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Researchers develop under-the-skin implant to treat Type 1 diabetes
Scientists have developed a new implantable device that has the potential to change the way Type 1 diabetics receive insulin.
UK university will study students' social media data to prevent suicide
A university in the UK is planning to use data analytics to help prevent student suicide. Northumbria University, and a handful of partner organizations, will collect data from students' social media accounts to create an "Early Alert Tool." If successful, it will identify students in crisis so the university can provide aid.
PepsiCo is using robots to deliver snacks to college students
If walking to a regular vending machine seems too inconvenient, what if the vending machine came to you? PepsiCo is doing just that at the University of Pacific campus in Stockton, California with robots called "snackbots." Using a smartphone app, students can order quasi-healthy snacks like Baked Lays, Sunchips or a Starbucks Cold Brew (from PepsiCo's "Hello Goodness" vending platform), and have it delivered between 9 AM and 5 PM to one of 50 locations around the 175 acre campus.
Amazon's Alexa Fellowship expands to 14 more universities
Amazon is eager to get more bright minds working on voice technology, so it's expanding the Alexa Fellowship program to 14 more universities, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Texas A&M and Cambridge. The fellowships are financed through Amazon's $200 million Alexa Fund.
Steve Wozniak just created his own online university
Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak has just launched Woz U, a new digital institute designed for those eyeing a career in the tech industry. "Our goal is to educate and train people in employable digital skills without putting them into years of debt," Wozniak said in a statement. "People often are afraid to choose a technology-based career because they think they can't do it. I know they can, and I want to show them how."
Infrared light could someday deliver super-fast WiFi
WiFi has become essential to our everyday lives, which is why slow speeds piss us all off. Luckily, a PhD student in the Netherlands has come up with a potentially groundbreaking idea: using infrared rays to carry wireless data to your laptop or smartphone.
Google search cards help you choose a college
Search for a college or university with Google and you'll soon see a new results card. These small, mobile-friendly summaries include graduation and acceptance rates, the average post-grad salary and the normal fees for undergraduate tuition. All of the stats are being pulled from the US Department of Education's "College Scorecard" site, meaning they're reliable and easy to compare. Of course, you've always been able to find this information yourself -- it just took a little longer rooting around the web. Now, it's easier to retrieve some quick, top-level information. So whatever you value the most -- be it projected earnings, or cheaper fees -- you can surface this information almost immediately. Which sounds pretty useful, whether you're just starting to think about your options, or narrowing down some colleges you've been deliberating for months.
'League of Legends' fuels college rivalries with live broadcasts
You no longer have to head to a basketball or football game to see your favorite college sports rivalry play out. Yahoo eSports and Riot Games' uLoL are partnering on a series of five League of Legends live broadcasts that will pit players from major North American schools against each other once a week, starting November 4th at 6PM Eastern. You vote for your favorite rivalries among 12, ranging from Cal/Stanford to Harvard/Yale -- the top 5 go on to in-person competitions that Yahoo will stream online. There will even be viewing parties at each school if you'd rather watch with fellow students. While there's no certainty that these college MOBA match-ups will be as intense as the conventional kind, it's safe to say that there's a lot of pride on the line.
UC Irvine debuts the first public college esports arena in the US
The University of California, Irvine, is serious about esports. This fall it will officially launch a competitive-gaming initiative, complete with scholarships and an already-decorated League of Legends team, and it's just finished construction on a 3,500-square-foot esports arena that's set to open Friday, Sept. 23rd. The arena is packed with 80 gaming PCs loaded with top eSports titles, a webcasting studio and viewing screens. The arena will serve as a home base for the university's gaming community and a place for its competitive players to train. It also represents another step forward for collegiate esports across the country. "Esports is the future of competition. Period," UCI's Acting Director of Esports Mark Deppe says. "It transcends language, geography, race, age, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, physical ability and many other identities. In five years many more schools will official programs and more structure will be in place to regulate and provide guidance to schools. Esports also has a huge opportunity to learn from the successes and shortcomings of traditional sports and provide a model for collegiate competition in the 21st century."
Christian college says mandatory Fitbits won't track sex
Can a Fitbit distinguish between cross-fit and carnal knowledge? It doesn't matter, says Oral Roberts University (ORU) officials, because they won't be scanning data for signs of student coitus anyway. The school now requires that all of its incoming students use (and pay for) Fitbit trackers during the spring semester. That caused some speculation that the devices could invade students' privacy, particularly since they can be used to monitor sexual activity. However, the school says it isn't using the devices to enforce its code of conduct forbidding pre-marital sex.
Microsoft will hand out $500K to these five HoloLens grant winners
Microsoft put out the call this summer for innovative, academic applications using its HoloLens augmented reality headset, offering $100,000 and two dev kits each to five winning universities. Today, Microsoft named the victorious schools, ranging from Carnegie Mellon University to Clackamas Community College. The winners include a program aimed at "augmenting reality for the visually impaired" and two projects that rely on open-source or collaborative data analysis -- in AR, of course. Plus, Microsoft said it received too many great ideas to stop at five, so it's handing out two dev kits to an additional five universities. The runners-up include a project called "DinoLens" (yes, please), a program focused on helping humans perceive ultraviolet and ultrasonic waves and an app for stroke rehabilitation. Check out the full list of winners below.
Amazon's first staffed pickup spot lets students get textbooks quickly
Sure, Amazon has unmanned delivery lockers to save you the trouble of waiting for a courier, but that human touch could come in handy sometimes. What if you need help with a return, for instance? That's where Amazon's first-ever staffed pickup location, Amazon@Purdue, promises to come to the rescue. The location lets university students and faculty both pick up their online orders and drop off returns (including textbook rentals) in a helpful, trustworthy place -- you shouldn't have to worry about someone swiping your new laptop while you're in class. It's potentially faster, too, as some products qualify for free one-day shipping to the Purdue facility.
Landfill copy of Atari's Centipede donated to university
University of North Dakota's Special Collections department now houses a cartridge of the Atari 2600 game Centipede, dug up from a landfill in New Mexico last year. Assistant professor of history Bill Caraher participated in the dig and threw down $60 to buy the cartridge on eBay. "While I usually would not condone purchasing archaeological artifacts of any kind, these artifacts are somewhat different because they represent our very recent past," Caraher told the AP. "When I saw that the Smithsonian had received a game and several other major cultural institutions as well, I had to acquire one for UND to commemorate the university's participation in this unusual excavation." The Centipede cartridge marks an important moment in video game history – the crash of the industry in 1983. That year, Atari reportedly dumped truckloads of unsold copies of ET, Asteroids, Missile Command, Centipede and other games in the New Mexico landfill, and in 2014 a documentary team set about excavating the old, dirty games. Microsoft helped finance the excavation and the documentary Atari: Game Over, which explores the 1983 crash and subsequent landfill dig. Atari: Game Over premiered on Xbox in November. Once on eBay, the games sold individually for $50 to $1,500. The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, picked up a copy of ET last year for its video game history collection. The University of North Dakota plans to invite people who participated in the excavation to a showing of Atari: Game Over in the spring, for a discussion of archaeology, media and video games as artifacts.
What happened to all of the women coders in 1984
In 1984, women stopped pursuing Computer Science majors at American universities. From 1970 onward, women had composed an increasing percentage of Computer Science majors, but something happened in 1984 and that number began to drastically fall, an occurrence at odds with other tech fields. This trend has continued into the 2000s, and today women make up roughly 20 percent of Computer Science majors, as opposed to the 1984 high of about 37 percent. NPR's Planet Money team of Caitlin Kenney and Steve Henn dove into the data to uncover what went down in the mid-80s to drive women out of the field. "There was no grand conspiracy in computer science that we uncovered," Henn said. "No big decision by computer science programs to put a quota on women. There was no sign on a door that said, 'Girls, keep out.' But something strange was going on in this field."
Play League of Legends in college, win scholarship money
The League of Legends North American Collegiate Championship returns for the 2014 - 2015 season with a larger competition layout and new region splits. Last year, 540 teams competed from 300 universities across the US and Canada. "This year, the competition's even bigger," Riot says. "The season now spans the entire academic year and we've split North America into four competitive regions: North, South, East and West. We're also making it easier for new players and teams to compete by collaborating with four community partners with a solid history of running League tournaments." The Qualifiers kick off on October 17 and registration for both the Ivy League of Legends and Collegiate Star League tracks are open from now through October 16. Two additional, shorter Qualifier rounds hosted by TeSPA and WellPlayed Productions take place in early 2015. Each Qualifier track crowns one winning team per region, for a total of 16 groups in the playoffs. The playoffs should be held around April or May 2015, Riot says, and the North American Championship will take place in Los Angeles, California, later in 2015. The top four teams win scholarship money: $30,000 per team member for first place, $15,000 each for second, and $7,500 each for third and fourth. See the full registration schedule and rules in the NACC FAQ, and check out your school's clubs here. Good luck, Summoners of academia! [Image: Riot]
University library starts 'drone loan' program for students
There's good news if you're a broke University of South Florida student who'd like to take an $1,195 DJI Phantom 2 Vision UAV for a spin: you can now sign one out from the library. Before you start preparing some kind of water balloon-dropping scheme, however, there are a few caveats. First off, all use will be supervised by library staff and you'll have to take a course in drone operation before you can borrow one of the two available. Secondly, you'll need a good reason to use it -- one approved usage cited by a library supervisor was aerial surveying by architecture students to learn about building layouts. Educational projects aside, however, with the Phantom 2 Vision's stabilized footage we imagine there'll also be a lot of sweet aerial mixer videos.
University adds League of Legends team to its athletic program
Could being at wiz video games get you a scholarship and a college degree? As far-fetched of a dream as that may seem, it's now becoming a reality at one institute of higher learning. Robert Morris University in Illinois announced today that it will be forming an official League of Legends varsity team as part of its athletic program for the 2014-15 academic year. Team members will be treated on the same level as other athletes, meaning that they're eligible for tutoring, support, and scholarships. The team is a result of the university's associate athletic director's love of competitive PC gaming and acknowledgement that it requires the same level of teamwork as other sports. "Although e-sports have long been a part of the culture of gaming, competitions have seen a large surge in popularity in recent years," the university posted. "Robert Morris University recognizes the value and legitimacy of e-sports and is excited to add e-sports to its already rich athletic program."
Playing video games well can get you into a top South Korean university
Chung-Ang University ranks among the top 10 schools in South Korea, and you know what can get you in other than good grades and connections? Being really, really good at video games. Beginning next year, professional gamers can apply for a spot at the university's Department of Sport Science. Since that department's also in charge of students with more traditional sports backgrounds (you know: soccer, basketball, snowboarding etc.), it's safe to say Chung-Ang recognizes the more sedentary players as athletes, as well. While this news might sound like something from The Onion, it's not such a bizarre development for a country where competitive gaming is huge -- players train as hard as any athlete and matches are even shown on TV. In fact, gaming in the country is big enough that US immigration officials (after some convincing, anyway) granted a couple of pro-gamers athletic visas in the past. With a school possibly honing players' skills even more, we wouldn't be surprised if the immigration ends up giving out more pro-athlete visa in the future. [Image credit: y6y6y6/Flickr]
EVE Evolved: Top five tips for new EVE players
I often hear people say that EVE Online is a lot more fun to read about than actually play, and I've even caught myself saying it jokingly to friends and writing it in articles. But the truth is that amazing stories like the recent world record-breaking Bloodbath of B-R5RB are a hell of a lot better when you're a part of the action or have the first-hand experience to put the event into a wider context. All of EVE was impacted by that battle, with its effects rippling through the in-game markets and reshaping the political landscape of New Eden. But to read about it, you'd think the carnage in B-R5RB ended when $310,000 US worth of titans went up in smoke. EVE has seen a huge influx of fresh faces since that colossal battle at the end of January, with thousands of new characters being created and the Rookie Help channel bursting at the seams. Whether you've always been a closet fan of EVE who has finally been convinced to take the plunge or you just want to join the ranks of the warring alliances you've read so much about, starting out can be a daunting experience. The sheer amount of information there is out there to absorb and sort through is overwhelming, and not all of it is up to date. CCP released a great new player guide recently to help newcomers assimilate, but I've still received several emails asking for advice on getting started. In this week's EVE Evolved, I delve into the new-player experience with a 14-day free trial and reveal my top tips for starting out on the road to creating your own sandbox story.
Facebook gets into nerd feud with Princeton, hilarity ensues
In the tech industry, barely a week goes by without one entity saying that another one is doomed. Mostly, however, we just ignore them, but when Princeton claimed that Facebook would collapse in 2017, the social network decided to get its own back. With tongue placed firmly in cheek, data scientists Mike Develin, Lada Adamic and Sean Taylor copied Princeton's slightly suspect method to discover that the university would effectively run out of students by 2021. Then the team went one step further, analyzing Google trends and Facebook likes to learn that, if social engagement stats are to be believed, the planet will run out of air at some point in 2060. If you like it when major corporations go all reductio ad absurdum on their rivals, then head down to the source link and enjoy this timely reminder that not all scientific studies are created equal.
