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

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  • State employees work from home when threat of bad air quality looms

    Although work-from-home was mostly a reaction in response to the pandemic, in Salt Lake City, Utah, the strategy has developed the potential to improve air quality. Most state employees are now required to telework certain days in order to help curb bad air quality days, and are given at least a 48-hour notice. During the pandemic, having close to 9,000 state employees stay home reduced pollution by 40 tons over the course of April 2020 to May 2021.

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  • ShotSpotter tech eyed as possible tool in gun violence prevention

    An audio alert service called ShotSpotter uses audio sensors and algorithms to detect gunfire and report it to the Cleveland police. The technology is helping to bridge the gap in unreported gunfire in the city.

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  • In Egypt, online group Qawem saving hundreds of women from sextortion

    The Egyptian Facebook group Qawem (Arabic for resist) helps victims of sextortion by turning threats around to target the attacker. Sextortion, in which threatened disclosure of a person's nude or other embarrassing photos are used as a tool of extortion, is illegal in Egypt. But women – the typical victims – are often reluctant to report incidents to the police, out of shame or fear. When victims report sextortion attempts to Qawem, volunteers counsel the victims while other volunteers track down the extortionists and threaten to expose them to their family or friends. About 200 cases per week get resolved.

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  • India's healthcare workers are busting misinformation on WhatsApp

    Accredited social health activists (ASHA) across India fight COVID-19 related misinformation on WhatsApp. ASHAs provide basic health care to people in their villages, which puts them on the frontline of treating COVID-19 patients and educating people to dispel the many myths about the virus and its treatments. ASHAs' local interactions often identify prevailing myths, which they quickly dispel in their face-to-face exchanges and by posting in the many local WhatsApp groups that have been created. The local groups have been an effective mode of educating people and helped ASHAs gain villagers’ trust.

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  • The force that could redraw the peninsula of India

    In the South Indian coast, erosion is leading to disappearing beaches. A study found that this erosion was in part due to man-made structures like a harbor that was built in the late 80s, groynes, and seawalls. These structures were interfering with the natural movement of sand. To fix it, they needed a structure that could block waves but also allow sand movement, the solution? An artificial reef. It was installed and some beaches are already seeing the results.

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  • Indian Cities Prepare for Floods with Predictive Technology

    In coastal cities in India, floods have led to hundreds of deaths and millions of people being displaced. To address the issue, scientists had to address a variety of factors: hydrology of the upstream region; river, tidal, and storm surge modeling; and a high-resolution digital elevation map of the city. A group of scientists from 13 research institutes and government organizations looked at all those factors and came up with a real-time flood forecasting system. It generated 800 flood scenarios. When it rains the model predicts the most vulnerable sites.

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  • Internet from the moon: Varsity scholar nurtures his concept on inexpensive internet.

    To make internet connectivity accessible and affordable across Africa, Dr. Harold Omondi developed “internet from the moon,” a technology that uses satellite dishes to communicate with transponders placed in the moon several years ago by NASA. The transponders can send and receive information and, since the moon keeps the same side of its surface pointed towards earth, the connection cannot be lost. Still in the piloting phase, the system currently offers free internet at Jomo Kenyatta University, where over 1,200 people login every day, and has another station in South Sudan serving 300-500 people daily.

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  • In The Wake Of Worsening Achievement Gap, Officials Ponder Private Help For Public Schools

    Private donors and businesses are helping some Connecticut public schools provide students and their families with access to the internet, a critical need when distance learning is imposed. Long-term hopes to close the growing achievement gap between wealthy and poorer schools through public-private partnerships need more time to ripen. But some nearer-term successes include one philanthropy's grant to provide 60,000 laptops and broadband internet to students statewide who otherwise lacked access, while a grant in Norwalk put 1,000 families online to help with homework and healthcare access.

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  • The robot will see you now

    The Da Vinci Robot allows surgeons to perform soft tissue procedures with advanced technologies like electrocautery to cauterize tissue as it cuts and 3-D camera, without having to make a big incision. The robot acts as an extension of the surgeon’s hands, replicating human movements in a more fluid and flexible way than tools used for other minimally invasive surgeries. After substantial training on the device, studies show that the robot reduces physician error and anecdotal evidence supports the laboratory finding that the robot leads to faster recovery and less pain for patients.

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  • Both lost jobs. She got paid. He waits. Where they live may be the reason why.

    Four years before the pandemic caused unemployment compensation claims to spike, South Carolina took advantage of a federal grant to modernize its claims processing systems. That upgrade saved thousands of hours of time once claims rose sharply, which meant that people making legitimate claims got paid relatively quickly. That stands in contrast with the Virginia Employment Commission's huge backlog, which must be run through a decades-old system. The state was finally upgrading its systems when the pandemic put that work on hold, leaving some laid-off people in financial limbo for several months.

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