Google Science Fair 2015 what will you try

Posted by Miriam Schneider, Google for Education team

(Cross-posted from the Google for Education Blog)

Science is about observing and experimenting. It’s about exploring unanswered questions, solving problems through curiosity, learning as you go and always trying again.

That’s the spirit behind the fifth annual Google Science Fair, kicking off today. Together with LEGO Education, National Geographic, Scientific American and Virgin Galactic, we’re calling on all young researchers, explorers, builders, technologists and inventors to try something ambitious. Something imaginative, or maybe even unimaginable. Something that might just change the world around us.

From now through May 18, students around the world ages 13-18 can submit projects online across all scientific fields, from biology to computer science to anthropology and everything in between. Prizes include $100,000 in scholarships and classroom grants from Scientific American and Google, a National Geographic Expedition to the Galapagos, an opportunity to visit LEGO designers at their Denmark headquarters, and the chance to tour Virgin Galactic’s new spaceship at their Mojave Air and Spaceport. This year we’re also introducing an award to recognize an Inspiring Educator, as well as a Community Impact Award honoring a project that addresses an environmental or health challenge.

It’s only through trying something that we can get somewhere. Flashlights required batteries, then Ann Makosinski tried the heat of her hand. His grandfather would wander out of bed at night, until Kenneth Shinozuka tried a wearable sensor. The power supply was constantly unstable in her Indian village, so Harine Ravichandran tried to build a different kind of regulator. Previous Science Fair winners have blown us away with their ideas. Now it’s your turn.

Big ideas that have the potential to make a big impact often start from something small. Something that makes you curious. Something you love, you’re good at, and want to try.

So, what will you try?

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What we can learn about effective meaningful and diverse organizations

Posted by Beryl Nelson, Software Engineering Manager

By becoming more conscious of our own stereotypes and biases, and making use of the insights revealed by the research on bias and stereotype threat, unconscious decision making, and cognitive illusions, each of us can bring more to our work and create diverse, innovative, and meaningful organizations.

Since 2009, I’ve been reading literature about the challenges and successes in making diverse teams effective, and speaking about this research. My goal is to help everyone understand more about unconscious decision-making and other barriers to inclusion, and through knowledge, combat these effects.

A short summary:

• A team that is heterogeneous in meaningful ways is good for innovation, and good for business.
• There are many challenges to making such teams effective, such as unconscious decision making, stereotype threat, and other cognitive illusions.
• There is repeatable quantitative research which shows ways to combat some of these effects.
• The barriers to effectiveness may seem overwhelming, but there is hope! Meaningful change is possible, and some examples of successful change are cited below.

In a bit more detail:

1. Diversity is good for innovation and business. There is a correlation between financial success and the diversity of leadership teams, as shown in research by Catalyst, McKinsey and Cedric Herring. Further, research shows a strong correlation between having women on teams and innovation; concluding that there is a strong correlation between the presence of women and the social skills required to get ideas percolating into the open.
2. We all make decisions unconsciously, influenced by our implicit associations. As an example of these effects, a large proportion of CEOs are taller than the average population and height is strongly correlated with financial and career success. It’s long been argued that women and underrepresented minorities are not represented in CEO leadership because there aren’t enough qualified individuals in the labor pool. This “pipeline issue” argument can’t be made for short and average-height people, however. Simple, repeatable tests measure, via response time and error rate, the implicit associations we have between concepts. These associations are created as an adaptive response, but we must understand our own implicit biases in order to make better decisions.
3. Stereotype threat plays a role in preventing people from being fully effective. The low representation of women and minorities in Science has long been the source of a troubling question: is this an indication of a difference in innate ability (see Ben Barre’s response to Lawrence Summers’ remarks), or the result of some other effect? Claude Steele and his colleagues elegantly showed that two groups of people can have similar or opposite reactions, depending on the way a situation is presented. These and other experiments show that stereotype threat can compromise the performance of the subject of a stereotype, if he or she knows about the stereotype and cares about it.
4. Change is possible. The above and other challenges may make it seem nearly impossible to create a diverse and highly functioning organization, but dramatic change can be made. Take, for example, the discovery of biased decision making and effective changes made via the use of data in the MIT Science Faculty Study, or the amazing changes at Harvey Mudd college, which not only increased participation of women as Computer Science majors from 12% to 40% in five years, but also increased the total number of CS majors from 25 to 30 per year to 70 CS graduates in the class of 2014.

If you’re interested in learning more, watch the video about the data on diversity below. You can read the full research in the November issue of Communications of the Association of Computing Machinery. You can read even more using the full bibliography.

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What does Privacy Mean to New Zealanders in the Internet Age

This Thursday is the 1st lecture in the annual Gibbons Memorial lecture series. The first lecture is by Professor Miriam Lips of the School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington, titled: What does Privacy Mean to New Zealanders in the Internet Age?

When: 6pm (refreshments) for 6.30pm lecture start, Thursday 1st May, 2014
Where: Owen G Glenn Building, Room OGGB3/260-092
Note that there is public parking in the basement of the Owen G Glenn Building at 12 Grafton Road.

Miriam Lips is the first Professor of E-Government at Victoria University of Wellington. This chair is sponsored by industry - Datacom System, FX Networks, Microsoft New Zealand – and the NZ government - the State Services Commission and the Department of Internal Affairs.

Professor Lips holds a MSc and a PhD from Erasmus University Rotterdam and an EMPA from Erasmus University, Leiden University and the Hochschule für Verwaltungswissen-schaften, Speyer. She has held academic positions at the University of Oxford and Tilburg University. Her current research includes management of online identity, use of social media for public engagement, the use of e-campaigning and the use of new media in disaster management.

Synopsis: Based on a 2013 survey with a representative sample of the New Zealand population, this talk will explore how, and to what extent, different groups of the New Zealand population are disclosing and protecting their personal information in varying online relationships with the private sector, government, and family and friends through social networking. The meaning of privacy for people from different age groups, ethnicities, educational backgrounds, and income groups will be discussed, and the implications for a population which increasingly exchanges their identity information online, against the backdrop of new privacy challenges and risks emerging from the use of Big Data.

from The Universal Machine http://universal-machine.blogspot.com/

Put the internet to work for you.

via Personal Recipe 895909

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What happens if your Government unfriends you

Sounds crazy right? Perhaps not if youre Chinese. China is launching a system that gives a score to every citizen. This is partially similar to the credit scoring systems that Western nations have used for years, but it also includes a component that measures the political trustworthiness of citizens. If you are a political critic of the Government your score will go down. But, whats really sinister is that if your friends have low ratings, your rating will be reduced. This social network may encourage people to "unfriend" any friends that show dissent. We in the west are perhaps used to, and certainly aware of the fact, that our spy masters have access to our social media accounts. China is taking this a step further by building a social network into the states functioning. Read this article from the American Civil Liberties Union for more on this story. Thanks to my colleague Mark Wilson for this story.

from The Universal Machine http://universal-machine.blogspot.com/

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Amazon at 20 what has the online giant ever done for retail

You may not have noticed but Amazon recently celebrated its 20th birthday. You may or not be a regular user (I certainly am). It was originally billed a the "Earths Biggest Bookstore" featuring over one million titles. Twenty years later it has over 270m active accounts and claims to have more than 2m third-party vendors selling millions of products through its marketplace platform. Amazon is comfortable with the term "disruptive." Its disrupted the bookshop and publishing industries and is disrupting other retail industries. The Guardian recently published an interesting article about the impact Amazon has had - recommended.




from The Universal Machine http://universal-machine.blogspot.com/

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What is Recycler Folder and How to remove it

You mus be wondering, Is recycler a virus? Is it a windows folder? why is it not deletable?
This article will give you a clear detail of this issue.
If you have used Windows for quite some time now then you must have seen this folder called RECYCLER. But many people don’t know what this folder is and what is it doing in the drive?

What is Recycler folder?

The Recycler folder is used only on NTFS partitions and is referred to as a location where all the deleted files go after they have been deleted by the user.

Now you may be wondering if it contains the deleted files then why we have the Recycle Bin.
When a file is deleted it goes to the Recycle Bin but when the Recycle Bin is emptied, the files are stored in this Recycler folder. This is the reason why we can still restore the deleted data in the Windows.

Difference between Recycle Bin and Recycler:

Recycle Bin stores the file that are deleted from the computer until it is emptied completely whereas the Recycler folder contains a Recycle Bin for each user that logs on to the computer.

Recycled Folder:

This is something different than the Recycler folder as Recycled is same as Recycle Bin. That is both Recycled and Recycle Bin are just two different names for the same memory location.

How to delete Recycler Folder:
Recycler is a read only folder and that is why it gave error if you tried to delete it. To view the folder, go to Tools -> Folder Options -> View tab and uncheck the option of Hide Protected operating System Files.
Now just right click on the folder, go to Properties and unselect the option of Read Only. Now it can be deleted.

Recycler Virus:
There has been identified a virus with the same name that is Recycler.exe which should not be confused with the Recycler folder.

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What of STEM Should Be Computer Science

We keep hearing in the media how many job vacancies there are for computer scientists and how the critical shortage is restricting the growth of many companies. Every one is agreed that we need more people with computing skills. This article from code.org provides an interesting insight into this skills shortage and offers some solutions.

from The Universal Machine http://universal-machine.blogspot.com/

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