James Devitt-NYU, Futurity, Nov 13, 2024

This article challenges us to think more deeply on the distinction between knowledge and memory. The claim made here is that parts of the body - the kidney, say - can replicate the massed-spaced effect, retaining information over time, which is the same thing we see when connections are formed between neurons in the brain. But is that the same as forming a memory? I have Haglund's Deformity, a 'memory' of my many years of walking in bad shows. That seems more like "what our pancreas remembers about the pattern of our past meals to maintain healthy levels of blood glucose" and rather less like "knowing Paris is the capital of France". We can interpret these 'memories' as retained information, but it's not clear this is in any way any sort of knowledge.

Michael Franco, New Atlas, Nov 13, 2024

The depth and detail in this paper (8 page PDF) are daunting, but the gist, as summarized in this post, is straightforward: provided only with observations of a human cleaning (" using a so-called instrumented tool, which is a standard tool equipped with additional sensors") the front of an ordinary sink, a robot arm learn to clean entire sinks with varying surface topology. "The model implicitly learned the correct
tool orientation and position w.r.t. the freeform 3D surface." Michael Franco speculates, "a fleet of robots could learn the basic moves from each other through what's known as 'federated learning' and then they could apply those moves to their individual, specified tasks."

Roberto J. Rodriguez, et al., Office of Educational Technology, Nov 13, 2024

This is a longish (79 page PDF) resource from the U.S. government's Office of Educational Technology. "The Department heard educators say that AI is here to stay, AI will keep changing, and safely integrating AI in educational settings will require informed leadership at multiple levels across the education system." The toolkit is divided into three sections: migitating risks, strategy for AI integration, and guiding its use. The risks considered include privacy and data security, student civil rights, accessibility, and digital equity. The second section is weaker, focusing on the 'instructional core' (credited to Elmore, but basically Moore (1989)), with a corresponding focus on instruction. The third section begins with a discussion of AI literacy (limited to "includes the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to engage with AI safely") and promotion of "responsible use". 

Vinay K. Chaudhri, The Hechinger Report, Nov 13, 2024

This is an idea straight from the 50s but expect to see more of the same as companies wrestle with how to make their publications relevant in the age of AI. Vinay K. Chaudhri beghins with a reaffirmation of the importance of textbooks (as "a carefully curated body of knowledge... nearly 100 percent accurate... (and) the view of an expert educator"). Needed now, though, is "authoring textbooks so that their concepts can be read as computer code." How? Back to the 50s - a controlled vocabulary. "Textbooks, using the discipline of knowledge engineering, can support the curation, preservation and learning of all forms of human knowledge." Next up? I guess it would have to be the unification of the sciences.

Sean Goedecke, Nov 13, 2024

I remember a phrase from some technical conference a number of years ago: "quality ships." If you ever wondered what this means, this article is for you. It describes what it is to 'shop' a software product, and the sorts of concerns the person responsible has in order to ensure the project ships. After all, the default status for any project is 'not shipped'. There will always be something that could be added, something improved. The idea is to get it in front of as many ideas as possible, deal with the issues, earn the confidence of management, and deliver the result. Via Ben Werdmuller.

Mathew Lowry, Medium, Nov 13, 2024

This post deserves a look if only for its cracking good diagram illustrating the difference between the ActivityPub protocol (used by Mastodon and others) and the ATmosphere protocol (used by Bluesky). View it here. Essentially the difference is that the AT protocol disaggregates posting and applications, which (in theory) means that a viral post won't cause your 'instance' to crash (presumably because the post is being cached by the applications?). However "Bluesky's openness means there will not be separate villages, nor private groups for collaboration." 

Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, The Scholarly Kitchen, Nov 13, 2024

We expect The Scholarly Kitchen to represent the publishers' point of view, since that is its intent, but in this case it ventures into the realm of pure propaganda. No open access charges subscription fees to readers. In 'Gold' open access, publishers charge authors 'article publication fees', while in 'Green' open access no such fees are charged. So how is there a "cost" to readers? According to this article, it's in the time and effort it takes to find the 'version of record' of an article as compared to what is found in typical 'green' venues such as preprint repositories. This argument, of course, assumes readers want to find the 'version of record', and the author is ready with a 'fear, uncertainty, doubt (FUD)' argument. The author also argues that green versions are hard to find, compared to gold versions, ignoring such services as Unpaywall that index open access articles.

Digital Education Council, Nov 13, 2024

Members of the Digital Education Council (mostly from business and management schools) have signed this short declaration (5 page PDF) following their inaugural meeting this week. Most interesting is their desire to "commit to developing strategies to maintain curricula relevance, at speed with the rapidly-evolving pace of industry."

The Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management (Ministerie van Verkeer en Waterstaat) announces their new RSS news feed. It is a noteworthy model for other governmental agencies to emulate.

Government Computer News reports that the Navy is building a business case for using weblogs for project management. Enterprise blogging software by Traction Software, Inc. called TeamPage was selected for evaluation for being one of the first weblog systems designed for business use.

Larimer County Colorado has offered an e-mail subscription service of web updates to the county's web site, The Virtual Courthouse, since 1998. This service has grown to 22 separate mailings including job openings, news releases, emergency information, road closures, bids & proposals, various board agendas, and more. Recently this service has been expanded to include an RSS feed of all subscriptions for those who prefer to use a newsreader instead of receiving e-mail. Information on this service can be found at www.larimer.org/subscriptions.cfm, and the RSS feed is www.larimer.org/feed.xml.

Salt Lake City and 17 other Utah cities are planning to construct the largest ultrahigh-speed data network in the country using fiber optic cables. The project to complete a direct fiber optic connection to homes is considered by The New York Times as one of the most ambitious of its type in the world.

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has released their Request for Proposal (RFP) for its Electronic Records Archive project. The eight-year performance-based ERA contract could be worth about $122 million.

Steve Faulkner recently released a tool for Internet Explorer called the Accessibility Toolbar. It provides one-click access to accessibility validators and has features that go beyond simple accessibility checks.

Six Apart released Movable Type v. 2.661 this week as a stopgap to help administrators deal with comment flooding spam before they release comment registration in Movable Type 3.0.

ITS has recently polled State agency developers for their ideas for a more collaborative eDG site that will better serve...

The eDG Website is nearing another milestone. In a past meeting, we polled members to learn what improvements could make The eDG more useful. All present expressed interest in having a more interactive site. The new eDG, available April 21, is a PHP portal-driven site with more interactive features.

Forgoing watching Arnold at the RNC last night, I tuned in instead to the streaming video keynote from the Apple Expo 2004 in Paris. It was the first public demonstration of the Tiger OS and several other hardware and software products. For something to really rock your world, take a look at the new IMac G5.

Michael Taft and Marcia Segal from the American Folk Life Center, Library of Congress will be in Utah on October 13, 2004 to discuss the The Save Our Sounds project and related digital issues. This Fall Caucus program will be from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. in room 3211 Wilkinson Center on the campus of Brigham Young University and is sponsored by CIMA, the Conference of Inter-Mountain Archivists. There will be no charge to the event and lunch will be on your own from 12:00 noon to 1:30 p.m.

You may remember Gilbert Lee when he was a web designer for Utah.gov. He left us to design for Northrop Grumman and now has his own successful firm PlainSimple Design, LLC at www.plainsimple.org. Gilbert has just volunteered to organize the Salt Lake City Weblogger Meetup. He encourages SLC bloggers to come out and meet others doing the same. The first meeting is Wednesday, September 15 at 7:00 p.m. at the Barnes & Noble Booksellers, 1104 East 2100 South (Cafe), Salt Lake City.

FCW.com reports today that Webcontent.gov wil be unveiled on September 29. This site will help federal agencies put up more uniform content and adhere to laws and best practices for information accessibility.

Anyone can become a power news consumer by taking advantage of the wealth information being published via RSS newsfeeds. You just need to learn where to find the feeds and how to read them. Bloglines, is a tool that allows you to do both and I hightly recommend it if you haven't already found an aggregator that meets your needs. Here are some tips on how to hit the road running with Bloglines.

프로농구 서울 삼성은 2024~2025시즌을 야심 차게 준비했다. 3년 연속 최하위에 그쳤던 삼성은 김효범 감독을 정식 사령탑으로 임명하며 팀 재건에 나섰다. 논란 끝에 이대성(사진)을 영입하고, LG에서 뛰던 저스틴 구탕을 데려오는 등 명가 재건을 다짐하며 새 시즌을 준비했다. 하지만 1라운드를 마친 11일 현재 삼성은 2승9패로 원주 DB와 함께

여자 프로농구(WKBL) 부산 BNK의 기세가 심상치 않다. BNK가 하나은행을 격파하며 개막 이후 패배 없이 5연승을 달려 우승 후보다운 면모를 뽐냈다. BNK는 11일 부산사직체육관에서 열린 2024∼2025시즌 WKBL 정규리그 1라운드 부천 하나은행과의 홈 경기에서 65-45로 완승을 따냈다. 지난 시즌 최하위까지 추락했던 BNK는 올 시즌 강

“중학교 졸업하고 고등학교에 진학하지 않았어요. 학교에 다니면 당구 칠 시간이 부족하잖아요.” ‘펜’ 대신 ‘큐’를 잡은 소년이 프로당구 PBA 새 역사를 썼다. 김영원(17)은 11일 경기도 고양 킨텍스 PBA 스타디움에서 열린 PBA-LPBA NH농협카드 챔피언십 결승에서 오태준(크라운해태)을 4-1로 물리치고 정상에 섰다. 김영원은 생후 17세 2

프로농구 서울 SK가 무려 42점을 몰아친 자밀 워니의 괴력을 앞세워 원주 DB를 물리치고 4연승을 달리며 단독 선두로 나섰다. SK는 12일 원주종합체육관에서 열린 2024-2025 KCC 프로농구 정규리그 원정 경기에서 DB에 88-80으로 이겼다. 4연승을 달린 SK는 대구 한국가스공사와 공동 1위에서 단독 선두(8승 2패)로 올라섰다. 반

Almost every Web site has a what's new section or page. The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio shows us that RSS syndication is a great way to allow your customers to monitor what's new on your agency's website.

Selling government agencies on RSS would be easier if we could demonstrate to them an easy way to convert their existing news formats to automatically generated and delivered email newsletters. In this first, of a two-part series, we show you how easy it is to use Moveable Type and Bloglet to provide rudimentary email delivery.

Emarketing firms IMH, Inc. and eLaw Marketing offer new RSS services for publishing eNewsletters. Can the same thing be accomplished using your existing blogging software?

Jeremy Zawodny has announced how to ping Yahoo's RSS database when you post to your Movable Type weblog. Yahoo joins weblogs.com, blo.gs, and several others in offering the XML-RPC ping interface. Pinging has the advantage of getting your content much faster into those sites that crawl RSS feeds for news.

Sun Microsystems has announced, according to Alison Taylor of ITWorldCanada, that it will participate in driving open standards for RSS to bring together the fragmented RSS communities. Sun, under Tim Bray's visionary guidance, will develop RSS for internal communications as well as delivering external information among developers, customers and partners.

Pssst… have you noticed your site loading a bit faster than usual? It’s not your imagination! We’re happy to let you know that we’ve rolled out Brotli to all of your WPMU DEV hosted sites, giving you on average 11.62% better compression than before (and faster sites as a result!) It’s a change that’ll make […]

Read to the end for a tiny yet extremely majestic lion. In today’s edition: The truth behind the classic “average person eats 3 spiders per year” factoid. Tips that’ll make organizing your taxonomies a little less, uh… taxing. America’s finest news source, The Onion, is now powered by our old friend WP. Hot Off The […]

We’re launching a new feature on The Hub: Tickets. Now you can effortlessly communicate with your clients entirely within The Hub, with an easy-to-use instant ticketing system. Plus, it’s entirely white label so it’ll appear to clients as part of your own site. Why We Created Tickets At the moment, you’re probably using email or […]

Great news for agencies, developers and freelancers! We’ve heard that while many of you love our Webmail service, the 5GB storage limit is getting tight. That’s why we’re introducing our new range of expanded Webmail plans to help take your email capabilities to the next level. More Space, More Flexibility, More Power We’re expanding our […]

カレントアウェアネス-E

No.486 2024.09.05

 E2726

50周年を迎えた日本国際児童図書評議会（JBBY）

日本国際児童図書評議会・土居安子（どいやすこ）

  日本国際児童図書評議会（JBBY）は、国際児童図書評議会（IBBY）の日本支部として1974年に誕生し、2024年で50周年を迎えた。本稿では、主にJBBYの概要とその主な活動等を紹介する。

●IBBYとは

  IBBYは、第二次世界大戦後の1946年に、荒廃したドイツで、イエラ・レップマン（Jella Lepman）が世界に呼びかけて集めたミュンヘンでの子どもの本の展覧会に端を発する。その後、「本を通して国際理解を深め、子どもの本で平和な世界を」をモットーに1953年にスイス・チューリッヒで発足し、2024年現在、84の国と地域が加盟している。

続きを読む

We published our report on the world’s top selling EV models yesterday. Now, let’s look at which auto brands and auto groups sold the most plugin vehicles and the most BEVs in September. Top Selling Brands In September, #1 BYD, now deep into pricing out the competition (fossil fueled and electric…) didn’t ... [continued]

The post World EV Sales Report — Top Selling Auto Brands & Groups appeared first on CleanTechnica.

In an unprecedented move some months ago, Ethiopia became effectively the first country in the world to ban the import of internal combustion engine vehicles. That ban was not some futuristic target for 2030 or 2035. It was an immediate ban on the import of ICE cars, with no exceptions. ... [continued]

The post Inchcape & BYD Partner In New Distribution Agreement For Ethiopia! appeared first on CleanTechnica.

As I sit at my computer tapping out this article, the sun is shining in beautiful Brisbane, capital of Queensland, Australia. We are moving into summer and the sun is up long before I am. When I awake, the house battery is filling up and charging the car. Soon, the ... [continued]

The post Renewables Gallop Ahead Down Under — A Queensland Sample appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Florida is famous for “Florida Man” news stories and memes, for the extreme heat frying people’s brains, and for more and more extreme Republicans taking over the state. When I was younger, it was a swing state in national elections— one of the key swing states. It seems that it’s ... [continued]

The post Should Democrats Abandon Florida? appeared first on CleanTechnica.

October saw plugin EVs take 23.6% share in Germany, down from 24.5% share YoY. BEVs in Europe’s largest auto market are now even below the levels of October 2021. Overall auto volume was 231,992 units, up 6% YoY. The bestselling BEV in October was the Skoda Enyaq. The October auto ... [continued]

The post EVs Take 23.6% Share In Germany — Below 2021 Levels appeared first on CleanTechnica.

I recently came across a social media post that puts solar energy in an interesting perspective: energy that everyone can possibly harness. This not only applies to most of the planet, but provides a very simple way to visualize a way forward to providing everyone with needed energy. Sunlight is ... [continued]

The post Can The Sun Become A Form of Universal Basic Income? appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Remember when the Tesla Model Y outsold every other electric car, anywhere in the world, all the time? That was then; this is now. According to Yahoo Finance, registration data from Germany’s Motor Transport Authority (KBA) shows the Volkswagen brand has delivered 49,200 electric cars in that country through the ... [continued]

The post Tesla Outsold By BMW & Volkswagen In Germany, MG In UK appeared first on CleanTechnica.

These days, it seems like everyone is into emergency preparedness, or at least wants to think they are. Whether it’s a fear of natural disasters, the communists, the fascists, or even the space aliens, there is no shortage of content these days on social media, blogs, and YouTube. But, we ... [continued]

The post E-Bikes For Preparedness appeared first on CleanTechnica.

By Kyle Julian, Regional Director, Commercial & Industrial Sales, U.S. West Without data centers, life as we know it would collapse. That may sound like hyperbole, but our entire digital economy relies on data centers. But it turns out that data centers use a lot of electricity. In fact, the ... [continued]

The post Behind the Curtain: Power Grid Resilience for Data Centers appeared first on CleanTechnica.

This Luckeep X2 Stormtrooper E-Bike is Awesome We’ve tested a lot of electric bikes. I like some for certain reasons, others for other reasons, and some I really don’t care for much at all. I have to say that one thing I’ve found over the years is that e-bikes seem ... [continued]

The post Exploring the Luckeep X2: A High-Performance Urban E-Bike for All Terrains appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Toyota is already complaining about the state of California and CARB as it seems an opportunity to shove its point of view down our throats.

The post Toyota Exec Says California ZEV Goal Is Impossible To Achieve appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The installed solar capacity of the global PV industry is poised for another round of rapid growth, with or without an assist from the US.

The post Global Installed Solar Capacity To Blow Past 2 Terawatts, USA Or Not appeared first on CleanTechnica.

This is the first of a five-part series of articles where I look at the best affordable EVs in each size category. There are plenty of good EVs right now, but one of the main challenges continues to be their price and how much more expensive they are compared to ... [continued]

The post Best Value for Money EVs — City Cars (A Segment) appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Colombia’s EV market is booming. As I said a couple months ago, we’re not only seeing significant YoY (year over year) growth (as we are in several other markets, including Costa Rica, Uruguay, Mexico, and Brazil), but we’re also looking at “bursts” of demand that lead to significant MoM (month ... [continued]

The post Colombia EV Sales Report: 1000 Sales Surpassed in October, Country Reaches 6.4% EV Market Share! appeared first on CleanTechnica.