While so much of this semester looks different, this much is the same: There’s nothing like the beauty of the fall season at Notre Dame.
Tag Archives: Universities
Global News: Putin’s Fears, The Trump Convention & MIT Of France (Economist)
A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week: what Putin fears, (9:10) Trump at the Republican National Convention and (16:10) France’s university to rival MIT.
Top New Science Podcasts: Universities Post-Covid And Drones Fighting Mosquito-Borne Disease
Senior Correspondent Jeffrey Mervis joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how universities are dealing with the financial crunch brought on by the coronavirus. Jeff discusses how big research universities are balancing their budgets as federal grants continue to flow, but endowments are down and so is the promise of state funding.
Mosquito-borne infections like Zika, dengue, malaria, and chikungunya cause millions of deaths each year. Nicole Culbert and colleges write this week in Science Robotics about a new way to deal with deadly mosquitoes—using drones. The drones are designed to drop hundreds of thousands of sterile male mosquitoes in areas with high risk of mosquito-borne illness. The idea is that sterile male mosquitoes will mate with females and the females then lay infertile eggs, which causes the population to decline. They found this drone-based approach is cheaper and more efficient than other methods of releasing sterile mosquitoes and does not have the problems associated with pesticide-based eradication efforts such as resistance and off-target effects.
Economics & Finance: “Economics For People” With Cambridge Author & Professor Ha-Joon Chang (New INET Video Series)
In the new series “Economics For People” from the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), University of Cambridge economist and bestselling author Ha-Joon Chang explains key concepts in economics, empowering anyone to hold their government, society, and economy accountable.
Lecture 1.1: The Nature of Economics
Lecture 1.2: Five Reasons Why Economics Is Political
Lecture 2: What Is Wrong With Globalization?
To view more videos: https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/videos/economics-for-people
Debates: “AI Will Bring More Harm Than Good” (Cambridge Video)
MOTION:
“This House Believes AI Will Bring More Harm Than Good”
This debate was run in association with IBM Research.
Proposition:
Project Debater Project Debater is designed by IBM research. It will deliver a speech based on over 1,100 arguments collected from Union members and others over the past week. It will not be taking points of information.
Sharmila Parmanand
Sharmila Parmanand is a PhD Candidate in Gender Studies at the University of Cambridge and a Gates Scholar. She has served as a debate trainer or chief judge in debating events in 45 countries. She served as a chief judge for most major global debating competitions (World Universities, World Schools, European Universities, Asian Universities, Austral-Asian Universities, North American Universities, and PanAmerican Universities).
Professor Neil Lawrence
Neil Lawrence is the DeepMind Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Cambridge and the co-host of Talking Machines. Neil’s main research interest is machine learning through probabilistic models. He focuses on both the algorithmic side of these models and their application. His recent focus has been on the deployment of machine learning technology in practice, particularly under the banner of data science.
Opposition
Project Debater
Project Debater is designed by IBM research. It will deliver a speech based on over 1,100 arguments collected from Union members and others over the past week. It will not be taking points of information.
Harish Natarajan
Harish Natarajan is a graduate of the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge. He was a grand fnalist and 2nd best speaker at the 2016 World Debating Championships and won the European Debating Championship in 2012. Harish holds the record for most competition victories. He currently works as the Head of Economic Risk Analysis at AKE International in London.
Professor Sylvie Delacroix
Sylvie Delacroix is professor in Law and Ethics at the University of Birmingham. Her work has notably been funded by the Wellcome Trust, the NHS and the Leverhulme Trust, from whom she received the Leverhulme Prize. She has recently been appointed to the Public Policy Commission on the use of algorithms in the justice system.
Website: https://www.cus.org/
Profiles: Stanford Physicist Robert Byer, 77, Helped Develop “Most Stable Laser In The World”
From a Stanford University News article:
Byer also helped develop the quietest, most stable laser in the world, called the diode-pumped YAG laser. YAG lasers are today found in everything from communications satellites to green handheld laser pointers, which Byer co-developed with two of his graduate students and cites as one of his favorite inventions (he had joined Stanford in 1969). YAG lasers also form the main beams of the gravitational wave-detecting instrument, LIGO, which in 2015 achieved the most precise measurement ever made by humans when its antenna detected the tenuous spacetime fluctuations generated by two colliding black holes 1.3 billion light-years away.
Robert Byer was 22 years old when he first saw the light that changed his life.
One summer morning in 1964, Byer drove the hour from Berkeley down to Mountain View for a job interview at a California company called Spectra Physics. He walked in to find an empty lobby but could hear clapping and cheering in the back of the building. After politely waiting for several minutes, he followed the commotion to a darkened room filled with men whose jubilant faces were illuminated by a rod of red-orange light that seemed to float above an instrument-strewn table
To read more: https://news.stanford.edu/2019/11/19/life-changing-first-glimpse-laser/
