Science Week puts STEM in the spotlight

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Science, technology, engineering and math took the spotlight last week at the first city-wide Science Week, a series of activities designed to highlight the importance of the STEM fields to Western New Yorks innovation economy, including the emerging life sciences and advanced manufacturing industries.

Science Week was presented by UB, SUNY Buffalo State and Erie Community College, along with the city of Buffalo and the Buffalo Public Schools (BPS).

The idea for Science Week was conceived by SUNY Trustee Eunice Lewin, who approached UB and the areas other SUNY institutions, as well as the city, the schools and SUNY central administration, for help in bringing the initiative to life.

It featured national speakers, professional development workshops for teachers and hands-on science activities in BPS classrooms.

Among those science activities were student-led wind tunnel and shake table demonstrations on Friday at Burgard High School, one of 12 Buffalo schools participating in the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Partnership. ISEP, funded by a $10 million National Science Foundation grant, is a coalition of partners, led by UB, that aims to transform how science is taught. It helps fill classrooms with hands-on activities that make science exciting for kids, as well as providing professional development for teachers.

About 300 Burgard students joined guests and dignitaries, including scientist and City Honors senior Yankang Yang who served as master of ceremonies; BPS Superintendent Pamela Brown; Alexander N. Cartwright, UB vice president for research and economic engagement; Buffalo State Interim President Howard Cohen; ECC President Jack Quinn; Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown; Common Council Majority Leader and Burgard graduate Demone Smith; Assemblyman Sean Ryan; Rep. Brian Higgins; Life Technologies scientist Mwita Phelps; and guest speaker Shirley Malcom. Malcom, head of education and human resources programs at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is internationally known for her work on STEM education.

Another ISEP school, Native American Magnet School 19, opened Science Week on Monday with in-class science activities in three classrooms.

Thursday was Nano Day and nearly 450 students from Buffalos public and charter schools heard presentations and interacted with polymer worms, computer hard drives and hydrophobicity exploration at sessions at Roswell Park Cancer Institute hosted by SUNYs College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering

Wednesday was Teacher Development Day, with Buffalo State and SUNY hosting morning sessions on Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Master Teacher Program and the TeachLive Lab.Nearly 50 BPS teachers joined other area teachers, SUNY, UB and Buffalo State leaders for the discussions and demonstrations.In the afternoon, about 175 BPS science teachers took part in four round-robin sessions at McKinley High School that focused on best practices in the classroom.It included a poster session by ISEP teachers.

Perhaps the best endorsement for STEM comes from UB students studying in the fields. The students, most of whom are graduates of the Buffalo Public Schools, produced videos for Science Week.

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Science Week puts STEM in the spotlight

Welcome to the World of Tomorrow

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When I was a kid, I loved to read science fiction. I always wondered, "why couldn't I have been born a few hundred years in the future?", "what would life be like if such futuristic technology existed now?". The worlds envisioned by authors like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke never seemed like fiction to me, but a glimpse of things to come.

Being a millennial I have lived through some radical paradigm shifts in technology. When I was in elementary school our administration office still had a rotary phone. I have lived through the invention of the internet, the explosion of information technology, the realization of nanotechnology, prototype invisibility cloaks, and the renaissance of not just space exploration, but of space tourism.

Listing the new technologies that have emerged, evolved, collided, and converged would be impossible, the breadth of progress made just this last decade alone is the subject of an exhaustive number of books. But for anyone paying even a little attention, the world has been trying to outrace our imaginations for the last few decades, to the point where our science fiction seems less like fantasy and more like a road-map of what we have yet to witness.

And we don't have to look outside our home to have a taste of what's still in store for us. According to Gartner, an industry analyst, sales for cell phones in the third quarter of 2013 reached roughly 450 million units sold, with about 55% of those being smartphones. Take a good look, in terms of raw computing power that little thing that fits right in your pocket is more powerful than a supercomputer 40 years ago.

According to analysts IDC, worldwide sales for tablets reached 49.2 million units sold in the first quarter of 2013, a 142.4% growth from the same time the year before. When tested using the Linpack Computing Benchmark, the iPad 2 was found to rival the performance of the Cray Supercomputer of 1985. The same iPad 2 that is sitting right next to me as I write this, and the same iPad that is now rumored to soon be discontinued, with Apple's iPad now in its 5th generation with the introduction of the iPad Air.

On my archaic 2009 iPhone, I can instant message friends, pinpoint my exact position on the globe, watch a movie, or take an online math class using Khan Academy's mobile app. I am able to Facetime my twin brother, who lives 3,000 miles away from me, with a camera the size of a speck of dirt. My desktop collects dust as I use my iPad to stream movies with services like Netflix or Hulu Plus, check my Facebook page, and play video games with better graphics than anything I ever played as a kid.

Ten years ago I remember having to take the Subway downtown to wait in line for a ticket if I wanted to see a movie, or walking a few blocks to Blockbuster to rent something already out of theaters. Remember VHS? I think most of us try not to. Now Blockbuster is out of business and ticket sales at movie theaters continue to slump, meanwhile with the tap of my finger I can watch a movie in high definition.

Most of the services and devices we take for granted today were mindbogglingly amazing just a decade ago. Today I read on Extremetech.com (my favorite technology news source) that the first 3D-printed skull had been implanted into a human being. Not even two minutes later I read that UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh will be conducting the first suspended animation human trials.

Wake up futurists, sci-fi geeks, and science nerds. We don't need to read science fiction novels anymore to escape into a wondrous future; the future has finally arrived. Want that rush of exhilaration? Just read the news.

Welcome home. Welcome to the world of tomorrow.

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Welcome to the World of Tomorrow

Depp cant transcend artificial stupidity in latest film

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Johnny Depp, playing a dying scientist, has his brain uploaded to mind-numbing effect in Transcendence where nothing happens that you havent seen done much better in almost any computer-oriented sci-fi epic of the last six decades.

Lethargic direction, bland visuals, credulity-straining plotting and tin-eared dialogue turn even pros like Rebecca Hall, Paul Bettany and Morgan Freeman into sleepwalking bores.

Things start off on a promising note, with a shot of a computer keyboard being used as a doorstop. The Web has crashed and cant be fixed.

Bettany tells us exactly how that happened in droning narration thats going to explain Every. Last. Thing. (Except why the Web cant be fixed.)

Hall plays Depps wife and professional collaborator hes the worlds leading expert on artificial intelligence.

When he suffers a lethal encounter with cyber-terrorists, she urges him to let her use his remaining month of life to basically upload his genius to a Web cloud so he can continue his work.

I havent given away anything that isnt apparent from the trailer. But now I need to get into spoilerish territory to do a proper demolition job on this fiasco.

Depps former associates, Bettany and Freeman, come to question whether its really a resurrected Depp they hear through computer speakers and see on monitors, or just a computer program with evil intent mimicking him.

But Hall insists that the digitized version of her formerly modest husband is real and not Memorex even when he begins laying plans to control the world.

Its not a horrible premise for a movie, but the execution is exceedingly trite and sloppy.

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Depp cant transcend artificial stupidity in latest film

Transcendence fails to rise above the ordinary

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That man would have the hubris to reach the level of a god is a notion that has long animated both myth and literature. To see such ambition brought low is a story that never gets old, and that premise is the best part of Transcendence, a belabored science-fiction fantasy that aims for what its title advertises and falls far short.

In his first film as director, acclaimed cinematographer Wally Pfister (The Dark Knight Rises, Inception) has made a movie that predictably looks good but has little substance beneath its shiny, digitally enhanced surface.

Johnny Depp is Will Caster, the Tony Stark of artificial intelligence, a hotshot scientist and Wired cover boy on the verge of a breakthrough in the merging of man and machine that he believes could be the answer to hunger, disease and other global ills. His best hope is a computer called PINN (Physically Independent Neural Network).

But the work he and his colleagues -- including his wife, Evelyn (Rebecca Hall), and best friend Max (Paul Bettany) -- are doing has sparked opposition from a terrorist group called RIFT (Revolutionary Independence from Technology). This outfit -- whose slogan is evolution without technology -- wants to unplug humanity from machines altogether.

This doesnt include explosive devices and guns, though, and the group uses them to take out many of those working with Depp and another AI pioneer, Joseph Tagger (Morgan Freeman). Their attempt on Wills life at first seems to have failed -- he is shot but survives -- but then it turns out the bullet was coated with a radioactive material. With only weeks to live, Will, along with Evelyn and Max, decide to upload Wills mind into PINN so that his brilliance is preserved.

Of course, the law of unintended consequences being what it is, Wills ego and sense of power increase exponentially once his mind is paired with the seemingly limitless power of a machine that can tap into all of the worlds computers and see everything everywhere. Will wants to eradicate cancer and conflict -- a good thing -- but seeks to link everyone in a hive mind with him at the controls. Not so good.

Thats when both Evelyn and Max, who are totally Team Will at first, come to the realization that maybe this man-machine thing wasnt such a bright idea after all.

While Transcendence has nothing new to say about absolute power corrupting absolutely or the friction between technology and humanity, it still could have been an engaging thriller. But its lined with plot holes so big that they take you right out of the movie. Evelyn, while still in Wills thrall, marches into a desert town with millions wired into her bank account by all-powerful Will, hires a crew of local neer-do-wells and then seemingly overnight secretly builds a sprawling, wired campus that makes Google headquarters look like a tiki shack. Its from here that Will, like The Brain on the old Pinky and the Brain cartoons, plans to take over the world. But wouldnt someone take notice? The local power company? The mayor? The NSA?

And then the explosions start and Transcendence goes the way of so many big-budget movies where performances are subservient to special effects. But even on this basic level, Transcendence isnt very special.

Humanitys hubris may indeed be dangerous, but Hollywoods is just boring.

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Transcendence fails to rise above the ordinary

Marshall Chin, MD, New President-Elect of Society of General Internal Medicine

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Newswise Marshall Chin, MD, MPH, the Richard Parrillo Family Professor of Healthcare Ethics in the Department of Medicine, is the new president-elect of the Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM) for the 2014-2015 year.

Chin, associate chief and director of research in the Section of General Internal Medicine at the University of Chicago Medicine, was elected by the national medical societys 3,000 members, who are the general internal medicine faculty at the countrys medical schools and teaching hospitals.

I am honored and humbled to be elected president of SGIM, said Chin, who is also the associate director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. General internal medicine is the heart of our health care system, and patients recognize how important it is to have an excellent primary care physician who knows them and truly cares for them.

As the nations health care undergoes fundamental change, a growing spotlight has been put on primary care to find innovations in care delivery.

Chin plans to mobilize SGIMs extensive expertise in academic general internal medicine and capitalize on its members experiences in innovative care delivery models to improve the quality of care and outcomes for all patients, including the most vulnerable populations in society.

Health disparities are a major focus of Chins research. He is director of Finding Answers: Disparities Research for Change, a national program based at the University of Chicago and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It seeks evidence-based solutions to reduce racial and ethnic health disparities.

This dovetails with SGIMs pioneering efforts to reduce unacceptable differences in care and outcomes based on the patients race, socioeconomic status, gender, and health insurance.

Chins priorities for SGIM include using the strengths and knowledge of general internists to improve health policy and population health management. He also wants to advance primary care training and identify priority areas for research funding.

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Marshall Chin, MD, New President-Elect of Society of General Internal Medicine

Privatization Is A Ramp For Corruption and Insouciance Is a Ramp for War

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By Paul Craig Roberts

The New York Times has acquired a new Judith Mille

Libertarian ideology favors privatization. However, in practice privatization is usually very different in result than libertarian ideology postulates. Almost always, privatization becomes a way for well-connected private interests to loot both the public purse and the general welfare.

Most privatizations, such as those that have occurred in France and UK during the neoliberal era, and in Greece today and Ukraine tomorrow, are lootings of public assets by politically-connected private interests.

Another form of privatization is to turn traditional government functions, such as prison operation and many supply functions of the armed services, such as feeding the troops, over to private companies at a large increase in cost to the public. Essentially, the libertarian ideology is used to provide lucrative public contracts to a few favored persons who then reward the politicians. This is called "free enterprise."

The privatization of prisons in the US is an example of the extraordinary cost and injustice of privatization. Privatization of prisons requires ever higher rates of incarceration in order to build profitability. The US, supposedly "a land of liberty" has by far the highest incarceration rates of all countries. The "free" US has not only the highest percentage of its population in prison but also the highest absolute number. "Authoritarian" China with four times the US population has fewer citizens in prison.

This article shows how well prison privatization works for well-connected private interests: http://www.globalresearch.ca/privatization-of-the-us-prison-system/5377824

It also shows the extraordinary shame, corruption, and discredit that prison privatization has brought to the US.

A few years ago I wrote about the conviction of two judges who were paid by privatized juvenile detention facilities to sentence kids to their facilities.

As Alain of Lille and later Karl Marx said, "Money is all." In America money is all that is important to the political system and to the bulk of the population. Essentially, America has no other values.

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Privatization Is A Ramp For Corruption and Insouciance Is a Ramp for War

Libertarian candidates platform consists of lower taxes, smaller government

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Series note: This is one story of a two-part series about third party candidates running for Pa. governor.

There may be more than just two names on the gubernatorial ballot this fall.

Ken Krawchuk secured the Libertarian Partys nomination for governor in February and is running on a platform that emphasizes lower taxes, smaller government, protecting citizens and improving education.

I have a vision for Pennsylvania, Krawchuk said.

One issue Krawchuk, who also ran for governor as a libertarian in 1998 and 2002, would address is taxes and the cost of government. If elected, Krawchuk said he would use powers granted to the governor to act unilaterally. He would veto any tax increase and use the line-item veto to eliminate needless spending.

Introducing a series of budgets that would eliminate Pennsylvanias personal income tax is another step Krawchuk said he would take as governor.

If elected, another goal of his is to make Pennsylvanias streets safer. To achieve this, Krawchuk said he would implement two actions as soon as becoming governor.

The governor has power over paroles, Krawchuk said, and he would eliminate parole for violent criminals.

To reduce prison populations, Krawchuk said he would also pardon every nonviolent drug offender in the state.

The prisons are full and its so crowded, they are releasing rapists and murderers to make room for pot-smoking Grateful Dead fans, Krawchuk said.

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Libertarian candidates platform consists of lower taxes, smaller government