K-12 students have been educated online since March, and parents fear they are falling behind.
With most schools across the US closed since March to slow the spread of the coronavirus, some ultrawealthy parents are hiring private educators to make sure their kids don’t fall behind.
Some of these educators are former teachers or people who have degrees in education, and they charge between $25 and $60 an hour for their services.
Some parents may continue to employ these professionals to homeschool their kids even after schools reopen in the fall in case the US experiences a second wave of the coronavirus, as some experts expect.
Educators are concerned that lower-income families’ lack of internet access will further widen the achievement gap between rich and poor students when schools eventually reopen.
If a hospital in Huntersville, North Carolina, needs to quickly replenish its supply of surgical masks and gowns as the COVID-19 pandemic continues, it will now be able to summon a drone to make a delivery. Novant Health, the nonprofit that runs the hospital and hundreds of other facilities in the Southeast, just became the first hospital system to be granted a drone operator permit from the FAA. The system will begin the first long-range, ongoing drone deliveries in the U.S., using technology from Zipline, a startup that first launched its services in Africa.
“We believe this will allow us to, in a very precise, on-demand way, get supplies to where they need to be exactly when they need to be there,” says Angela Yochem, executive vice president and chief digital and technology officer at Novant Health. The organization already has a well-tuned distribution system, and has calculated that if coronavirus cases surge in the region, it has enough personal protective equipment to cover the need. But it also wanted to do everything possible to prepare for the crisis—and will eventually use the same system to make more routine deliveries.
One-in-ten eligible voters in the 2020 electorate will be part of a new generation of Americans – Generation Z. Born after 1996, most members of this generation are not yet old enough to vote, but as the oldest among them turn 23 this year, roughly 24 million will have the opportunity to cast a ballot in November. And their political clout will continue to grow steadily in the coming years, as more and more of them reach voting age.
With the president pushing for children to return to the classroom and a number of states intent on pursuing phased reopenings, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released guidance for reopening schools. But a new Ipsos poll conducted on behalf of USA Today has found that if schools reopen in the fall, they may find attendance down as many parents will likely continue at-home learning.
While more than half of Americans polled, just more than 2,000, said they supported a range of suggested proposals for reopening schools for in-classroom learning in the fall, a majority of the parents surveyed appeared hesitant to return their children to school before a vaccine had been found. A total of 59% of parents surveyed who had at least one child in a K-12 grade said they would “likely” pursue at-home education options such as homeschooling or remote learning instead of sending their children back into the classroom. Another 30% said they were “very likely” to continue to pursue at-home learning.
The CEO of Skylum notes that we will now understand how things can work when people are purely focused on productivity and communication, and that is going to change everything.
To say the coronavirus has had an impact on the way the world “works” would be an understatement.
In a matter of weeks, we’ve gone from a society that sees remote work as a luxury, or even a “freelancer lifestyle,” to realizing the vast majority of jobs today can be done from home. Companies that hadn’t moved the majority of their assets to the cloud are now doing so at a rapid rate. Video calls have gone from being a suboptimal alternative to a core function of the way we communicate. The list goes on and on—and the impact is here to stay.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve noticed several shifts in our company, Skylum, as more than 100 of us around the world have adjusted to the new rules of society.
Many have never worked from home before, which comes with a unique learning curve. Many have never had the opportunity to connect and collaborate with other employees who work out of offices on different continents—which is now easier since everyone is “remote.” Many have also never viewed their job descriptions through the lens of being quarantined, where tasks left unfinished become more obvious to the rest of the group (in an office setting it’s easier to appear “busy”).
What good are electric vehicles if our bridges and roads are still falling apart?
Los Angeles, 2042. The sun rises on another day, the crystalline blue sky a reminder of how much smog levels have dropped since California banned the sale of gas-burning vehicles in the late 2030s.
Electric car adoption is still spreading across the country in fits and starts, but here in the cradle of zero-emissions rules, tax incentives and investments in a public fast-charging network have seen most drivers switch over. It’s been a long, tortuous process, but the future you were promised is finally here.
Anyway, time for work. You get dressed, slurp down some nutrient slurry and walk out to your Honda-E (in this vision, Honda eventually came to its senses and eventually released its cute EV in America). Easing out of your driveway, you make for the I-10 freeway—the same eight-lane disaster zone it’s always been—dodging giant potholes, random piles of gravel from abandoned roadworks projects and more than a few broken curb chunks. Ochre trails from rusting street signs and guardrails color the concrete everywhere.
Traffic still sucks; it’s been decades since Los Angeles attempted to repave its main arteries, let alone build a new one.
So, this is not exactly the future you were promised. Yet it’s a glimpse at a looming, oft-overlooked and critically important problem with the impending shift to EVs. Currently, a large majority of infrastructure projects (including mass transit) and maintenance in this country are funded by a single source: the gas tax, paid by consumers at the pump. An electric car makes no harmful emissions as it tootles along a road, but its driver also contributes nothing to that road’s upkeep while wearing it down all the same.
In yet another sign that electric vehicles are a more sustainable solution for 21st century personal mobility than gas mobiles, researchers have propelled electricity through 11 inches of thin air, from an in-ground charging system all the way up into the waiting battery pack of a hybrid electric UPS truck, all without using their hands. What, they couldn’t try this on a Tesla?
“Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers demonstrated on Feb. 27 a 20-kilowatt, bi-directional wireless charging system on a medium-class hybrid electric delivery truck” by Brittany Cramer/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, US Dept. of Energy.
Tesla is getting ready to introduce a long rumored lower-cost, longer-lasting battery for its electric vehicles in China sometime later this year or early next year, according to a new report from Reuters. The battery — which has been colloquially called a “million mile” battery in reference to how long it can last in a car before breaking down — is being co-developed with Chinese battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd (CATL) and was designed in part by battery experts recruited by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Tesla is already the industry leader when it comes to squeezing range out of lithium-ion batteries in electric cars, and it’s expected to reveal more about the new technology at an upcoming “Battery Day” for investors. Musk told investors and analysts earlier this year that the information “will blow your mind. It blows my mind.” The company originally planned to hold the event in April, but has had to reschedule it until at least late May thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. The company held a similar event focused on self-driving technology in April 2019.
Japanese shipping company Asahi Tanker has announced it plans to build two “world first” zero-emission electric propulsion tankers which will be powered by lithium-ion batteries.
The little that is known about the details is available only through what appears to be a shaky English translation. But it does give the specifications of the two new vessels that will use the “e5 tanker” planned and designed by e5 Labl – a joint effort announced in August 2019 between Asahi Tanker, Exeno Yamamizu Corp, Mitsui and Mitsubishi Corporation.
Set to work as a marine fuel supply vessel in Tokyo Bay, the new battery-powered tanker will measure in with a gross tonnage of approximately 499 tonnes and be able to reach speeds of around 11 knots.
Hong Kong (CNN)A US Navy warship has successfully tested a new high-energy laser weapon that can destroy aircraft mid-flight, the Navy’s Pacific Fleet said in a statement Friday.
Images and videos provided by the Navy show the amphibious transport dock ship USS Portland executing “the first system-level implementation of a high-energy class solid-state laser” to disable an aerial drone aircraft, the statement said.
The images show the laser emanating from the deck of the warship. Short video clips show what appears to be the drone burning.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) say that over a third of Americans who took its survey reportedly misused household cleaners by using them on their fruits and vegetables in the attempt to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Calls to poison control centers regarding disinfectants and household cleaners reportedly went up since the beginning of the pandemic.
“Thirty-nine percent of respondents reported engaging in non-recommended high-risk practices with the intent of preventing SARS-CoV-2 transmission, such as washing food products with bleach, applying household cleaning or disinfectant products to bare skin, and intentionally inhaling or ingesting these products,” the CDC report read.
Working from the office could become a relic of the past in the post-COVID-19 world.
Millions of people around the world have been working remotely due to the coronavirus pandemic and now experts are asking whether this “business as unusual” could be the future of work, at least for those people whose job doesn’t require them to be tied to a particular location.
UN News spoke to Susan Hayter, a Senior Technical Adviser on the Future of Work at the Geneva-based International Labour Organization, about how COVID-19 could change our working lives.
A few large companies have said employees need not commute to work again Susan Hayter, Senior Technical Adviser on the Future of Work, ILO
What are the longer-term effects of the pandemic on the workplace in developed countries, once the immediate crisis is over?
