When some students are online and others in school buildings, how can teachers make sure everyone is learning what they need to learn?

Though it didn’t seem like it would happen, 14 girls in Buenos Aires now participate in volleyball classes complete with lessons from the Bible.

The consequences of reopening schools in Denmark, Israel, and South Korea offer valuable insights for U.S. schools.

When some students are online and others in school buildings, how can teachers make sure everyone is learning what they need to learn?

This post was contributed by Liliko Uchida, application engineer at Cadence. Being a “Woman in STEM” is a phrase that has long been used to describe the holistic experience shared by thousands of women globally, yet it still makes us feel isolated. Partially due to the statistics of gender population in the STEM workforce and the remainder due to our own internal obstacles, being a woman in STEM continues to be a challenge. While many of us know the should-do’s and should-be’s of taking on this unique role objectively, we struggle to implement them. After all, our perseverance as engineers, mathematicians, businesswomen, programmers, and scientists is largely affected by subjectivity. The UMass Lowell Women’s Leadership Conference 2024 aimed to tackle this problem by uniting hundreds of women with shared experiences under one roof. Not only did the conference provide us with the knowledge necessary to persevere, but it also gave us the tools that will allow us to thrive and act upon the facts we already know. It is my hope that through this blog post, I can share some of my main takeaways from this special day. Be Confident This is one of the most palpable pieces of advice we always hear. Yet so many of us struggle to build this confidence because we don’t know how. Featured speaker Nicole Kalil defined confidence as “complete trust in oneself”.”One way to build this self-trust is by getting to know yourself on a deeper level. By creating a true inner connection, we begin to see ourselves as a whole instead of hyper-focusing on our shortcomings frequently illusioned by imposter syndrome. In one of the sessions, we were asked to introduce ourselves to our neighbors, not by what we do for work, but by who we are as a person. Even if this opportunity does not arise every day, this practice can be done simply by listing characteristics of yourself that define who you are. Who do you care for? How do you show them? What are your life goals oriented towards? How do you observe others’ behavior around you, and what does that say about how you make them feel? Getting to know you beneath the surface and allowing yourself to be seen for who you are is critical in building internal confidence. With practice, this self-reassurance will grow independent of external factors. Take Risks “Sometimes, you have to put your foot in the elevator” - Barb Vlacich, Keynote Speaker When opportunities arise, the only thing you can do to have a chance is to try. Without putting your foot in the elevator, the doors will close, becoming a missed opportunity. Similarly, several of the conference’s speakers also emphasized that the answer to every unasked question will always be a no. Even if you are not ready to full-send a negotiation, ask for a raise, or respectfully disagree with a co-worker’s opinion, start by getting comfortable asking uncomfortable questions. Just one discomfort a day will help in building an immunity to the anxiety that comes with taking risks, typically driven by our self-doubt. Another interesting point that stood out from the conference was the statistics of self-assessed qualifications between men and women. During the negotiation panel, it was revealed that men typically feel they only need 60% of the qualifications under a job description to apply, whereas women often feel they need close to 100%. These numbers alone demonstrate how the pure mental habits of men continue to funnel them into STEM and not women. The next time you seek a new opportunity, assess yourself based on the 60% and use it as a checklist threshold. If more women are able to pursue STEM careers using these numbers, the more likely we will begin to populate these roles. Build Your Genuine Network “ The essence of communication lies in the mutual exchange of ideas and emotions. And when the listener isn’t invested, it undermines the entire purpose of the conversation. Why are you having it anyway?” This is a quote from episode 186 of Julie Brown’s podcast This Sh!t Works called “The 5 Steps to Being an Active Listener”. Julie Brown is a Networking Coach, author, and podcast host who guided an energetic and candid conversation about networking and building a personal brand for women. Networking is often misunderstood as putting your name and qualifications out on the table for as many people to pick up your cards. While making these things known is important, they are not what nurtures effective connections. The key to cultivating your genuine network is to activate a sincere interest in the people you meet. Become the proactive receiver of the confidence exercise discussed above. When you meet someone new, what can you take away from them as a person, not an employee? By making people feel heard, even through the little conversations, you can begin to develop more meaningful connections that resonate. And, with practice, the sometimes inherent need to overcompensate by defining yourself with your resume will slowly fade. It was a wonderful opportunity to attend the UML Women’s Leadership Conference with four other inspiring Cadence women. Not only was the conference a motivating learning experience, but it was also a wonderful opportunity for us to bond together as women and feel supported by each other. The most eye-opening part of the day was seeing just how many women alike were sitting under the same roof. The conclusion of the event led me to feel proud to be an engineer, proud to be at Cadence, and most importantly, proud to be a woman. Learn more about life at Cadence .

This is the 19th installment of The Rationalist, my column for the Times of India.

A friend of mine was very impressed by the interview Narendra Modi granted last week to Akshay Kumar. ‘Such a charming man, such great work ethic,’ he gushed. ‘He is the kind of uncle I would want my kids to have.’ And then, in the same breath, he asked, ‘How can such a good man be such a bad prime minister?”

I don’t want to be uncharitable and suggest that Modi’s image is entirely manufactured, so let’s take the interview at face value. Let’s also grant Modi his claims about the purity of his neeyat (intentions), and reframe the question this way: when it comes to public policy, why do good intentions often lead to bad outcomes? To attempt an answer, I’ll refer to a story a friend of mine, who knows Modi well, once told me about him. 

Modi was chilling with his friends at home more than a decade ago, and told them an incident from his childhood. His mother was ill once, and the young Narendra was tending to her. The heat was enervating, so the boy went to the switchboard to switch on the fan. But there was no electricity. My friend said that as he told this story, Modi’s eyes filled with tears. Even after all these years, he was moved by the memory.

My friend used this story to make the point that Modi’s vision of the world is experiential. If he experiences something, he understands it. When he became chief minister of Gujarat, he made it his stated mission to get reliable electricity to every part of Gujarat. No doubt this was shaped by the time he flicked a switch as a young boy and the fan did not budge. Similarly, he has given importance to things like roads and cleanliness, since he would have experienced the impact of those as a young man.

My term for him, inspired by Rajat Kapoor’s 2014 film, is ‘the ankhon dekhi prime minister’. At one level, this is a good thing. He sees a problem and works for the rest of his life to solve it. But what of things he cannot experience?

The economy is a complex beast, as is society itself, and beyond a certain level, you need to grasp abstract concepts to understand how the world works. You cannot experience them. For example, spontaneous order, or the idea that society and markets, like language, cannot be centrally directed or planned. Or the positive-sum nature of things, which is the engine of our prosperity: the idea that every transaction is a win-win game, and that for one person to win, another does not have to lose. Or, indeed, respect for individual rights and free speech.

One understands abstract concepts by reading about them, understanding them, applying them to the real world. Modi is not known to be a reader, and this is not his fault. Given his background, it is a near-miracle that he has made it this far. He wasn’t born into a home with a reading culture, and did not have either the resources or the time when he was young to devote to reading. The only way he could learn about the world, thus, was by experiencing it.

There are two lessons here, one for Modi himself and others in his position, and another for everyone.

The lesson in this for Modi is a lesson for anyone who rises to such an important position, even if he is the smartest person in the world. That lesson is to have humility about the bounds of your knowledge, and to surround yourself with experts who can advise you well. Be driven by values and not confidence in your own knowledge. Gather intellectual giants around you, and stand on their shoulders.

Modi did not do this in the case of demonetisation, which he carried out against the advice of every expert he consulted. We all know the damage it caused to the economy.

The other learning from this is for all of us. How do we make sense of the world? By connecting dots. An ankhon-dekhi approach will get us very few dots, and our view of the world will be blurred and incomplete. The best way to gather more dots is reading. The more we read, the better we understand the world, and the better the decisions we take. When we can experience a thousand lives through books, why restrict ourselves to one?

A good man with noble intentions can make bad decisions with horrible consequences. The only way to hedge against this is by staying humble and reading more. So when you finish reading this piece, think of an unread book that you’d like to read today – and read it!

The India Uncut Blog © 2010 Amit Varma. All rights reserved.
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When I joined CIVICUS in 2019, I came in with two decades of work on influencing and monitoring public policies through grassroots and global activism. Joining CIVICUS as Secretary-General felt familiar, like returning home after a period of separation. My first international role in 2006 – as Campaign Director of the Global Call to Action […]

This paper examines the causes of export success in East and South East Asia and assesses the role of industrial policy.

Research on ICT and capacity building for poverty reduction, focusing on lessons learned from a distant learning course in microfinance.

This brief shows how India sparked a digital payments boom and boosted financial inclusion through the introduction of its Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and outlines ways countries in the region can ramp up their own digital transformation.

ABSTRACTThe private health care sector is an important source of service delivery in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Yet, the private sector remains fragmented, making it difficult for health system actors to support and ensure the availability of quality health care services. In global health programs, social franchising is one model used to engage and organize the private health care sector. Two social franchise networks, ProFam in West Africa and Tunza in East and Central Africa, provide health care through branded networks of facilities. However, these social franchise networks include a limited number of private health care facilities, and in fragile contexts, like Burundi and Mali, they have faced challenges in integrating with national health systems. The MOMENTUM Private Healthcare Delivery (MPHD) project in Burundi and Mali sought to expand the number of health facilities it engaged beyond the existing ProFam and Tunza networks. The expansion aimed to help improve service quality in more private facilities while advancing localization and reducing fragmentation for improved stewardship by health system actors. MPHD achieved this expansion by removing barriers for private health facilities to join inclusive, nonbranded networks and engaging local partners to build and maintain these networks. We share lessons learned regarding the growing role of local organizations as actors within mixed health systems and provide insights on strengthening stewardship of the increasingly heterogeneous private health care delivery sector in LMICs, particularly in fragile settings.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE:

Recently, artificial intelligence tools have been deployed with increasing speed in educational and clinical settings. However, the use of artificial intelligence by trainees across different levels of experience has not been well-studied. This study investigates the impact of artificial intelligence assistance on the diagnostic accuracy for intracranial hemorrhage and large-vessel occlusion by medical students and resident trainees.

Sony president Hiroki Totoki in a Q&A session with investors was asked about the failure of Concord, which was shut down less than two weeks after it released.

"Currently, we are still in the process of learning," said Totoki (via VideoGamesChronicle). "And basically, with regards to new IP, of course, you don’t know the result until you actually try it.

"So for us, for our reflection, we probably need to have a lot of gates, including user testing or internal evaluation, and the timing of such gates. And then we need to bring them forward, and we should have done those gates much earlier than we did.

"Also, we have a siloed organisation, so going beyond the boundaries of those organisations in terms of development, and also sales, I think that could have been much smoother.

"And then going forward, in our own titles and in third-party titles, we do have many different windows. And we want to be able to select the right and optimal window so that we can deploy them on our own platform without cannibalization, so that we can maximize our performance in terms of title launches. That’s all I have."

Sony senior vice president for finance and IR Sadahiko Hayakawa discussed the success of Helldivers 2 and the failure of Concord.

"We launched two live-service games this year," he said. "Helldivers 2 was a huge hit, while Concord ended up being shut down. We gained a lot of experience and learned a lot from both.

"We intend to share the lessons learned from our successes and failures across our studios, including in the areas of title development management as well as the process of continually adding expanded content and scaling the service after its release so as to strengthen our development management system.

"We intend to build on an optimum title portfolio during the current mid-range plan period that combines single-player games – which are our strengths and which have a higher predictability of becoming hits due to our proven IP – with live-service games that pursue upside while taking on a certain amount of risk upon release."

Concord released for the PlayStation 5 and PC on August 23, and it was shut down on September 6.

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.

Full Article - https://www.vgchartz.com/article/463026/sony-discusses-what-lessons-can-be-learned-from-the-failure-of-concord/

By Mike Cloonan, CEO of Sionna Therapeutics, as part of the From The Trenches feature of LifeSciVC An insightful piece on this blog following the JPM healthcare conference noted the “refreshing burst of enthusiasm” in the biotech sector. It’s true

The post Lessons From A Private Funding Round: Science, Relationships, And Experience appeared first on LifeSciVC.

By Arthur O. Tzianabos, PhD, CEO of Lifordi Immunotherapeutics, as part of the From the Trenches feature of LifeSciVC As the biotech industry continues to pick up steam, I have been getting a number of phone calls from folks in

The post Stars and Scars… Some Lessons Learned About Leadership appeared first on LifeSciVC.

We’re seeing an alarming increase in the number of failed biotech companies. While the biotechnology industry holds enormous […]

Sep 28, 2022

As the best documented major crisis in history, in substantial part because Kennedy secretly taped the deliberations in which he and his closest advisers were weighing choices they knew could lead to a catastrophic war, the Cuban missile crisis has become the canonical case study in nuclear statecraft. Over the decades since, key lessons from the crisis have been adapted and applied by the successors of Kennedy and Khrushchev to inform fateful choices.

Dec 8, 2016

"The goal of the book was to invest in thinking. It doesn't have a list of recommendations but generates options for action that are backed by evidence. We chose to forgo credit by adopting this approach, but it’s been very encouraging to see some key impacts that acknowledge the book."

Apr 3, 2024

Only a small handful of people in the world have sat at the negotiating table with the North Koreans and extensively interacted with them. Yet, this knowledge is fragmented and has not been collected or analyzed in a systematic manner. This report captures the findings from in-depth, one-on-one interviews with former senior negotiators from the United States and South Korea, who gained unique knowledge about North Korean negotiating behavior by dealing directly with their high-level North Korean counterparts. 

These negotiators collectively represent a body of negotiation experience and expertise starting from the early 1990s to late 2019, when North Korea ceased all negotiations with the United States. During that time, the conditions for productive negotiation changed dramatically – indeed, the conditions for the 1994 U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework negotiations were much more favorable than during the Six-Party Talks of the mid-2000s or the Season of Summits during 2018-2019. For the “Negotiating with North Korea: Key Lessons Learned from Negotiators’ Genesis Period” project, a spotlight was placed on former senior negotiators’ early-stage experience preparing for and engaging in negotiations with the North Koreans. In doing so, tacit knowledge was captured to serve as a resource for future negotiators to inform and accelerate their own genesis period.

Jun 4, 2024

Joseph Nye Russia's war on Ukraine is still raging, and no one knows when or how it will end. Nonetheless, the past two years have borne out several predictions concerning what does and does not work in twenty-first-century conflicts involving major powers.

Urfi Javed didn't mince her words in questioning Tripti Dimri's dance skills in Mere Mehboob song.

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge, 2013.

Cappucci, Matthew, author

A World Resources Institute paper presents five case studies that are worthy of replication

At the U.N. summit in Cali, delegates are working on a “biodiversity and health action plan” proposed for adoption by the 196 member nations of the Convention on Biological Diversity

'If someone were to ask you if you want to die tomorrow, no matter what problems you are grappling with, you would be hesitant, right?'

It is time managers revisit their stereotypical notions of who is talented and what talent is

Have you ever wondered how and why a robot moves the way it does? Learn from engineer and artist Catie Cuan on how she tackles this exact question. As robots become increasingly present in our society, programming context clues through movement and noise will become more nuanced. Hear from Cuan on what building in this nascent field looks like.

Tracing India’s surgical history through the memoirs of a pioneering doctor

Electoral funding needs to be made more transparent

The impact of Brexit on the global realty market

India could learn from the U.K.’s transition, ensuring that it does not make the mistakes Britain made

National Bureau of Economic Research

National Bureau of Economic Research

National Bureau of Economic Research

National Bureau of Economic Research

National Bureau of Economic Research

National Bureau of Economic Research