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anna_nelidova

Head tracker knows what you're doing and helps you multitask | New Scientist - 1 views

  • wearable system that tracks human movements to understand what task you’re doing, how difficult it is, and when you switch to something else. His goal is to help us control our multitasking lives
  • Gathering patterns of data that describe humans doing different tasks has more potential than just helping us work more efficiently.
  • the device could turn your phone to silent or deliver only emergency notifications. It could also tell you when you need to take a break
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  • Epps’s team has made a device which straps to a baseball cap that can work out the intensity of a task and when a person switches to another task – just from their head movements.
  • o use the data from wearables to train artificial intelligences.
  • Epps’s team is building a new prototype made from cheap components that can be worn on glasses, which tracks eye movement and speech as well as head motion.
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    A wearable system that tracks head movements could help people to multitask and handle distractions. The data generated by wearables on millions of humans can be useful for learning purposes of robots and AI. 
Maria Gurova

I quantified my baby and wish I could get the time back - 1 views

  • It’s part of an experiment to see if technology can help with the daunting and seemingly Sisyphean tasks of a first time parent, to find out why a growing number of people are turning to gadgets to help with one of life's toughest jobs.
  • Attempting to simplify parenthood with gizmos and apps has perversely made it a lot more complicated. And as for peace of mind, forget it.
  • The concept of the “quantified baby” has been around for some time now, and there’s a large and growing market for smart infant products from anxious or diligent or curious new parents.
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  • But does it all help you to be a better father, or mother, or is it all a massive distraction from the serious business of parenting?
  • While tracking proved useful as a reminder of feedings, and gave an objective insight into longer term sleep patterns, there wasn’t much she could do with the info.
  • It's the same problem quantified self devotees have: what to do with all that data. Unless you're a math or data viz wizard and prepared to take it all incredibly seriously, the numbers that consumer gadgets and apps spew out can be pretty meaningless — even more so when you're dealing with an unpredictable baby.
  • The Mimo and the Owlet are just the tip of the emerging infant tracking iceberg.
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    does using all the tech can offer to monitor your infant health make you a better parent or ease the toughest job in the world. Based on the article - not really 
alexbelov

Discovery of plastic-eating bacteria could lead to new ways to recycle | The Verge - 1 views

  • A newly-discovered bacterium that feeds on plastic could help develop new recycling methods.
  • The discovery was made by researchers from Japan, who say that the microorganism is remarkable for its ability to breakdown completely a common type of plastic known as PET. This digestive process is slow, and the short-term implications of the discovery are uncertain, but studying the bacterium — which has been given the name Ideonella sakaiensis — could lead to new ways to safely get rid of junk material.
  • It's thought that plastic bottles take 450 years to break down, and although some plastics do degrade quicker in the ocean, this just leads to more chemical pollution.
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  • This newly-discovered species of bacteria could help solve these problems.
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    A new plastic-eating bacteria will help to clean up plastic waste.
Maria Gurova

Hand Gestures Could Make Kids Smarter | TIME.com - 0 views

  • Using hand gestures may be important for more than just making a point; they could help children to learn.
  • Once something is learned, however, it’s a challenge to unlearn and inhibit the reflexive response. That’s why it helps to develop good habits early
  • It’s easier to learn something correctly the first time than it is to unlearn ineffective techniques and relearn better ones.
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  • During the task, some of the children instinctively used gestures — making rabbit ears when they knew shape mattered, or moving their palms from facing up to turning sideways when they were sorting by the teddy bear’s orientation — to guide themselves.
  • What’s more, she found that this effect had a stronger effect on successful performance than age — a powerful finding given that children’s skills improve rapidly with age during this stage of development.
  • The toddlers’ gestures could be interpreted as a glimpse of their brains at work, as they figure out how to exert the cognitive control necessary to complete their tasks.
  • Earlier work showed that older children were better able to learn math if taught to use gestures while doing so. And they often found the right answer physically — for example, by making movements to signify the numbers that needed to be kept together to add correctly — before finding it verbally
  • That has implications for improving the way we communicate and think, and could help to address developmental disorders associated with cognitive control issues, such as autism
Maria Gurova

These 3D-Printed Pictures Could Help the Blind Experience Classic Art - 0 views

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    technology meets empathy 
Anna Dubinina

A Snapchat account is helping teens speak up about abuse - 0 views

  • Snap Counsellors, an account on the messaging app, is helping teens speak up about relationship abuse
  • Snapchat’s self-destruct feature makes it ideal for a helpline. All messages get deleted within 10 seconds.
  • It also allows the Stories feature to be used to send out images and videos to encourage victims to come forward.
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  • Snapchat users now view 7 billion video clips per day
  • Although Snap Counsellors is directed toward teens, it receives cases from women too.
alexbelov

Microsoft is bringing bots to Skype - and everywhere else | TechCrunch - 0 views

  • Microsoft’s own virtual assistant Cortana, aim to help pave the way for the future of communication, productivity, and interactions with businesses and brands.
  • In Skype, the company showed off rich Cortana integration which put the assistant directly into the app where she could help users do things like identify the persons, places and things in your messages, underline them, and then display more info in a card-like interface when clicked.
  • She is also able to help you perform a variety of tasks, like adding items to your calendar, booking travel or hotel rooms, or even pre-populating conversations to friends with text.
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  • The bots’ integration in Skype is rolling out today on Windows, iOS and Android as a preview.
  • The company launched the first-ever Skype Bot SDK, which lets brands, businesses and other third parties create their own bots that can work on Skype, seamlessly integrating into users’ chats. These aren’t just text bots, as many of the SMS-based virtual assistance startups we’ve seen so far – Skype bots can introduce both audio and video experiences
  • The company is also launching a bot directory, giving us a brief peek at a few bots it had created itself.
  • Bots “represent a huge opportunity to write new types of applications,” Nadella told developers
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    Microsoft jumps bots bandwagon by introducing bots ecosystem in skype, which includes bot development kit, bot framework and bot directory.
Maria Gurova

How Flexible Hours Can Harm Employees As Much As It Helps Them | Fast Company | Busines... - 0 views

  • Employees love workplace flexibility, and employers should, too, since it's linked with increased productivity and higher job satisfaction.
  • Some new behavioral evidence suggests that some bosses will harbor biases against employees with flexible work schedules without even realizing it.
  • So in the eyes of a boss, a late-arriving worker may be no different from a bad worker
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  • All else being equal, supervisors gave employees with late start times lower performance ratings, as well as lower "conscientiousness" ratings, than workers who arrived early
Ekaterina Nurieva

How kids will help to decide the future of television - 3 views

http://business.time.com/2013/06/29/how-kids-will-help-decide-the-future-of-television/

Children's programming

started by Ekaterina Nurieva on 05 Sep 13 no follow-up yet
Ekaterina Yanovskaya

Cities of the Future | INSEAD Knowledge - 0 views

    • Ekaterina Yanovskaya
       
      You think about the middle class in China, the middle class in India and you think about their consumption power, it is explosive," says Van Wassenhove. "It's good that these people get out of poverty but the constraints they're going to put on resources are just enormous. Sustainability is no longer a luxury; it is something that business will have to deal with
  • Singapore had the foresight to realise very early that they didn’t have resources. They didn’t have water, they didn’t have energy. So they were forced from the start to include sustainability in their thinking. They understood that economic sustainability for them was tightly linked to environmental sustainability
  • The infamous traffic in Indonesia’s capital city, Jakarta, led to the first phase of a Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) rail system to alleviate the strain on roads, to be announced this year
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  • Mumbai built the now-famous “Sealink” bridge to divert traffic away from the gridlock of the city and along its coast
  • There’s still the issue to develop a longer-term plan rather than chaotic management of cities. There may still be the issue of resources, where are the resources going to come from? Maybe companies can help by helping to create business which would generate economic resources.”
  • Globalisation has meant urbanisation, and by 2050, 70 percent of the world’s population will be living in cities. What should we do to survive and thrive in this brave new world?
  • You cannot attract highly educated people and become a knowledge centre if you have a lousy environment
Irina Marchenko

G20's Young Entrepreneurs are Increasingly Interested in Digital Technologies but not H... - 0 views

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    The recommendations summarized in a final Summit communique primarily focus on the following: *Need to develop digital infrastructure. Young entrepreneurs are the most active group in terms of both starting up businesses and using the latest digital technology to help run the business and optimize business processes; *Importance of developing educational programs for entrepreneurs, advancing the entrepreneurial culture, and streamlining government funding for "green" technology studies; *Need to ease the tax burden in the fields of scientific-technical programs and social entrepreneurship, namely the taxes imposed on employers and employee income tax; *Access to funding for startups and emerging companies. Ensuring funding on easy terms, changing banking requirements, developing rules for new forms of funding, including cross border online platforms, investors' and entrepreneurs' networks.
Irina Marchenko

Child internet safety - Department of Education - 0 views

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    Children learn about internet safety in school, as it is taught as part of the National Curriculum, and Safer Internet Day is widely promoted in February each year. In addition, the Government has pressed for progress through the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS). UKCCIS is a group of more than 200 organisations across the government, industry, law enforcement, academia and charity sectors, who work in partnership to help keep children safe online. The UKCCIS board is chaired by ministers. UKCCIS achievements include the creation of:
Maria Gurova

Meet the Robots That Will Help Run a Tokyo Airport - 0 views

  • Last week, Japan’s ominously named robotics company Cyberdyne announced new technologies it’ll start rolling out at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport in September: Two robots, one exoskeleton. One robot shuttles unwieldy luggage, another cleans the facility, and the exo assists with heavy lifting.
  • Japan’s government actively funds robotics R&D, with aims to triple the nation’s robotics market to $22 billion in the next six years, and is keen on showing off some impressive technology at Tokyo’s Summer Olympics in 2020
Maria Gurova

BBC - Future - Is e-waste an untapped treasure? - 0 views

  • Electronic waste, or e-waste, is a rapidly growing global problem
  • Yet many are realising that the gadgets we chuck away can be ripped apart and transformed into something new – brand new technology, or even art.
  • In 2012, we discarded 48.9 million tonnes of electrical and electronic products. If current trends continue, by 2017, the annual amount of e-waste produced globally will reach 65.4 million tonnes – that’s roughly 20% of the weight of all the people living on Earth.
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  • Using parts and wires from old computers, scanners and photocopiers (some of it for free, but most bought), and an Arduino electronics card as the brain, they managed to put together a working prototype for a few hundred euros (see below).
  • “In Togo, there are many people who can’t have access to computers, because they don’t have money to buy a new computer,” says Allahare. “But we have many computers that are broken and not working. It’s sometimes just a little piece that is spoiled in it. W.Jies can help people get connected, get information, and help kids learn ICT from low-cost computers.”
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    in 2012 china alone produced 11.1 mlm tones of e-waste, what can be considered trash in one part of the world, can indeed become a treasure in the other part of the world
Maria Gurova

Should You Trust Big Pharma With Your DNA? | Popular Science - 0 views

  • In January, the biotech company Genentech reportedly committed $10 million for access to the DNA of 3,000 Parkinson’s patients and their families. A week later, Pfizer made a similar deal for the genomes of 5,000 people with lupus.
  • A trove of data could give scientists the tools they need to develop gene-specific drug therapies for certain diseases. “We are hoping to ultimately develop Parkinson’s medicines, for example, that actually modify the disease as opposed to just treating symptoms,”
  • “this has the possibility of not only helping us find new cures, but it also helps us create a genuine health care system as opposed to just a disease care system.”
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  • Even a small segment of DNA (23andMe looks at 750,000 base pairs out of 3 billion) can reveal a history of illness or predict future risks and be used
  • The 2009 Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act makes it illegal for employers or health insurance companies to discriminate based on genetic data. The Act doesn’t address who controls data once it’s out there
alexbelov

Ending patent wars will be a huge boon to the tech industry | TechCrunch - 0 views

  • Because of these patent wars and patent trolls, technology companies are divesting huge resources to defend themselves rather than advancing their innovations. This is the equivalent of nuclear arms race and is a lose-lose situation.
  • do we even need patents in an era in which technology is advancing so rapidly that it makes entire computing platforms obsolete in less time than it takes to be awarded a patent?
  • This happens in the pharmaceutical industry when a company is allowed to exclude competitors for a fixed period of time to recoup its sizable investment in research.
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  • However, if a patent isn’t helping innovation get to consumers, it is not helping society.
  • it is clear that patents are not fulfilling the purpose for which they were intended. The often-cited defense ofpatents, that patent rights encourage inventions that would not otherwise occur, is no longer grounded in reality.
  • In this era of exponentially advancing technologies, the only protections that really matter are speed to market and technological obsolescence. The underlying technologies are changing so fast, that by a time a patent is filed, it loses its innovation value.
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    Patents are no longer serving society needs. Today they hinder the progress. Chances are that patents are going to be abolished or will take some different form.
alexbelov

Oculus announces new social features to help personalize VR experiences | TechCrunch - 0 views

  • Starting tomorrow, users on the Gear VR platform will be able to create their own user profiles and search for friends by username who they can interact with in virtual space.
  • Social Trivia, which will allow you to hang out with buddies’ avatars in a social space and compete in trivia battles. Users will also be able to create VR chatrooms of sorts with Oculus Social where they can watch videos together from Vimeo or Twitch.
  • retty soon we’re going to live in a world where everyone has the power to share and experience whole scenes as if you’re just there right there in person
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  • Alongside this launch, Oculus announced a new multiplayer game that makes use of some of these new social features.
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    Gaming and social media market landscape will very soon change a lot thanks to virtual reality.
Vladimir Antonov

Build-it-yourself spider robot aims to help kids learn robotics - 0 views

  • Assembling is half the fun
  • by building the robot you'll learn the basics of 3D modeling, electronics, mobile app coding and Arduino programming
  • platform is fully Open Access, meaning everyone will be able to freely modify all of its aspects
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  • founders promised to make the source code, as well as all the blueprints and 3D models free and accessible to everyone.
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    STEMI - a play on the acronym STEM, meaning Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics - is an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign for a hexapod robot that moves like to a spider. Unlike many other commercial robots, however, this one comes in a kit, together with a set of multimedia lessons that helps you assemble it into a working robot.
al_semenchenko

There Are Some Super Shady Things in Oculus Rift's Terms of Service - 1 views

  • If you create something with the Rift, the Terms of Service say that you surrender all rights to that work and that Oculus can use it whenever it wants
  • Oculus can collect data from you while you’re using the device
  • Furthermore, the information that they collect can be used to directly market products to you
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  • What’s most worrisome here is that the emergence of VR technology opens up an new type of data for companies to mine en masse which can be collected efficiently. The fact that Oculus, the clear leader in the new VR marketplace, is setting this precedent could be dangerous for the future of the technology.
  • the Oculus Rift is a device that is always on (much like Microsoft’s Xbox One Kinect feature) which leads to further concerns about when the information will be collected.
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    Oculus already gathering much more personal data than were possible before, and owns any UGC created with the help of Oculus.
Maria Gurova

Study: Lego faces have been getting 'angrier' over last 20 years (Wired UK) - 1 views

  • The University of Canterbury team, led by Christoph Bartneck of the university's Human Interface Technology Lab, wanted to explore one way Lego might be influencing children through play. Toys, and play time, are considered vital to the development of emotional understanding in children, and with an average of 75 Lego blocks per human on Earth it makes sense to see what kinds of emotions Lego is presenting to children
  • On average, heads displayed 3.9 different emotions, which means that for a lot of the faces their emotional state is reasonably complex and ambiguous.
  • We cannot help but wonder how the move from only positive faces to an increasing number of negative faces impacts how children play
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  • Lego is moving towards a more conflict based play themes
  • the children that grow up with Lego today will remember not only smileys, but also anger and fear in the Minifigures' faces
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