Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has been named Uber’s top executive, taking the difficult job of mending the dysfunctional ride-hailing giant and turning it from money-losing behemoth to a profitable company.

 

Uber’s fractured eight-member board voted to hire Khosrowshahi late Sunday, capping three days of meetings and the withdrawal of once-top candidate Jeffery Immelt, former CEO and still chairman of General Electric, two people briefed on the decision said. They didn’t want to be identified because the decision had not been officially announced as of Sunday night.

 

Khosrowshahi has been CEO of Expedia since August of 2015. The online booking site is one of the largest travel agencies in the world.

Self-driving cars

 

He’ll replace ousted CEO Travis Kalanick and faces the difficult task of changing Uber’s culture that has included sexual harassment and allegations of deceit and corporate espionage. Uber also is losing millions every quarter as it continues to expand and invest in self-driving cars.

 

The company currently is being run by a 14-person group of managers and is without multiple top executive positions that will be filled by Khosrowshahi.

 

Khosrowshahi has served as a member of Expedia’s board since it was spun off from IAC/InterActiveCorp. two years ago. An engineer who trained at Brown University, Khosrowshahi helped to expand IAC’s travel brands which were combined into Expedia, the company’s website says. He also serves on the boards of Fanatics Inc. and The New York Times Co.

Many problems to solve

 

He immediately will face troubles on many fronts, including having to deal with multiple board factions that had once pushed Immelt and Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman. Several factions of the board are suing each other.

 

Whitman, an investor in Uber, denied multiple times publicly that she was interested in the job. Although she spoke to some board members remotely Friday night, they could not guarantee an end to their infighting or that Kalanick would not become board chairman, said another person with knowledge of the board discussions. That person also didn’t want to be identified because board discussions are supposed to be private.

 

Khosrowshahi also must bring together a messy culture that an outside law firm found was rampant with sexual harassment and bullying of employees. He also must deal with driver discontent, although Uber already has started to fix that by allowing riders to tip drivers through its app.
…

In middle school, Junior Alvarado often struggled with multiplication and earned poor grades in math, so when he started his freshman year at Washington Leadership Academy, a charter high school in the nation’s capital, he fretted that he would lag behind.

But his teachers used technology to identify his weak spots, customize a learning plan just for him and coach him through it. This past week, as Alvarado started sophomore geometry, he was more confident in his skills.

“For me personalized learning is having classes set at your level,” Alvarado, 15, said in between lessons. “They explain the problem step by step, it wouldn’t be as fast, it will be at your pace.”

As schools struggle to raise high school graduation rates and close the persistent achievement gap for minority and low-income students, many educators tout digital technology in the classroom as a way forward. But experts caution that this approach still needs more scrutiny and warn schools and parents against being overly reliant on computers.

The use of technology in schools is part of a broader concept of personalized learning that has been gaining popularity in recent years. It’s a pedagogical philosophy centered around the interests and needs of each individual child as opposed to universal standards. Other features include flexible learning environments, customized education paths and letting students have a say in what and how they want to learn.

Personalized learning

Under the Obama administration, the Education Department poured $500 million into personalized learning programs in 68 school districts serving close to a half million students in 13 states plus the District of Columbia. Large organizations such as the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation have also invested heavily in digital tools and other student-centered practices.

The International Association for K-12 Online Learning estimates that up to 10 percent of all America’s public schools have adopted some form of personalized learning. Rhode Island plans to spend $2 million to become the first state to make instruction in every one of its schools individualized. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos also embraces personalized learning as part of her broader push for school choice.

Supporters say the traditional education model, in which a teacher lectures at the blackboard and then tests all students at the same time, is obsolete and doesn’t reflect the modern world.

“The economy needs kids who are creative problem solvers, who synthesize information, formulate and express a point of view,” said Rhode Island Education Commissioner Ken Wagner. “That’s the model we are trying to move toward.”

At Washington Leadership Academy, educators rely on software and data to track student progress and adapt teaching to enable students to master topics at their own speed.

Digital tool finds problem

This past week, sophomores used special computer programs to take diagnostic tests in math and reading, and teachers then used that data to develop individual learning plans. In English class, for example, students reading below grade level would be assigned the same books or articles as their peers, but complicated vocabulary in the text would be annotated on their screen.

“The digital tool tells us: We have a problem to fix with these kids right here and we can do it right then and there; we don’t have to wait for the problem to come to us,” said Joseph Webb, founding principal at the school, which opened last year.

Webb, dressed in a green T-shirt reading “super school builder,” greeted students Wednesday with high-fives, hugs and humor. “Red boxers are not part of our uniform!” he shouted to one student, who responded by pulling up his pants.

The school serves some 200 predominantly African-American students from high-poverty and high-risk neighborhoods. Flags of prestigious universities hang from the ceiling and a “You are a leader” poster is taped to a classroom door. Based on a national assessment last year, the school ranked in the 96th percentile for improvement in math and in the 99th percentile in reading compared with schools whose students scored similarly at the beginning of the year.

 

It was one of 10 schools to win a $10 million grant in a national competition aimed at reinventing American high schools that is funded by Lauren Powell Jobs, widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs.

‘Female Bill Gates’

Naia McNatt, a lively 15-year-old who hopes to become “the African-American and female Bill Gates,” remembers feeling so bored and unchallenged in fourth grade that she stopped doing homework and her grades slipped.

 

At the academy, “I don’t get bored ‘cause I guess I am pushed so much,” said McNatt, a sophomore. “It makes you need to do more, you need to know more.”

In math class, McNatt quickly worked through quadratic equations on her laptop. When she finished, the system spitted out additional, more challenging problems.

Her math teacher, Britney Wray, says that in her previous school she was torn between advanced learners and those who lagged significantly. She says often she wouldn’t know if a student was failing a specific unit until she started a new one.

In comparison, the academy’s technology now gives Wray instant feedback on which students need help and where. “We like to see the problem and fix the problem immediately,” she said.

Still, most researchers say it is too early to tell if personalized learning works better than traditional teaching.

A recent study by the Rand Corporation found that personalized learning produced modest improvements: a 3 percentile increase in math and a smaller, statistically insignificant increase for reading compared with schools that used more traditional approaches. Some students also complained that collaboration with classmates suffered because everybody was working on a different task.

“I would not advise for everybody to drop what they are doing and adopt personalized learning,” said John Pane, a co-author of the report. “A more cautious approach is necessary.”

New challenges

The new opportunities also pose new challenges. Pediatricians warn that too much screen time can come at the expense of face-to-face social interaction, hands-on exploration and physical activity. Some studies also have shown that students may learn better from books than from computer screens, while another found that keeping children away from computers for five days in a row improved their emotional intelligence.

Some teachers are skeptical. Marla Kilfoyle, executive director of the Badass Teachers Association, an education advocacy group, agrees that technology has its merits, but insists that no computer or software should ever replace the personal touch, motivation and inspiration teachers give their students.

“That interaction and that human element is very important when children learn,” Kilfoyle said.

 
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Ever so slowly, the world is edging towards the demise of the gasoline-powered engine. It likely won’t come for decades, but it’s coming. Two new entries in the alternative powered vehicle department are showing off ways that technology is slowly changing the automobile marketplace. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports
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Reports of cyberattacks against companies and governments around the world seem to be appearing in the headlines more frequently this year. Cyber security experts explain why the risk of being hacked is now greater, who is doing the hacking and what can be done to prevent or minimize the damage. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details.
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Iranian media are reporting that Apple Inc. has removed all Iranian mobile apps from its App Store.

In reaction to Apple’s decision, Telecommunication Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi said Apple should respect its Iranian consumers. He also sent out this tweet:

 

Apple, based in Cupertino, California, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Jahromi tweeted: “11 percent of Iran’s mobile phone market share is owned by Apple. Giving respect to consumer rights is a principle today which Apple has not followed. We will follow up the cutting of the apps legally.”

Apple is not officially in Iran or any other Persian Gulf countries, but many Iranians purchase its products from stores inside Iran.
…

People smugglers are using Facebook to broadcast the abuse and torture

of migrants in order to extort ransom money from their families, the U.N. migration agency said on Friday.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) lambasted the tech giant for failing to police the platform and help crack down on traffickers.

One video hosted on the site since June shows Libyan gangmasters threatening emaciated and abused migrants – mostly Somalis and Ethiopians – huddled in a concrete room.

IOM said the traffickers had sent clips to the captives’ families via the encrypted messaging service WhatsApp – a Facebook channel – along with threats that their loved ones would be killed unless ransoms of up to $10,000 were paid.

One young Somali man is seen lying face down with a concrete block on his back. “I was asked for $8,000,” he says, according to the IOM. “They broke my teeth. They broke my hand. I have been here 11 months. They put this stone on me for the last three days. It’s really painful.”

British newspaper The Times, which ran the story on its front page on Friday, also quoted a young Ethiopian who had been held for 15 months. “They beat me with iron bars,” he said. “They ordered me to pay $8,300 and my family cannot afford to pay that amount.”

Hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants have crossed the Mediterranean from North Africa to Europe since 2014, and thousands have died trying.

Facebook, which has also been criticized for failing to stop traffickers using the platform to advertise their services, said posts by smuggling groups would be removed if reported.

“We encourage people to keep using our reporting tools to flag this kind of behavior so it can be reviewed and swiftly removed by our global team of experts, who work with law enforcement agencies around the world,” a spokesperson said.

But Facebook said it had not removed the June video as it had been posted by a Somali journalist and was important for raising awareness of the problem.

However, IOM spokesman Leonard Doyle accused Facebook of “arrant nonsense”, adding that the smugglers had used the journalist to publicize their demands.

He told the Thomson Reuters Foundation it was totally inappropriate for Facebook to host a video showing the faces of vulnerable people being abused.

“Don’t let Facebook off the hook here,” he said. “It’s an absolutely nonsensical argument that it’s up to the public to notify Facebook of stuff that’s happening on Facebook.

“They should invest heavily in policing their platforms to stop vulnerable migrants being exploited, extorted and murdered.”

Doyle said the IOM had tried without success to talk to Facebook about targeting smugglers.

“They should stop smugglers telling people there’s an El Dorado waiting for them in Europe when it’s a lie,” he added. “It’s not good enough to say, ‘we are a technology platform, it’s got nothing to do with us’.”

Doyle said the IOM had tried to find the people in the video, but they had disappeared.

 
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Tesla next month plans to unveil an electric big-rig truck with a working range of 200 to 300 miles, Reuters has learned, a sign that the electric car maker is targeting regional hauling for its entry into the commercial freight market.

Chief Executive Elon Musk has promised to release a prototype of its Tesla Semi truck next month in a bid to expand the company’s market beyond luxury cars. The entrepreneur has tantalized the trucking industry with the prospect of a battery-powered heavy-duty vehicle that can compete with conventional diesels, which can travel up to 1,000 miles on a single tank of fuel.

Tesla’s electric prototype will be capable of traveling the low end of what transportation veterans consider to be “long-haul” trucking, according to Scott Perry, an executive at Miami-based fleet operator Ryder System. Perry said he met with Tesla officials earlier this year to discuss the technology at the automaker’s manufacturing facility in Fremont, California.

Perry said Tesla’s efforts are centered on an electric big-rig known as a “day cab” with no sleeper berth, capable of traveling about 200 to 300 miles with a typical payload before recharging.

“I’m not going to count them out for having a strategy for longer distances or ranges, but right out of the gate I think that’s where they’ll start,” said Perry, who is the chief technology officer and chief procurement officer for Ryder.

Tesla responded to Reuters questions with an email statement saying, “Tesla’s policy is to always decline to comment on speculation, whether true or untrue, as doing so would be silly. Silly!”

Tesla’s plan, which could change as the truck is developed, is consistent with what battery researchers say is possible with current technology. Tesla has not said publicly how far its electric truck could travel, what it would cost or how much cargo it could carry. But Musk has acknowledged that Tesla has met privately with potential buyers to discuss their needs.

Reuters reported earlier this month that Tesla is developing self-driving capability for the big rig.

‘Manufacturing hell’

Musk has expressed hopes for large-scale production of the Tesla Semi within a couple of years. That audacious effort could open a potentially lucrative new market for the Palo Alto, California-based automaker.

Or it could prove an expensive distraction. Musk in July warned that the company is bracing for “manufacturing hell” as it accelerates production of its new Model 3 sedan. Tesla aims to produce 5,000 of the cars per week by the end of this year, and 10,000 per week sometime next year.

Tesla shares are up about 65 percent this year. But skeptics abound. Some doubt Musk’s ability to take Tesla from a niche producer to a large-scale automaker. About 22 percent of shares available for trade have been sold “short” by investors who expect the stock to fall.

Musk, a quirky billionaire whose transportation ambitions include colonizing the planet Mars, has long delighted in defying conventional wisdom. At Tesla’s annual meeting in June, he repeated his promise of a battery-powered long-haul big rig.

“A lot of people don’t think you can do a heavy-duty, long-range truck that’s electric, but we are confident that this can be done,” he said.

Trucking’s sweet spot

While the prototype described by Ryder’s Perry would fall well short of the capabilities of conventional diesels, Musk may well have found a sweet spot if he can deliver. Roughly 30 percent of U.S. trucking jobs are regional trips of 100 to 200 miles, according to Sandeep Kar, chief strategy officer of Toronto-based Fleet Complete, which tracks and analyzes truck movement.

A truck with that range would be able to move freight regionally, such as from ports to nearby cities or from warehouses to retail establishments.

“As long as [Musk] can break 200 miles, he can claim his truck is ‘long haul’ and he will be technically right,” Kar said.

Interest in electric trucks is high among transportation firms looking to reduce their emissions and operating costs.

Electric motors require less maintenance than internal combustion engines. Juice from the grid is cheaper than diesel.

But current technology doesn’t pencil when it comes to powering U.S. trucks across the country. Experts say the batteries required would be so large and heavy there would be little room for cargo.

An average diesel cab costs around $120,000. The cost of the battery alone for a big rig capable of going 200 to 400 miles carrying a typical payload could be more than that, according to battery researchers Shashank Sripad and Venkat Viswanathan of Carnegie Mellon University.

Battery weight and ability would limit a semi to a range of about 300 miles with an average payload, according to a paper recently published by Viswanathan and Sripad. The paper thanked Tesla for “helpful comments and suggestions.” Tesla did not endorse the work or comment on the conclusions to Reuters.

A range of 200 to 300 miles would put Tesla at the edge of what the nascent electric truck industry believes is economically feasible, the researchers and industry insiders said.

Short-haul trucks

Transportation stalwarts such as manufacturer Daimler AG and shipping company United Parcel Service said they are focusing their electric efforts on short-haul trucks. That’s because smaller distances and lighter payloads require less battery power, and trucks can recharge at a central hub overnight.

Daimler, the largest truck manufacturer in the world by sales, will begin production this year on an electric delivery truck. The vehicle will have a 100-mile range and be capable of carrying a payload of 9,400 pounds, about 1,000 pounds less than its diesel counterpart, according to Daimler officials.

Daimler has been joined by a handful of startups such as Chanje, a Los Angeles-based manufacturer that has a partnership with Ryder to build 100-mile-range electric trucks for package delivery.

Ryder and its customers believe electric trucks could cost more to buy but may be cheaper to maintain and have more predictable fuel costs. As batteries become cheaper and environmental regulation increases, the case for electric trucks could strengthen.

“This tech is being seen as a major potential differentiator. Everyone wants to understand how real it is,” said Perry, the chief technology officer.
…

A new, high-tech yarn that generates electricity when stretched or twisted could use ocean waves and human motion to lower man’s dependency on fossil fuels, researchers said Thursday.

An international team of scientists said in a study they had developed a stretchy yarn made of carbon nanotubes — tiny strands of carbon atoms up to 10,000 times smaller than a hair — that produces electricity from a host of natural sources.

“The easiest way to think of twistron harvesters is you have a piece of yarn, you stretch it, and out comes electricity,” said Carter Haines, a lead author of the study published in the journal Science. The device, which exploits the ability of nanotubes to transfer springlike motion into electrical energy, has numerous possible applications, according to the paper.

In the lab, tests showed that yarn weighing less than a housefly could light up a small LED.

When sewn into a T-shirt, it could power breathing sensors — like those used to monitor babies — using the stretch caused by the chest expanding at every inhalation.

The innovation could be used to power internet-connected devices and smart clothing, said the study’s senior author, Ray Baughman, a professor at the University of Texas-Dallas.

“Electronic textiles are of major commercial interest, but how are you going to power them?” Baughman said in a statement.

“Harvesting electrical energy from human motion is one strategy for eliminating the need for batteries,” he said.

Seawater operation

But the twistron’s most compelling feature was the ability to operate in seawater and potentially harvest vast amounts of energy from the ocean, he added.

“The grander dream is to make a real difference in the energy economy of nations,” Baughman told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

A trial in South Korea showed that a small twistron attached between a buoy and a sinker on the seabed produced electricity every time a passing wave pulled it.

Baughman said that the technique could be scaled up in the future to create sea-power stations that can light entire cities, though harvesters are currently too expansive.

Under the Paris accord reached in 2015, rich and poor countries committed to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases generated by burning fossil fuels that are blamed by scientists for warming the planet.
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Amazon will close its $13.7 billion buyout of Whole Foods Market Inc. on Monday and plans to cut prices on grocery staples.

 

Starting Monday, Whole Foods will offer lower prices on bananas, eggs, salmon, beef, and other products. Looking ahead, the Seattle company hopes to give Amazon Prime members special savings and other in-store benefits.

Also, certain Whole Foods products will be available through Amazon.com, AmazonFresh, Prime Pantry and Prime Now.

Whole Foods shareholders approved the deal Wednesday, and the Federal Trade Commission said it would not block the deal. Amazon will pay Whole Foods shareholders $42 per share, marking an 18 percent premium from its stock price the day before the tie-up was announced on June 16.

Earlier this month, Amazon.com Inc. sold $16 billion of bonds in order to pay for the purchase.

By buying Whole Foods, Amazon is taking a bold step into brick-and-mortar, with more than 460 stores and potentially very lucrative data about how shoppers behave offline.

Meanwhile, rivals are scrambling to catch up with the e-commerce giant. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which has the largest share of the U.S. grocery market, is expanding its grocery delivery service with ride-hailing service Uber and announced Wednesday that it will join forces with Google to let shoppers order goods by voice on Google devices.
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In recent years, the U.S. space program has been supporting a broader range of commercial interests, which has led to more companies getting into the space business. One such U.S. company, NanoRacks, is a full-service operation that gets science experiments from around the world into space. The company made history recently with a client from China. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee explains from Houston.
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Britain will set out a plan to cooperate closely with Europe on data protection rules after it leaves the European Union, hoping to reassure businesses and law enforcement agencies that there will be no disruption to exchanges of information.

Minister for Digital Matt Hancock said Britain was leading the way on data protection laws and had worked closely with its EU partners in developing standards.

“We want the secure flow of data to be unhindered in the future as we leave the EU,” he said. “So a strong future data relationship between the U.K. and EU, based on aligned data protection rules, is in our mutual interest.”

In the latest paper looking at its future relationship with the EU, the British government said it would outline Thursday how it wanted collaboration in data security to continue.

Privacy, flexibility

“Our goal is to combine strong privacy rules with a relationship that allows flexibility, to give consumers and businesses certainty in their use of data,” Hancock said.

Noting that the digital economy in Britain was worth 118.4 billion pounds ($151.5 billion) in 2015, he said any disruption in the free flow of data could be costly both to Britain and to the remaining members of the bloc.

British lawmakers said last month the country could be put at a competitive disadvantage and the police could lose access to intelligence if the government failed to retain unhindered flows of data.

Britain has published a number of papers this month to try to nudge negotiations with the EU on Brexit forward, tackling subjects such as laws, customs and the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.
…

Els van der Heijden, who has cystic fibrosis, was finding it ever harder to breathe as her lungs filled with thick, sticky mucus. Despite taking more than a dozen pills and inhalers a day, the 53-year-old had to stop working and scale back doing the thing she loved best, horseback riding.

Doctors saw no sense in trying an expensive new drug because it hasn’t been proven to work in people with the rare type of cystic fibrosis that van der Heijden had.

Instead, they scraped a few cells from van der Heijden and used them to grow a mini version of her large intestine in a petri dish. When van der Heijden’s “mini gut” responded to treatment, doctors knew it would help her too.

“I really felt, physically, like a different person,” van der Heijden said after taking a drug — and getting back in the saddle.

Someday for transplants?

This experiment to help people with rare forms of cystic fibrosis in the Netherlands aims to grow mini intestines for every Dutch patient with the disease to figure out, in part, what treatment might work for them. It’s an early application of a technique now being worked on in labs all over the world, as researchers learn to grow organs outside of the body for treatment — and maybe someday for transplants.

So far, doctors have grown mini guts — just the size of a pencil point — for 450 of the Netherlands’ roughly 1,500 cystic fibrosis patients.

 

“The mini guts are small, but they are complete,” said Dr. Hans Clevers of the Hubrecht Institute, who pioneered the technique. Except for muscles and blood vessels, the tiny organs “have everything you would expect to see in a real gut, only on a really small scale.”

These so-called organoids mimic features of full-size organs, but don’t function the same way. Although many of the tiny replicas are closer to undeveloped organs found in an embryo than adult ones, they are helping scientists unravel how organs mature and providing clues on how certain diseases might be treated.

Mini kidneys in Australia

 In Australia, mini kidneys are being grown that could be used to test drugs. Researchers in the U.S. are experimenting with tiny bits of livers that might be used to boost failing organs. At Cambridge University in England, scientists have created hundreds of mini brains to study how neurons form and better understand disorders like autism. During the height of the Zika epidemic last year, mini brains were used to show the virus causes malformed brains in babies.

 

In the Netherlands, the mini guts are used as a stand-in for cystic fibrosis patients to see if those with rare mutations might benefit from a number of pricey drugs, including Orkambi. Made by Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Orkambi costs about 100,000 euros per patient every year in some parts of Europe, and it’s more than double that in the U.S., which approved the drug in 2015. Despite being initially rejected by the Dutch government for being too expensive, negotiations with Vertex were reopened in July.  

 

Making a single mini gut and testing whether the patient would benefit from certain drugs costs a couple of thousand euros. The program is paid for by groups including health insurance companies, patient foundations and the government. The idea is to find a possible treatment for patients, and avoid putting them on expensive drugs that wouldn’t work for them.

 

About 50 to 60 patients across the Netherlands have been treated after drugs were tested on organoids using their cells, said Dr. Kors van der Ent, a cystic fibrosis specialist at the Wilhelmina Children’s Hospital, who leads the research.

Mutations in single gene

 

Clevers made a discovery about a decade ago that got researchers on their way. They found pockets of stem cells, which can turn into many types of other cells, in the gut. They then homed in a growing environment in the lab that spurred these cells to reproduce rapidly and develop.  

 

“To our surprise, the stem cells started building a mini version of the gut,” Clevers recalled.  

 

Cystic fibrosis is caused by mutations in a single gene that produces a protein called CFTR, responsible for balancing the salt content of cells lining the lungs and other organs.

 

To see if certain drugs might help cystic fibrosis patients, the medicines are given to their custom-made organoids in the lab. If the mini organs puff up, it’s a sign the cells are now correctly balancing salt and water. That means the drugs are working, and could help the patient from whom the mini gut was made.

Mini organs vs. cancer

Researchers are also using the mini guts to try another approach they hope will someday work in people — using a gene editing technique to repair the faulty cystic fibrosis gene in the organoid cells.

 

Other experiments are underway in the Netherlands and the U.S. to test whether organoids might help pinpoint treatments for cancers involving lungs, ovaries and pancreas.

 

While the idea sounds promising, some scientists said there are obstacles to using mini organs to study cancer.

 

Growing a mini cancer tumor, for example, would be far more challenging because scientists have found it difficult to make tumors in the lab that behave like in real life, said Mathew Garnett of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, who has studied cancer in mini organs but is not connected to Clevers’ research.

Huge hurdles remain

 

Also, growing the cells and testing them must happen faster for cancer patients who might not have much time to live, he said.

 

Meanwhile, Clevers wants to one day make organs that are not so mini.

 

“My dream would be to be able to custom-make organs,” he said, imagining a future where doctors might have a “freezer full of livers” to choose from when sick patients arrive.

 

Others said while such a vision is theoretically possible, huge hurdles remain.

 

“There are still enormous challenges in tissue engineering with regards to the size of the structure we’re able to grow,” said Jim Wells, a pediatrics professor at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. He said the mini organs are far smaller than what would be needed to transplant into people and it’s unclear if scientists can make a working, life-sized organ in the lab.

Complex interplay

There are other limitations to growing miniature organs in a dish, said Madeline Lancaster at Cambridge University.  

 

“We can study physical changes and try to generate drugs that could prevent detrimental effects of disease, but we can’t look at the complex interplay between organs and the body,” she said.

 

For patients like van der Heijden, who was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis as a toddler, the research has helped her regain her strength. Vertex agreed to supply her with the drug.

 

“It was like somebody opened the curtains and said, ‘Sunshine, here I am, please come out and play.’” she said. “It’s strange to think this is all linked to some of my cells in a lab.”
…

The U.S. Defense Department is making another multimillion-dollar investment in high-energy lasers that have the potential to destroy enemy drones and mortars, disrupt communication systems and provide military forces with other portable, less costly options on the battlefield.

U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich, a New Mexico Democrat who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee and is a longtime supporter of directed-energy research, announced the $17 million investment during a news conference Wednesday inside a Boeing lab where many of the innovations were developed.

The U.S. already has the ability to shoot down enemy rockets and take out other threats with traditional weapons, but Heinrich said it’s expensive.

High-energy lasers and microwave systems represent a shift to weapons with essentially endless ammunition and the ability to wipe out multiple threats in a short amount of time, he said.

“This is ready for prime time,” Heinrich, who has an engineering degree, said of the concept.

Boeing has been working on high-energy laser and microwave weapons systems for years. The effort included a billion-dollar project to outfit a 747 with a laser cannon that could shoot down missiles while airborne. The system was complex and filled the entire back half of the massive plane.

Size of a suitcase

With advancements over the past two decades, high-powered laser weapons systems can now fit into a large suitcase for transport across the battlefield or be mounted to a vehicle for targeting something as small as the device that controls the wings of a military drone.

“Laser technology has moved from science fiction to real life,” said Ron Dauk, head of Boeing’s Albuquerque site.

The company’s compact laser system has undergone testing by the military, and engineers are working on a higher-powered version for testing next year.

While the technology has matured, Dauk and Heinrich said the exciting part is that it’s on the verge of moving from the lab to the battlefield.

 

Another $200 million has been requested in this year’s defense appropriations bill that would establish a program within the Pentagon for accelerating the transition of directed-energy research to real applications.

Heinrich said continued investment in such projects will help solidify New Mexico’s position as a leading site of directed-energy research and bring more money and high-tech jobs to the state.

Boeing already contributes about $120 million to the state’s economy through its contracts with vendors.
…

Protecting people rather than property or animals will be the priority under pioneering new German legal guidelines for the operation of driverless cars, the transport ministry said on Wednesday.

Germany is home to some of the world’s largest car companies, including Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW, all of which are investing heavily in self-driving technology.

German regulators have been working on rules for how such vehicles should be programmed to deal with a dilemma, such as choosing between hitting a cyclist or accelerating beyond legal speeds to avoid an accident.

Under new ethical guidelines — drawn up by a government-appointed committee comprising experts in ethics, law and technology — the software that controls such cars must be programmed to avoid injury or death of people at all cost.

That means that when an accident is unavoidable, the software must choose whichever action will hurt people the least, even if that means destroying property or hitting animals in the road, a transport ministry statement showed.

The software may not decide on its course of action based on the age, sex or physical condition of any people involved.

“The interactions of humans and machines is throwing up new ethical questions in the age of digitalization and self-learning systems,” German Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt said in a a statement.

“The ministry’s ethics commission has pioneered the cause and drawn up the world’s first set of guidelines for automated driving,” he added.

Germany earlier this year passed legislation under which a driver must be sitting behind the wheel at all times ready to take back control if prompted to do so by the autonomous vehicle, clearing the way for the development and testing of self-driving cars.
…

Samsung Electronics set out to wipe the slate clean in New York on Wednesday with a new Galaxy Note 8 phablet, hoping features such as dual rear cameras and its biggest-ever screen will extinguish memories of its fire-prone predecessor.

The world’s largest smartphone maker by market share has put safety at the center of a phone-cum-tablet that is likely to compete for pre-holiday season sales with a widely expected 10th anniversary iPhone from U.S. rival Apple Inc.

The unveiling comes five months after the release of the Galaxy S8 smartphone. Analysts said brisk sales of that device indicate recovery in Samsung’s standing, after battery fires prompted the October withdrawal of the Galaxy Note 7 just two months into sales at an opportunity cost of $5.48 billion.

The fires briefly lost Samsung its No. 1 rank, showed data from researcher Counterpoint. It has since regained ground, with Strategy Analytics putting its April-June share at 22 percent — more than Apple and China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd combined.

Cumulative sales of the S8 and S8+, released in the period, were 15 percent over those of the S7, Samsung said in July.

Samsung’s Note series usually sport bigger screens than the S series and come equipped with a removable stylus. The trademark curved screen of the latest incarnation measures 6.3 inches corner to corner, a mere 0.1 inch bigger than the S8+.

The South Korean firm has been a principle driver of growth in handsets with 6 inch-plus screens, a category which Strategy Analytics expects to grow 10 times faster than the overall market next year.

Samsung has also installed dual rear cameras on a handset for the first time, adding the Note 8 to a trend which promises improved photographic control and picture quality.

Other features include security technology, such as facial recognition and fingerprint and iris scanning, and artificial intelligence in the form of Samsung’s Bixby voice-command assistant.

The Note 8 will be sold from mid-September, Samsung said, without elaborating on place or price.
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Starbucks coffee shops recently installed the fastest Wi-Fi we regular folks can enjoy. It’s a blazing 9 megabits per second. But researchers in the Netherlands have some Wi-Fi that leaves that in the dust. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Researchers who warned half a dozen robot manufacturers in January about nearly 50 vulnerabilities in their home, business and industrial robots, say only a few of the problems have been addressed.

The researchers, Cesar Cerrudo and Lucas Apa of cybersecurity firm IOActive, said the vulnerabilities would allow hackers to spy on users, disable safety features and make robots lurch and move violently, putting users and bystanders in danger.

While they say there are no signs that hackers have exploited the vulnerabilities, they say the fact that the robots were hacked so easily and the manufacturers’ lack of response raise questions about allowing robots in homes, offices and factories.

“Our research shows proof that even non-military robots could be weaponized to cause harm,” Apa said in an interview. “These robots don’t use bullets or explosives, but microphones, cameras, arms and legs. The difference is that they will be soon around us and we need to secure them now before it’s too late.”

His comments come in the wake of a letter signed by more than 100 leading robotic experts urging the United Nations to ban the development of killer military robots, or autonomous weapons.

Apa, a senior security consultant, said that of the six manufacturers contacted, only one, Rethink Robotics, said some of the problems had been fixed. He said he had not been able to confirm that as his team does not have access to that particular robot.

A spokesman for Rethink Robotics, which makes the Baxter and Sawyer assembly-line robots, said all but two issues — in the education and research versions of its robots — had been fixed.

Apa said a review of updates from the other five manufacturers — Universal Robots of Denmark, SoftBank Robotics and Asratec Corp. of Japan, Ubtech of China, and Robotis Inc. of South Korea — led him to believe none of the issues he had raised had been fixed.

Asratec said that software released for its robots so far was limited to “hobby use sample programs,” and it believed IOActive was pointing to security vulnerabilities in those.

Software it planned to release for commercial use would be different, it said.

Robotis declined to comment. The three other manufacturers did not immediately respond to emailed requests for comment.

The slow reaction by the robot industry was not surprising, said Joshua Ziering, founder of drone manufacturer Kittyhawk.io.

“A new technology bursts on to the market and people fail to secure it,” he said.

Alarming threat

Cybersecurity experts said the robot vulnerabilities were alarming, and cybercriminals could use them to disrupt factories by ransomware attacks, or with robots slowed down or forced to embed flaws in the products they are programmed to build.

“The potential impact to companies, and even countries, could be massive,” said Nathan Wenzler, chief security strategist at AsTech, a San Francisco-based security consulting company, “should an attacker exploit the vulnerability within the applications that control these robots.”

Even in the home, danger lurks, said Apa, demonstrating how a 17-inch- (43.18-cm) tall Alpha 2 robot from Ubtech could be programmed to violently jab a screwdriver.

“Maybe it’s small and it’s not really going to hurt right now, but the trend is that the robots are going to be more powerful,” he said. “We tested industrial ones which are really heavy and powerful, and some of the attacks work with them.”

Apa and Cerrudo released their initial findings in January.

This week, they released details about the specific vulnerabilities they found, including one case where they mix several of those vulnerabilities together to hijack a Universal Robot factory robot, making it lurch about and be a potential threat.
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A common complaint for busy, stressed out people is not being able to find the time and place to unwind. A new smartphone application promises to solve these problems by helping users practice an old Chinese form of healing meditation while on the go. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.
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Americans gazed in wonder through telescopes, cameras and protective glasses Monday as the moon began blotting out the midday sun in the first full-blown solar eclipse to sweep the U.S. from coast to coast in nearly a century.

“The show has just begun, people! What a gorgeous day! Isn’t this great people?” Jim Todd, a director at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, told a crowd of thousands at an amphitheater in Salem, Oregon, as the moon seemed to take an ever-bigger bite out of the sun.

The celestial show was expected to be the most observed and photographed eclipse in history, with millions staking out prime viewing spots and settling into lawn chairs to watch, especially along the path of totality — the projected line of shadow created when the sun is completely obscured. The path was 60 to 70 miles (96 to 113 kilometers) wide, running from Oregon to South Carolina.

With 200 million people within a day’s drive from the path of totality, towns and parks braced for monumental crowds. Clear skies beckoned along most of the route, to the relief of those who feared cloud cover would spoil this once-in-a-lifetime moment.

Astronomers were giddy with excitement. A solar eclipse is considered one of the grandest of cosmic spectacles.

The Earth, moon and sun line up perfectly every one to three years, briefly turning day into night for a sliver of the planet. But these sights normally are in no man’s land, like the vast Pacific or Earth’s poles. This is the first eclipse of the social media era to pass through such a heavily populated area.

The moon hasn’t thrown this much shade at the U.S. since 1918. That was the country’s last coast-to-coast total eclipse. In fact, the U.S. mainland hasn’t seen a total solar eclipse since 1979 — and even then, only five states in the Northwest experienced total darkness.

Scientists said Monday’s total eclipse would cast a shadow that would race 2,600 miles (4,200 kilometers) through 14 states, entering near Lincoln City, Oregon, at 1:16 p.m. EDT, moving diagonally across the heartland over Casper, Wyoming, Carbondale, Illinois, and Nashville, Tennessee, and then exiting near Charleston, South Carolina, at 2:47 p.m. EDT.

Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois was in line to see the longest stretch of darkness: 2 minutes and 44 seconds.

All of North America was on track to get at least a partial eclipse, along with Central America and the top of South America.

In the southern Illinois village of Makanda, population 560 and home of the Eclipse Kitchen, lawn chairs were out and excitement was building.

“More and more people are coming in all the time,” said Debbie Dunn, designated car parker for the day.

Joe Roth, an amateur photographer, traveled south from the Chicago area to Alto Pass, Illinois, to catch his first total solar eclipse — on his 62nd birthday, no less. He said the stars aligned for him — “a Kodak moment for me to cherish and experience.”

Kim Kniseley drove overnight from Roanoke, Virginia, arriving in Madisonville, Tennessee, before dawn to get a parking spot at Kefauver Park, where by sunrise dozens of folks had claimed benches and set up tents.

He said he could have stayed home in Roanoke and seen a partial eclipse of 90 percent, but that would have been like “going to a rock concert and you’re standing in the parking lot.”

NASA and other scientists were in position to watch and analyze from telescopes on the ground and in orbit, the International Space Station, airplanes and scores of high-altitude balloons beaming back live video.

From aboard the space station, NASA astronaut Jack Fischer tweeted out a photo showing about a dozen cameras ready for action.

“All hands (cameras) on deck for #SolarEclipse2017 today,” he wrote, adding: “Don’t forget to protect your eyeballs!”

Hundreds of amateur astronomers converged on Casper, Wyoming. Among them was Mike O’Leary, whose camera was outfitted with a homemade eclipse filter, its focus and aperture settings locked in with blue painter’s tape. He was there to log his ninth eclipse.

“It’s like nothing else you will ever see or ever do,” O’Leary said. “It can be religious. It makes you feel insignificant, like you’re just a speck in the whole scheme of things.”

Citizen scientists also planned to monitor animal and plant behavior as daylight turned into twilight and the temperature dropped. Thousands of people streamed into the Nashville Zoo just to watch the animals’ reaction.

Scientists warned people not to look into the sun without protection, except when the sun is 100 percent covered. Otherwise, to avoid eye damage, keep the solar specs on or use pinhole projectors that can cast an image of the eclipse into a box.

The next total solar eclipse in the U.S. will be in 2024. The next coast-to-coast one will not be until 2045.
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Online abuse will be treated as seriously as offline offences, Britain’s prosecution service said on Monday in new guidance on handling hate crimes.

The rules – which included guidelines on helping disabled and bisexual victims – were meant to encourage more people to come forward and press courts to impose longer sentences, the Crown Prosecution Service said.

“This is a crime that’s under-reported. Sometimes people feel that they just have to put up with it … That’s absolutely not the case,” Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecutions, told the BBC.

The new advice was in response to the growth of social media, the CPS said. There have been several high-profile instances of successful prosecutions of people who had abused lawmakers and other public figures online.
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“It’s still fresh in my mind, the scene of female genital mutilation,” said Purity Achieng, a 17-year-old from Kenya. 

 

Achieng was speaking on stage in the finals of the Technovation Challenge World Pitch Summit, a competition that invites girls from around the world to come up with tech solutions to local community problems. Since it began in 2009, 15,000 girls from more than 100 countries have participated in the competition.

 

Achieng and her team of four other Kenyan teen girls call themselves “The Restorers.” They are taking on Female Genital Mutilation or FGM. They have created an app, called i-Cut, which connects girls at risk of FGM with rescue agents and offers support for those who have already been cut. It also provides information for anyone seeking to learn more about the practice.

 

“The pain of having your clitoris cut just because someone wants to have you go through a ‘rite of passage,’” said Achieng, during her pitch at the competition. “It’s painful and no one wants to listen to you. You cry and there you are, almost dying but nobody is caring about that.”

 

At least 200 million girls and women have undergone female genital mutilation or FGM in 30 countries, reports UNICEF.And 44 million are girls 14 and younger. The practice involves cutting out all or part of a woman’s clitoris, which is said to eliminate almost completely a woman’s sexual pleasure, in hopes of ensuring her virginity and keeping her faithful in marriage.

 

The Kenyan girls in this competition have not experienced FGM firsthand, as their tribe does not practice it, but they have friends who have. One of Achieng’s best friends was forced to drop out of school and into an early marriage at 15 after FGM, which greatly affected Achieng.

 

“I think for teenagers to be able to identify problems around them and provide a solution, that is really, really inspiring,” said Dorcas Owinoh, the team’s mentor, who works as a community manager at LakeHub, a technology innovation hub in Kisumu, Kenya. It was Owinoh who brought the idea of the Technovation Challenge to the team. 

Achieng said it was her friend dropping out of school after FGM that inspired the team to create the app.

 

Other teams in the international event came from Armenia, Kazakhstan, Canada, Cambodia, the U.S. and other countries. The Restorers were the only team who qualified from the African continent.

 

“It’s always better when the people who face the problems, come up with their own solutions because they’re the most organic,” said Tara Chklovski, founder and CEO or Iridescent, the nonprofit behind Technovation.

 

Though the i-Cut app has the potential to save lives, it has not been embraced by all Kenyans.

 

“One village elder drove six hours to their school to protest the app because, according to him, that’s an African culture and the girls are being, according to him, Westernized,” Owinoh said. 

 

The man had learned of the app after local media reported of the girl’s acceptance into Technovation. Owinoh said school leaders and teachers remained calm, spoke with him, and then asked him to leave.

 

Technovation comes at a time when women in tech are facing blowback, not just in Kenya, but even at the Google headquarters where the competition was held.A Google employee was recently fired after writing a memo positing that women are biologically inferior to men in regards to working in technology.

 

“I know the journey won’t always be easy but to the girls who dream of being an engineer or an entrepreneur and who dream of creating amazing things, I want you to know that there’s a place for you in this industry, there’s a place for you at Google—don’t let anyone tell you otherwise,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai told the girls.

 

The Restorers did not win the Technovation Challenge, but they will continue their fight against FGM and hope to get i-Cut into the Google Play Store soon.
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At least 200 million girls and women have undergone female genital mutilation in 30 countries. And according to UNICEF, 44 million are girls 14 years old and younger. One group of Kenyan teens is standing up to this archaic so called “right of passage” and offering would be victims a possibly life saving alternative — with an app. Deana Mitchell reports from Silicon Valley.
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How does a former stay-at-home mom become an employee of a tech company that could be worth more than $1 billion?

For Ellein Cheng, mom to a 5½- and a 2½-year-old, the answer involved a “returnship.”

So-called returnships are internships that target men and women who have been out of the workforce, either for childrearing or other caregiving. It gives them a chance to retrain in a new field.

In Cheng’s case, the former math teacher and tutor took a returnship at AppNexus, an online advertising company.

For companies, returnships are an opportunity to tap into more mature and professionally diverse talent pools. For participants who may be out of the workforce, it’s a chance to refresh their networks, learn new skills and try on new roles.

Beneficial arrangement

For both parties, it’s a low-risk, low-commitment arrangement. Companies can achieve their goals to make the employee ranks more diverse. Job seekers can potentially find full-time work.

Cheng’s returnship was set up by Path Forward [[www.pathforward.org/]], a New York-based nonprofit that works with tech companies to coordinate 16-week, paid assignments for those who have been away from the labor market for two or more years because of caregiving.

The organization partners with tech companies that range in size from 30-person startups to behemoths such as PayPal, which has more than 10,000 employees.

“What these companies of every size in the tech sector have in common is rapid growth, and also not enough talent to fulfill their needs,” said Tami Forman, executive director at Path Forward.

Women re-entering the workforce often struggle to explain the gap in their resume and find employment harder to come by, Forman said.

“They often get feedback from companies and recruiters and hiring managers that makes them believe that they’ll never be hired, that no one will ever overlook their gap,” she said. The organization says it gets results — 40 out of the 50 women who have gone through the program were offered ongoing employment at the companies in which they interned.

Teaching background

In her job search, Cheng applied for teaching positions but was also open to other fields. The product support work struck a chord with her in its appeal for candidates “passionate about learning and teaching.”

The program gave both managers and participants the chance to see if a long-term opportunity would be the right fit for them.

It also provided a dose of inspiration.

Other employees were “inspired to see people stepping out of their comfort zone, taking a big risk, working on something they haven’t done before,” Lorraine Buhannic, senior director of talent acquisition at AppNexus, said.

For Cheng, the inspiration came from a more personal place — her daughters.

They are growing up “in a world that is changing so quickly with technology, and I just want to be part of that,” she said. “I want to grow with them, I want to learn with them.”

In the end, the match worked. After the returnship, AppNexus hired Cheng as a product support specialist.

Now working in the fast-paced world of online advertising, Cheng says she doesn’t feel she has left her old self behind.

“I’m still obviously learning a lot, because I’m switching careers completely, but at the same time, still bringing the teaching element part of it every day to work,” she said.
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The lack of women and diversity in the tech industry remains a headline issue, but so-called “returnship” programs are giving companies the chance to tap into a new talent pool — former stay-at-home moms and dads. How do their skills translate in the tech world? VOA’s Tina Trinh explains.
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