This expert seminar aims to get a better understanding of the features, limitations and preliminary findings from the use of SIBs, and to a lesser extent, of DIBs in developing countries from a multidimensional and multi-stakeholder perspective.

The jobs gap between well-educated young people and those who left school early has continued to widen during the crisis. A good education is the best insurance against a lack of work experience, according to the latest edition of the OECD’s annual Education at a Glance.

Archived webinar - Low-performing Students: Why they Fall Behind and How to Help them Succeed (February 10, 2016) with Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills, OECD, and Daniel Salinas, Analyst, OECD.

Equality of opportunity is a lofty ideal, but some societies get closer to achieving it than others.

Globally, enrolment in secondary education has expanded dramatically over the past decades. This expansion is also reflected in PISA data, particularly for low- and middle-income countries. Between 2003 and 2015, Indonesia added more than 1.1 million students, Turkey and Brazil more than 400 000 students, and Mexico more than 300 000 students, to the total population of 15-year-olds eligible to participate in PISA.

A Karnataka farmer had posted a video about 100 tonnes of cabbage ready to be harvested and needed buyers. An activist and agri-tech entrepreneur came to immediate rescue of the farmer in dire need.

This expert seminar aims to get a better understanding of the features, limitations and preliminary findings from the use of SIBs, and to a lesser extent, of DIBs in developing countries from a multidimensional and multi-stakeholder perspective.

It would be wrong for charges against the Texas governor to be allowed through the courts

A team of firefighters worked tirelessly for three hours to rescue a horse named Duchess who had fallen into a ditch in Great Horkesley, near Colchester on the Friday of bank holiday.

Virgin Australia shares are worth less than 10 cents. Credit ratings agency Standard & Poor's has warned the airline's debt problems were likely to worsen in light of the coronavirus.

A woman in her 40s was found dead after emergency services were called to Greenall Court in Prescot, Merseyside, at around 3.30am on Saturday. A man, 38, was arrested at the scene.

The price of oil has fallen to around $26 in less than a month due to growing fears of a global recession, travel restrictions and a dispute between Saudi Arabia and Russia over production levels.

Data released by Forecourt Trader and the AA shows that a litre of unleaded on average is most expensive in London costing 113.6p while in Northern Ireland it is just 105.7p - an 8p difference.

Memo to all writers of action thrillers, particularly ones who might just be putting the final touches to Bond 25 - I think we may already be at peak drone attack.

A team of firefighters worked tirelessly for three hours to rescue a horse named Duchess who had fallen into a ditch in Great Horkesley, near Colchester on the Friday of bank holiday.

The 40-year-old singer's impromptu photoshoot ended in disaster when she fell backwards into the pool, ruining her freshly applied make-up.

If the Royals were still being paid by the long-established Civil List, they would not benefit from the energy auction. But in 2012 this changed and the Queen now gets 25 per cent of the estate's profit.

Desi jugad: How to pluck mangoes without letting them fall

The total death toll since the outbreak came to light on Feb. 21 now stands at 30,395 the agency said, the third highest in the world after those of the United States and Britain.

Sales doubles from ₹18 crore a month to ₹55 crore during lockdown

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson led the tributes with UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak at 10 Downing Street for the National Health Service (NHS) and other key workers across care homes and public transport at 11 am local time.So far 82 NHS staff are known to have died after testing positive for the coronavirus, including many with their roots in India.

The incident occurred at Shakti Paper Mill in Tetla village, where the victims were cleaning an open tank on Wednesday evening, said Raigarh superintendent of police Santosh Singh.

The HTML5

HTML5 standardizes the oninput event handler, which should be used to detect user input in JavaScript. Sure, you could use onkeydown or onkeyup instead, but those were never really designed for this particular use case, and it shows.

Phase 1 will include a considerable easing of measures that will allow people to move around their province as well as attend concerts and go to the theatre. Gatherings of up to 10 people will be allowed

A two-wheeler rider was injured on Saturday evening after a hand grinder, that slipped from the hands of a worker engaged in cladding work over Kochi

Gas leak fallout: CPCB asks industrial units across India to go for safety and hazard audit before resuming operations

In the context of increasing hardware and software automation in the process of crystal structure determination by X-ray diffraction, and based on conference sessions presenting some of the experience of senior crystallographers for the benefit of younger colleagues, an outline is given here of some basic concepts and applications of symmetry in crystallography. Three specific examples of structure determinations are discussed, for which an understanding of these aspects of symmetry avoids mistakes that can readily be made by reliance on automatic procedures. Topics addressed include pseudo-symmetry, twinning, real and apparent disorder, chirality, and structure validation.

Smithsonian scientists report fledgling catbirds in suburban habitats are at their most vulnerable stage of life, with almost 80 percent killed by predators before they reach adulthood. Almost half of the deaths were connected to domestic cats.

The post Alarming number of fledgling, suburban catbirds fall prey to domestic cats, study finds appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

“Our results support the idea that environmental conditions on tropical non-breeding areas can influence the departure time for spring migration,” said Colin Studds, a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute's Migratory Bird Center and lead author of the study.

The post Smithsonian scientists find declining rainfall is a major influence for migrating birds appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

In the United States, natural-gas production from shale rock has increased by more than 700 percent since 2007. Yet scientists still do not fully understand […]

The post Biological fallout of shale-gas production still largely unknown appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

AUSTIN, Texas — Astronomers at The University of Texas at Austin and Harvard University have put a basic principle of black holes to the test, […]

The post Do Stars Fall Quietly into Black Holes? appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

As command module pilot for the Apollo 15 mission to the moon in 1971, Al Worden spent six days orbiting the moon, including three days completely alone, the most isolated human in existence. In Falling to Earth, Worden tells for the first time the full story around the dramatic events that shook NASA and ended his spaceflight career.

The post “Falling to Earth: An Apollo 15 Astronaut’s Journey to the Moon” by Al Worden with Francis French appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

To understand the long-term effects of a prolonged tropical storm in the Panama Canal watershed, Robert Stallard, staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and research hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, and Armando Ubeda, the LightHawk Mesoamerica program manager, organized four flights over the watershed to create a digital map of landslide scars.

The post Smithsonian hydrologist discovers that rainfall has dried up Panama’s drinking water appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

These opportunistic plants quickly fill-in the gap taking advantage of the increased light coming through the tree canopy and the fresh soil at the fallen tree’s turned-up roots.

The post Falling trees help invasive wineberry move into deciduous forests in North America appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

(The Paypers) Ecommerce Foundation has surveyed 5.200 consumers from 42 countries to better...

The status of soil can be represented by many properties. However, how well they represent soil status depends on the level of rainfall in the area. Researchers in Spain found that in wet regions soil status is strongly linked to biological factors, such as vegetation cover and biodiversity. In drier regions, status has a stronger link to the physical properties of the soil.

Several countries around the world are emitting less carbon due to the pandemic slowdown, but the climate will continue to warm.; Credit: Andy Buchanan/AFP via Getty Images

With the dramatic reduction in car traffic and commercial flights, carbon emissions have been falling around the globe. If the slowdown continues, some are estimating the world could see the largest drop in emissions in the last century.

Still, overall greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere are still going up and the decline will likely be smaller than what scientists say is necessary to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

So far, the effects are just starting to appear. In China, the first country to lock down, greenhouse gas emissions dropped an estimated 25% in February as factories and industrial producers slowed output. That decreased coal burning, which has come back slowly since then.

"A month or two of shelter in place will drop carbon dioxide emissions a few percent here or there, but it won't change the year substantially unless we stay like this for some time," says Rob Jackson, environmental scientist at Stanford University.

The declines are still too small to be read by greenhouse gas observatories around the world, like the one on top of the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii, given the natural changes in atmosphere this time of year. Because much of the Earth's land mass is in the northern hemisphere, plants and forests there cause carbon levels to fluctuate as they bloom in the spring, drawing carbon dioxide from the air.

If countries continue shelter-at-home orders, emissions declines could be greater. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates U.S. emissions from gas and energy use could drop more than 7% this year, similar to a 2009 decline during the financial crisis.

Worldwide, early estimates put global emissions dropping around 4%. Still, that's less than the 7.6% the U.N. says is needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change by limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

To achieve those cuts, scientists say more fundamental changes are needed, like switching to renewable energy.

"This isn't the way we want to reduce our fossil fuel emissions," says Jackson. "We don't want tens of millions of people being out of work as a path to decarbonizing our economy. We need systemic change in our energy infrastructure and new green technologies."

Still, Jackson says the recent changes are providing useful insights.

"It's as if a third of the cars on the road were suddenly electric, running on clean electricity and the air pollution is plummeting," says Jackson. "It's really a remarkable experiment and it shows the benefits of clean energy."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Embattled Korean Resource Center board president DJ Yoon takes interviews in a photo dated February 2014. ( ; Credit: Korean Resource Center via Flickr

In Los Angeles, another Asian American civil rights organization is in upheaval. A month after major layoffs at Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Los Angeles, the Korean Resource Center has lost more than half of its staff.  

The Korean Resource Center  is a leading advocate for low-income and undocumented Koreans. Its organizers worked on flipping Orange County from red to blue. Its legal staff provides free aid to immigrants. But 18 people have left in recent weeks, many upset with board president DJ Yoon and his management style. 

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: Alyson Hurt/NPR

To safely phase out social distancing measures, the U.S. needs more diagnostic testing for the coronavirus, experts say. But how much more?

The Trump administration said on April 27 the U.S. will soon have enough capacity to conduct double the current amount of testing for active infections. The country has done nearly 248,000 tests daily on average in the last seven days, according to the nonprofit Covid Tracking Project. Doubling that would mean doing around 496,000 a day.

Will that be enough? What benchmark should states try to hit?

One prominent research group, Harvard's Global Health Institute, proposes that the U.S. should be doing more than 900,000 tests per day as a country. This projection, released Thursday, is a big jump from its earlier projection of testing need, which was between 500,000 and 600,000 daily.

Harvard's testing estimate increased, says Ashish Jha, director of the Global Health Institute, because the latest modeling shows that the outbreak in the U.S. is worse than projected earlier.

"Just in the last few weeks, all of the models have converged on many more people getting infected and many more people [dying]," he says.

But each state's specific need for testing varies depending on the size of its outbreak, explains Jha. The bigger the outbreak, the more testing is needed.

Thursday Jha's group at Harvard published a simulation that estimates the amount of testing needed in each state by May 15. In the graphic below, we compare these estimates with the average numbers of daily tests states are currently doing. (Jump to graphic)

Two ways to assess whether testing is adequate

To make their state-by-state estimates, the Harvard Global Health Institute group started from a model of future case counts. They calculated how much testing would be needed for a state to test all infected people and any close contacts they may have exposed the virus. (The simulation estimates testing 10 contacts on average.)

"Testing is outbreak control 101, because what testing lets you do is figure out who's infected and who's not," Jha says. "And that lets you separate out the infected people from the non infected people and bring the disease under control."

This approach is how communities can prevent outbreaks from flaring up. First, test all symptomatic people, then reach out to their close contacts and test them, and finally ask those who are infected or exposed to isolate themselves.

Our chart also shows another testing benchmark for each state: the ratio of tests conducted that come back positive. Communities that see around 10% or fewer positives among their test results are probably testing enough, the World Health Organization advises. If the rate is higher, they're likely missing a lot of active infections.

What is apparent from the data we present below is that many states are far from both the Harvard estimates and the 10% positive benchmark.

Just nine states are near or have exceeded the testing minimums estimated by Harvard; they are mostly larger, less populous states: Alaska, Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.

Several states with large outbreaks — New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut among others — are very far from the minimum testing target. Some states that are already relaxing their social-distancing restrictions, such as Georgia, Texas and Colorado, are far from the target too.

Jha offers several caveats about his group's estimates.

Estimates are directional not literal

Researchers at the Global Health Initiative at Harvard considered three different models of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak as a starting point for their testing estimates. They found that while there was significant variation in the projections of outbreak sizes, all the models tend to point in the same direction, i.e. if one model showed that a state needed significantly more testing, the others generally did too.

The model they used to create these estimates is the Youyang Gu COVID-19 Forecasts, which they say has tracked closely with what's actually happened on the ground. Still the researchers caution, these numbers are not meant to be taken literally but as a guide.

If social distancing is relaxed, testing needs may grow

The Harvard testing estimates are built on a model that assumes that states continue social distancing through May 15. And about half of states have already started lifting some of those.

Jha says, that without the right measures in place to contain spread, easing up could quickly lead to new cases.

"The moment you relax, the number of cases will start climbing. And therefore, the number of tests you need to keep your society, your state from having large outbreaks will also start climbing," warns Jha.

Testing alone is not enough

A community can't base the decision that it's safe to open up on testing data alone. States should also see a consistent decline in the number of cases, of two weeks at least, according to White House guidance. If their cases are instead increasing, they should assume the number of tests they need will increase too.

And Jha warns, testing is step one, but it won't contain an outbreak by itself. It needs to be part of "a much broader set of strategies and plans the states need to have in place" when they begin to reopen.

In fact, his group's model is built on the assumption that states are doing contact tracing and have plans to support isolation for infected or exposed people.

"I don't want anybody to just look at the number and say, we meet it and we're good to go," he says. "What this really is, is testing capacity in the context of having a really effective workforce of contact tracers."

The targets are floors not goals

States that have reached the estimated target should think of that as a starting point.

"We've always built these as the floor, the bare minimum," Jha says. More testing would be even better, allowing states to more rapidly tamp down case surges.

In fact, other experts have proposed the U.S. do even more testing. Paul Romer, a professor of economics at New York University proposed in a recent white paper that if the U.S. tested every resident, every two weeks, isolating those who test positive, it could stop the pandemic in its tracks.

Jha warns that without sufficient testing, and the infrastructure in place to trace and isolate contacts, there's a real risk that states — even those with few cases now — will see new large outbreaks. "I think what people have to remember is that the virus isn't gone. The disease isn't gone. And it's going to be with us for a while," he says.

Daniel Wood contributed to this report.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

On Monday, California State University, Fullerton announced it was planning to begin the fall 2020 semester online, making it one of the first colleges to disclose contingency plans for prolonged coronavirus disruptions.

"Our plan is to enter [the fall] virtually," said Pamella Oliver, the schools provost, at a virtual town hall. "Of course that could change depending on the situation, depending on what happens with COVID-19. But at this point that's what we're thinking."

The public institution in Southern California also said it hopes to resume in-person learning when it's safe to do so.

Oliver asked faculty to start planning for fall virtual classes now, citing the pain felt this spring when the university was forced to transition to online classes. "Having to jump quickly, without having in-depth plans," she said, "added to the difficulty."

Colleges and universities moved spring classes online, and many also closed campuses in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Schools are now grappling with how long the disruptions will last, and what the fall semester will look like, but many have been hesitant to announce their fall plans publicly.

College enrollment was already on a downward trend before the pandemic, making it a competitive field for college recruiters — every student they sign up counts. The big question is: Will students still enroll if college is all online? And will colleges that were already in dire financial straits survive the outbreak?

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: /Hanna Barczyk for NPR

What will happen on college campuses in the fall? It's a big question for families, students and the schools themselves.

A lot of what happens depends on factors outside the control of individual schools: Will there be more testing? Contact tracing? Enough physical space for distancing? Will the coronavirus have a second wave? Will any given state allow campuses to reopen?

For all of these questions, it's really too early to know the answers. But one thing is clear: Life, and learning for the nation's 20 million students in higher education, will be different.

"I don't think there's any scenario under which it's business as usual on American college campuses in the fall," says Nicholas Christakis, a sociologist and physician at Yale University.

So why are so many colleges announcing they will be back on campus in the fall?

In many cases, it's because they're still trying to woo students. A survey of college presidents found their most pressing concern right now is summer and fall enrollment. Even elite schools, typically more stable when it comes to enrollment, have reportedly been tapping their waitlists.

In the midst of all this uncertainty, it's worth looking at some of the ideas out there. With the help of Joshua Kim and Edward J. Maloney, professors and authors of the book Learning Innovation and the Future of Higher Education, here are some potential scenarios for reopening colleges and universities:

All virtual

Perhaps the most obvious option for the fall is to continue doing what they've been doing this spring. Colleges have signaled that they're planning for this option — even if it's a last resort. California State University, Fullerton, was one of the first to announce publicly it was planning for a fall semester online.

"Obviously we want to resume in-person teaching as soon as possible, but we also need to make sure that we're safe," says Ellen Treanor, who helps lead strategic communication at the school. Treanor says it made a lot of sense to assume the school would start online. "What would be the easier way to transition? It would be easier to transition beginning virtually and then transitioning in person," she said. "The faculty [needs] to be prepared."

With virtual classes, students can remain at home, although some colleges are exploring bringing them back to campus, where they could use the school's Wi-Fi to take online classes.

Delayed start

A delay in the semester would allow a school to wait it out until it was safer to reopen. One option is to push back a month or two, starting in October or November. Another idea is to push a normal start to January. In that case, the spring semester would become the fall semester, and potentially students could stay on campus through next summer to make up the spring semester. Boston University floated a version of this January start date when it announced a number of plans it was exploring.

One downside to a late start is what students will do in the meantime, especially those who don't have financial stability and rely on campus or the university to be a safe and stable home.

Some online, some face-to-face

This would be a hybrid model, with a combination of virtual and in-person classes. It may be a good choice for campuses that don't have enough classrooms to allow adjusting face-to-face teaching to the requirements of social distancing.

"You might have some of the larger classes being taught online simply because it's harder to imagine a 150- or 350-person classroom," says Maloney, who leads the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship at Georgetown University. "So you might see that class split up into multiple sections." For large, entry-level classes, colleges may have a lecture component online and then meet in smaller groups in person.

"The hybrid model doesn't have to just be about modality," Maloney says. "It can be, but it could also be about fundamentally rethinking what the core structure has been for those large classes."

Of course, shifting larger classes online may not be enough, by itself, to alleviate the health concerns of having students on campus. Early research from Cornell University found that eliminating such classes didn't lessen student interactions with each other.

Shortened blocks

In block scheduling, students take just one course at a time for a shorter duration, typically three or four weeks. Colorado College, a liberal arts school south of Denver, has been using this model for 50 years. The college adopted this style of classes because "it allows [students] to take a deep dive and really focus in unique ways on the single subject," says Alan Townsend, the provost there. In a typical year, the school offers eight blocks.

In addition to its intensity, block scheduling is attractive right now because it allows flexibility. Colleges that use it have the opportunity to change the way classes look every three weeks — since there are multiple start and stop points. (With a semester, you have only a single start and then, often 16 weeks later, an end.)

"It's easier for us to now think creatively for next year," Townsend says. "Different students can make different choices. That's really hard to do with a semester-based system, but the blocks allow us to do that a little bit more flexibly."

The school is also entertaining the idea of sending faculty abroad to teach a block for international students who might not be able to enter the U.S, or adding summer blocks to give students even more opportunities to take classes.

Only some on campus

Some colleges have suggested bringing only freshmen back to campus and having upperclassmen either delay their start, or be online and remote.

The idea centers on research that shows just how important a student's first year of college is as a predictor of graduation. Adapting to campus can be a challenge, so this would allow first-year students to get comfortable and have extra support on campus.

Since upperclassmen are already familiar with how campus and classes work, the theory goes, they can more easily adapt to an online environment. Other versions of this approach would have students who have housing needs come back to campus first, and then, over time, phase in other groups of students.

All these options seek to keep the population density of the campus lower while still maintaining some face-to-face interactions.

On campus, with some changes

Social distancing, improved testing and contact tracing could help colleges reopen their campuses.

"Every school is trying to figure out a way to have students come back and do whatever we can while also protecting public health," says Learning Innovation co-author Joshua Kim, director of online programs and strategy at Dartmouth College.

"At the same time, we know that, however that works, things will be different. It's probably unlikely that we'll be able to cram students together in large, packed lecture halls or put doubles and triples in residence halls or have big events."

To follow social distancing, professors are measuring their classrooms, calculating how many students could fit in the space if they were 6 feet apart. Deans are planning out how students could enter and exit the classrooms safely.

But it's not just the classrooms that pose a challenge. For residential colleges, it's the dorms.

"Whether or not students are actually learning in the classroom, it's incredibly important for them to have an on-campus experience," Maloney says. So schools are thinking about how they can spread their students out, putting them in places where they normally wouldn't go.

Some ideas include housing students in offices that aren't being used, local hotel rooms or off-campus housing. Institutions are also reimagining campus events, like freshman orientation, since it's unlikely hundreds of students will be in a packed auditorium.

"Rethinking how we do everything we do at a university is part of the process," Maloney says.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Commercial sea fishing has been taking place for centuries. The first analysis of historic data from the UK has indicated that, over the past 118 years, the commercial productivity of UK fisheries has decreased by 94 per cent.

Walter Flores was unemployed for 8 months in 2014 but is now working in sales for Workforce Solutions in Compton; Credit: Brian Watt/KPCC

California's unemployment rate continued its decline in December, ending the year at 7 percent, according to figures released Friday by the state Employment Development Department.

But in Compton, Willowbrook and the Florence-Graham section of Los Angeles County, it remains about double that, data show.

“You might have work this week. But next week, you won’t have work,” said James Hicks, 36, 0f Compton. He's worked in warehouses through staffing agencies, but said the jobs have always been temporary.

Statewide, California has added jobs at a faster rate than the United States for three straight years, according to Robert Kleinhenz, Chief Economist with the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation. He pointed out the statewide unemployment rate is now where it was June 2008. 

"All in all, with the recession now five years back in our rearview mirror, we’re finally at the point where we can say that we have shrugged off quite a bit of the pain that occurred back during those times," Kleinhenz said.

The Los Angeles County metro area saw a net gain of almost 71,000 jobs in 2014.  The County's overall unemployment rate has fallen to 7.9 percent from 9.2 percent a year ago.

But Compton's unemployment rate was 13 percent in December.

“I’d rather have a  full-time type of gig, working 40 hours a week, but right now, even if you get 25 hours, it’s a blessing,” said Hicks, the warehouse worker in Compton.

On Thursday, he interviewed to be a guard with a security firm, but was told there weren’t any positions available. He had another security guard job six months ago that he thought might become full time and permanent. 

"It was going all right for about two to three months, until they cut my hours and days," Hicks said. 

Walter Flores lives in La Mirada but currently works as an account executive in the Compton office of Workforce Solutions. He was unemployed for about eight months last year after a car accident.

"Losing what you love to do is a tough one, but I'm back," he said. "2015 is going to be a great year."

Flores said most major warehouse and logistics companies prefer to hire temporary workers through industrial staffing firms like the one where he's working because their needs are sporadic.  

But he said it's still a potential opportunity.

"It doesn't matter that it's a temporary position, as long as you put your foot in the door, and then you let the employer know how much value you are for the company," Flores said.  

Hicks, who's earned a GED, wants to find a program to study physical therapy. But first, he’d like to find a job. 

He said you can't judge Compton’s residents by its unemployment rate.

"Some of us out here who [are] looking for jobs, but sometimes it’s the luck of the draw," he said. "It’s kind of scarce out there.” 

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Production of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) decreased by 5% within the EU in 2011, compared with 2010, when measured in absolute, metric tonnes, according to a recent report from the European Environment Agency (EEA). Imports and sales of these powerful greenhouse gases (GHGs) also fell, by 6% and 12% respectively, but exports rose by 5%.

IT firm says margins to remain under 16-17%, sees a $50-70-million hit from ransomware Maze attack