Ogba Educational Clinic promoting a greener Africa for all Africans.
Category: education – Page 119
On a high, dry terrace overlooking a green river valley in the Andes Mountains of Peru, sits a complex of American pyramids that may be older than the pyramids of Egypt. These structures are remnants of the ancient city of Caral, which some have called the oldest society in the Americas. Caral was built around 5000 years ago, give or take a few centuries, according to groundbreaking research published in Science back in 2001. That origin date places it before the Egyptian pyramids in Africa and roughly 4000 years before the Incan Empire rose to power on the South American continent. That history, and the shear scope of the site, prompted UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, to dub it a World Heritage Site in 2009.
These pyramids in Peru are older than the ones in Egypt, and predate the Incan Empire by roughly 4000 years.
It looks like virtual education(which is happening more now) is actually preparing students for the workplace of the future.
That said, there may be a silver lining to virtual classrooms and distance learning, which many universities and schools this academic year are defaulting to, in various degrees, due to the coronavirus. As students and teachers may have to compensate for logistic challenges, collaborating online might prepare high school students with the kind of organizational acumen, emotional intelligence and self-discipline needed for modern careers, particularly those that allow for the growing trend of working in remote, distributed teams. The sooner that students master those proficiencies, the better off they’ll be when they reach the job market.
Humans have taken spiders into space more than once to study the importance of gravity to their web-building. What originally began as a somewhat unsuccessful PR experiment for high school students has yielded the surprising insight that light plays a larger role in arachnid orientation than previously thought.
The spider experiment by the US space agency NASA is a lesson in the frustrating failures and happy accidents that sometimes lead to unexpected research findings. The question was relatively simple: on Earth, spiders build asymmetrical webs with the center displaced towards the upper edge. When resting, spiders sit with their head downwards because they can move towards freshly caught prey faster in the direction of gravity.
But what do arachnids do in zero gravity? In 2008, NASA wanted to inspire middle schools in the US with this experiment. But even though the question was simple, the planning and execution of the experiment in space was extremely challenging. This led to a number of mishaps.
In 2016, combined venture investments in VR, AR, and mixed reality (MR) exceeded $1.25 billion. In 2019, that number increased more than 3X to $4.1 billion. And today, major players are bringing new, second-generation VR headsets to market that have the power to revolutionize the VR industry, as well as countless others. Already, VR headset sales volumes are expected to reach 30 million per year by 2022. For example, Facebook’s new Oculus Quest 2 headset has outsold its predecessor by 5X in the initial weeks of the product launch. With the FAANG tech giants pouring billions into improving VR hardware, the VR space is massively heating up. In this blog, we will dive into a brief history of VR, recent investment surges, and the future of this revolutionary technology.
“Virtual reality is not a media experience,” explains Bailenson. “When it’s done well, it’s an actual experience. In general our findings show that VR causes more behavior changes, causes more engagement, causes more influence than other types of traditional media.”
Nor is empathy the only emotion VR appears capable of training. In research conducted at USC, psychologist Skip Rizzo has had considerable success using virtual reality to treat PTSD in soldiers. Other scientists have extended this to the full range of anxiety disorders.
VR, especially when combined with AI, has the potential to facilitate a top shelf traditional education, plus all the empathy and emotional skills that traditional education has long been lacking.
While Jupiter and Saturn have been stealing the headlines lately, this week on “The Cosmic Controversy Podcast,” I’m pleased to welcome planetary astronomer Heidi Hammel to talk about the ice giants Uranus and Neptune. They remain the largely forgotten gatekeepers to our outer solar system.
Renowned planetary astronomer Heidi Hammel and I chat about our solar system’s mysterious ice giant planets, Uranus and Neptune. There’s only been one flyby of these giant planets by NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft back in the late 1980s. Hammel, who was part of the Voyager 2 science team, explains what that mission taught us about these objects and why we need to go back.
Nice lecture with both technical info and analogy.
Latest study from David Sinclair’s lab have used cellular reprogramming to restore vision in aged mice & more! Suggests reversing aging *may* be possible.
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This week, I had some amazing discussions with Navajo Nation Math Circle leaders — Dave Auckly and Henry Fowler. The idea of starting a math circle on Navajo land was initially brought up by a wonderful math educator and mathematician raised in Kazakhstan, Tatiana Shubin. Here is a small tribute to their efforts:
Project activities were launched in the Fall of 2012. A team of distinguished mathematicians from all over the US, as well as local teachers and community members, work together to run the outreach. Navajo Nation Math Circles present math in the context of Navajo culture, helping students develop their identity as true Navajo mathematicians. “We want to find kids who would not have discovered their talents without our project, to help them realize that they can change the world,” says Fowler. Having introduced Navajo children to the joy of mathematics, the project also yielded a book, Inspiring Mathematics: Lessons from the Navajo Nation Math Circles, which contain lesson plans, puzzles and activities, and other insights for parents and teachers to embrace.
An extension of Navajo Nation Math Circles is an annual two-week Baa Hózhó summer math camp at Navajo Technical University. “Baa Hózhó” means “balance and harmony,” tying together the ideas of mathematical equilibrium with the way of life embraced by Navajo people. The summer camp is widely popular with parents and children; the older students come back as counselors, making everyone feel like one big family. It is preceded by an annual student-run math festival in local schools across the Navajo Nation, where students share their passion for mathematics with families and friends.
Fowler’s ultimate goal is to create a Mathematical Research institute on Navajo land, where local and international researchers could exchange math ideas and study the best ways of teaching mathematics to Indigenous people, enriching worldwide mathematical sciences. Hopefully, the great strides in the Navajo Nation math education will encourage leading high-tech companies to support the rise of a new generation of diverse, talented and passionate Native American STEM professionals.
As we sit here in 2020, in the middle of a major viral pandemic, we can’t forget the fact that a century after the first antibiotics were created, drug resistant bacterial infections have become a major threat around the globe, exactly at the same time that the antibiotic pipelines of pharma companies have either dried up, or they have gotten out of the business.
In the U.S. alone, Centers For Disease Control (CDC) estimates that antibiotic resistance causes more than 2 million infections, several million hospital stay days, and over 35, 000 deaths per year. Worldwide, such infections cause 750, 000 deaths every year. And a recent United Nations (UN) report concluded that by 2050, “super bugs” could kill 10 million people globally every year, if no action is taken to combat the problem.
A solution to this emerging threat lies in the area of bacteriophage therapy (or “phage” for short), which is a type of virus that infects, replicates within, and are very good at killing bacteria.
Interestingly, phages have been used for over 90 years as an alternative to antibiotics in the former Soviet Union and Central Europe as well as in France. They are seen as a possible therapy against multi-drug-resistant strains of many bacteria and have been shown to interfere not just with bacteria life cycles, but also with biofilm production and quorum sensing involved bacterial colonization processes.
Voicebots, humanoids and other tools capture memories for future generations.
What happens after we die—digitally, that is? In this documentary, WSJ’s Joanna Stern explores how technology can tell our stories for generations to come.
Old photos, letters and tapes. Tech has long allowed us to preserve memories of people long after they have died. But with new tools there are now interactive solutions, including memorialized online accounts, voice bots and even humanoid robots. WSJ’s Joanna Stern journeys across the world to test some of those for a young woman who is living on borrowed time. Photo illustration: Adele Morgan/The Wall Street Journal.
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