Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

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  • St. Louis technology detects lots of gunfire, but calls often lead to a dead end

    St. Louis was one of the first cities to adopt ShotSpotter technology, which uses a network of microphones, software, and human monitors to detect and analyze gunshot sounds. The detection system summoned police more than 15,000 times last year. Only 1% of those calls in a 10-year span yielded enough evidence to result in a police report, and only 13 arrests resulted. There is no evidence that the system actually reduced gun violence. Advocates say the system, which costs St. Louis taxpayers and a nonprofit group more than $1 million per year, yields other useful intelligence and should be maintained.

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  • Inside Elephant Territory

    New tactics are being implemented to prevent elephants from approaching farmland in Sri Lanka. Clashes between people and elephants have increased with the expansion of small farms encroaching into elephant habitats. One solution to prevent damage to crops and to protect people has been electric fences. The fences deliver a small shock - enough to deter the elephant without harming it.

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  • What Robots Can—and Can't—Do for the Old and Lonely

    The Joy For All Companion provides lifelike robot pets to lonely seniors. These robotic pets provide much-needed company to a group of people most at risk of being impacted by the loneliness epidemic that was exacerbated by COVID-19.

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  • There's a detective at the door; she wants to say 'sorry'

    Using a federal grant to reopen unsolved sexual assault cases, Tucson police and prosecutors have provided hundreds of victims with something they were denied when they first reported being attacked: a clear sense that authorities take their cases seriously. Dozens of possible serial rapists were identified when DNA testing was finally performed, and several suspects were prosecuted. When notifying victims their long-ago cases were getting a second look, detectives and victim advocates start with an apology for neglecting or mishandling the cases in the past.

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  • “You Save as Long as You Have To”

    The first DNA database in unsolved rape cases was created at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center nearly 50 years ago by a forensic pathologist who was appalled by the callous treatment of rape victims and the impunity their attackers were granted. Dr. Rudiger Breitenecker's methodical storage of physical evidence and meticulous documentation enabled dozens of convictions, and some exonerations, decades later with the development of DNA testing. Baltimore County's use of the evidence became a model for other prosecutors and police around the country.

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  • This pregnancy test came back positive for the environment

    Pregnancy tests account for two million pounds of plastic waste a year. If you were born before the 1980s, chances are your mother's pregnancy test is in a landfill. Since its creation in the 1970s, pregnancy tests remained the same; as single-use plastics that are not biodegradable. The founders of Lia Diagnostics sought to change that by revolutionizing the design and creating a pregnancy test made out of paper.

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  • Santa Barbara County Looks to Yolo County for Criminal Justice Reform

    By turning over its criminal justice data to Measures for Justice, a nonprofit developer that turns raw data into publicly available reports, the Yolo County district attorney has a much better grasp on the work that it has been doing. Better data mean better-informed decisions about criminal justice reforms. The investment in the new system is prompting policy changes because of racial disparities showing up in the numbers. And that is prompting many other DAs to clamor for the same kind of system.

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  • Meet the Activist Archivists Saving the Internet From the Digital Dustbin

    The Internet Archive is a digital library of around 544 billion archived web pages, most of which are found using a bot that crawls the web and saves snapshots. However, a self-described loose collective of volunteer activist archivists, known as the Archive Team,' individually monitors and preserves websites at risk of being abruptly taken down. Using donated bandwidth and hard drive space on the archiving application “Warrior,” they systematically download sites they fear will be deleted. The downloads are saved within the Internet Archive database, which is available to the public.

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  • Tired of long waiting times in Starbucks? How about a Robot Barista?

    To reduce long wait times and exposure to health concerns amid the latest global pandemic, some coffee shops are experimenting with robot baristas. The robot barrista at Café X, in San Francisco, can make about 120 cups of coffee an hour using a robotic arm created by Mitsubishi. While the robot only performs predefined actions, like picking up a cup, pouring milk, and placing the cup in front of the customer, a barista robot at a Singapore café also plays games with customers waiting in line and a Japanese company created a “friendly” robot barista that greets customers with different facial expressions.

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  • Amid pandemic, uninsured patients benefiting from emergence of telemedicine

    As COVID-19 forced some low cost and free clinics to use telemedicine to treat patients it became clear that it was an efficient and convenient way to reduce unnecessary trips to the emergency room and meet the immediate health needs of people with chronic health problems. The clinics can treat more patients and no-show rates decline substantially. While internet and smartphone access are long-term barriers that need to be overcome, 46 charitable clinics across the state are using telemedicine platforms to deliver care to uninsured patients.

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