoo of infringement.

Ross Levinsohn stepped in as interim chief executive after Thompson’s departure and is being considered as a permanent CEO, among other candidates, people familiar with the matter have said. Levinsohn and Sandberg 

“We were able to resolve this in a positive manner and look forward to partnering closely with Ross and the leadership at Yahoo,” Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, said in the statement. “Yahoo’s new leaders are driven by a renewed focus on innovation and providing great products to users.”

Yahoo, in the lawsuit filed March 12, sought an order barring Facebook from infringing 10 patents. It also sought triple damages. In the countersuit, Facebook accused Yahoo of infringing 10 patents through its home page and the Flickr-photo sharing service.

The end to the patent dispute may free Facebook from potential challenges the social-network website warned investors about in March.

“If an unfavorable outcome were to occur in this litigation, the impact could be material to our business, financial condition or results of operations,” Facebook, which sold shares in an initial public offering in May, said in a March 27 filing.

Start-up attempts to convert Prof Hawking's brainwaves into speech

An American scientist is to unveil details of work on the brain patterns of Prof Stephen Hawking which he says could help safeguard the physicist's ability to communicate.

Prof Philip Low said he eventually hoped to allow Prof Hawking to "write" words with his brain as an alternative to his current speech system which interprets cheek muscle movements.

Prof Low said the innovation would avert the risk of locked-in syndrome.

Intel is working on an alternative.

Prof Hawking was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 1963. In the 1980s he was able to use slight thumb movements to move a computer cursor to write sentences.

His condition later worsened and he had to switch to a system which detects movements in his right cheek through an infrared sensor attached to his glasses which measures changes in light.

Because the nerves in his face continue to deteriorate his rate of speech has slowed to about one word a minute prompting him to look for an alternative.

The fear is that Prof Hawking could ultimately lose the ability to communicate by body movement, leaving his brain effectively "locked in" his body.

In 2011, he allowed Prof Low to scan his brain using the iBrain device developed by the Silicon Valley-based start-up Neurovigil.

Prof Hawking will not attend the consciousness conference in his home town of Cambridge where Prof Low intends to discuss his findings, but a spokesman told the BBC: "Professor Hawking is always interested in supporting research into new technologies to help him communicate."

Decoding brainwaves

The iBrain is a headset that records brain waves through EEG (electroencephalograph) readings - electrical activity recorded from the user's scalp.

Prof Low said he had designed computer software which could analyse the data and detect high frequency signals that had previously been thought lost because of the skull.

"An analogy would be that as you walk away from a concert hall where there's music from a range of instruments," he told the BBC.

"As you go further away you will stop hearing high frequency elements like the violin and viola, but still hear the trombone and the cello. Well, the further you are away from the brain the more you lose the high frequency patterns.

"What we have done is found them and teased them back using the algorithm so they can be used."

Prof Low said that when Prof Hawking had thought about moving his limbs this had produced a signal which could be detected once his algorithm had been applied to the EEG data.

He said this could act as an "on-off switch" and produce speech if a bridge was built to a similar system already used by the cheek detection system

Prof Low said further work needed to be done to see if his equipment could distinguish different types of thoughts - such as imagining moving a left hand and a right leg.

If it turns out that this is the case he said Prof Hawking could use different combinations to create different types of virtual gestures, speeding up the rate he could select words at.

To establish whether this is the case, Prof Low plans trials with other patients in the US.

Intel's effort

The US chipmaker Intel announced, in January, that it had also started work to create a new communication system for Prof Hawking after he had asked the firm's co-founder, Gordon Moore, if it could help him.

It is attempting to develop new 3D facial gesture recognition softwareto speed up the rate at which Prof Hawking can write.

"These gestures will control a new user interface that takes advantage of the multi-gesture vocabulary and advances in word prediction technologies," a spokeswoman told the BBC.

"We are working closely with Professor Hawking to understand his needs and design the system accordingly."

Penguins come to the Dubai desert

The desert is not a place you would expect to find snow, let alone penguins you can hug and play with. But Dubai has never adhered to convention (or common sense, some would argue).

Ski Dubai, a snow park and ski complex in the Mall of the Emirates, recently became home to 20 flip-flopping penguins who emigrated fromSea World in Texas.  Ten large King penguins and 10 smaller Gentoo penguins now reside permanently in a section of the ski park that has been converted into a penguin’s idea of a deluxe apartment with plenty of fish and  a large indoor pool.

Born and brought up in distinctly non-Antarctic Texan captivity, these iconic birds love being around people, much like dogs. “Peng-Friend” encounters take place in an ice cave where the penguins feel at home, and once you are suited in warm ski gear, you are free to play with a selection under the close supervision of their trainers, who were also relocated from the United States.

Penguins have big personalities and are surprisingly easy to interact with. You might meet moody teenager McFatty, a two year old King penguin who is a little portly around the middle, or little Pebbles, a Gentoo female who loves to try to climb things. The black-and-white waddlers love to play with bubbles, toys on strings and won’t turn down the odd hug or two. If you thought you liked penguins before, you’ll want to adopt them all after coming here.

“Peng-Friend” encounters can be booked at the ski park or online, and as with everything in Dubai, there are different levels depending on the exclusivity. The general “Peng-Friend” encounter offers two penguins with 10 other people for 40 minutes and costs 175 dirhams per person . The executive version sees 14 penguins split between only four people for maximum petting potential. The session lasts 90 minutes and the 500 dirham fee includes a souvenir and hot chocolate. (Children between three and 12 years old must be accompanied by an adult.)

The ski park also organises a “March of the Penguins” every day, which anyone in the mall can watch for free.

Oscar-winning actor Ernest Borgnine dead at 95 in L.A.

U.S. actor Ernest Borgnine, whose barrel-chested, bulldog looks made him a natural for tough-guy roles in films like "From Here to Eternity" but who won an Oscar for playing a sensitive loner in "Marty," died on Sunday at age 95, his publicist said.

The real-life U.S. Navy veteran who became a household name during the 1960s by starring as the maverick commander of a World War Two patrol boat in the popular television comedy "McHale's Navy," died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, long-time spokesman Harry Flynn said.

Borgnine, who continued to work until very recently, had been the oldest living recipient of an Academy Award for best actor, Flynn said.

A statement from the actor's family said he "had been in excellent health until a recent illness." Flynn said Borgnine recovered from unspecified surgery he underwent a month ago but his condition deteriorated rapidly after he visited the hospital on Tuesday for a medical check-up.

His last screen credit was the lead role of an aging nursing home patient in a film set for release later this year, "The Man Who Shook the Hand of Vicente Fernandez." The performance earned Borgnine a best actor award at the Newport Beach Film Festival, where it debuted in April, Flynn said.

With his burly profile, gruff voice and gap-toothed leer, Borgnine was on the verge of being typecast as the bad guy early in his career, following a string of convincing performances as the heavy in such films as "Johnny Guitar" in 1954 and "Bad Day at Black Rock in 1955."

Borgnine's most memorable turn as a menacing tough guy was his breakout role in the 1953 Oscar-winning film "From Here to Eternity" as the sadistic Sergeant "Fatso" Judson, who terrorizes and eventually kills Frank Sinatra's character, Private Angelo Maggio.

UGLY DUCKLING ROLE

But Borgnine broke free from the bad-guy rut and won his own Oscar with a rare leading-man role in 1955's "Marty," playing a warm-hearted New York butcher who lamented, "One fact I gotta face is that, whatever it is that women like, I ain't got it."

In addition to his Academy Award, Borgnine's work in "Marty" led to more sympathetic roles in such films as "Jubal" (1956) and "The Best Things in Life Are Free" (1956).

Critic Bosley Crowther described Borgnine's Oscar-winning performance in "Marty," a film version of a television play by Paddy Chayevsky, as "a beautiful blend of the crude and strangely gentle and sensitive."

Some critics hinted that Borgnine was a "Marty" in real life, but the actor, who was married five times, took exception by saying, "I'm no playboy, but I'm no dumb slob either."

"Marty" also won Oscars for best picture, best director and adapted screenplay.

"Ernie is the nicest man I've ever worked with," said Sidney Lanfield, who directed him on the TV sitcom "McHale's Navy." "When he says, 'Hello! How are you?' or 'Glad to see you!' you can bet the line has not been rehearsed."

The television show, in which he starred as the skipper of a misfit PT boat crew skirting Navy regulations while chasing Japanese submarines, ran on ABC from the fall of 1962 until August 1966 and reinvigorated Borgnine's career. Funnyman Tim Conway co-starred as McHale's ensign.

He starred again as Lieutenant Commander Quinton McHale in a 1964 big-screen adaptation of the TV show, and returned to supporting character work in such movies such as "The Flight of the Phoenix" (1965), "The Dirty Dozen" (1968), Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch" (1969) and "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972).

He appeared in dozens of films in all.

NAVY SERVICE

He was born Ermes Effron Borgino in Hamden, Connecticut, and did not take up acting until after a 10-year hitch in the U.S. Navy, including a stint during World War II as a gunner's mate on a destroyer in the Pacific.

"I just couldn't see myself going into a factory where I saw these pasty-faced fellows walking in and walking out after stamping their cards," Borgnine once said.

Using money he earned from the G.I. Bill, Borgnine studied at the Randall School of Dramatic Arts in Hartford and performed on stage for several years at a Virginia theatre.

His first Hollywood job was a low-budget picture, "China Corsair," in 1951, starring in ethnic makeup as the Chinese proprietor of a gambling club.

He made his Broadway debut in the 1949 Mary Chase comedy "Harvey," and after a trio of early-'50s films appeared on Broadway again in 1952 in another Chase production, "Mrs. McThing," this time opposite Helen Hayes.

Hayes ended up being a godmother to the eldest of Borgnine's three children, daughter Nancee, by his first wife.

Borgnine returned to series television as co-star of the mid-1980s action film "Airwolf." And in 1988 he portrayed a mafia chief in the big-screen film "Spike of Bensonhurst."

Working well into his 90s, Borgnine earned an Emmy nomination for his 2009 guest appearance on the final two episodes of the television hospital drama "ER," playing the husband of a dying elderly woman. The following year, he notched a cameo role as a CIA records keeper in the spy thriller "Red."

He performed voice work for animated productions late in his life, including "SpongeBob SquarePants" and "All Dogs Go to Heaven."

Borgnine's 1964 marriage to singer-actress Ethel Merman barely lasted a month. He said it broke up because fans paid more attention to him than her during their honeymoon.

The longest of Borgnine's five marriages was his last - to Tova Traesnaes, whom he married in 1973. Despite his rough looks, Borgnine appeared in ads touting the face-rejuvenating powers of beauty products from a company she started. (Reuters)

Headline July 10th, 2012 / 'Computing Marvel'

The Most Advanced Silicon Enhanced :

'Computing Marvel' : In The World!

This devise is the possessor of more computer knowledge than any nerd can ever dare to conceive, even if his imagination runs wild. One day, some day, and in not too distant a future, wars will be fought out between spotty- computer geeks, playing out deadly games at the controls of Giant Computers, directing unmanned instruments of destruction from thousands of miles away. 

But in the meantime, you will have to hold your breath and peep through to The New pound 33million Eurofighter, that speaks to you in a beautiful woman voice and has more computing power than any University in the World!! 

This little carbon-fiber baby, developed jointly by Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain will take up the mantle in many Air Forces. The EuroFighter as it is called, is a silicon enhanced technological marvel in the world, with a ''human machine interface'' that recognises voice commands. Its most impressive attribute is a set of new generation computers that makes those of its peers look as advanced as a Sinclair ZX81. 

Remember, that these days the fighter with the edge is the one with the best computer. And Eurofighter will fall out of the sky if its computers failed. Skill in front of the PC ought to count for more in the Eurofighter's cockpit than a neat way to execute an Immelman turn. 

As the possessor of more technical computer knowledge than it's safe to admit in polite company, one has to see this killing marvel unfold at the British Aerospace's huge factory in Warton. Near Preston, where Test Pilots get trained and where the Simulaters are based for training. It has been suggested that modern fighter planes lack charisma. 

And it's true, from the outside, that the delta winged grey painted Eurofighter, with odd canard wings below the Cockpit, portrays a unique personality. But if you are blessed and lucky to get to the simulator, you will discover Eurofighter's huge bag of personality. 

This is meant quiet literally, since it is the fighter plane that can talk to you, listen to what you say to it,
if need be argue with you, and then advise you how how to fly it via an autocue. For technology students even professional technologists and scientists, here is an amazing example of "Petrinets" - at its greatest version ever conceived. Remember it can shoot down any plane in existence!!

It has ''Carefree handling'' like, 'hello, hello trees. Hey, hello flowers! Here, here Suck on this Sidewinder for a change!'' Hahaha! 

So never miss this remarkable research from !WOW! Understand that on the benchmark, your wireless networks are 10 years laggards. Your corporate fancy ERP's a decade and a half!! Hahaha! Great wishes for you all!!

Good night & God bless!

SAM Daily Times - The Voice Of The Voiceless