VIDEO REELS

Can You Prove That You’re A Human And Not A Bot
TECHNOLOGY, TOP FOUR, VIDEO REELS

Can You Prove That You’re A Human And Not A Bot

CAPTCHAs: The struggle to tell real humans from fake. CAPTCHAs are those now ubiquitous challenges you encounter to prove that you’re a human and not a bot when you go to log in to many websites. Websites and mobile apps have long been attacked by bots on a massive scale. Those malicious bots are programmed to automatically consume a large amount of computing resources, post spam messages, collect data from websites and even register and perform user authentication. This state of affairs led to the introduction of CAPTCHA, which stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. As a computer scientist, I see CAPTCHAs as an effective shield for websites to prevent automated attacks, enhance cybersecurity and improve user experience – at least in the...
Memory Loss And How To Improve Yours
HEALTH & WELLNESS, TOP FOUR, VIDEO REELS

Memory Loss And How To Improve Yours

Forgetting appointments, deadlines and that call to Mom − the phenomenon of prospective memory and how to improve yours. Have you ever walked into a room and then wondered why you went there? If you’ve experienced this phenomenon, you’ve had a prospective memory lapse. Memory usually means remembering things that have already happened. But prospective memory is the ability to remember to do something in the future – such as stopping to get milk on the way home from work, calling your mom on her birthday or remembering to take your casserole out of the oven. Sometimes, errors lead to heartbreaking results – such as forgetting to take your toddler out of the car on a hot day. I am a clinical neuropsychologist and a professor of psychology and neuroscience. For the past 30 years, my r...
The Global Information Ecosystem Massive IT Outage Spotlights Major Vulnerabilities
Journalism, TECHNOLOGY, VIDEO REELS

The Global Information Ecosystem Massive IT Outage Spotlights Major Vulnerabilities

Massive IT outage spotlights major vulnerabilities in the global information ecosystem. The global information technology outage on July 19, 2024, that paralyzed organizations ranging from airlines to hospitals and even the delivery of uniforms for the Olympic Games represents a growing concern for cybersecurity professionals, businesses and governments. The outage is emblematic of the way organizational networks, cloud computing services and the internet are interdependent, and the vulnerabilities this creates. In this case, a faulty automatic update to the widely used Falcon cybersecurity software from CrowdStrike caused PCs running Microsoft’s Windows operating system to crash. Unfortunately, many servers and PCs need to be fixed manually, and many of the affected organizations ha...
Inside NCAA’s $2.75B Settlement To Pay College Athletes
SPORTS, TOP FOUR, VIDEO REELS

Inside NCAA’s $2.75B Settlement To Pay College Athletes

5 questions after the NCAA’s $2.75B settlement to pay college athletes. As part of a US$2.75 billion class action settlement struck in May 2024 between former student-athletes and several dozen universities involved in big-time sports, schools will be allowed to pay future players with something more than scholarships. They can give them cash. That’s about all we know. The rest is uncharted territory. There are many more questions than answers. In House v NCAA, about 14,000 former college athletes enrolled between 2016 and 2020 sued over lost opportunities and profits in the era before 2021. That’s the year that the NCAA changed its rules to permit active student-athletes to make money off their name, image and likeness – referred to as NIL. The plaintiffs in House argued that they...
Lessons In Dealing With AI And The Disability Community
TECHNOLOGY, TOP FOUR, VIDEO REELS

Lessons In Dealing With AI And The Disability Community

Disability community has long wrestled with ‘helpful’ technologies – lessons for everyone in dealing with AI. You might have heard that artificial intelligence is going to revolutionize everything, save the world and give everyone superhuman powers. Alternatively, you might have heard that it will take your job, make you lazy and stupid, and make the world a cyberpunk dystopia. Consider another way to look at AI: as an assistive technology – something that helps you function. With that view, also consider a community of experts in giving and receiving assistance: the disability community. Many disabled people use technology extensively, both dedicated assistive technologies such as wheelchairs and general-use technologies such as smart home devices. Equally, many disabled people re...
College Helps But Luck And Hiring Practices Also Play A Big Role With Landing A Good Job
EDUCATION, VIDEO REELS

College Helps But Luck And Hiring Practices Also Play A Big Role With Landing A Good Job

College may not be the ‘great equalizer’ − luck and hiring practices also play a role, a sociologist explains. The idea that a college degree levels the playing field for students of different socioeconomic classes has been bolstered in recent years. Research from 2011 and 2017, for example, found that earning a bachelor’s degree helped students from less advantaged backgrounds do as well as their better-off peers._ Jessi Streib, a sociology professor at Duke University, was skeptical. According to other research, everything associated with landing a good job – professional networks, high GPAs, internships, status symbols – is unequally distributed by class. To find out whether college is the “great equalizer,” or whether more is at play than a bachelor’s degree, Streib interviewed 6...
Menthol-Flavored E-Cigarettes — How The Benefits May Outweigh The Risks
HEALTH & WELLNESS, VIDEO REELS

Menthol-Flavored E-Cigarettes — How The Benefits May Outweigh The Risks

FDA authorized the sale of menthol-flavored e-cigarettes – a health policy expert explains how the benefits may outweigh the risks. On June 21, 2024, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized the marketing of the first electronic cigarette products in flavors other than tobacco in the U.S. Of the four new authorized products, two are sealed, prefilled pods with menthol flavored nicotine liquid that can be used in certain types of e-cigarettes. The other two are disposable nicotine e-cigarettes – meaning once the prefilled menthol liquid is used, the device cannot be used again. The Conversation asked Jamie Hartmann-Boyce, a health policy expert who specializes in tobacco control and e-cigarette products, to explain the pros and cons of the FDA’s authorization and what it could...
A Final Goodbye To Willie Mays, The ‘Say Hey Kid’
IN OTHER NEWS, VIDEO REELS

A Final Goodbye To Willie Mays, The ‘Say Hey Kid’

Saying a final goodbye to Willie Mays, baseball’s ‘Say hey kid’. In 1959, when Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev visited San Francisco and members of the International Longshoreman’s Union greeted him with cheers, newspaperman Frank Coniff quipped: “This is the damndest city. They cheer Khruschev and boo Willie Mays.” It was the height of the Cold War and, for Coniff and many of his readers, there was no better symbol of America than Mays. At that time, Mays was a 28-year-old centerfielder for the San Francisco Giants and the best ballplayer in the world, and he was occasionally booed by fans of his own team. A decade before that, Mays was playing for the Birmingham Black Barons, a Negro League team near his hometown of Westfield, Alabama, while still in high school. Mays, who died o...
A Dentist Explains Why And How Best To Protect Your Teeth
HEALTH & WELLNESS, TOP FOUR, VIDEO REELS

A Dentist Explains Why And How Best To Protect Your Teeth

Healthy teeth are wondrous and priceless – a dentist explains why and how best to protect them. At an auction in England in 2011, one of John Lennon’s teeth sold for just over US$31,000. How much are your teeth worth? Teeth are amazing little miracles. They light up our smiles, we use them to speak and we chew with them more than 600 times at every meal. Yet, in a society where 1 out of 5 Americans ages 75 and up live without their teeth, many people may not realize that teeth are designed to stay with us for a lifetime. I’m a dentist and an assistant professor spanning clinical dentistry and craniofacial regeneration research. Researchers like me are still deepening our understanding of tooth development, with the ultimate goal of serving patients with on-demand regrown ones. In...
Are You Human?
Journalism, TOP FOUR, VIDEO REELS

Are You Human?

AI chatbots are intruding into online communities where people are trying to connect with other humans. A parent asked a question in a private Facebook group in April 2024: Does anyone with a child who is both gifted and disabled have any experience with New York City public schools? The parent received a seemingly helpful answer that laid out some characteristics of a specific school, beginning with the context that “I have a child who is also 2e,” meaning twice exceptional. On a Facebook group for swapping unwanted items near Boston, a user looking for specific items received an offer of a “gently used” Canon camera and an “almost-new portable air conditioning unit that I never ended up using.” Both of these responses were lies. That child does not exist and neither do the camera ...