Almost half of Universities may be gone in 5 to 10 years, professor admits

 

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Scott Galloway, lecturer in Marketing at New York University, speaking at the DLD (Digital-Life-Design) conference in Munich, Germany, 18 January 2016.

An NYU professor of business surmises that because of the effects of the coronavirus, anywhere from one-quarter to almost one-half of universities in the nation may go out of business in the next five to ten years. NYU professor Scott Galloway also admitted that foreign students paying full tuition are the “cash cow” for universities and “might decide not to show up.” He commented, “What department stores were to retail, tier-two higher tuition universities are about to become to education and that is they are soon going to become the walking dead.”

Speaking with Hari Sreenivasanon on PBS’ “Amanpour and Co.,” Galloway spoke of the impact of the coronavirus on colleges and universities, forcing them to hold their classes over the internet, and how that may catalyze flight from the universities and the universities’ subsequent downfall. Galloway stated, “Students I think across America along with their families listening in on these Zoom classes are all beginning to wonder what kind of value, or lack thereof, they’re getting for their tuition dollars … There’s generally a recognition or disappointment across America, and I would argue that it’s not that they’re disappointed in the Zoom classes, it’s more the recognition that Zoom has uncovered how disappointing college education is. I think there’s a lot of households saying, ‘This is what we’re paying for?’”

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These hungry superworms happily munch through plastic

 

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A superworm can eat about eight times more than other plastic-ingesting insects.

Recycling seems like a simple cure for our plastic addiction: just take the plastic we have and make it into new items. But problems abound. Current technology mostly creates plastic of a lower quality than it was before, many types of plastic aren’t recyclable at all, and much of the plastic is floating in the ocean, not even in the recycling stream. So it’s vital that we find new ways to break down plastic, and scientists have just discovered one: a superworm that can eat about eight times more than other plastic-ingesting insects like mealworms.

Superworms are actually beetle larvae, and commonly sold at pet stores as food for reptiles and fish. In a paper recently published by the American Chemical Society, researchers Jiaojie Li, Dae-Hwan Kim, and their team detail how they placed 50 superworms in a chamber with two grams of polystyrene. After 21 days, the superworms had consumed about 70% of the polystyrene.

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Bryter raises $16M for a no-code platform for non-technical people to build enterprise automation apps

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Automation is the name of the game in enterprise IT at the moment: We now have a plethora of solutions on the market to speed up your workflow, simplify a process and perform more repetitive tasks without humans getting involved. Now, a startup that is helping non-technical people get more directly involved in how to make automation work better for their tasks is announcing some funding to seize the opportunity

Bryter — a no-code platform based in Berlin that lets workers in departments like accounting, legal, compliance and marketing who do not have any special technical or developer skills build tools like chatbots, trigger automated database and document actions and risk assessors — is today announcing that it has raised $16 million. This is a Series A round being co-led by Accel and Dawn Capital, with Notion Capital and Chalfen Ventures also participating.

The funding comes less than a year after Bryter raised a seed round — $6 million in November 2019 — and it was oversubscribed, with term sheets coming in from many of the bigger VCs in Europe and the U.S. With this funding, the company has now raised around $25 million, and while the valuation is considerably up on the last round, Bryter is not disclosing what it is.

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Germany requires all gas stations to provide EV charging

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As part of Germany’s new increased electric-vehicle incentive package, the country will require gas stations to offer EV charging. Details about the plan are not yet known, such as the timeline and type of required chargers. But EV advocates quickly praised the move as a boost to electric-car adoption.

BDEW, Germany’s association for energy and water industries, believes that at least 70,000 charging stations and 7,000 fast-charging stations are required to achieve a mass market for EVs in the country. BDEW reports that there are currently about 28,000 stations in Germany.

According to Reuters, electric cars made up only 1.8% of new passenger car registrations last year in Germany, with diesel and petrol cars accounting for 32% and 59.2%, respectively.

New German EV incentives double existing subsidies to €6,000 ($6,720) on electric vehicles costing up to €40,000 ($44,800). Germany will also implement higher taxes for fuel-thirsty, internal-combustion SUVs.

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Tesla announces massive Supercharger expansion in China to support growth

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Tesla announced plans to install 4,000 Superchargers in China this year alone in order to support its growth in the market.

 Over the last five years, Tesla has deployed over 2,500 Supercharger stalls in over 150 cities in China.

At their Shanghai office last week, the automaker announced its plan to deploy 4,000 Superchargers in the country in 2020 alone.

This is a massive acceleration of Supercharger deployment for Tesla in China.

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Mini human livers grown from stem cells successfully implanted into rats

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Miniature human livers can be grown from stem cells and implanted into rats – and hopefully, one day humans

 Imagine needing a liver transplant, and instead of waiting for a donor, a new one could be grown from your own skin cells. Scientists have now taken quite a big step towards that future, by successfully transplanting miniature human livers grown from induced pluripotent stem cells (IPSCs) into rats.

Organ transplants save lives, but there are hurdles to overcome. For one, there’s a constant shortage of donors and, even when one is found, the patient’s immune system often rejects the new tissue.

Growing a replacement organ from a patient’s own cells could solve both problems. It can be done on demand when a patient needs one, and the organ won’t be rejected because the immune system recognizes the cells as “self.”

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Hadrian X brick-laying robot ups the ante to 200 blocks an hour

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The Hadrian robot was created by Australian firm Fastbrick Robotics (FBR) and is named after the UK’s Hadrian Wall

Back in 2015 we looked at an interesting approach to automated construction in the form of a brick-laying robot, capable of putting together full-sized homes in just two days. The engineers behind the Hadrian X have continued making software improvements and have now announced a new record brick-laying speed, which they say makes the robot commercially competitive with manual workers around much of the world.

The Hadrian X robot was created by Australian firm Fastbrick Robotics (FBR) and is named after the UK’s Hadrian Wall. It features a telescopic boom that mounts to an excavator or truck, which is fed a 3D CAD model of a house and goes about placing bricks along with mortar and adhesive to build out the structure.

While the team has concept demonstrator robots designed to one day achieve laying rates of more than 1,000 bricks an hour, on the practical side things have been a little more slow-going. Software upgrades to the Hadrian X have seen it go from laying around 85 blocks an hour before the COVID-19 pandemic, to around 150 blocks an hour, and then onward to up over 200 blocks an hour.

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7 ways companies can deliver better virtual events

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“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” — William Shakespeare

Audiences still want what audiences want: content, community and connections. There are seven ways businesses can deliver what their audiences want through live events delivered virtually.

What happens when that stage no longer has a jumbotron, special effects, and a state-of-the-art sound system? How do you amplify your pitch and your prospects when front row, center stage seats go virtual? While the context has shifted, the demand for events that create connections and convert leads into sales haven’t.

“Audiences still want what audiences want: content, community and connections,” reminds Bari Baumgardner, an event planning veteran and founder of SAGE Event Management. “The question is how to deliver what audiences want through live events delivered virtually.” To stage a performance that leaves your audience wanting more – and results in revenue and raving fans – create a backdrop for success with these leading practices.

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New study : Every electric car brings $10,000 in life-saving benefits

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Converting all cars and SUVs in the Greater Toronto area into electric vehicles would cause 313 fewer deaths per year, an estimated social benefit of $2.4 billion. That’s the high-level finding of a study published today by Environmental Defence and the Ontario Public Health Association.

EV drivers cite numerous reasons for ditching a gas car and buying an EV: lower operating costs, high resale values, quick and quiet acceleration, and mitigating climate change. But what’s more compelling than saving human lives?

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The U.S. Navy wants more robot submarines : Study

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Orca Submarine Robot Submarine U.S. Navy

Cheaper and better?

What the United States Navy wants and what the United States Navy will be able to afford in the coming years is unlikely to match up, and as it continues to address increasingly powerful Chinese and Russian navies, this could give a lot of people many a sleepless night. China is currently testing out the Shandong, its first domestically-built aircraft carrier while Russia continues to bolster its fleets in a slow but methodical manner.

As the same time President Trump cut the Navy’s shipbuilding budget by $4 billion, according to the 2021 budget request outlined earlier this year, the Navy would acquire 44 vessels through 2025—down from a planned 55 vessels.

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Eye, robot: Artificial intelligence dramatically improves accuracy of classic eye exam

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The classic eye exam may be about to get an upgrade. Researchers have developed an online vision test—fueled by artificial intelligence (AI)—that produces much more accurate diagnoses than the sheet of capital letters we’ve been staring at since the 19th century. If perfected, the test could also help patients with eye diseases track their vision at home.

“It’s an intriguing idea” that reveals just how antiquated the classic eye test is, says Laura Green, an ophthalmologist at the Krieger Eye Institute. Green was not involved with the work, but she studies ways to use technology to improve access to health care.

The classic eye exam, known as the Snellen chart, has been around since 1862. The farther down the sheet a person can read, the better their vision. The test is quick and easy to administer, but it has problems, says Chris Piech, a computer scientist at Stanford University. Patients start to guess at letters when they become blurry, he says, which means they can get different scores each time they take the test.

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6 charts that show what employers and employees really think about remote working

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Remote working has meant many people are skipping their morning commute.

COVID-19 has lead to more and more employees working from home.

98% of people surveyed said they would like the option to work remotely for the rest of their careers.

But not everything is positive, with workers finding the biggest challenge is ‘unplugging’ from work.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly one-third of the U.S. workforce, and half of all “information workers”, are able to work from home. Though the number of people working partially or fully remote has been on the rise for years now, the COVID-19 pandemic may have pressed the fast-forward button on this trend.

With millions of people taking part in this work-from-home experiment, it’s worth asking the question – how do people and companies actually feel about working from home?

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