Author at The Secrets of the Universe, I am a Biology and Chemistry high school student from Poland. I love writing about conquest and research in space and future possibilities for Humanity and Astrophysics.
Since the explosion of student debt following the Great Recession, annual repayment rates, or the amount of existing balances lowered, have been just 3%, Moody’s said. Just 51% of borrowers who took out loans from 2010-12 have made any progress at all in paying down their debt.
“While in the past, higher enrollment and rising tuition were the main drivers of growing student loan balances, more recently, slow repayments have become the primary driver,” Jody Shenn, senior analyst at Moody’s, and others said in the report. “Over the next few years, the combination of slow repayments and elevated, if no longer growing, levels of new borrowing will likely fuel further increases in outstanding debt.”
There are multiple reasons why the debt levels are not going down.
A drone has become a welcomed addition to cinematography in recent years. With brand new ways to see the world, they provide us with new viewpoints deemed impossible only a few years ago. We can already see their impact when used in documentaries and recreational films: most new movies rely on the standard drone overhead shot used for establishing the scene and aesthetic.
Here are some of the coolest drone shots that have been posted online. Some of these explore views that have never been captured on film before, making for some amazing ways to see the world.
These two got close and personal to some pretty wild beasts in California. The girls were part of a documentary that explored the relationship between sharks and humans when they traveled on a paddleboard to see them.
A Chinese facial-recognition database with information on thousands of children was stored without protection on the internet, a researcher discovered, raising questions about school surveillance and cybersecurity in China.
The cache was connected to a surveillance system labeled “Safe School Shield” and contained facial-identification and location data, according to Victor Gevers, a researcher at the Dutch nonprofit GDI Foundation, which scans the internet for vulnerabilities and flags them to owners for fixing.
Cuba is the most sustainably developed country in the world, according to a new report launched on November 29. The socialist island outperforms advanced capitalist countries including Britain and the United States, which has subjected Cuba to a punitive six-decades-long economic blockade. The Sustainable Development Index (SDI), designed by anthropologist and author Dr Jason Hickel, calculates its results by dividing a nation’s “human development” score, obtained by looking at statistics on life expectancy, health and education, by its “ecological overshoot”, the extent to which the per capita carbon footprint exceeds Earth’s natural limits. [block: views=node_blocks-related].
How did the monstrous giant squid—reaching school-bus size, with eyes as big as dinner plates and tentacles that can snatch prey 10 yards away—get so scarily big?
Today, important clues about the anatomy and evolution of the mysterious giant squid (Architeuthis dux) are revealed through publication of its full genome sequence by a University of Copenhagen-led team that includes scientist Caroline Albertin of the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole.
Giant squid are rarely sighted and have never been caught and kept alive, meaning their biology (even how they reproduce) is still largely a mystery. The genome sequence can provide important insight.
How will learning and development cope with the growing trend of humans augmenting their basic capabilities with chemical, electronic, physical, and genetic enhancements?
We’ve been entertained by a never ending stream of Marvel and DC Comics characters with super powers ranging from x-ray vision to mind control. Many of us have also spent time fantasising about the additional capabilities we’d like to help see us through the day. But what happens when those boundaries blur between science fantasy and everyday reality?
The practice of human enhancement or augmentation is a phenomena well underway across society – although the concept may be new to many of us. Over the next 25 years, the integration of information and communications technologies (ICTs), cognitive science, new materials, and bio-medicine could fundamentally improve the human condition and greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. As a result, the notion of the “transhuman” could emerge. For example, we are well underway with the process of augmenting human beings’ cognitive and intellectual abilities through technological implants, such as memory storage. These enhancements mean humans could achieve heightened senses and biological capabilities that are largely the prerogative of other species (e.g. speed, resistance, adaptation to extreme conditions, etc.).
The speed of development is truly mind blowing. Advances in cognitive enhancement drugs and “nootropic” supplements, electronic brain stimulation techniques, genetic modification, age extension treatments, 3D printed limbs and organs, and body worn exoskeletons, have given rise to the notion of enhancing the human brain and body well beyond the limits of natural evolutionary processes. Indeed, many leaders in the field of AI are fierce advocates of Transhumanism as the next stage of human evolution—arguing that if humans want to keep up with AI, we ourselves will have to become machines—embedding technology in our brains and bodies to give us similar levels of processing power.
Continue reading “The Rise of Superhumans and the Challenges for Learning and Development” »
Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa’s search for a girlfriend to join him on a voyage around the moon will be the subject of a new documentary program, in the latest attention-grabbing stunt by the entrepreneur.
44-year-old Maezawa, who sold his online fashion retailer Zozo Inc to SoftBank Group Corp, is seeking single females aged over 20 for the show, which will be shown on streaming service AbemaTV.
How can we tackle gender imbalance in the personalities of AI learning tools?
The Gendering of AI
The expected growth in use of artificial intelligence (AI) in learning applications is raising concerns about both the potential gendering of these tools and the risk that they will display the inherent biases of their developers. Why the concern? Well, to make it easier for us to integrate AI tools and chatbots into our lives, designers often give them human attributes. For example, applications and robots are often given a personality and gender. Unfortunately, in many cases, gender stereotypes are being perpetuated. The type of roles robots are designed to perform usually reflect gendered over generalizations of feminine or masculine attributes.
Feminine personalities in AI tools such as chatbots and consumer devices like Amazon’s Alexa are often designed to have sympathetic features and perform tasks related to care giving, assistantship, or service. Many of these applications have been created to work as personal assistants, in customer service or teaching. Examples include Emma the floor cleaning robot and Apple’s Siri your personal iPhone assistant. Conversely, male robots are usually designed as strong, intelligent and able to perform “dirty jobs”. They typically work in analytical roles, logistics, and security. Examples include Ross the legal researcher, Stan the robotic parking valet and Leo the airport luggage porter.
Starfleet Begins
Steven L. Kwast is a retired Air Force general and former commander of the Air Education and Training Command at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph. A graduate of the United States Air Force Academy with a degree in astronautical engineering, he holds a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He is a past president of the Air Force’s Air University in Montgomery, Alabama, and a former fighter pilot with extensive combat and command experience. He is the author of the study, “Fast Space: Leveraging Ultra Low-Cost Space Access for 21st Century Challenges.”
Continue reading “Steven Kwast | The Urgent Need for a U.S. Space Force” »
