SpeakersModerators - 20-22 września 2018 r., Ghent Marriott, Belgia Paolo Corvo Kierownik ds. Rozwoju działalności Biofuels amp Derivatives Group Biotechnology Paolo dołączył do Clariants Group Biotechnology, która opracowuje i wprowadza na rynek biopaliwa celulozowe i biopaliwa odnawialne dla szwajcarskich specjalistycznych chemikaliów firmy Clariant, w 2017 r. Jako szef działu rozwoju biznesu nadzoruje licencjonowanie celulozowych etanolu i cukrowni. W latach 2005-12 Paolo pracował jako kierownik ds. Rozwoju biznesu w Biofuels Partners, włoskiej firmie konsultingowej specjalizującej się w sektorze biopłynów i biodiesla. Przed dołączeniem do Biofuels Partners pracował dla Aon Insurance w Mediolanie i Rotterdamie jako Audytor Wewnętrzny, a następnie jako Business Development Manager koncentrujący się na sektorze energii odnawialnej. Paolo ukończył studia w 2000 r. Na politechnice w Mediolanie, uzyskując dyplom z zarządzania i inżynierii produkcji, przed ukończeniem stażu w McKinsey amp Company w Mediolanie jako analityk biznesowy. Dr Sergio Ugarte Współzałożyciel i dyrektor zarządzający SQ Consult Dr Sergio Ugarte jest współzałożycielem i dyrektorem zarządzającym SQ Consult (sqconsult). Skumulował ponad 25 lat doświadczenia w doradztwie w zakresie polityki, innowacji technologicznych i strategii biznesowych w sektorze zrównoważonej energii. W ciągu ostatnich kilku lat przeprowadził dla IEA-RETD, IATA, Abengoa, między innymi, odpowiednie projekty związane z ogólną wykonalnością produkcji zaawansowanych biopaliw. Projekty te obejmowały również analizę możliwości technicznych i oszczędności ekonomicznych w celu integracji konwencjonalnej i zaawansowanej produkcji biopaliw. Przeprowadził także szereg projektów oceny polityki związanych z przyszłością i stosownością biopaliw w globalnym koszyku energetycznym. Sergio pracował dla klientów prywatnych i publicznych na czterech kontynentach i ma bogate doświadczenie w opracowywaniu zaleceń dotyczących polityki oraz w komunikowaniu się ze wszystkimi odpowiednimi zainteresowanymi stronami w łańcuchu wartości biopaliw. Sergio zajmował takie stanowiska, jak dyrektor ds. Strategii w Ecofys International i wiceminister energii w Peru. Posiada tytuł doktora inżyniera, w szczególności modelowania kinetyki spalania paliw. Jest członkiem zewnętrznej rady doradczej Wydziału Inżynierii Przemysłowej i Mechanicznej na Northeastern University (Boston, USA), gdzie był współpracownikiem naukowym i wykładowcą przedmiotów z zakresu nauk ścisłych i cieplnych. Arno van de Kant Dyrektor ds. Rozwoju w Działalności Bioprocesowej B. V. Pracuje w dziedzinie biotechnologii przemysłowej przez ponad 20 lat, Arno jest doświadczonym dyrektorem ds. Rozwoju biznesu, obecnie pracuje w ośrodku pilotażowym Bioprocess w Delft. Pracował dla kilku firm w działach marketingu, sprzedaży i rozwoju biznesu. jak są New Brunswick Scientific, Akzo Nobel, badania żywności NIZO, bioMerieux i TNO. Pracował również jako dyrektor generalny ARKI i MicroDish, firmy startupowej, odkrywającej i wykrywającej nowe organizmy. Był również aktywny w kilku europejskich sieciach, takich jak członek przemysłowej grupy biotechnologicznej EuropaBio i grupa robocza ds. Technologii klucza głównego Unii Europejskiej w dziedzinie biotechnologii przemysłowej. Teraz jest dedykowany, aby pomóc firmom w upowszechnieniu swoich procesów z biomasy do produktów w otwartych urządzeniach do pilotowania w Delft. Dr Jan M. Henke Dyrektor Meo Carbon Solutions GmbH Dr Jan Henke jest dyrektorem Meo Carbon Solutions, firmy konsultingowej specjalizującej się w obszarach zrównoważonego rozwoju, energii odnawialnej i emisji gazów cieplarnianych. Meo zarządza rozwojem i obecnie obsługuje system ISCC, uznany system certyfikacji, opracowany w ramach podejścia wielopodmiotowego i zarządzany przez Stowarzyszenie ISCC (iscc-system. org). Jan pracuje również nad rozwojem GRAS (Global Risk Assessment Services), narzędzia dostarczającego informacji na temat zmiany użytkowania gruntów, różnorodności biologicznej, zasobów węgla i wskaźników społecznych. GRAS może być używany do tworzenia i monitorowania zrównoważonych i wolnych od wylesień łańcuchów dostaw (gras-system. org). Jan jest absolwentem Międzynarodowej Ekonomii. W latach 2002-2006 był pracownikiem naukowym w Instytucie Gospodarki Światowej w Kilonii. Jan zajmuje się tematyką energii odnawialnej i zasobów odnawialnych, zrównoważonego rozwoju, zmian klimatu, obliczeń gazów cieplarnianych i certyfikacji wzdłuż całego łańcucha dostaw. Prowadził projekty dla firm prywatnych i sektora publicznego w Europie, Azji Południowo-Wschodniej i obu Amerykach. Gudbrand Roslashdsrud Dyrektor ds. Technologii, rozwój biznesu Borregaard AS Gudbrand Roslashdsrud jest z wykształcenia chemikiem polimerów z Uniwersytetu w Oslo, a także posiada tytuł MBA w zakresie marketingu międzynarodowego w Norweskiej Szkole Administracji Biznesu. Roslashdsrud dołączył do Borregaard w 1995 roku jako dyrektor ds. Lignin Borregaards w RampD i od 11 lat zajmuje się rozwojem produktów i techniczną obsługą klientów wiodącego na świecie biznesu ligninowego. Ma również 2-letnie expatriate stanowisko dla Borregaard w RPA i od 2006 roku pracował w Business Development jako dyrektor ds. Technologii. Roslashdsrud uczestniczył w szeregu projektów z biorafinerii w ramach nowych strategii Borregaards. Borregaard jest uważany za jedną z najnowocześniejszych biorafinerii działających obecnie i rozważających rozszerzenie swoich koncepcji biorafinerii zarówno na surowce, jak i paletę produktów do produkcji. Obecnie zajmuje się rozwojem cennych strumieni produktów ze wszystkich głównych komponentów biomasy oraz integracją nowych koncepcji biorafinerii z wyborem istniejących branż na całym świecie. Jest współtwórcą procesu wstępnej obróbki i separacji BALI. Pracuje również nad projektami, które przekształcają pentozę w chemikalia użytkowe, cukry w białka jednokomórkowe, ligniny w związki aromatyczne i cukry specjalne. Dr Spyros J. Kiartzis Dyrektor Alternatywne źródła energii i nowe technologie HELLENIC PETROLEUM SA Dr Spyros Kiartzis otrzymał Dyplom i doktorat z elektrotechniki w Szkole Inżynierskiej i stopień naukowy w Szkole Prawa i Ekonomii od Arystotelesa University of Thessaloniki, a na koniec MBA z Hellenic Open University. Po ukończeniu studiów wstąpił na Uniwersytet Arystotelesa w Salonikach jako badacz, a później jako instruktor. Od czasu do czasu wygłasza wykłady na Międzynarodowym Uniwersytecie Greckim. Jego zainteresowania badawcze dotyczą energii odnawialnej, ekonomiki energetycznej i polityki deregulacji sektora energetycznego. Wstąpił do Hellenic Petroleum Group w 2001 roku, gdzie zajmował szereg stanowisk w dziale konserwacji i budowy projektów (w tym Zespół Zarządzania Projektami w celu budowy CCPP o mocy 390 MW), zanim został Dyrektorem Alternatywnych Źródeł Energii i Nowych Technologii. Jest wiceprezesem i dyrektorem generalnym właściciela parku wiatrowego Energiaki Pylou-Methonis SA. Jest również członkiem Rady Dyrektorów Quellenic Petroleum Renewable Sources S. A.quot (spółka zależna Hellenic Petroleum Group) i zasiadał w Radzie Dyrektorów spółki notabene Bulgaria S. A.quot (spółka zależna Hellenic Petroleum Group). Kevin McGeeney CEO Grupa SCB Kevin McGeeney był założycielem grupy SCB w 2006 roku i jest jej dyrektorem generalnym. Dzięki biurom grupowym w Szwajcarii, Stanach Zjednoczonych, Wielkiej Brytanii i Singapurze, SCB jest największą na świecie firmą maklerską zajmującą się obrotem energią odnawialną i zdobyła szereg wyróżnień, w tym nagrodę za ochronę środowiska przyznawaną przez czasopismo Environmental Risk Magazine oraz nagrodę "Breker roku" w kategorii "Ryzyko energetyczne". McGeeney jest znanym komentatorem na rynkach ochrony środowiska i regularnie występuje na międzynarodowych konferencjach na całym świecie, w telewizji CNBC oraz w mediach drukowanych, takich jak Wall Street Journal. Przed powołaniem do życia grupy SCB, McGeeney spędził 15 lat jako bankier inwestycyjny w Londynie, Nowym Jorku i Tokio. Uzyskał tytuły licencjata handlu i magistra nauk ekonomicznych na University College w Dublinie. Luis Rodrigo Poch Dyrektor generalny UCO Trading Luis pracuje w branży biodiesla od 2009 roku. Dołączył do firmy Biocarburantes de Galicia w 2017 roku, gdzie skupiał się na projektach odpadów od energii. Jego głównym zainteresowaniem było wykorzystanie surowców odpadowych do produkcji wysokiej jakości biopaliw głównie w ramach systemów podwójnego liczenia. W 2017 roku dołączył do grupy Beta Renowable, działając tam jako Biofuels Trader i był odpowiedzialny za kupowanie uco i sprzedaż produkcji wyprodukowanej w dwóch różnych fabrykach w Hiszpanii. Ma doświadczenie w certyfikacji ISCC-UE, a także w krajowym wdrożeniu w Hiszpanii. Luis rozpoczął własną działalność gospodarczą w 2017 r., Handlując zrównoważonymi surowcami do produkcji biodiesla i produktów ubocznych w UCO TRADING HISZPANIA. Raf Verdonck Konsultant TOTCO Raf Verdonck jest niezależnym konsultantem zarządzania TOTCO bvba, wspierającym firmy z sektorów chemii i biopaliw. W latach 2006-2017 był kierownikiem jednostki biznesowej w Oleon Biodiesel NV, filii francuskiego producenta biodiesla SaipolDiester. W tym okresie był również odpowiedzialny za kilka projektów z zakresu zaawansowanych biopaliw. Wcześniej pracował jako kierownik ds. Rozwoju biznesu w przemyśle tekstylnym oraz jako menedżer RD w branży metalowej. Raf Verdonck posiada tytuł magistra inżyniera na Katolickim Uniwersytecie w Leuven (Belgia), gdzie ukończył go w 1997 roku. Ortwin Costenoble Starszy konsultant NEN Ortwin Costenoble ukończył Politechnikę Delftską jako inżynier nauk materiałowych. Zaczynał w NEN, Holenderskim Instytucie Normalizacji, w 2000 roku w dziedzinie chemii. Po latach doradztwa standaryzacyjnego, na przykład w dziedzinie gumy, analizy gazu i gazu ziemnego, specjalizował się w międzynarodowych pracach normalizacyjnych w dziedzinie ropy naftowej i biopaliw. Obecnie jest starszym konsultantem ds. Normalizacji w NEN Energy Resources. Pan Costenoble jest sekretarzem międzynarodowym ds. Komitetów i grup roboczych w ISO i CEN, a. o. (bio) jakość paliw i etykietowanie, alternatywne źródła energii, kryteria zrównoważonego rozwoju w odniesieniu do biomasy, bio-rozpuszczalników, alg i produktów biologicznych. Jest członkiem powiązanych organizacji, takich jak ASTM lub Europejska Platforma Technologiczna Biopaliw. Oprócz tego zarządza on kilkoma projektami dotyczącymi badań poprzedzających normalizację (FP7 i Horizon2020), metrologią, zamówieniami i certyfikacją w odniesieniu do biopaliw i produktów opartych na produktach biologicznych. Ortwin organizuje międzynarodowe kongresy naukowe i szkolenia na przykład w Chinach i Europie Wschodniej w zakresie standaryzacji, handlu, certyfikacji, pomiarów i metrologii. Christian Schweitzer Dyrektor zarządzający bse Engineering Leipzig GmbH Christian Schweitzer urodził się w lipcu 1964 roku w Aachen. Tam ukończył studia inżynierskie w Fachhochschule Aachen. Otrzymał również tytuł Bachelor of Business Administration w 1999 r. W St. Gallen Management Institute w Szwajcarii. Od 1995 roku Pan Schweitzer jest dyrektorem zarządzającym bse Engineering Leipzig GmbH. Bse Engineering GmbH Leipzig działa w całej Europie i jest niezależną, konsultacyjną i zorientowaną na klienta firmą inżynierską w dziedzinie biomasy płynnej i stałej. Po pomyślnym utworzeniu fabryki bioetanolu w Zeitz w Niemczech w 2005 r. Rozpoczął pracę w branży biopaliw. Od tego czasu pan Schweitzer wspierał i realizował wiele projektów bioenergetycznych w całej Europie. Ponadto pan Schweitzer opublikował różne artykuły na temat bioetanolu, cukrowni i (zrównoważonego) wykorzystania biomasy, a także przeprowadził prezentacje na te tematy na międzynarodowych konferencjach poświęconych bioenergii. W tej chwili pan Schweitzer rozwija techniczną i ekonomiczną integrację chemicznego magazynowania energii Metanolu w przemyśle etanolu. Tim Worledge Global Associate Dyrektor redakcyjny ds. Rolnictwa Tim Worledge jest Platts Global Associate Dyrektor redakcyjny ds. Rolnictwa. Jest odpowiedzialny za zespół dedykowanych redaktorów, którzy dostarczają cen rynkowych, nowości i spostrzeżenia dla sektora rolnego. W ciągu 7 lat pracy w Platts kierował zespołem redaktorów Middle Distillate, odpowiedzialnym za pokrycie europejskich rynków odrzutowców, diesli i olejów napędowych. W tym czasie Tim pokrył historyczny wzrost ropy do 147 za baryłkę i załamanie popytu na globalną recesję sprzed 2017 roku. Po ukończeniu studiów licencjackich w zakresie historii współczesnej, rozpoczął karierę w firmie medialnej, pracując razem z kablówką. Kanały telewizyjne, takie jak MTV i VH1. Dr Gunter Festel Współzałożyciel Autodisplay Biotech GmbH Gunter Festel jest współzałożycielem Autodisplay Biotech i wspiera działania związane z globalnym rozwojem biznesu. Założył również szwajcarską firmę inwestycyjną FESTEL CAPITAL i współzałożycielem fundacji założycieli licznych start-upów biotechnologicznych w Niemczech i Szwajcarii. Na przykład był współzałożycielem i dyrektorem generalnym firmy Butalco, która opracowała platformę technologiczną do produkcji biopaliw i biochemikaliów i została sprzedana francuskiej firmie Lesaffre w 2017 roku. Wcześniej był członkiem zespołu zarządzającego i szefem biznesu konsultingowego dla przemysłu chemicznego i opieki zdrowotnej z Arthur D. Little w Zurychu i konsultantem McKinsey. Karierę rozpoczął w Bayer, gdzie zajmował różne stanowiska kierownicze w RampD i marketingu. Gunter Festel posiada tytuł magistra i doktora chemii, licencjat z zarządzania biznesem, magister ekonomii, doktor ekonomii zarządzania i dyrektor wykonawczy ds. Finansów korporacyjnych. Sandra De Mey Dyrektor Handlowy Port of Ghent Sandra De Mey ukończyła w 1991 r. Tytuł licencjata w zakresie zarządzania komunikacją (specjalizacja w dziedzinie reklamy PR amp). Podyplomowe: zarządzanie portem. Współpracuje z Ghent Port Company od 1992 roku, gdzie rozpoczęła karierę jako asystentka PR (dział PR). Niedługo później została dyrektorem ds. PR, aż w 2004 roku wybrała nowe wyzwanie jako menedżer ds. Przesyłek masowych, a następnie jako menedżer konta. Obecnie, jako kierownik ds. Handlowych, specjalizuje się w gospodarce opartej na biobazach, sektorze agribulk i produktach płynnych. Została mianowana ambasadorem ds. Kobiet w agrobiznesie i wchodzi teraz w skład zarządu IMEXGRA vzw. PORT IN YOUR BLOOD quotTo pomoc dla moich klientów portowych w zwiększaniu ich działalności i znajdowaniu nowych inwestycji dla nich to moje codzienne cele. Know-how, lata doświadczeń i zarządzanie ludźmi to tylko niektóre z moich przydatnych umiejętności. Zajęcie się ludźmi w języku portugalskim, niemieckim, angielskim, a nawet arabskim nie jest dla mnie żadnym wysiłkiem. Patrick Pitkaumlnen Kierownik ds. Rozwoju biznesu St1 Biofuels Oy Główny zespół specjalistów ds. Rozwoju sprzedaży i biznesu - St1 Biopaliwa wykorzystuje własne odpady do pozyskiwania surowców z floty do produkcji etanolu, według sprzedaży produktów i zarządzania przez klientów. - Nowe przypadki rozwoju działalności gospodarczej na całym świecie w różnych surowcach do odpadu - Sprzedaż eksportowa i licencjonowanie odpadów do technologii etanolu i transfer wiedzy - Marketing - analiza biznesowa i komunikacja zewnętrzna - Produkt, koncepcja rozwoju usług i usług związanych z przetwarzaniem odpadów na potrzeby działalności związanej z etanolem Madeleine Breguet Analityk rynku nasion oleistych i biopaliw TallageStrateacutegie Grains Madeleine Breguet jest analitykiem rynku nasion oleistych i biopaliw w firmie TallageStrateacutegie Grains. Uzyskała tytuł magistra w AgroParisTech (Paris Institute of Technology for Life, Food and Environmental Sciences). Karierę zawodową rozpoczęła jako analityk rynku w zakresie niespożywczego wykorzystania biomasy. Dołączyła do działu nasion oleistych TallageStrateacutegie Grains w 2017 roku i jest odpowiedzialna za globalne rynki soi i sojuszu. Specjalizuje się w rynkach bioetanolu i cukru w UE. Tallage jest niezależną firmą specjalizującą się w rolno-ekonomicznych rynkach zbóż i roślin oleistych, utworzoną w styczniu 1993 r. Główną jej działalnością jest publikacja ziaren Strateacutegie (raporty miesięczne i usługi sieciowe), odniesienie do analizy rynków upraw w Europie, wdrożenie ukierunkowanych badań agroekonomicznych i szkoleń dla obszarów działalności związanych z rynkami towarów rolnych. 325 firm w ponad 50 krajach zasubskrybowało usługi zboża TallageStrateacutegie. Kevin Willerton Wiceprezes ds. Rozwoju biznesu Alter NRG Kevin współpracuje z Alter NRG w zakresie rozwoju biznesu od 2006 roku. Odpowiada za działania marketingowe i sprzedażowe w całej Europie oraz współpracę z firmą Air Products, która obecnie buduje 2000 ton w skali dziennej urządzenia do gazyfikacji plazmy w NE w Anglii. Przed przejściem do firmy Alter NRG Kevin miał 20-letnie doświadczenie w branży elektrycznej, z czego większość miała potencjał rozwoju biznesu. Był odpowiedzialny za wejście jednej z firm energetycznych w energię wiatrową. Pełnił wiele ról w innej dużej firmie energetycznej, w tym w zakresie rozwoju biznesu, marketingu, zarządzania ryzykiem towarowym i inżynierii. Kevin pracował w krajach na całym świecie, w tym w Chinach, Australii, Nowej Zelandii, Japonii i całej Europie. Kevin jest profesjonalnym inżynierem, posiada tytuł licencjata w dziedzinie inżynierii elektrycznej na Uniwersytecie w Saskatchewan i tytuł MBA na Uniwersytecie w Calgary. Raffaella Serra Business Development Manager Beta Renewables Raffaella Serra jest kierownikiem ds. Rozwoju Beta Renewables na rynku europejskim. Dołączyła do MG w 2000 r. I od tego czasu pełniła wiele funkcji w zespole zajmującym się handlem i marketingiem w jednostce organizacyjnej zajmującej się opakowaniami w grupie, a następnie skoncentrowała swoje działania na marketingu i sprzedaży specjalnych żywic barierowych PET w Polymer Business Unit of the. Grupa. Raffaella dołączył do zespołu Beta Renewables w 2017 roku. Victor Allemandou Broker Greenea Broker zajmujący się biodieselem fizycznym i surowcem, obejmujący i rozwijający europejskie (kraje Europy Środkowej i Wschodniej) oraz rynki południowoamerykańskie. Rozpoczął karierę w bankowości inwestycyjnej i zarządzaniu aktywami. Victor posiada podwójny stopień: Master in Management i Msc na rynkach finansowych od EDHEC Business School. Jego językami roboczymi są francuski, angielski, hiszpański i portugalski. Peter Geertse Dyrektor Handlowy Zeeland Seaports Rozpoczął pracę jako kierownik handlowy w Zeeland Seaports 7 lat temu, po 23 latach pracy w branży transportowej. Szkolenia z zakresu ekonomii handlowej, zarządzania portami, transportu i transportu. Obowiązki w Seaports w Zelandii obejmują projekty typu Liquid bulk, Offshore, Energy, sustainability oraz Bio Based Economy. Zeeland Seaports jest zarządem portów portów Vlissingen i Terneuzen w południowo-zachodniej części Holandii (pomiędzy Rotterdamem i Antwerpią). Udziałowcami są Prowincja Zelandia i 3 gminy Vlissingen, Terneuzen i Borssele. Zeeland Seaports przyjmuje liderów rynku światowego w sektorze hurtowym. Przemysł petrochemiczny (DOW Chemical), terminale czołgów (VOPAK, Oiltanking, Vesta), a także rafinerie (Zeeland Refinary ndash TotalLukoil) i biopaliw. Zeeland Seaports zarządza również Biopark Terneuzen, który w zamian jest założycielem ojca i współfinansującym (z Doliną Ghent Bio Economy) Bio Base Europe. Bio Base Europe ułatwia firmom w ich rozwoju produkty nowej generacji oparte na biopaliwach, bioenergetyce i bio. Ian Waller Niezależny doradca FiveBarGate Consultants Ltd Niezależny doradca nbash FiveBarGate Consultants Ltd Ians consultancy, FiveBarGate, zapewnia: rynkowe zarządzanie zrównoważonym łańcuchem dostaw komercyjnych oraz zapewnienie technicznych i strategicznych wskazówek dla wielu aktywnych firm i inwestorów w zakresie bioenergii i technologii na całym świecie. Należą do nich firmy zajmujące się ciepłem, mocą i transportem, od momentu powstania uprawy lub odpadów do miejsca użycia. Ian doradzał także rządowi Wielkiej Brytanii w szeregu kwestii związanych z bioenergią i regulacjami oraz łańcuchem dostaw. Ian jest międzynarodowym audytorem wiodącym dla Roundtable for Sustainable Biomaterials i doradza wielu klientom, którzy osiągnęli RSB lub ISCC. Ian jest także dyrektorem Farming Footprints Ltd Csaba Zsoacuteteacuter Product amp Renewables Trading Manager MOL Group Csaba Zsoacuteteacuter (Węgry) jest Product Am Renewables Trading Manager w Grupie MOL. Na tym stanowisku zarządza działalnością handlową Grupy MOL w zakresie produktów naftowych (lekkich, średnich i ciężkich destylatów) oraz biopaliw i innych odnawialnych źródeł energii, wykorzystuje możliwości biznesowe wynikające z elastyczności, struktury rynku i fizycznej pozycji Grupy MOL oraz generuje marżę poprzez czysty przepływy handlowe stron trzecich. Csaba rozpoczął karierę w Grupie MOL w 2008 roku w dziale Corporate Business Development MampA, gdzie pracował w różnych transakcjach związanych z rafineriami, petrochemią i sprzedażą detaliczną oraz innych projektach rozwoju biznesu. Od 2017 roku pracował jako asystent menedżera w MOL Group Refining amp Marketing, następnie w Supply Chain Management, aw 2017 roku został mianowany szefem zaopatrzenia w surowce i sprzedaży. Csaba ukończył ekonomię na Uniwersytecie Corvinus w Budapeszcie, gdzie przez wiele lat pełnił rolę nauczyciela seminarium w niepełnym wymiarze godzin. Jakob Lagercrantz Współzałożyciel 2030-Sekretariat Z wykształcenia jestem ekonomistą. Karierę zawodową rozpocząłem w niedawno założonym Greenpeace Sweden w 1984 roku. Zostałem przez 11 lat, zostając dyrektorem Greenpeace w Szwecji. Na tym etapie założyłem firmę doradczą i od tego czasu pracuję jako konsultant. Zostałem powołany na przewodniczącego wpływowej organizacji Szwedzkiej Organizacji Zielonych Kierowców, w której przebywałem przez dziewięć lat. Po odejściu z firmy współtworzyłem sekretariat 2030, przemysłową organizację pozarządową, której celem było osiągnięcie sektora transportu niezależnego od paliw kopalnych w Szwecji do 2030 roku. Pracowałem zawodowo ze wszystkimi biopaliwami, a także doradzałem szwedzkiemu rządowi w zakresie polityki dekarbonizacji. Carl De Mareacute Wiceprezes, szef rozwijających się technologii. ArcelorMittal Civil Engineer, Master (specjalista elektromechanika) ndash University Gent 1985. Dołączył do firmy we wrześniu 1988 r. - strona ArcelorMittal Gent. Aktywny w różnych obszarach, jako rozwój IT, centrum badawcze do zastosowań stalowych, jakość odpowiedzialna za wykończenie powierzchni. Był od 2002 r. Do końca 2006 r. Dyrektorem generalnym działu Steelplant w ArcelorMittal Gent. Przeniesiony koniec 2006 r. Na poziom segmentu ArcelorMittal, najpierw jako Continuous Improvement odpowiedzialny za Flat Europe, a od maja 2008 r. Został nominowany na stanowisko wiceprezesa ArcelorMittal na stanowisko CTO Flat Carbon Europe, odpowiedzialnego za technologię, strategię, innowacje i ciągłe doskonalenie. Od 2017 r. Był nominowany do wiceprezesa ArcelorMittal na stanowisko szefa rozwijających się technologii. W tej funkcji jest odpowiedzialny za globalny program w zakresie technologii Low Impact Steel. Współzałożyciel Bo Gleerup Nordic Green Pan Gleerup pełni funkcję CEO i jest jednym z założycieli Nordic Green. Ma ponad 16-letnie doświadczenie w sprzedaży i dystrybucji różnych surowców i składników dla przemysłu spożywczego, paszowego i farmaceutycznego. Jest ponadto właścicielem i dyrektorem generalnym agencji i firmy dystrybucyjnej Johannes Eriksen. Jest także członkiem zarządu i doradcą biznesowym wielu firm. BSc Business Administration, 42. Brecht Vanlerberghe Główny Rampd Officer Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant Jako główny kierownik RampD Officer, trener Trener Brecht nadzoruje projekty konsorcjów w zakładzie Bio Base Europe Pilot. Posiada wyższe stopnie naukowe w zakresie stosowanych nauk biologicznych i zarządzania przemysłowego. Zanim był odpowiedzialny za innowacyjne produkty wzmacniające proces w kilku międzynarodowych firmach (AVEVE, Campina, FrieslandCampina, TEREOS). biorefinerie pierwszej generacji na bazie mleka lub zbóż, bulw, buraków. Prof. Martin Tangney Prezes Celtic Renewables Prof Martin Tangney jest uznanym na całym świecie ekspertem w zakresie produkcji biopaliw z udziałem drobnoustrojów, aw 2007 roku założył w Edinburgh Napier University pierwsze w Wielkiej Brytanii centrum badawcze zajmujące się rozwojem zrównoważonego biopaliwa w Centrum Badań Biopaliw (BfRC). Centrum osiągnęło międzynarodowy rozgłos jako portal służący do asymilacji, integracji i rozpowszechniania wiedzy i informacji między krajowymi i międzynarodowymi środowiskami akademickimi, przemysłem i rządem. Martin jest kluczową postacią i czołowym prelegentem w sektorze energii odnawialnej w Szkocji i na arenie międzynarodowej i poinformował o debacie politycznej w kraju i za granicą. W 2017 roku uruchomił w Hong Kongu pierwszy recykling do kampanii na biopaliwa, a także gościł wizytę szefa rządu Hongkongu podczas wizyty w Hongkongu Premiers w Wielkiej Brytanii. W 2017 r. Pomógł opracować MOU w sprawie odnawialnych źródeł energii między Szkocją i Hongkongiem. Martin wprowadził globalne wiadomości do swojego procesu produkcji biobutanolu, jako zrównoważonego, zaawansowanego biopaliwa (bezpośredniego zamiennika benzyny), od produktów ubocznych Scotlands Malt Whisky industry - nie tylko zapewniając zrównoważoną drogę usuwania produktów ubocznych jednego największych gałęzi przemysłu w kraju, ale także integrację produkcji energii odnawialnej ze zrównoważeniem środowiskowym i redukcją emisji dwutlenku węgla. Jego uznana innowacja została równie pochwalona przez organizacje pozarządowe, liderów branży i międzynarodowych liderów rządowych, a kura skupiła uwagę mediów na całym świecie na innowacjach w Szkocji. W 2017 r. Otrzymał prestiżową nagrodę Międzynarodowego Innowatora Roku dla Inżynierów Chemików za swój proces - innowację, którą obecnie komercjalizuje jako założyciel Celtic Renewables Ltd. Firma startowa osiągnęła już światowe uznanie i liczne nagrody, w tym Nagroda "Shell Springboard Award" za innowacyjność niskowęglowodanową i najbardziej pożądane wyróżnienia "Best Innovation" przyznawane przez Scottish Green Energy Awards oraz stowarzyszenie Chemical Industries Association. Martin został uznany na arenie międzynarodowej za swoje przywództwo myślowe, a jego osobista historia Whisky z biopaliwami i ja, które wygłosił podczas konferencji TED w Hongkongu, jest dowodem jego wiary w zrównoważony rozwój poprzez innowacje. Matthew Stone Dyrektor zarządzający PRIMA Matthew Stone jest dyrektorem zarządzającym PRIMA, nowego podmiotu zajmującego się badaniami i ceną porównawczą cen, koncentrując się na biopaliwach jako filarze wzrostu między rynkami energii i produktów rolnych. Po wielu latach pracy na rynkach energetycznych, od węgla po benzynę, Matthew pracował w sektorze biopaliw od ponad dziesięciu lat w benchmarkingu, analityce i pośrednictwie. Matematyka w architekturze - PowerPoint Prezentacja PPT Transkrypcja i prezentera Uwagi Tytuł: Matematyka w Architektura 1 Matematyka w architekturze Cała prezentacja poświęcona jest temu, jak matematyka pasuje do architektury. 2 Historia matematyki w architekturze W czasach starożytnych architektura była dziedziną matematyki. Architekci byli po prostu matematykami, których ktoś by wynajął. Architektura po raz pierwszy została wspomniana w tekście, dotyczyła piramid egipskich. Istnieje złota liczba w architekturze (1square root z 5) 21,618033989 (1.618033989) 51degrees 50 minut, egipskie piramidy są oparte na tym numerze. Nie wiemy, czy był to proces próbny i błąd, czy też już odkryli Złotą liczbę. 3 Pythagoras Pythagoras były jednym z najwcześniejszych wpływów na architekturę. Liczby w ich kulturze miały znaczenie religijne. Pythagorowie przyjęli fundamentalną teorię muzyczną (którą stworzyli), która polega na tym, że dźwięki są uzależnione od długości, co doprowadziło do podstawowej długości jednostki dla konstrukcji budowlanych. 4 Gdzie matematyka mieści się w każdym budynku jest mierzona i poziom, który obejmuje bardzo podstawową matematykę, w bardziej skomplikowanych budynkach, na przykład wieży Eiffla, musi być idealny trójkąt i mieć specjalne krzywe pod specjalnym kątem. Również waży wiele ton, więc musi być w stanie utrzymać własny ciężar. Jak widać, istnieje wiele różnych rodzajów potrzebnej matematyki, które obejmują podstawowy pomiar trygonometrii i skomplikowane multiplikacje. 5 Przeszkody rozwiązane z matematyki W Azji znajduje się budynek bardzo wysoki i zagrożony trzęsieniami ziemi. Postanowili umieścić gigantyczne wahadło w wieży, aby zapobiec przewróceniu lub utracie stabilności. Wiele budynków jest zaprojektowanych aerodynamicznie, więc zmniejsza opór powietrza, tak aby nie kołysały się zbyt mocno, powodując niewygodę lub chorobę u ludzi w nich, lub w bardzo poważnych przypadkach awarii konstrukcji budynku. 6 Nowoczesna architektura W dzisiejszych czasach ludzie robią dużo mniej kalkulacji. Wszystko odbywa się za pomocą programowania komputerowego. Może być tak proste, aby budynek był skalowany, a nawet, aby dowiedzieć się, ile elementów w kształcie diamentu potrzebujesz w określonym obszarze budynku. Programowanie komputerowe pozwala nam być bardziej precyzyjnym w pracy, która musi zostać wykonana, a także znacznie mniej stresuje projektanta. 7 Działanie Zrobię grupy trzy lub cztery dla tego działania. Będziesz mieć tak wiele kształtów budynków, a będziesz musiał stworzyć najbardziej aerodynamiczny konstruktor, bezpieczny budynek, który możesz wykonać. 8 pytań Jaki jest kąt piramid (wśród wielu współczesnych budynków). Ten kąt jest używany do znalezienia pewnej liczby Dlaczego wieżowce muszą być aerodynamiczne Jakie znaczenie miały liczby dla Pythagorasa? Dlaczego teraz używamy komputerów do architektury jako narzędzia planowania? Odpowiedzi Kąt wynosi 50 stopni i 51 minut. Drapacze chmur są aerodynamiczne, aby uniknąć kołysania tam iz powrotem, a może nawet uszkodzenia konstrukcji. Znaczenie jest reprezentowane przekonania religijne. Używamy komputerów, ponieważ są znacznie bardziej precyzyjne, mniej czasochłonne i mniej miejsca na błędy ludzkie. 10 Bibliografia gap. system. org-historyHistTopicsArchitectur e. html Semptember 8th 2009 wwwplus. math. orgissue42featuresfrostersinde x. html 8 września 2009 boelgen vejile. dk 5 października 2009 Cache. ebebimageid75854rendType4 5 października 2009 your-info-hubguitarratateimage. php 5 października 2009 delhivewarminaryanakshardham - temple0 5 października 2009 PowerShow jest wiodącą witryną współdzielenia prezentacji. Niezależnie od tego, czy Twoja aplikacja to biznes, instrukcje, edukacja, medycyna, szkoła, kościół, sprzedaż, marketing, szkolenie online czy po prostu zabawa, PowerShow jest świetnym źródłem informacji. Co najważniejsze, większość jego atrakcyjnych funkcji jest bezpłatna i łatwa w użyciu. Możesz użyć programu PowerShow, aby znaleźć i pobrać przykładowe prezentacje PowerPoint ppt w Internecie na dowolny temat, który możesz sobie wyobrazić, abyś mógł nauczyć się, jak ulepszyć swoje własne slajdy i prezentacje za darmo. Lub użyj go, aby znaleźć i pobrać wysokiej jakości prezentacje PowerPoint ppt z ilustrowanymi lub animowanymi slajdami, które nauczą Cię, jak robić coś nowego, również za darmo. Możesz też przesłać własne slajdy w formacie PowerPoint, aby udostępnić je nauczycielom, klasie, studentom, szefom, pracownikom, klientom, potencjalnym inwestorom lub całemu światu. Możesz też użyć go do stworzenia naprawdę fajnych pokazów slajdów ze zdjęciami - z przejściami 2D i 3D, animacjami i wyborem muzyki - które możesz udostępniać znajomym ze znajomych lub kręgom Google. To wszystko za darmo Za niewielką opłatą można uzyskać najlepszą prywatność w branży online lub publicznie promować swoje prezentacje i pokazy slajdów z najwyższej rangi. Ale poza tym jest za darmo. Przekształć swoje prezentacje i pokazy slajdów w uniwersalny format Flash ze swoją oryginalną multimedialną chwałą, w tym animacją, efektami przejścia 2D i 3D, wbudowaną muzyką lub innym dźwiękiem, a nawet wideo osadzone w slajdach. Wszystko za darmo. Większość prezentacji i pokazów slajdów na PowerShow można przeglądać bezpłatnie, wiele z nich można nawet pobrać bezpłatnie. (Możesz wybrać, czy chcesz, aby ludzie mogli pobierać oryginalne prezentacje PowerPoint i pokazy slajdów za darmo lub za darmo.) Sprawdź dzisiaj PowerShow - ZA DARMO. Dla wszystkich prezentacji jest naprawdę coś za darmo. Lub użyj go, aby znaleźć i pobrać wysokiej jakości prezentacje PowerPoint ppt z ilustrowanymi lub animowanymi slajdami, które nauczą Cię, jak robić coś nowego, również za darmo. Możesz też przesłać własne slajdy w formacie PowerPoint, aby udostępnić je nauczycielom, klasie, studentom, szefom, pracownikom, klientom, potencjalnym inwestorom lub całemu światu. Możesz też użyć go do stworzenia naprawdę fajnych pokazów slajdów ze zdjęciami - z przejściami 2D i 3D, animacjami i wyborem muzyki - które możesz udostępniać znajomym ze znajomych lub kręgom Google. To wszystko za darmo Za niewielką opłatą można uzyskać najlepszą prywatność w branży online lub publicznie promować swoje prezentacje i pokazy slajdów z najwyższej rangi. Ale poza tym jest za darmo. Przekształć swoje prezentacje i pokazy slajdów w uniwersalny format Flash ze swoją oryginalną multimedialną chwałą, w tym animacją, efektami przejścia 2D i 3D, wbudowaną muzyką lub innym dźwiękiem, a nawet wideo osadzone w slajdach. Wszystko za darmo. Większość prezentacji i pokazów slajdów na PowerShow można przeglądać bezpłatnie, wiele z nich można nawet pobrać bezpłatnie. (Możesz wybrać, czy chcesz, aby ludzie mogli pobierać oryginalne prezentacje PowerPoint i pokazy slajdów za darmo lub za darmo.) Sprawdź dzisiaj PowerShow - ZA DARMO. Jest naprawdę coś dla każdego Menu główne 8:00 Otwarcie Uwagi 8:15 Dialog: Podejmowanie decyzji dla Equity EquityPolicyBeliefStatementRevisions 9:15 BREAK 9:30 Dialog: Perspektywa pięcioletnia, rok szkolny 1718 focus Planowanie ponownego wejścia 1718 obszary zainteresowania 1718 Okręg 038 Cele SIP 10:15 Strategic Framework Priority Project Update 038 Dyskusja 11:15 Zamknięcie Uwagi 11:30 Lunch Madison School District Administration (PDF): Stuknij, aby uzyskać większą wersję. W swoim pierwszym publicznym wystąpieniu po wyborach, Hillary Clinton potępiła 8220pidemic fałszywych nowości. 8221 Obłędne historie i oszukańcze twierdzenia o politykach i ich zwolennikach rozprzestrzeniły się niefiltrowane i nieskrępowane przez media społecznościowe. Z niektórymi wymyślonymi treściami od macedońskich nastolatków i młodych absolwentów amerykańskich college'ów, Facebook, sugerował niektórzy, wyrzucili wybory do Trumpa. Mark Zuckerberg, prezes i współzałożyciel Facebooka8217, zaprzeczył, że jego firma ponosiła jakąkolwiek odpowiedzialność. 8220More than 99 percent of what people see8221 on Facebook, he said shortly after the election, 8220is authentic.8221 It was a 8220pretty crazy idea8221 to suggest that Facebook could affect an election. Trust us, counselled Zuckerberg, we only give you facts and friends. Zuckerberg8217s refusal to acknowledge Facebook8217s possible role in the US election is both disingenuousFacebook has conducted experiments on the effects particular kinds of posts have on people8217s voting decisionand irresponsible. The social media behemoth is now the primary news medium in the United States. Zuckerberg casts his company as a neutral medium that simply connects friends, shares information, and facilitates democracy. But Facebook is now a social institution that people rely on and, however implicitly, trust. Implicit in the entire project is a basic dissatisfaction with the current digital environment that Google helped create. Compare Zuckerberg8217s initial response to Google8217s recent attempts to reinvent its search engine as an arbiter of facts and trustworthiness. Acknowledging that most search engines evaluate web sources based on their popularity, a team of Google engineers described their attempts to evaluate the 8220trustworthiness8221 of 119 million web pages in an article titled 8220Knowledge-Based Trust: Estimating the Trustworthiness of Web Sources.8221 Google, so it seems, wants to automate trust. Google8217s method for extracting facts from the web, evaluating them, and then determining a score for individual web pages represents a significant shift from its earlier assumptions about how information is organized and transmitted in our digital age, and I will return to these important details later in this essay. But what I find most significant about Google8217s 8220Knowledge-Based Trust8221 project is Google8217s interest in trust in the first place. The authors provide technical details for algorithms and machine-learning processes, but implicit in the entire project is a basic dissatisfaction with the current digital environment that Google helped create. And now Google wants to reform that media environment by redefining what it means to trust and what counts as authoritative knowledge in our digital age. In little more than a decade since its founding, Google is moving from helping us access the web pages we want to determining what web pages we should trust. But what kind of custodian of knowledge and trust is Google For centuries, universities and academies have served this cultural function. They were bulwarks against falsehood and institutions for truth. They did not always live up to the epistemic and ethical ideals they propounded, but one of their primary tasks was to make facts and beliefs correspond. In important ways, then, universities are the cultural forebears of Facebook and Google. Science is facing a 8220reproducibility crisis8221 where more than two-thirds of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist8217s experiments, research suggests. This is frustrating clinicians and drug developers who want solid foundations of pre-clinical research to build upon. From his lab at the University of Virginia8217s Centre for Open Science, immunologist Dr Tim Errington runs The Reproducibility Project, which attempted to repeat the findings reported in five landmark cancer studies. 8220The idea here is to take a bunch of experiments and to try and do the exact same thing to see if we can get the same results.8221 You could be forgiven for thinking that should be easy. Experiments are supposed to be replicable. But even as school choice is poised to go national, a wave of new research has emerged suggesting that private school vouchers may harm students who receive them. The results are startling the worst in the history of the field, researchers say. While many policy ideas have murky origins, vouchers emerged fully formed from a single, brilliant essay published in 1955 by Milton Friedman, the free-market godfather later to be awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics. Because a stable and democratic society is impossible without widespread acceptance of some common set of values and without a minimum degree of literacy and knowledge on the part of most citizens, Mr. Friedman wrote, the government should pay for all children to go to school. But, he argued, that doesnt mean the government should run all the schools. Instead, it could give parents vouchers to pay for approved educational services provided by private schools, with the governments role limited to ensuring that the schools met certain minimum standards. High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut 038 paste the article. See our T038Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales. supportft to buy additional rights. ftcontent176feb54-f8f8-11e6-9516-2d969e0d3b65 She was born in Kingston, Jamaica, but moved to New York aged seven and grew up in the Bronx, where her mother worked as a nurses aide and her father was a hospital orderly. After receiving her masters in fine arts from Columbia University she taught for seven years at its sister school, Barnard College, so the city has always been home, even as her career took her from Cleveland to Atlanta to a nine-year stint at Pomona College in California. Her writing style crystallised with Lonely. She says she wanted to be able to report facts about Amadou Diallo being shot 41 times by the NYPD in 1999 while brandishing his wallet, for instance but also wax lyrical, and the prose poem allowed her to do that. The visuals were introduced because she wanted to write about the 1998 death of James Byrd Jr, a black man who three white men dragged behind a truck in Texas until his extremities separated from his body. It was, she says, an act of erasure, and I thought, Im not going to write a piece where James Byrd is referenced but not seen. So she contacted his family and gained access to a picture of him and those from the crime scene. From there, the images have become more abstract. The image should allow the reader to go someplace else do something else. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos offered few details of her views on higher education during her confirmation hearings. But on Thursday, in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, she sharply criticized faculty members and accused them trying to indoctrinate students. She devoted only a paragraph to higher education in a relatively short speech, but she captured lots of attention. Here8217s what she said, after asking how many in the audience were college students: 8220The fight against the education establishment extends to you too. The faculty, from adjunct professors to deans, tell you what to do, what to say, and more ominously, what to think. They say that if you voted for Donald Trump, youre a threat to the university community. But the real threat is silencing the First Amendment rights of people with whom you disagree.8221 DeVos opened her speech by saying that she wasn8217t worried about what 8220the mainstream media has called me lately.8221 Past education secretaries have offered plenty of criticism of higher education. Both Margaret Spellings (under a Republican administration) and Arne Duncan (under a Democratic administration) have raised questions about college costs, accountability and measures of student learning. But secretaries after William J. Bennett (in President Reagan8217s second term) have not generally been culture warriors. The CPAC crowd loved the speech and cheered DeVos on. For a month, Zachary Turpin would sit there night after night, buzzing. The graduate student at the University of Houston had spent the past few years digging through the digitized papers of American writer Walt Whitman, which contain 40 to 50 years worth of his personal notes. He was more or less a hoarder, Turpin told The Washington Post during a phone interview. For the unfamiliar, Whitman (1819-1892) was one the most influential poets included in the American canon. In the 1850s he popularized free verse with his magnum opus Leaves of Grass, which includes the famous line I contain multitudes. Many call him the father of free verse. Before his life as a poet, the New Yorker worked as a schoolteacher, journalist and novelist. But Im actually more worried about the threat from within. Over the years, I have watched a growing intolerance at universities in this country not intolerance along racial or ethnic or gender lines there, we have made laudable progress. Rather, a kind of intellectual intolerance, a political one-sidedness, that is the antithesis of what universities should stand for. It manifests itself in many ways: in the intellectual monocultures that have taken over certain disciplines in the demands to disinvite speakers and outlaw groups whose views we find offensive in constant calls for the university itself to take political stands. We decry certain news outlets as echo chambers, while we fail to notice the echo chamber weve built around ourselves. This results in a kind of intellectual blindness that will, in the long run, be more damaging to universities than cuts in federal funding or ill-conceived constraints on immigration. It will be more damaging because we wont even see it: We will write off those with opposing views as evil or ignorant or stupid, rather than as interlocutors worthy of consideration. We succumb to the all-purpose ad hominem because it is easier and more comforting than rational argument. But when we do, we abandon what is great about this institution we serve. Carolyn Starkey-Darden, 69, the former director of grant development at DPS, is charged by federal prosecutors with billing DPS 1.275 million over seven years for never-delivered tutoring services through companies she created. She did this, court records show, by submitting phony documents to the district that included doctored test scores, forged attendance records and parental signatures and fake individual learning plans 8212 all of which went on forms that were required by DPS before payment could be made. To bolster this claim, federal investigators cited some of Starkey-Darden8217s emails, which are included in court documents. 8220I put in some fake scores for a few kids at Denby, just to get their plans approved. When and if we get real ones 8230 just replace what I put in,8221 Starkey-Darden wrote in a 2008 email to an employee at a tutoring firm owned by her husband. Sterilization quotas are still a common population control technique in the area where, earlier this month, a father of four said he was forced to undergo a vasectomy. On Feb. 14, the Health and Family Planning Commission of Yunnan Province directed local authorities to investigate the case, which took place in Zhenxiong County, in Chinas southwest. But one current and one former village leader in the area have told Sixth Tone that such operations though not necessarily carried out under coercion are commonplace. According to the local leaders, the county government gives villages annual sterilization quotas for residents, based on the number of women of childbearing age in each village. In the past, any woman who had given birth was eligible to have herself or her husband chosen to undergo sterilization to meet the villages target. Since the two-child policy came into effect in January 2018, it now takes two births to get your name on the list. Russia celebrates Defender of the Fatherland Day on Feb. 23, known previously as Red Army Day and Soviet Army and Navy Day. Originally, the holiday honored the Bolsheviks first mass draft in Petrograd and Moscow in 1918, in the early days of the Russian Civil War. Today, the Bolshevik Revolution represents a tricky piece of history, as Russian patriots have an interest both in rejecting Communism and celebrating the Soviet armed forces. With the revolutions centennial coming this October, interest in 1917 is particularly high this year. In that spirit, the Arzamas Academy, a nonprofit online educational project, published a quiz this week designed to show readers where their sympathies would have lied in September 1917, after the failed Kornilov putsch against the Petrograd Soviet, but before the Bolshevik Revolution. Northwestern Engineerings Ken Forbus is closing the gap between humans and machines. Using cognitive science theories, Forbus and his collaborators have developed a model that could give computers the ability to reason more like humans and even make moral decisions. Called the structure-mapping engine (SME), the new model is capable of analogical problem solving, including capturing the way humans spontaneously use analogies between situations to solve moral dilemmas. t is 7 oclock in the morning and Harvey Friedman has just sent an email to an unspecified number of recipients with the subject line stop what you are doing. It features a YouTube link to a live 1951 broadcast of a concert by the famous Russian pianist Vladimir Horowitz. There is a pattern on YouTube of priceless gems getting taken down by copyright claims, Friedman writes, so I demand (smile) that you stop everything you are doing, including breathing, eating, thinking, sleeping, and so forth, to listen to this before it disappears. His comment takes its place at the top of a chain of emails stretching back months, with roughly as many messages sent at 3 a. m. as at noon or 9 p. m. The haphazard correspondence covers a wide range of topics, from electronic music editing to an interdisciplinary field Friedman calls ChessMath. At one point, he proposes to record at home, by himself, a three-part Emotion Concert. Anonymous piano players on the email thread discuss their own thoughts on the lineup. There isnt a week that goes by without a campus free speech controversy reaching the headlines. Thats why its as important as ever that we at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) review the record each year and shine a spotlight on the 10 worst schools for free speech. A reported 81 cents of every dollar contributed to the L. A. city election has been spent on supporting or opposing one candidate or another for school board, according to the L. A. City Ethics Commission. Most of it is coming from backers of public charter schools. So far this year, charter backers are outspending labor unions there by a ratio of 2-to-1. Former L. A. Mayor Richard Riordan upped the ante by donating 1 million in January to a group called L. A. Students for Change, which opposes the re-election of school board president Steve Zimmer in District 4, covering the Westside and west San Fernando Valley. The group is one of a few connected to the California Charter Schools Association. The CCSA and its financial backers have spared no expense in targeting Zimmer, who has shown increasing support for more stringent fiscal and operational oversight of charters. As of Feb. 20, more than 1.2 million from charter-backed groups has gone to opposing Zimmer. In 2017, 153 city teachers were paid 100,000 or more, representing nearly 4 percent of the 4,264 teachers on the payroll, according to Sullivan. Six-figure earners jumped to 1,419 last year, representing 32 percent of the 4,367 teachers on the books with city payroll data showing 265 more topped 100,000 due to arbitration settlements, stipends and extended learning time pay. The rise in teacher salaries comes as the city and the Boston Teachers Union continue to negotiate a new deal that expired last summer. The proposed 1.06 billion school budget for next year includes 20 million extra to cover union negotiations. The district also carries a costly up to 15 million a year excess pool of tenured teachers with no classroom to report to. An extra 4,500 per teacher was paid out to 600 educators last year to extend the school day at some locations. I think the city and the union have to be mindful of the fact that the budget for the school department has to be affordable to the city, Sullivan said. It is a public policy consideration to find ways not to have excessive growth. Were paying so much more than 10 years ago for the school department and that is not attributable to more teachers. Students at Michigan State University soon will not be permitted to hang whiteboards on the outside of their dorm room doors. The new policy, effective Fall 2017, was created in an attempt to eliminate opportunities for students to write mean words and racial slurs, according to a campus official. Their utility as a communication tool no longer outweighed the attractive nuisance that they are, Kat Cooper, director of university residential services communications, told The College Fix via email. In a statement to The Detroit News, Cooper added: In any given month, there are several incidents like this hurtful words. There was no one incident that was the straw that broke the camels back. Sometimes these things are racial, sometimes theyre sexual in nature. There are all sorts of things that happen. Evers, 65, said his large margin Tuesday reflected Wisconsin voters8217 commitment to public education. But he could face a tough fight ahead, he said, if Holtz attracts funding from school reform proponents across the country. 8220They both vowed to go after national voucher money, and I assume that will be Mr. Holtz8217s M. O.,8221 Evers said of his challengers. 8220If that happens8230we will work as hard as we can to raise money and get people out to vote the next time around.8221 Holtz, 59, was not available for comment, according to his spokesman, because he was celebrating with friends and family. The candidate issued a statement saying he would present 8220an alternative vision for the future of Wisconsin8217s students to that of Dr. Tony Evers.8221 Humphries congratulated both candidates in a statement and urged voters to learn more about Holtz8217s proposals and to ask Evers what he plans to do differently. 8220I remain convinced that Wisconsin students can achieve so much more with the right leadership at DPI.8221 So far, Evers has a significant edge financially. As of Feb. 14, he had raised more than 245,000 over the past 13 months, compared to Holtz8217s 54,280. But Holtz is expected to pick up many of Humphries8217 conservative supporters and could attract outside funding from education reform advocates who see a chance to bring Wisconsin in line with the views of new U. S. Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who has been critical of Common Core and supports the expansion of taxpayer funded vouchers. Higher-than-expected turnouts in Madison and Dane County at large as much as 18 to 22, according to early estimates likely helped Evers. Madison and Dane County clerks could not say whether the DPI race brought voters to the polls. The state superintendent race pits two former school district superintendents and longtime educators against each other 8212 a proponent of expanding school choices and an opponent of the state expansion of taxpayer-funded school vouchers. On the April 4 ballot will be two-term incumbent Tony Evers, a public school advocate backed mostly by liberals and teachers unions who has been at odds with Republicans for years over his adoption of the Common Core State Standards and his opposition to the expansion of private school vouchers in the state. He took about seven of every 10 votes in the primary. His challenger, Lowell Holtz, is backed mostly by conservatives and school voucher supporters. He is making his second run for the position and opposes the Common Core State Standards and favors expansion of educational options 8212 including taxpayer-funded vouchers 8212 other than public schools. Holtz got 23 percent of the vote Tuesday, and was dogged by allegations that he sought to get out of the race in exchange for a guaranteed, taxpayer-funded 150,000 job that would let him oversee the state8217s largest school districts, including Madison. Evers is seeking a third term in the wake of massive membership losses for the state8217s largest teachers union, a strong campaign contributor for Evers in the past, setting the stage for the potential of third-party groups spending on behalf of Holtz to ensure the election of a voucher supporter. Last Sunday, I posted something about the ban, explaining to my followers where I had been the last three days and reposted the screenshot and wrote FacebookCensorship, she said. That ticked them off and they didnt like that at all. It was going viral. Just within a few hours, they had banned me again and they were going to make it more painful. Facebook has been continually criticized over its handling of conservative and Christian viewpoints on its platform. Last year, the tech giant was accused of suppressing conservative news sites in its trending news section. Mark Zuckerberg denied the claims. Although the real reason for Johnstons post removal remains unknown, according to Facebooks community standards the platform actively removes various forms of hate speech. At the beginning of February, The New York Times published a story about Hillsdale College, calling it 8220a 8216Shining City on a Hill8217 for Conservatives.8221 The Times report proved to be a very fair and revealing article about this prominent conservative college promoted by Rush Limbaugh (which also happens to be my alma mater). But America8217s newspaper of record did find a way to work in some subtle jabs at the school, which required answering. The Times8217 Erick Eckholm argued that the issue of race 8220captures the juxtaposition of Hillsdale8217s pathbreaking origins with its present-day conservatism.8221 Hillsdale College claims to have been the first college to admit students regardless of race or sex in 1844. The college boasts of sending more students (and professors) to fight for the Union than any other school, due to in part to its opposition to slavery. But Eckholm quoted the current president, Dr. Larry Arnn, suggesting that the school8217s opposition to 8220social justice8221 betrays a racist conservative philosophy. 8220My answer to the charge that we do not promote 8216social justice8217 is that we don8217t and that I am proud that we don8217t,8221 Dr. Paul Rahe, professor of history and Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage at Hillsdale, told PJ Media in an email statement. 8220Justice is owed individuals, not groups. There is no such thing as 8216social justice.8217 The phrase is a slogan used by those intent on looting.8221 But pressure is mounting from a confluence of political, societal, and economic forces to finally clean up this gulch of horrors for good. From a task force convened by the mayor to address the city8217s opioid epidemic, to growing development around the site, and an increase in rail traffic, a flash point seems to have been reached. 8220This neighborhood has been struggling for decades, and when my administration came into office last year, we said this has to stop,8221 said Mayor Kenney. 8220It8217s not an easy issue, it8217s going to take many years and a ton of money, so that may have been why it hasn8217t been addressed in the past but that8217s not an excuse.8221 Sunshines 455 students more than 85 percent of whom are black or Hispanic sit for four hours a day in front of computers with little or no live teaching. One former student said he was left to himself to goof off or cheat on tests by looking up answers on the internet. A current student said he was robbed near the strip malls parking lot, twice. Sunshine takes in cast-offs from Olympia and other Orlando high schools in a mutually beneficial arrangement. Olympia keeps its graduation rate above 90 percent and its rating an A under Floridas all-important grading system for schools partly by shipping its worst achievers to Sunshine. Sunshine collects enough school district money to cover costs and pay its management firm, Accelerated Learning Solutions (ALS), a more than 1.5 million-a-year management fee, 2018 financial records show more than what the school spends on instruction. But students lose out, a ProPublica investigation found. Once enrolled at Sunshine, hundreds of them exit quickly with no degree and limited prospects. The departures expose a practice in which officials in the nations tenth-largest school district have for years quietly funneled thousands of disadvantaged students some say against their wishes into alternative charter schools that allow them to disappear without counting as dropouts. I would show up, I would sit down and listen to music the whole time. I didnt really make any progress the whole time I was there, said Thiago Mello, 20, who spent a year at Sunshine and left without graduating. He had transferred there from another alternative charter school, where he enrolled after his grades slipped at Olympia. The Orlando schools illustrate a national pattern. Alternative schools have long served as placements for students who violated disciplinary codes. But since the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 refashioned the yardstick for judging schools, alternative education has taken on another role: A silent release valve for high schools like Olympia that are straining under the pressure of accountability reform. As a result, alternative schools at times become warehouses where regular schools stow poor performers to avoid being held accountable. Traditional high schools in many states are free to use alternative programs to rid themselves of weak students whose test scores, truancy and risk of dropping out threaten their standing, a ProPublica survey of state policies found. Palantir is generally used interchangeably to refer to both Thiel and Karps company and the software that company creates. Its two main products are Palantir Gotham and Palantir Metropolis, more geeky winks from a company whose Tolkien namesake is a type of magical sphere used by the evil lord Sauron to surveil, trick, and threaten his enemies across Middle Earth. While Palantir Metropolis is pegged to quantitative analysis for Wall Street banks and hedge funds, Gotham (formerly Palantir Government) is designed for the needs of intelligence, law enforcement, and homeland security customers. Gotham works by importing large reams of structured data (like spreadsheets) and unstructured data (like images) into one centralized database, where all of the information can be visualized and analyzed in one workspace. For example, a 2017 demo showed how Palantir Government could be used to chart the flow of weapons throughout the Middle East by importing disparate data sources like equipment lot numbers, manufacturer data, and the locations of Hezbollah training camps. Palantirs chief appeal is that its not designed to do any single thing in particular, but is flexible and powerful enough to accommodate the requirements of any organization that needs to process large amounts of both personal and abstract data. If you, an American citizen who can trace his or her ancestry to the Mayflower, return home from a trip abroad, US border agents can take your phone, tablet, or tablet 8212 and demand you open its data to them. The government says this is completely legal. And yet others say it8217s a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which guarantees your right against unreasonable searches and seizures. In a world as unmannerly as this one, how is it best to speak Theres no need to be rude, I say to the man in the packed hall at passport control. There are people everywhere, and his job is to send them into the right queues. I have been watching him shout at them. I have watched the obsessive way he notices them, to pick on them. Theres no need to be rude, I say. His head jerks around. Youre rude, he counters. Youre the one whos rude. This is an airport, a place of transit. There are all sorts of people here, people of different ages, races and nationalities, people in myriad sets of circumstances. In this customs hall, there are so many different versions of living that it seems possible that no one version could ever be agreed on. Does it follow, then, that nothing that happens here really matters The Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department has collected the names of about 300 deputies who have a history of past misconduct such as domestic violence, theft, bribery and brutality that could damage their credibility if they testify in court. Sheriff Jim McDonnell wants to send the names to prosecutors, who can decide whether to add them to an internal database that tracks problem officers in case the information needs to be disclosed to defendants in criminal trials. Tracey Sparrow says she often tells people involved in early childhood programs that they are doing the most important work anyone can do. Many others can make claims about the importance of their work, so lets not get hung up on a competition about importance. Instead, take Sparrows thought as a challenge to our priorities, both in terms of public policy and our personal lives. Shes making a valuable point its hugely important to give infants, toddlers, and kids up through kindergarten age a good start in life. Sparrow is president of Next Door, a nonprofit whose services include two large centers with early childhood programs on the north side. Hundreds of children who take part in Next Door programs daily are from low-income homes. Almost all are non-white. Overall data shows that among children such as these, it is common to enter kindergarten already well-behind better-off kid Newly minted Education Secretary Betsy DeVos had a hard time getting inside the Districts Jefferson Middle School Academy last week when protesters briefly blocked her from entering. But at the end of her visit her first to a public school since taking office she stood on Jeffersons front steps and pronounced it awesome. A few days later, she seemed less enamored. The teachers at Jefferson were sincere, genuine and dedicated, she said, they seemed to be in receive mode. In an article published recently in the Atlantic, The Curse of Econ 101 , University of Connecticut law professor James Kwak argues against what he assumes to be the content, thrust, and effect of the basic principles course, Economics 101. He thinks its too simplistic. And hes sure that in its simplicity, it masks the complexities that must be accounted for when passing judgment on economic reality and especially on government policies. According to Kwak, over the past few decades Econ 101 has devolved into economism, which he describes as the belief that basic economics lessons can explain all social phenomenathat people, companies, and markets behave according to the abstract, two-dimensional illustrations of an Economics 101 textbook. The two-dimensional illustrations to which Kwak refers are supply-and-demand graphs. Test preparation programssometimes referred to as test coaching programshave been implemented with the goal of increasing student scores on college entrance tests. They generally (a) familiarize students with the format of the test (b) introduce general test-taking strategies (e. g. get a good nights sleep) (c) introduce specific testtaking strategies (e. g. whether the test penalizes incorrect answers, and what this means for whether or not one should guess an answer if it is not known) and (d) specific drills (e. g. practice factoring polynomial expressions). The programs can be delivered in person or online, and in whole class settings, in small groups, and individually. But there are still big gaps in access to quality schools choice has done little to narrow achievement gaps by income and race poorer families point to on-going transportation challenges and choice in Denver includes some painful choices about re-booting and closing under-performing schools, mostly in neighborhoods with some of the most vulnerable students. It all raises important questions about the promise and limitations of choice to bridge stubborn access and equity gaps in education. It turns out that the year 2000 marks a grim historical milestone of sorts for our nation. For whatever reasons, the Great American Escalator, which had lifted successive generations of Americans to ever higher standards of living and levels of social well-being, broke down around thenand broke down very badly. The warning lights have been flashing, and the klaxons sounding, for more than a decade and a half. But our pundits and prognosticators and professors and policymakers, ensconced as they generally are deep within the bubble, were for the most part too distant from the distress of the general population to see or hear it. (So much for the vaunted information era and big-data revolution.) Now that those signals are no longer possible to ignore, it is high time for experts and intellectuals to reacquaint themselves with the country in which they live and to begin the task of describing what has befallen the country in which we have lived since the dawn of the new century. The battle of wills between charter school advocates and opponents continued last Thursday, February 9th, at the NAACPs special hearing on charter schools in Los Angeles. The hearing, held at the Deaton Civic Auditorium at LAPD Headquarters, convened some of the citys most seasoned veterans and dedicated professionals in the education field. Student Loans, Credit Cards, and Auto Loans Outstanding student loan balances increased by 31 billion, and stood at 1.31 trillion as of December 31, 2018. 11.2 of aggregate student loan debt was 90 days delinquent or in default in 2018Q42. Auto loan balances increased by 22 billion, continuing their steady rise. Auto loan delinquency rates deteriorated again, with 3.8 of auto loan balances 90 or more days delinquent on December 31, 0.2 above last quarter. Credit card balances increased by 32 billion, to 779 billion, while 90 credit card delinquency rates were unchanged at 7.1. The school system is struggling make payroll each month. It delayed checks to 700 employees, mostly teachers, in November. March is also likely to be a problem, school district staff said last week at a Gary School Board meeting. It wasnt always this way Garys public school system was once one of the largest in Indiana and a model nationwide. It educated a Nobel prize winning economist, an Oscar-winning actor, successful business leaders, entertainers and athletes. The Gary Community School Corporation is experiencing an unprecedented financial crisis unlike any school corporation has experienced in the state of Indiana, Indiana State Sen. Eddie Melton told an education committee at the Indiana Statehouse this month. His district includes Gary. The district is struggling on a day-to-day basis to ensure payroll is met and that critical vendors, such as health insurance and bus services, are paid, the Democrat said. He and other Hoosier lawmakers are searching for solutions for Gary, including greater funding, forgiving outstanding state loans or appointing a fiscal monitor. The lovely and talented Scott Alexander has a posting on Cost Disease. the costs of some things, notably education and medical care especially in the USA, have increased in the last few generations to a really unfathomable extent. He gives detailed statistics, but it8217s typically about a factor of 10 after accounting for general inflation. Why has this happened He gives some hypotheses, and in a followup posting shares some ideas contributed by readers, but it8217s not at all clear what8217s going on. And it seems like knowing might be valuable, because the fact of this phenomenon8217s occurrence (whatever the cause) is causing a great deal of misery for a whole lot of people, bearing on many other important issues. I don8217t know either, but it made me think of some things. The Horror of the Mall I don8217t like shopping malls. When I go to one, I can feel my mental protective filters kicking in. It8217s like I don8217t even really see a majority of the stores 8211 because the mall is mostly clothing stores. The fraction of storefronts devoted to clothing alone feels grossly disproportionate. If I go to a mall8217s Web site and visit the alphabetical list of tenants, maybe there8217ll be a name on it I don8217t recognize. So I click on it, thinking it might be something interesting 8211 but no, it8217s just another damn clothing store. What is with all these clothing stores How many do we need Clothing is a basic necessity. Everybody needs to buy it on an ongoing basis. I don8217t keep exact records of this, but I figure I myself spend a few hundred dollars per year on clothing, out of my income which is a few tens of thousands of dollars per year. So, maybe I spend 1 to 3 of my income (probably nearer the low end of that range) on clothing. On that basis at first glance it would seem we need somewhere around one clothing store per mall complex. Maybe not every mall really needs to have a clothing store. So when I go to the mall I mentally do that calculation and then am horrified at how it differs from reality. Editors8217 note: This week PRIME is publishing the set of five lectures given by Karl Polanyi in autumn 1940 at Bennington College, Vermont, entitled 8220The Present Age of Transformation8221. The lectures have also now been put together for ease of reference into a pdf 8220publication8221. We post here the third lecture, 8220The Breakdown of the International System8221. necessary commonplace: Almost everyone we know has been turned around, or at least seriously shaken, by a teacherin college, maybe, but often in high school, often by a man or a woman who drove home a point or two about physics, literature, or ethics, and looked at us sternly and said, in effect, You could be more than what you are. At their best, teachers are everyday gods, standing at the entryway to the world. If they are fair and good, they are possibly the most morally impressive adults that their students will ever know. For a while, they are the law, they are knowledge, they are justice. Everyone celebrates his or her personal memory of individual teachers, yet, as a culture, we snap at the run-down heels of the profession. The education reporter Dana Goldstein, in her book The Teacher Wars, published in 2017, looks at American history and describes a recurring situation of what she calls moral panicthe tendency, when theres an economic or social crisis, to lay blame on public-school teachers. They must have created the crisis, the logic goes, by failing to educate the young. We have been in such a panic for more than a decade, during which time the attacks on public-school teachers have been particularly virulent. They are lazy, mediocre, tenaciously clinging to tenure in order to receive their lavish pay of thirty-six thousand dollars a year (thats the national-average starting salary, according to the National Education Association). As Goldstein put it, Today the ineffective tenured teacher has emerged as a feared character, a vampiric type who sucks tax dollars into her bloated pension and health care plans, without much regard for the children under her care. Because of this person, we are failing to produce an effective workforce just look at how badly were lagging behind other nations in international standardized tests. Our teachers are mediocre as a mass we have to make a serious effort to toss out the bad ones before they do any more damage. I tak dalej. Its not just Republicans who talk this way. Democrats, too, are obsessed with ridding the system of bad teachers. From the President on down, leaders have been demanding accountability. Before WIENER, CLEMENT, and HIGGINSON, Circuit Judges. WIENER, Circuit Judge: Plaintiff-Appellant Phillip Turner was video recording a Fort Worth police station from a public sidewalk across the street when Defendants - Appellees Officers Grinalds and Dyess approached him and asked him for identification. Turner refused to identify himself, and the officers ultimately handcuffed him and placed him in the back of a patrol car. The officers supervisor, Defendant-Appellee Lieutenant Driver, arrived on scene and, after Driver checked with Grinalds and Dyess and talked with Turner, the officers released Turner. He filed suit against all three officers and the City of Fort Worth under 42 U. S.C. 1983, alleging violations of his First and Fourth Amendment rights. Each officer filed a motion to dismiss, insisting that he was entitled to qualified immunity on Turners claims. The district court granted the officers motions, concluding that they were entitled to qualified immunity on all of Turners claims against them. Turner timely appealed. We affirm in part and reverse and remand in part. Assuming that Betsy DeVos, the new secretary of education, has sufficient commitment and stamina, she will change how her department addresses K-12 education. Her support of school choice through charter schools and voucher programs is well known. DeVoss department is also deeply involved in higher education, but the issues are different. What roils higher education are problems such as excessive costs, lack of intellectual diversity, faltering academic quality, federal overregulation, and threats to free speech and due process. DeVos must appoint a deputy undersecretary for higher education who will address those issues capably and with respect for individual freedom. I recommend Richard Vedder for that job. Vedder is an emeritus economics professor at Ohio University, an accomplished and prolific writer on higher education issues, and a genial provocateur who will stand up against political correctness. Neal McCluskey, director of the Cato Institutes Center for Educational Freedom, makes that argument in a new study seeking to explain increases in college and university tuition levels. Its in some ways a middle-of-the-road finding for a libertarian think tank weighing into a debate whose different sides have long been dug in behind their favorite narratives. But it is also a distinct attempt to shift the focus at a time when some believe state funding has received too much attention in the debate over college costs and tuition levels. Many campus leaders and higher ed analysts argue that public colleges and universities have had to raise tuition to keep their budgets balanced amid a long-term trend of decreasing state funding per student. Others reject that narrative, instead arguing that tuition hikes go to pay for increasing and often unnecessary spending 8212 say, for posh new benefits for students, administrative bloat or inflated faculty salaries. After revolutionizing e-commerce, Jack Ma says he has now set his sights on improving Chinas problem-riddled education system. The Chinese billionaire and founder of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. has set up an experimental private bilingual school named Yungu, or Cloud Valley, in Hangzhous upscale Xi Hu (West Lake) district. The school offers classes from kindergarten (preschool) through senior high. Mas investment of an undisclosed sum comes at a time when Chinese authorities have stepped up scrutiny of private money flowing into primary and middle schools. In November, Chinese lawmakers banned schools that offer the first nine years of compulsory schooling from operating as for-profit enterprises. This has forced many schools to reregister their primary and middle school units as nonprofits. It is unclear whether Yungu would follow the same approach. Responding to a Caixin query, Alibaba said the school will comply with national law, without elaborating. via a kind email: Dear Wisconsin State Journal: We are social scientists with more than twenty years of experience as local public education activists. We have volunteered in classrooms been on PTO boards mentored and tutored disadvantaged students and served on District-wide committees. We are voting for Cris Carusi for Seat 6 and Matt Andrzejewski for Seat 7 on the Madison School Board. Oto dlaczego. 1) We need people on the School Board who are current MMSD parents and who have spent time volunteering in our schools. To those without these basic qualifications we say, you have skills and expertise to offer, but you lack school-based experience and a proven track record of commitment so get more involved and come back again later to ask us for our vote. 2) We need people on the School Board who know data analysis and statistics. The District has a longstanding practice of presenting data with the overarching intention of making itself look good. Too often this comes at the expense of honestly answering the question of whether or not our students are learning. We need someone on the Board who will not be duped by that tactic 3) We need people on the School Board with multiple areas of expertise and broad-based skills. We have seen it many times: single-issue Board members are easily overwhelmed by the range and complexity of the information and challenges they are asked to deal with and never recover. To those with single-issue passion and experience we say, 8220target your volunteerism by getting involved in our schools only around your area of expertise. 4) We need people on the School Board with a fresh perspective. A near-decade of service and influence is enough privilege for any one Board member. After that many years, the person is probably more loyal to the District Administration than is healthy for the system or the community. The Madison School Board needs smart, hard-working, committed parents like Cris Carusi and Matt Andrzejewski. And so do our students Laurie Frost and Jeff Henriques In 2008 the anthropologist Daniel Miller published a book based on an intimate study of 30 households on a single street in south London. The Comfort of Things explored the different kinds of relationships people have with what they own. Miller described a retired couples house, cluttered with furniture, framed photographs and knick-knacks accumulated over decades. Down the road, a self-employed man called Malcolm had rented a flat. Malcolm preferred a spartan existence: he kept his belongings in storage, the better to travel at short notice, and conducted as much as possible of his life online. His home was his email address. His central material possession was his laptop. The prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing has for the first time allowed international students to apply without taking a written test, causing concerns that it would create a loophole for abuse, Caixin reports. Chinese university students queue for hours for library study space The University, named the 57th best worldwide and 4th best in Asia by the US News and World Report Best Global University Rankings in 2017, recently changed its admission rules to allow international students to apply as long as they obtained level 5 in the HSK Putonghua proficiency test. How does Harvard8217s largest course, an Introduction to Computer Science, use GitHub to achieve its learning goals Professor David J. Malan, Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Computer Science at Harvard University, is dedicated to offering his students a robust learning experience. This post outlines how he uses GitHub and his own custom tools to build hands-on assignments for CS50 students. Its no longer enough to fill your CV with impressive grades. Employers are looking beyond qualifications to figure out what other skills their candidates have. Cognitive skills in topics like maths and English have long been used as to measure the calibre of a job candidate. But a report by The Hamilton Project, an economic think-tank, says that non-cognitive skills are also integral to educational performance and success at work and are becoming increasingly so. Non-cognitive skills are your soft skills: things like how well you can communicate, how well you work with others, how well you lead a team and how self-motivated you are. Why is free speech important When free speech comes into conflict with other values, why should free speech win I think a lot of us have only a vague answer to these questions. Free speech is just a good thing. We dont think much about why free speech is good, just that its a semi-sacred value. And so when free speech is threatened, we dont have many arguments for why it should prevail, especially in conflict with other legitimate, emotionally resonant values. Adriana had long looked forward to her 16th birthday but when the date finally arrived, she celebrated not at home with her family and friends, but in a Texas center for immigrants that felt more like a prison. That day I didnt do anything. I just sat there and I cried and cried all day, Adriana recalls to Teen Vogue. Weeks earlier, she had fled El Salvador with her mother and sister, Allison, then 13, crossing the Rio Grande in order to escape violence. When they entered the United States, they didnt have any authorization, and when they were picked up by border patrol officials, they said they were seeking asylum. As a school librarian at a small K-12 district in Illinois, Angela K. is at the center of a battle of extremes in educational technology and student privacy. On one side, her district is careful and privacy-conscious when it comes to technology, with key administrators who take extreme caution with ID numbers, logins, and any other potentially identifying information required to use online services. On the other side, the district has enough technology cheerleaders driving adoption forward that now students as young as second grade are using Googles G Suite for Education. In search of a middle ground that serves students, Angela is asking hard, fundamental questions. We can use technology to do this, but should we Is it giving us the same results as something non-technological Angela asked. We need to see the big picture. How do we take advantage of these tools while keeping information private and being aware of what we might be giving away In the future, if you want a job, you must be as unlike a machine as possible: creative, critical and socially skilled. So why are children being taught to behave like machines Children learn best when teaching aligns with their natural exuberance, energy and curiosity. So why are they dragooned into rows and made to sit still while they are stuffed with facts We succeed in adulthood through collaboration. So why is collaboration in tests and exams called cheating Governments claim to want to reduce the number of children being excluded from school. So why are their curriculums and tests so narrow that they alienate any child whose mind does not work in a particular way The best teachers use their character, creativity and inspiration to trigger childrens instinct to learn. So why are character, creativity and inspiration suppressed by a stifling regime of micromanagement Another version of Monbiot8217s column. Frederick Taylor and the schools is worth contemplation. I think our track record is pretty good, Evers said, citing decreased suspensions and expulsions, increased number of students taking college-level courses while still in high school and modest increases in reading proficiency. Is it where we want Absolutely not, he said. Reading a key issuefor Humphries The states reading proficiency levels have been a key issue for Humphries, who has said the DPI must have new leadership in order to improve those levels and students skills in other subjects. Since the early 2000s, Wisconsins ranking for reading skills has dropped, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. He said DPI is not aggressive enough in translating their priorities to school officials in an effort to combat some persistent academic problems. Unless DPI is held accountable in making sure schools understand the importance 8230 were not likely to have an impact, Humphries said. Weve seen that with academic achievement gaps. Humphries and Holtz have proposed writing new state academic standards, and Humphries said he would introduce a process that would allow persistently low-performing schools to be converted into new ones under new administration, including private voucher schools and charter schools, as long school boards agree. An official watchdog in Germany has told parents to destroy a talking doll called Cayla because its smart technology can reveal personal data. The warning was issued by the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur), which oversees telecommunications. Researchers say hackers can use an insecure bluetooth device embedded in the toy to listen and talk to the child playing with it. Manufacturer Genesis Toys has not yet commented on the German warning. There are few organizations in the world that can claim more expertise when it comes to storytelling than Pixar. The Disney-owned animation studio is known for its ability to consistently create world-class movies with gripping narrative alongside stunning visuals. Now, Pixar is helping others learn the secrets of great storytelling for free, in partnership with online education provider Khan Academy. The two have teamed up to create Pixar In A Box, and in this third instalment of the series, lessons are sourced from Pixar directors and story artists including Inside Out and Up director Pete Docter, Brave director Mark Andrews, Inside Out story artist Domee Shi, and Ratatouille animator Sanjay Patel. Nationalistic PRC student groups abroad are becoming increasingly vocal when it comes to academic institutions inviting critics of the CCP. Whether they succeed in eroding the Wests traditions of freedom of expression will be contingent on how universities respond. Imagine a group of foreign students at, say, Fudan University in Shanghai or Peking University in Beijing organizing a campaign to prevent a former Chinese official or academic known for his pro-regime views on Tibet or Xinjiang or Taiwan from giving a lecture at the university. Worse, a foreign embassy in Beijing or consulate in Shanghai were in contact with the group of students and compelled them to threaten the university because foreign officials had serious concerns about the event and the ideology of the invited speaker. American higher education has to deal much with bad news, as any quick scan of the countrys front pages will confirm: skyrocketing costs, runaway debt, sexual violence, and sluggish students more interested in partying than learning. But consider the following description of Bard College students, by one of their professors: Students report that classes are totally absorbing, which is clearly evident in the classrooms. The intensity of student engagement is seen in the consistently lively class discussions. The study rooms are always full. In one-on-one conversations with faculty, students often report having read several more books than the ones assigned in order to investigate the topics at hand more deeply. They regularly ask for comments on essays they have written not for class, but just to express their views about someone running for office or an event in the news. On occasion, they buttonhole professors to talk about some particularly challenging philosophical puzzle they have been contemplating, such as how one knows what is and is not fair. Others have wanted to discuss an idea they have for a book they want to write or an organization they hope to establish once they are home. Thats not the kind of intellectual atmosphere you will find on most American campuses. But these students arent on Bards campus theyre in jail. The tribute to them comes from Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, distinguished fellow at the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI), which provides college education to inmates at several high-security penitentiaries in upstate New York. The project was founded in 1999 by Max Kenner, an undergraduate at the time, with the backing of Bards president, Leon Botstein. Lagemanns evocative book makes a convincing case for college in prison, to quote its title, carefully documenting the great many benefits that its graduates receive from BPI. So does a second account by Daniel Karpowitz, the academic director of BPI and cofounder of a national network to promote liberal arts education in prisons. At the same time, both books also remind us how far our higher-education system has strayed from the humanistic ideal at the heart of the Bard prison project. By any conceivable measure, the education that these inmates receive is vastly superior to the standard academic experience of the roughly 20 million undergraduates in the United States. So these books also serve as an indirect criticism of mass higher education, not just mass incarceration. lThe search for planets beyond our solar system is about to gain some new recruits. Today, a team that includes MIT and is led by the Carnegie Institution for Science has released the largest collection of observations made with a technique called radial velocity, to be used for hunting exoplanets. The huge dataset, taken over two decades by the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, is now available to the public, along with an open-source software package to process the data and an online tutorial. By making the data public and user-friendly, the scientists hope to draw fresh eyes to the observations, which encompass almost 61,000 measurements of more than 1,600 nearby stars. The U. S. Marshals Service says it is providing security for Education Secretary Betsy DeVos after a handful of protesters prevented her from entering a D. C. middle school. Protesters briefly block Education Secretary Betsy DeVoss visit to a D. C. school The move is unusual for the Education Department, which typically has a team of civil servants guarding the secretary, and for the marshals, law enforcement officers who are generally responsible for protecting federal judges, transporting prisoners, apprehending fugitives and protecting witnesses. The last Cabinet member protected by marshals was a director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said Lynzey Donahue, a spokeswoman for the Marshals Service. That office ceased to be a Cabinet-level position in 2009. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has outlined a plan to let artificial intelligence (AI) software review content posted on the social network. In a letter describing the plan, he said algorithms would eventually be able to spot terrorism, violence, bullying and even prevent suicide. He admitted Facebook had previously made mistakes in the content it had removed from the website. But he said it would take years for the necessary algorithms to be developed. The announcement has been welcomed by an internet safety charity, which had previously been critical of the way the social network had handled posts depicting extreme violence. Errors In his 5,500-word letter discussing the future of Facebook, Mr Zuckerberg said it was impossible to review the billions of posts and messages that appeared on the platform every day. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has outlined a plan to let artificial intelligence (AI) software review content posted on the social network. In a letter describing the plan, he said algorithms would eventually be able to spot terrorism, violence, bullying and even prevent suicide. He admitted Facebook had previously made mistakes in the content it had removed from the website. But he said it would take years for the necessary algorithms to be developed. The announcement has been welcomed by an internet safety charity, which had previously been critical of the way the social network had handled posts depicting extreme violence. Errors In his 5,500-word letter discussing the future of Facebook, Mr Zuckerberg said it was impossible to review the billions of posts and messages that appeared on the platform every day. Why should it be different this time Thats the most common response I hear when I raise concerns about automation and the future of jobs, and its a pretty simple rejoinder. The Western world managed the shift out of agricultural jobs into industry, and continued to see economic growth. So will not the jobs being displaced now by automation and artificial intelligence lead to new jobs elsewhere in a broadly similar and beneficial manner Will not the former truck drivers, displaced by self-driving vehicles, find work caring for the elderly or maybe fixing or programming the new modes of transport As economics, that may well be correct, but as history its missing some central problems. The shift out of agricultural jobs, while eventually a boon for virtually all of humanity, brought significant problems along the way. This time probably wont be different, and thats exactly why we should be concerned. linguistic anthropologist Mark A. Sicoli and colleagues are applying the latest technology to an ancient mystery: how and when early humans inhabited the New World. Their new research analyzing more than 100 linguistic features suggest more complex patterns of contact and migration among the early peoples who first settled the Americas. The diversity of languages in the Americas is like no other continent of the world, with eight times more 8220isolates8221 than any other continent. Isolates are 8220languages that have no demonstrable connection to any other language with which it can be classified into a family,8221 Sicoli said. There are 26 isolates in North America and 55 in South America, mostly strung across the western edge of the continents, compared to just one in Europe and nine in Asia. 8220Scientists in the past decade have rethought the settlement of the Americas,8221 Sicoli said, 8220replacing the idea that the land which connected Asia and North America during the last ice age was merely a 8216bridge8217 with the hypothesis that during the last ice age humans lived in this refuge known as 8216Beringia8217 for up to 15,000 years and then seeded migrations not only into North America, but also back into Asia.8221 In a Feb. 17 presentation to the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston, Sicoli will join other scientists discussing 8220Beringia and the Dispersal of Modern Humans to the Americas.8221 Since much of Beringia, theorized to have been located generally between northwest North America and northeastern Asia, has been under water for more than 10,000 years, it has been challenging to find archaeological and ecological evidence for this 8220deep history,8221 as Sicoli calls it. Recent ecological, genetic and archaeological data support the notion of human habitation in Beringia during the latest ice age. The new linguistic research methods, which use 8220big data8221 to compare similarities and differences between languages, suggest that such a population would have been linguistically diverse, Sicoli said. In 8220Linguistic Perspectives on Early Population Migrations and Language Contact in the Americas,8221 Sicoli shows how big data analyses point to the existence of at least three now-extinct languages of earlier migrations that influenced existing Dene and Aleut languages as they moved to the Alaska coast. The data comparing dozens of indigenous languages support phases of migration for the Dene languages and multilingual language contact systems along the Alaska coast, which potentially involved languages related to current linguistic isolates. Traces of such language contacts support that the mixing populations also mixed their languages as part of human adaptation strategies for this region and its precarious environment. 8220The computational methods give us traction on questions that have been unanswered,8221 said Sicoli, who has been working in collaboration with Anna Berge of the University of Alaska and Gary Holton of the University of Hawaii. 8220They help us understand how people migrated and languages diversified not simply through isolation, but through multilingual contact.8221 Analyzing languages of the Dene-Yeniseian macro-family, Sicoli and Holton previously found support for Dene migrations from Beringia into North America and Yeniseian migration into Siberia. The linguists8217 continuing research is following up on this earlier study that posited a back-migration for the Yeniseian language family. Largest imaging study of ADHD to date identifies differences in five regions of the brain, with greatest differences seen in children rather than adults. Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is associated with the delayed development of five brain regions and should be considered a brain disorder, according to a study published in The Lancet Psychiatry. Mark Zuckerberg8217s vision for AI was initially somewhat creepier than what he shared in his epic 6,000-word manifesto about the future of Facebook. In the post, Zuckerberg briefly touches on how artificial intelligence can be used to detect terrorist propaganda. After spending more than 10 years away from his hometown of Luokan, in the southwestern province of Yunnan, a 42-year-old man was forced by local authorities to undergo a vasectomy upon returning for the lunar new year holiday. He was taken away by family planning officials on Feb. 8, and the operation was concluded the next day. The fecund fugitive, surnamed Hu, was reprimanded for having four children: Already the father of two sons and one daughter, he divorced his first wife, married another woman, and had a fourth child. Zhenxiong County authorities determined that Hu had violated the two-child policy and would undergo a vasectomy as punishment. There was nervous laughter as the teachers waited, but it evaporated when the commotion broke out in the hallway. People were yelling, and someone blasted a deafening air horn in staccato bursts, meant to represent gunfire. Five teachers in the barricaded classroom rushed to find cover while one brave soul held a strap affixed to the door handle to keep a would-be attacker out. It was all for naught. The handle turned, the flimsy tables piled in front of the door gave way and the doorway was breached. Dont just stand there. If Im in the door, slam that door, yelled the assailant, in reality a Sauk County emergency management official. Slam my arm in it. Dont let me stand here. Im in the fatal funnel. Attack me. Fewer UW-Madison graduates left the university with debt in 2018 compared to the previous year. Of students who earned a bachelors degree in the 2018-16 academic year, 53.4 percent graduated with no debt, a 3 percent increase from the previous year, according to a report released Tuesday from the universitys Office of Student Financial Aid, though some graduate and professional students saw their average debt increase. For undergraduates who took out student loans, the average amount of debt declined from 28,768 in 2018 to 28,255 in 2018, according to the report. Two state superintendent candidates publicly called each other liars on Friday days before the two are set to face each other in a three-way primary with incumbent Tony Evers. It was the latest twist punctuated by a Democratic lawmaker crashing a news conference in an increasingly turbulent race. At the news conference, candidate John Humphries called opponent Lowell Holtz a liar who is falsely blaming unnamed business leaders for Holtzs proposal for one of them to get out of the race in exchange for a six-figure, taxpayer-funded job should the other win. Holtz later fired back, calling the Friday event a three-ring circus orchestrated by Humphries. First, let me draw your attention to some recent news out of Cornell University, where the Student Assembly considered a resolution that would call for a committee to look into the matter of whether the campus lacks ideological diversity. The resolution cites the fact that 96 percent of Cornell faculty political donations are given to left-of-center candidates and causes as evidence of a problem. Note that the resolution did not actually call for some kind of intellectual-diversity-affirmative-action, which would likely be ill-conceived and harm the university8217s ability to make good hiring decisions. Nor would the resolution have created an actual committee. It merely calls on the faculty to consider creating a committee, in order to study the issue of ideological diversity at Cornell. 8220Common sense and research indicate that it is students on the left who have the most to gain from exposure to different ideas,8221 New York University psychologist Jonathan Haidt told The College Fix. in support of the resolution, 8220and the most to lose from spending four formative years in a politically homogeneous institution.8221 Humphries alleged Wednesday that another candidate, Lowell Holtz, offered to drop out in exchange for a promise of a 150,000-a-year job in a potential Humphries administration, plus a driver and vast power to break up or take over urban school districts. 8220This is a massive power grab,8221 Evers8217 campaign said. Humphries also charged that Holtz offered some of the same things to him in hopes of persuading Humphries to get out. Humphries said he declined. Holtz disputed some aspects of Humphries claims. To try to back up his claim, Humphries made public a document he says Holtz gave him at a meeting convened in December at the behest of business people who wanted to see the pair cooperate as they vied to take on Evers. State superintendent candidate John Humphries offered to consider negotiating a consulting contract with opponent Lowell Holtz at the Department of Public Instruction if Humphries defeated incumbent Tony Evers, according to a copy of an email from Humphries. The Dec. 23 email, which Humphries provided to the Wisconsin State Journal, suggests it was a response to a suggestion from Holtz a day earlier that one of the two candidates drop out of the race on condition the other give him a taxpayer-funded 150,000 job upon winning the state superintendent race. My offer includes an opportunity for Lowell to participate in crafting my campaign message, Humphries wrote. Lowell would be working alongside me in the campaign, and then in Milwaukee and other urban areas after I am elected. I think the most effective way to do that would be to consider a consulting agreement that would be negotiated once I am elected. Negotiating a contract prior to election would at the very least have an appearance of impropriety. For that reason, I need to be careful with what I agree to but I am interested in continuing our discussions. Holtz said that offer amounted to a bribe to get out of the race. Humphries campaign spokesman Brian Schupper said that characterization was ludicrous since Holtz proposed a day before Humphries leave the race, and that Humphries was offering to discuss ways to possibly work together in the future. The Humphries campaign released the email Thursday after state Superintendent Tony Evers called on his opponents to release more details about an alleged plan crafted at the request of unnamed business leaders to take over the states urban school districts. Universities are admitting students who are almost illiterate, lecturers warn as they complain that dropping entry requirements has led to a generation of undergraduates who cannot read, write or speak proper English. Almost half of academics (48 per cent) do not think that students are adequately prepared for university study, according to a Times Higher Education (THE) survey of over 1,000 academic staff. Many academics believe that slipping standards are to blame, with one lecturer from a red brick university telling the survey: Each year, the entry requirements for undergraduate programmes are reduced, meaning we get a high number of students who are almost illiterate. In 2008, it was designated a Red Army primary school 8211 funded by Chinas red nobility of revolution-era Communist commanders and their families 8211 one of many such institutions that have been established across the country. Why are so many Chinese nostalgic for the Cultural Revolution The schools are an extreme example of the patriotic education which Chinas ruling Communist party promotes to boost its legitimacy, but which critics condemn as little more than brainwashing. The Red Army spirit is a real asset for children. It teaches them to be hardworking and thrifty from a young age, said school manager Mu Chunyong, who oversees the 136 pupils in first to fourth grades. Guizhou province is one of Chinas poorest, but even there, most families are now able to afford relatively comfortable lives, making it important to remind students of the hardships of the past, he said. If you dont instil kids these days with a sense of the evolution of history, the kids wont cherish their current living conditions. Foreign students are flocking to the higher education system in the US. A recent study found that in 2017-2017, the number of international students in the US increased by 6.5 over the last year to a record high of 764,495 students. Of these, 56 came from only five countries: China, India, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Canada. The reasons for the shift and the consequences of this massive migration have been discussed at great length within universities, in papers with titles such as The Chinese are Coming. When the students arrive on American campuses, however, they have to wrestle with social and educational experiences that are fundamentally foreign to them. Most anticipate their American adventure as an exciting opportunity laced with some inevitable adjustments, caught off guard by the extent and nature of the obstacles they encounter, in the classroom and on campus. Its looking as if 2017 could become the year when the anti-vaccination movement gains ascendancy in the United States and we begin to see a reversal of several decades in steady public health gains. The first blow will be measles outbreaks in America. Measles is one of the most contagious and most lethal of all human diseases. A single person infected with the virus can infect more than a dozen unvaccinated people, typically infants too young to have received their first measles shot. Such high levels of transmissibility mean that when the percentage of children in a community who have received the measles vaccine falls below 90 percent to 95 percent, we can start to see major outbreaks, as in the 1950s when four million Americans a year were infected and 450 died. Worldwide, measles still kills around 100,000 children each year. The myth that vaccines like the one that prevents measles are connected to autism has persisted despite rock-solid proof to the contrary. Donald Trump has given credence to such views in tweets and during a Republican debate, but as president he has said nothing to support vaccination opponents, so there is reason to hope that his views are changing. Those cheering the deep state torpedoing of Flynn are saying, in effect, that a police state is perfectly fine so long as it helps to bring down Trump. It is the role of Congress to investigate the president and those who work for him. If Congress resists doing its duty, out of a mixture of self-interest and cowardice, the American people have no choice but to try and hold the government8217s feet to the fire, demanding action with phone calls, protests, and, ultimately, votes. That is a democratic response to the failure of democracy. Sitting back and letting shadowy, unaccountable agents of espionage do the job for us simply isn8217t an acceptable alternative. One of the most-discussed higher education policy proposals from President Donald Trump has been a proposal to tax the endowments of wealthy colleges that are seen as not using enough money on financial aid. Key Trump supporter Rep. Tom Reed (R-NY) has introduced legislation requiring colleges with endowments over 1 billion to spend at least 25 of all investment returns on financial aid, much to the chagrin of wealthy colleges. This proposal does not take into account the size of a collegewhich means that colleges with similar endowment levels can have vastly different levels of resources. For example, Vassar College and North Carolina State University had endowments just under 1 billion as of June 2018, but the sizes of the institutions are far different. Vassar has about 2,500 undergraduate students, while NC State has nearly ten times as many. Another important factor is the financial need of students. Colleges can have similar sizes and similar endowment levels, but differ substantially in their number of Pell recipients (a proxy for low-income status). Washington State University and the University of Missouri-Columbia both have endowments around 900 million, but Washington State enrolled 3,000 more Pell recipients than Mizzou in spite of enrolling 4,000 fewer undergraduates. This means that Mizzou has the ability to target more aid to their Pell recipients should they choose to do so. In the 1830s, the Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton reformulated Newtons laws of motion, finding deep mathematical symmetries between an objects position and its momentum. Then in the mid-1980s the mathematician Mikhail Gromov developed a set of techniques that transformed Hamiltons idea into a full-blown area of mathematical research. Within a decade, mathematicians from a broad range of backgrounds had converged to explore the possibilities in a field that came to be known as symplectic geometry. The result was something like the opening of a gold-rush town. People from many different areas of mathematics hurried to establish the field and lay claim to its fruits. Research developed rapidly, but without the shared background knowledge typically found in mature areas of mathematics. This made it hard for mathematicians to tell when new results were completely correct. By the start of the 21st century it was evident to close observers that significant errors had been built into the foundations of symplectic geometry. Drug resistant bacteria can be found easily in Chinas poultry production chain 8211 from hatcheries to supermarkets according to recent research by scientists from China, the US and Europe, underscoring the need for Beijing to control the use of antibiotics. Superbugs are bacteria that are resistant to antibiotic drugs. A British government report last year estimated that antibiotic resistance would kill 10 million people yearly around the globe by 2050, more than cancer. But the new study suggests a grimmer picture. University endowments posted the lowest investment returns since the 2008 financial crisis, yet schools upped their spending in fiscal 2018, according to a survey released Tuesday by CommonFund and the National Association of College and University Business Officers. Endowments have been on shaky ground coming out of the recession. Average annual returns have volleyed since plummeting 18.7 percent in 2009. In the 12 months ending June 30, endowments at 805 colleges and universities recorded a negative 1.9 percent return, compared to 2.4 percent growth the prior fiscal year, according to the survey. Weve heard a lot about the problem of inequality in America over recent years. But most of that talk has ignored one of the very worst pockets of inequality in American society. I speak, of course, of the American university system and its treatment of adjunct professors and graduate students. Academics seem to think that the business world is a feudal environment characterized by huge status differentials and abusive treatment of underlings. They think that because, to be honest, thats a pretty good characterization of. the modern university, where serfs in the form of adjunct professors toil in the vineyards. As a recent piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education reports: Tenured faculty represent only 17 of college instructors. Part-time adjuncts are now the majority of the professoriate and its fastest-growing segment. From 1975 to 2017, the number of part-time adjuncts quadrupled. And the so-called part-time designation is misleading because most of them are piecing together teaching jobs at multiple institutions simultaneously. A 2017 congressional report suggests that 89 of adjuncts work at more than one institution 13 work at four or more. The need for several appointments becomes obvious when we realize how little any one of them pays. In 2017, The Chronicle began collecting data on salary and benefits from adjuncts across the country. An English - department adjunct at Berkeley, for example, received 6,500 to teach a full-semester course. Its easy to lose sight of all the people struggling beneath the data points. 7,000 at Duke. 6,000 at Columbia. 5,950 at the University of Iowa. Matthew Stewart owes 62,668.78 for drugs, surgeries, and other treatment. With both bankruptcy and possibly fatal liver failure looming, he doesn8217t even bother opening his bills anymore, he told The Week. 8220There was no point. They just upset everyone,8221 he says. Stewart is 29 years old, and was pursuing his Ph. D in American history at Texas Christian University until ill health forced him to withdraw. He lives in Ft. Worth, Texas, with his wife of six years, who is a junior high school teacher in a low-income district. They own their home. Before he came down with complications from cirrhosis caused by autoimmune hepatitis, he says he led a scrupulously healthy lifestyle he does not drink or do any other non-medical drugs, he says, and was a devoted hiker before disaster struck. And he was insured indeed, he had a gold plan from the ObamaCare exchanges, the second-best level of plan that you can get. MICHAEL R. Auslin opens his book with a preface entitled The Asia that Nobody Sees. He might better have entitled it Hiding in Plain Sight. For far too long, but especially during the Obama years, policymakers chose to focus on Asias remarkable economic growth, coupled with an era of relative peace. Too often they overlooked economic, demographic, social, political and military tensions that did not lurk all that far below Asias shiny surface. Barack Obama, who spent part of his formative years in Indonesia, was a leading cheerleader for the concept of the Asian century. He seemed to care little about Europe and preferred to avoid the troubles of the Middle East as much as possible. He embraced the notion of a rising Asia that soon would constitute Americas most vital interests. It was in that spirit, too, that Hillary Clinton announced the pivot to Asia, which was meant to refocus American military power and political and economic priorities away from Europe and the Middle East and instead underscore Asias importance to the United States. Democratic education reformers, like many parents throughout the country, passionately believe that our public education system is struggling and needs to get better. But the DeVos appointment has left some of us in a state of confusion. Some in the Democratic Party, with strong ties to the teachers unions, have outwardly blamed reform-minded Democrats for helping pave the road for the DeVos nomination. In addition, those who have advocated against a potentially extreme DeVos agenda believe the only way to fight her is through a traditionalist education agenda, based on the policies of special interests. While many of us in the Democratic reform space share concerns regarding the DeVos appointment, such extreme tactics do not represent the will of parents. Up until recent years, working across the aisle to find common ground and bring compromise and develop needed results was once considered a patriotic endeavor. And it is clear that blindly following decades-old policy advocated by the teachers unions will certainly not address the current needs of our public school system. Lost in this debate is the new opportunity provided to the Democratic partyto build on the Obama legacy and create a united, modern, third-way when it comes to the Democrats values on education. It seems impossible these days to discuss any issue without being asked to check your privilege. Heaven forbid you have an opinion about something that has nothing to do with race the privilege police want to ensure that you are made to care. Of course, it is important to consider the positions of others and the privileges that may influence the way we think (be they race, gender, class, the kind of family you were raised in, etc.) but this impulse has devolved into the absurd. Evidently the only way for a white person to check ones privilege to an acceptable degree in 2017, for example, is to feel ashamed. Recently, DNC chair candidate Sally Boynton Brown called on this shame to pitch herself for the joba job she described as removing other white people from the conversation. My job is to listen and be a voice. And my job is to shut other white people down when they want to interrupt. My job is to shut other white people down when they want to say, Oh no, Im not prejudiced. Im a Democrat. Im accepting. Sorry, Ms. Boynton, but none of that sounds very accepting. Chinese students are joining their peers on American campuses in getting woke. Their cause Defending the official line of the Communist Party. On Feb. 2, the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) formally announced that the Dalai Lama would make a keynote speech at the June commencement ceremony. The announcement triggered outrage among Chinese students who view the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader as an oppressive figure threatening to divide a unified China. A group of them now plans to meet with the university chancellor to discuss the content of the upcoming speech. Hungerman said he can8217t fully explain the reasons behind the numbers. Maybe, he surmised, parishes that begin to accept vouchers experience leadership change and new priorities. Maybe vouchers caused parishioners to change churches. Maybe parishioners, knowing that their parish has a public funding stream, are less likely to donate, or perhaps they don8217t want to donate to help voucher students who may not already be a part of the parish community. Topczewski, from the archbishop8217s office, said declining church revenue caused by fewer Catholics per capita does not necessarily mean declining parish and religious activity. 8220Instead, the parish mission shifts to an evangelical mission in a neighborhood that is no longer predominantly Catholic, but whose families still seek out the quality and reputation of a Catholic school,8221 he said. 8220The survey misses that schools are a ministry for us.8221 Globalisation did not force governments to adopt policies that divided their countries, exacerbated inequality and hit social mobility. Many of them did those things by choice. Donald Trump, Brexit, serious populist pressures in other EU countries: are we entering a full-blown crisis of international liberal capitalism There is no doubt that globalisation poses policy challenges for governments. But globalisation by itself did not force governments to adopt policies that have divided their countries, exacerbated inequality and hit social mobility. Many of them did those things by choice. The problem is not that we have allowed an increased role for markets, as many on the left (and increasingly on the populist right) argue. Open markets remain the best way of generating wealth and opportunities, of challenging vested interests and of expanding peoples freedom. We are in this mess because weve forgotten the lessons of the post-war period. Basically, we have a crisis of distribution and opportunity. Researchers have recently developed the first reliable technique for websites to track visitors even when they use two or more different browsers. This shatters a key defense against sites that identify visitors based on the digital fingerprint their browsers leave behind. State-of-the-art fingerprinting techniques are highly effective at identifying users when they use browsers with default or commonly used settings. For instance, the Electronic Frontier Foundation8217s privacy tool, known as Panopticlick, found that only one in about 77,691 browsers had the same characteristics as the one commonly used by this reporter. Such fingerprints are the result of specific settings and customizations found in a specific browser installation, including the list of plugins, the selected time zone, whether a 8220do not track8221 option is turned on, and whether an adblocker is being used. The term, 8220information superhighway8221 has always been insufficient to describe the Internet. In reality, the Web is a global communication space containing the private information of a large part of the population of every developed country. If someone were able to train an all-seeing eye onto the Internet, the blackmail potential would be almost limitless. It is precisely this all-seeing eye that the British intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the American National Security Agency (NSA) have developed under the name Tempora. An appropriate real-world metaphor for the program might be something like this: In every room of every house and every apartment, cameras and microphones are installed, every letter is opened and copied, every telephone tapped. Everything that happens is recorded and can be accessed as needed. Specifically targeting black children for unlawful DNA collection is a gross abuse of technology by law enforcement. But its exactly what the San Diego Police Department is doing, according to a lawsuit just filed by the ACLU Foundation of San Diego 038 Imperial Counties on behalf of one of the families affected. SDPDs actions, as alleged in the complaint, illustrate the severe and very real threats to privacy, civil liberties, and civil rights presented by granting law enforcement access to our DNA. SDPD must stop its discriminatory abuse of DNA collection technology. According to the ACLUs complaint, on March 30, 2018, police officers stopped five African American minors as they were walking through a park in southeast San Diego. There was no legal basis for the stop. As an officer admitted at a hearing in June 2018, they stopped the boys simply because they were black and wearing blue on what the officers believed to be a gang holiday. Despite having no valid basis for the stop, and having determined that none of the boys had any gang affiliation or criminal record, the officers handcuffed at least some of the boys and searched all of their pockets. They found nothing but still proceeded to search the bag of one of the boysP. D. a plaintiff in the ACLUs case. (Its standard to use minors initials, rather than their full names, in court documents.) The officers found an unloaded revolver, which was lawfully registered to the father of one of the boys, and arrested P. D. This repository contains the lecture slides and course description for the Deep Natural Language Processing course offered in Hilary Term 2017 at the University of Oxford. This is an advanced course on natural language processing. Automatically processing natural language inputs and producing language outputs is a key component of Artificial General Intelligence. The ambiguities and noise inherent in human communication render traditional symbolic AI techniques ineffective for representing and analysing language data. Recently statistical techniques based on neural networks have achieved a number of remarkable successes in natural language processing leading to a great deal of commercial and academic interest in the field This is an applied course focussing on recent advances in analysing and generating speech and text using recurrent neural networks. We introduce the mathematical definitions of the relevant machine learning models and derive their associated optimisation algorithms. The course covers a range of applications of neural networks in NLP including analysing latent dimensions in text, transcribing speech to text, translating between languages, and answering questions. These topics are organised into three high level themes forming a progression from understanding the use of neural networks for sequential language modelling, to understanding their use as conditional language models for transduction tasks, and finally to approaches employing these techniques in combination with other mechanisms for advanced applications. Throughout the course the practical implementation of such models on CPU and GPU hardware is also discussed. This post is inspired by reading the latest Tom Wolfe diatribe, 8220The Kingdom of Speech8221. While the book sets off to discuss the issues of what were the origins and evolution of speech in early man, the largest part of this book is devoted to a juicy recounting of the feud between Noam Chomsky and Daniel Everett over whether recursion and other grammatical structures must be present in all languages. Chomsky famously holds that some mutation endowed early man with a 8220language organ8221 that forces all languages to share some form of its built-in 8220universal grammar8221. Everett, on the other hand, was the first to thoroughly learn the vastly simplified language spoken by the Amazonian Piraha (pronounced peedahan) that possesses very little of Chomsky8217s grammar and, in particular, appears to lack any recursive constructions (aka embedded clauses). What I want to claim in this blog is that both are wrong and that grammar in language is merely a recent extension of much older grammars that are built into the brains of all intelligent animals to analyze sensory input, to structure their actions and even formulate their thoughts. All of these abilities, beyond the simplest level, are structured in hierarchical patterns built up from interchangeable units but obeying constraints, just as speech is. The earliest that children tend to be diagnosed at present is at the age of two, although it is often later. The study, published in the journal Nature, showed the origins of autism are much earlier than that 8211 in the first year of life. The findings could lead to an early test and even therapies that work while the brain is more malleable. One in every 100 people has autism, which affects behaviour and particularly social interaction. The study looked at 148 children including those at high risk of autism because they had older siblings with the disorder. All had brain scans at six, 12 and 24 months old. It takes more than 50 million a year for hundreds of Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction staff to manage the hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds that flow to local school districts around the state, budget figures indicate. The figures which dont include spending or staff devoted to grant administration in either Washington, D. C. or in local school districts bolster arguments by those who say the state educational system is too burdened by paperwork and diverts resources that could be better used to help students and to assist their teachers. For the 2018-16 school year, 877.63 million in federal money flowed from Washington to the DPI, according to a September 2018 Legislative Fiscal Bureau memorandum to state Rep. Joe Sanfelippo (R-West Allis). Of that, more than 823.8 million was passed through DPI to subrecipients, mostly the states school districts, in the form of federal grants such as Title I for disadvantaged students, school lunches, teacher training and other programs. The rest of the money nearly 53.7 million went to administration, or, as DPI spokesman Tom McCarthy said in an email, the operations budget of administering federal programs. Ted Neitzke, the former superintendent of the West Bend School District with more than 22 years in the education field and now head of a regional education agency, said the paperwork to administer federal grants in Wisconsin is overwhelming. DPI they got a jillion people working there that are just checking boxes, Neitzke said. The paperwork it needs to be checked 52 ways to Sunday. I cant even imagine how many personnel they (DPI) have whose sole job is just checking boxes, Neitzke continued. The unfortunate fact is that cash does not move to the classroom as fast as it should. We should be results-driven, not compliance-driven. Whos sticking today the man asked. He wore tan work boots and rough jeans. He told a friend in the waiting room that he had a couple hours off work and thought hed stop in for some extra cash. The receptionist told him the names of that days phlebotomists. He paused. Sliding a 16-gauge needle into someones arm is tricky, and the man reconsidered. Instead of signing in, he announced to the room that hed come back tomorrow and try his luck. Id driven 107 miles from my home in Bangor, Maine to the BPL Plasma Center in Lewiston to collect 50 for having my arm punctured and a liter of my plasma sucked out. The actual donation takes about 35 minutes, but the drive and its attendant wait makes for an eight-hour day. I clocked in for that trip five times this summer. Im a professor at the University of Maine. My salary is 52,000, and I am a year away from tenure. But like everyone else in that room, I was desperate for money. I can see a day where people take a swab of their cheek to get a DNA-level analysis of what they would be attracted to, he said. Theres a biological component to all of this that is largely unexplored and it would make this business very different. Genetic matchmaking remains nascent, but a few companies have already launched products that claim to use DNA to aid romance. Genepartner, a Swiss company, offers a 249 DNA compatibility test that it bills as a complementary service for matchmakers and online dating sites. Canadian startup DNA Romance will release a more comprehensive matchmaking service on Valentines Day, based on biological compatibility by using the results of already-available DNA tests, such as that offered by Mountain View genetics startup 23andMe. Offering services that go beyond the current swipe-left, swipe-right trend may be a boon to the industry, too, as investors seem reticent to bankroll dating startups in an already crowded space. American manufacturing job losses to China and Mexico were a major theme of the presidential campaign, and President Trump has followed up on his promise to pressure manufacturers to keep jobs here rather than send them abroad. Already, he has jawboned automakers Ford, General Motors, Toyota and Fiat Chrysler and heating and cooling manufacturer Carrier into keeping and creating jobs in the United States. What he hasn8217t yet addressed but should is the looming technology tsunami that will hit the U. S. job market over the next five to 15 years and likely destroy tens of millions of jobs due to automation by artificial intelligence, 3-D manufacturing, advanced robotics and driverless vehicles among other emerging technologies. The best research to date indicates that 47 percent of all U. S. jobs are likely to be replaced by technology over the next 10 to 15 years, more than 80 million in all, according to the Bank of England. Posts navigation Recent Comments Recent Posts Categories
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