sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: If someone showed you a photo of a crocodile and asked whether it was a bird, you might laugh -- and then, if you were patient and kind, help them identify the animal. Such real-world, and sometimes dumb, interactions may be key to helping artificial intelligence learn, according to a new study in which the strategy dramatically improved an AI's accuracy at interpreting novel images. The approach could help AI researchers more quickly design programs that do everything from diagnose disease to direct robots or other devices around homes on their own.

It's important to think about how AI presents itself, says Kurt Gray, a social psychologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who has studied human-AI interaction but was not involved in the work. "In this case, you want it to be kind of like a kid, right?" he says. Otherwise, people might think you're a troll for asking seemingly ridiculous questions. The team "rewarded" its AI for writing intelligible questions: When people actually responded to a query, the system received feedback telling it to adjust its inner workings so as to behave similarly in the future. Over time, the AI implicitly picked up lessons in language and social norms, honing its ability to ask questions that were sensical and easily answerable.

The new AI has several components, some of them neural networks, complex mathematical functions inspired by the brain's architecture. "There are many moving pieces [...] that all need to play together," Krishna says. One component selected an image on Instagram -- say a sunset -- and a second asked a question about that image -- for example, "Is this photo taken at night?" Additional components extracted facts from reader responses and learned about images from them. Across 8 months and more than 200,000 questions on Instagram, the system's accuracy at answering questions similar to those it had posed increased 118%, the team reports today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A comparison system that posted questions on Instagram but was not explicitly trained to maximize response rates improved its accuracy only 72%, in part because people more frequently ignored it. The main innovation, Jaques says, was rewarding the system for getting humans to respond, "which is not that crazy from a technical perspective, but very important from a research-direction perspective." She's also impressed by the large-scale, real-world deployment on Instagram.

There's good news for the millions of people with federal student loans who've made payments on that debt during the Covid pandemic: many of them will be eligible to get the money back. CNBC reports: The U.S. Department of Education says that many borrowers eligible for President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness plan who made payments on their debt during the pandemic-era pause on the bills will automatically be refunded. The relief policy has been in effect since March 2020, and is scheduled to end Dec. 31. More than 9 million people made at least one payment on their federal student debt between April 2020 and March 2022, according to the government. The vast majority of borrowers haven't made any payments, taking advantage of the suspension of the bills and accrual of interest.

Payments made since March 2020 on federal student loans eligible for the pause should now be refundable, said higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz. The roughly 5 million student loan borrowers who have commercially held Federal Family Education Loans (FFEL) weren't eligible for the payment pause and won't be for the refund either. Any payments made before the pandemic also don't qualify, Kantrowitz said.

Not all borrowers need to apply for the refund, said Elaine Rubin, senior contributor and communications specialist at Edvisors. The refunding process will be automatic for borrowers who are eligible for student loan forgiveness and for those who made voluntary payments during the pause that brought their balance below the maximum forgiveness amount: either $10,000 or $20,000, Rubin said. "They will be offered an automatic refund for the difference," Rubin said. If you paid your loan in full during the pandemic, however, you'll have to take action and request the payments back. Borrowers who have refinanced their federal loans will also need to ask their student loan servicer for the refund, Kantrowitz said.

hackingbear shares a report from Gizmodo: China claims that America's National Security Agency used sophisticated cyber tools to hack into an elite research university on Chinese soil. The attack allegedly targeted the Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi'an (not to be confused with a California school of the same name), which is highly ranked in the global university index for its science and engineering programs. The U.S. Justice Department has referred to the school as a "Chinese military university that is heavily involved in military research and works closely with the People's Liberation Army," painting it as a reasonable target for digital infiltration from an American perspective.

China's National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center (CVERC) recently published a report attributing the hack to the Tailored Access Operations group (TAO) -- an elite team of NSA hackers which first became publicly known via the Snowden Leaks back in 2013, helps the U.S. government break into networks all over the world for the purposes of intelligence gathering and data collection. [CVERC identified 41 TAO tools involved in the case.] One such tool, dubbed 'Suctionchar,' is said to have helped infiltrate the school's network by stealing account credentials from remote management and file transfer applications to hijack logins on targeted servers. The report also mentions the exploitation of Bvp47, a backdoor in Linux that has been used in previous hacking missions by the Equation Group -- another elite NSA hacking team. According to CVERC, traces of Suctionchar have been found in many other Chinese networks besides Northwestern's, and the agency has accused the NSA of launching more than 10,000 cyberattacks on China over the past several years.

On Sunday, the allegations against the NSA were escalated to a diplomatic complaint. Yang Tao, the director-general of American affairs at China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, published a statement affirming the CVERC report and claiming that the NSA had "seriously violated the technical secrets of relevant Chinese institutions and seriously endangered the security of China's critical infrastructure, institutions and personal information, and must be stopped immediately."

schwit1 writes: Imperial College will shut down two major research centres sponsored by Chinese aerospace and defence companies amid a crackdown on academic collaborations with China, the Guardian has learned.

The Avic Centre for Structural Design and Manufacturing is a long-running partnership with China's leading civilian and military aviation supplier, which has provided more than $6m to research cutting-edge aerospace materials. The second centre is run jointly with Biam, a subsidiary of another state-owned aerospace and defence company, which has contributed $4.5m for projects on high-performance batteries, jet engine components and impact-resistant aircraft windshields. The centres' stated goals are to advance civilian aerospace technologies, but critics have repeatedly warned that the research could also advance China's military ambitions.

Now Imperial has confirmed the two centres will be shut by the end of the year after the rejection of two licence applications to the government's Export Control Joint Unit (ECJU), which oversees the sharing of sensitive research with international partners. The closures follow a warning in July by the heads of MI5 and the FBI of the espionage threat posed by China to UK universities, and highlight the government's hardening attitude on the issue.

"You can say with a high degree of confidence that this decision has been taken because the government is of the view that continuing licensing would enable the military development in China, which is viewed as a threat to security," said Sam Armstrong, director of communications at the Henry Jackson Society thinktank. "The government has made it clear to universities that there is an overall shift in the weather such that these collaborations are no longer possible."

America's Department of Agriculture and NASA recently announced the Artemis Moon Trees Program. After the first launch of its SLS super-heavy-lift launch vehicle, "the seeds carried on Artemis I will be grown into seedlings by the Forest Service and distributed to locations across the U.S."

But it's just part of a larger initiative. The U.S. government announced Friday that it's working with "a new coalition of space companies that will focus on increasing the space industry's capacity to meet the rising demand for the skilled technical workforce" — partly by inspiring and educating the next generation. This coalition includes Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Blue Origin, Jacobs, L3Harris, Planet Labs PBC, Rocket Lab, Sierra Space, Space X and Virgin Orbit.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: Yesterday at the second convening of America's National Space Council, Vice President Kamala Harris announced "new commitments from the U.S. government, private sector companies, education and training providers, and philanthropic organizations to support space-related STEM initiatives to inspire, prepare, and employ the next generation of the space workforce..." according to a statement from the White House, "to address the challenges of today and prepare for the discoveries of tomorrow...."

Among those anchoring the Administration's efforts to increase the space industry's capacity to meet the rising demand for the skilled technical workforce is Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' space tourism company Blue Origin, which will be joined by industry partner Amazon to inspire youth to pursue space STEM careers. "Blue Origin's Club for the Future," the White House explains, "is launching Space Days to engage millions of students, teachers and school administrators in the excitement of space and space careers." Club for the Future, as reported earlier on Slashdot, is the Blue Origin founded-and-funded tax-exempt foundation that received the $28 million proceeds of a single auctioned ticket to accompany Bezos on Blue Origin's maiden 11-minute space tourism flight in June 2021. The nonprofit's mission is "to inspire future generations to pursue careers in STEM and to help invent the future of life in space."

The White House also announced that Amazon and Bezos-funded nonprofit Code.org "will highlight connections between computer science and space exploration in the 2022 Hour of Code. Students will have the opportunity to explore and develop coding skills through engaging, space-themed tutorials and create shareable projects. Through a collaboration with NASA, the U.S. Space Force, America's Department of Energy, and the U.S. Geological Survey, students will also learn about different careers and pathways for space careers in these agencies. Code.org reaches approximately 15 million students annually." Amazon reported in 2018 on its efforts to accelerate K-12 CS education in the U.S. with Code.org to "support the much-needed pipeline for workers who are well versed in computer science."
The coalition's other efforts include three pilot programs collaborating with community colleges, unions and others "to demonstrate a replicable and scalable approach to attracting, training and creating employment opportunities." Federal agencies and the Smithsonian Institute also launched a new web site with free space-related resources for K-12 educators which also promotes career awareness.

And NASA also released an educator resources hub that includes a LEGO Build to Launch Series — plus $4 million in educational grants.

In a blog post today, YouTube says it's launching an embeddable video player for education apps that removes ads, external links, and recommendations so viewers can "avoid distractions." The Verge reports: The ad- and recommendation-free player will be open to select partners to start, including education tech companies like EDpuzzle, Google Classroom, Purdue University, and Purdue Global. YouTube also announced new tools for creators making educational content on the platform -- including ways to charge viewers for their videos. Beginning next year, certain creators will be able to make free or paid "courses," with playlists of videos set up for audiences. If a viewer buys a course, they'll be able to watch the content ad-free and play the videos in the background. Courses will come to the US and South Korea first in beta.

Finally, YouTube announced a new quiz feature that creators can set up in the community tab on their channel that relates to the educational content they make. The company will introduce quizzes in beta in the coming months, with creators getting access to the feature next year.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Princeton University said it will cover all expenses for most families making as much as $100,000 a year and slash costs for those that earn more. The Ivy League school, among the world's richest, is continuing its "national leadership in the area of financial aid as families across the income spectrum struggle with rising college costs," the New Jersey university said Thursday in a statement. Roughly 1,500 undergraduates, about 25% of the student body, will pay nothing for tuition, housing and food under the plan, Princeton said. Previously, families making $65,000 or less were eligible. The costs for students whose families earn as much as $150,000 annually will be cut by almost half, and a "$3,500 student contribution typically earned through summer savings and campus work will be eliminated," the university said. "The total cost to attend Princeton this year is $79,540," notes Bloomberg. "The school's endowment totaled $37.7 billion at the end of June 2021."

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has confirmed it was hit by a ransomware attack that is causing ongoing technical disruptions. From a report: LAUSD is the second largest school district in the U.S. after the New York City Department of Education. The LAUSD serves over 600,000 students spanning from kindergarten through 12th grade at over 1,000 schools, and employs more than 26,000 teachers. The district said on Monday that it was hit by a cyberattack over the weekend, which it later confirmed was ransomware.

Although the attack caused "significant disruption" to LAUSD's infrastructure, the district said it will resume classes on Tuesday -- after observing Labor Day on Monday -- while it works to restore impacted services. LAUSD said that it does not expect technical issues to impact transportation, food or after-school programs, but noted that "business operations may be delayed or modified." It warned that ongoing disruptions include "access to email, computer systems, and applications," while a post from Northridge Academy High, a school in the district, confirmed that teachers and students might be unable to access Google Drive and Schoology, a K-12 learning management system, until further notice.

High-profile universities and state-run research institutes in China have been relying on a U.S. computing chip to power their artificial intelligence (AI) technology but whose export to the country Washington has now restricted, a Reuters review showed. From the report: U.S. chip designer Nvidia last week said U.S. government officials have ordered it to stop exporting its A100 and H100 chips to China. Local peer Advanced Micro Devices also said new licence requirements now prevent export to China of its advanced AI chip MI250. The development signalled a major escalation of a U.S. campaign to stymie China's technological capability as tension bubbles over the fate of Taiwan, where chips for Nvidia and almost every other major chip firm are manufactured.

China views Taiwan as a rogue province and has not ruled out force to bring the democratically governed island under its control. Responding to the restrictions, China branded them a futile attempt to impose a technology blockade on a rival. A Reuters review of more than a dozen publicly available government tenders over the past two years indicated that among some of China's most strategically important research institutes, there is high demand - and need - for Nvidia's signature A100 chips. Tsinghua University, China's highest-ranked higher education institution globally, spent over $400,000 last October on two Nvidia AI supercomputers, each powered by four A100 chips, one of the tenders showed. In the same month, the Institute of Computing Technology, part of top research group, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), spent around $250,000 on A100 chips. The school of artificial intelligence at a CAS university in July this year also spent about $200,000 on high-tech equipment including a server partly powered by A100 chips. In November, the cybersecurity college of Guangdong-based Jinan University spent over $93,000 on an Nvidia AI supercomputer, while its school of intelligent systems science and engineering spent almost $100,000 on eight A100 chips just last month. Less well-known institutes and universities supported by municipal and provincial governments, such as in Shandong, Henan and Chongqing, also bought A100 chips, the tenders showed.

In 2021, 9% of the world's auto sales were electric vehicles, reports CNBC (citing statistics from the International Energy Agency). Yet CNBC also notes that electric vehicles "require 30% fewer parts and components manufacturing than conventional cars," according to researchers for an Industrial Heartland case study."

So will that create problems in America's heartland? "Large swaths of the Midwest have economies based around the auto parts manufacturing trade..." "When we look carefully at what goes on on the factory floor, it won't be less workers," Keith Cooley, former head of Michigan's Labor Department, told CNBC. "There will be different people building the cars." Researchers believe modern factory jobs will require more education and could be less available than they were in the past. They estimate that electric vehicles could require 30% less manufacturing labor when compared with conventional cars. "The lines that run to drive oil or gas around an internal combustion engine aren't going to be there," said Cooley.

This change could hit the parts suppliers in the auto industry.

Google has announced $20 million in new commitments to expand computer science education among communities that are underrepresented in the field. The company expects its funds to improve educational access for more than 11 million American students. From a report: "If we don't get this right, the gaps that exist today will be exacerbated," Google CEO Sundar Pichai said on Wednesday. "Technology will end up playing such a big role in the future. That's the fundamental reason we do it." Google's goal in distributing funds, Pichai says, was to support groups with "deep expertise in education" who work with underrepresented communities -- including students in rural areas, as well as racial and gender minorities.

The slate includes a mix of newer organizations and longtime Google partners. 4-H, receiving $5 million, has been working with the company since 2017. The Oakland-based Hidden Genius Project, also receiving funds, was a winner of Google's 2015 Impact Challenge. Other beneficiaries include UT Austin's Expanding Computing Education Pathways (ECEP) Alliance, CUNY's Computing Integrated Teacher Education project, and the nonprofit CodePath. Urban funding will focus on Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Washington, DC, and Los Angeles. "Living in the Bay Area... it's clear to me how many schools here have already transitioned and incorporated exposure to CS education as part of their curriculum," Pichai says. "It's important that this happens across the country, to rural areas, to places that are historically underrepresented."

President Biden has announced a sweeping effort to forgive up to $20,000 of federal student loan debt for Pell Grant recipients, and up to $10,000 for other qualifying borrowers. Biden also extended the federal student loan payment pause through Dec. 31. From a report: "In keeping with my campaign promise, my Administration is announcing a plan to give working and middle class families breathing room as they prepare to resume federal student loan payments in January 2023," Biden said in a tweet on Wednesday. U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement, "Today, we're delivering targeted relief that will help ensure borrowers are not placed in a worse position financially because of the pandemic, and restore trust in a system that should be creating opportunity, not a debt trap." To qualify for the $10,000 forgiveness, individual borrowers must earn less than $125,000 a year, or less than $250,000 a year for couples. To qualify for the $20,000 forgiveness, borrowers must meet those income requirements and must have received a Pell Grant in college. Pell Grants are designed to help low-income students pay for higher education.

Chinese authorities have punished 27 people over the publication of a maths textbook that went viral over its "tragically ugly" illustrations. The Guardian reports: A months-long investigation by a ministry of education working group found the books were "not beautiful," and some illustrations were "quite ugly" and did not "properly reflect the sunny image of China's children." The mathematics books were published by the People's Education Press almost 10 years ago, and were reportedly used in elementary schools across the country. But they went viral in May after a teacher published photos of the illustrations inside, including people with distorted faces and bulging pants, boys pictures grabbing girls' skirts and at least one child with an apparent leg tattoo.

Social media users were largely amused by the illustrations, but many also criticized them as bringing disrepute and "cultural annihilation" to China, speculating they were the deliberate work of western infiltrators in the education sector. Related hashtags were viewed billions of times, embarrassing the Communist party and education authorities who announced a review of all textbooks "to ensure that the textbooks adhere to the correct political direction and value orientation."

In a lengthy statement released on Monday, the education authorities said 27 individuals were found to have "neglected their duties and responsibilities" and were punished, including the president of the publishing house, who was given formal demerits, which can affect a party member's standing and future employment. The editor-in-chief and the head of the maths department editing office were also given demerits and dismissed from their roles. The statement said the illustrators and designers were "dealt with accordingly" but did not give details. They and their studios would no longer be engaged to work on textbook design or related work, it said. The highly critical statement found a litany of issues with the books, including critiquing the size, quantity and quality of illustrations, some of which had "scientific and normative problems."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Daily Beast: A star University of Maryland (UMD) professor built a machine-learning software "useful for surveillance" as part of a six-figure research grant from Chinese tech giant Alibaba, raising concerns that an American public university directly contributed to China's surveillance state. Alibaba provided $125,000 in funding to a research team led by Dinesh Manocha, a professor of computer science at UMD College Park, to develop an urban surveillance software that can "classify the personality of each pedestrian and identify other biometric features," according to research grant documents obtained via public records request. "These capabilities will be used to predict the behavior of each pedestrian and are useful for surveillance," the document read.

Manocha is a decorated scholar in the AI and robotics field who has earned awards and accolades from Google, IBM, and many others. His star status brings rewards: Maryland taxpayers paid $355,000 in salaries to the professor in 2021, according to government watchdog Open the Books. The U.S. military also provides lavish funding for the professor's research, signing a $68 million agreement with Manocha's lab to research military applications of AI technologies. But Maryland taxpayers and the U.S. military are not the only ones funding Manocha's research. In January 2018, the University of Maryland and Alibaba signed an 18-month research contract funding Manocha's research team. In the grant document obtained by The Daily Beast, Manocha's team pledged to "work closely with Alibaba researchers" to develop an urban surveillance software that can identify pedestrians based on their unique gait signatures. The algorithm would then use the gait signatures to classify pedestrians as "aggressive," "shy," "impulsive," and other personalities. The grant required UMD researchers to test the algorithm on videos provided by Alibaba and present their findings in person at Alibaba labs in China. The scholars also had to provide the C++ codebase for the software and the raw dataset as deliverables to Alibaba. The software's "clear implication is to proactively predict demonstrations and protests so that they might be quelled," Fedasiuk told The Daily Beast. "Given what we know now about China's architecture of repression in Xinjiang and other regions, it is clear Dr. Manocha should not have pitched this project, and administrators at UMD should not have signed off on it."

It's not just Alibaba that was interested in the professor's expertise. In January 2019 -- back when the Alibaba grant was still active -- Manocha secured a taxpayer-funded, $321,000 Defense Department grant for his research team. The two grants funded very similar research projects. The Alibaba award was titled "large-scale behavioral learning for dense crowds." Meanwhile, the DoD grant funded research into "efficient computational models for simulating large-scale heterogeneous crowds." Unsurprisingly, the research outputs produced by the two grants had significant overlap. Between 2019 and 2021, Manocha published multiple articles in the AI and machine-learning field that cited both the Alibaba and DoD grant. There is no evidence that Manocha broke the law by double-dipping from U.S. and Chinese funding sources to fund similar research projects. Nevertheless, the case still raises "serious questions about ethics in machine learning research," Fedasiuk said.

e-HallPass, a digital system that students have to use to request to leave their classroom and which takes note of how long they've been away, including to visit the bathroom, has spread into at least a thousand schools around the United States. Motherboard reports: On Monday, a since deleted tweet went viral in which someone claimed that their school was preparing to introduce e-HallPass, and described it as "the program where we track how long, at what time, and how often each child goes to the restroom and store that information on third party servers run by a private for-profit company." Motherboard then identified multiple schools across the U.S. that appear to use the technology by searching the web for instruction manuals, announcements, and similar documents from schools that mentioned the technology. Those results included K-12 schools such as Franklin Regional Middle School, Fargo Public Schools, River City High School, Loyalsock Township School District, and Cabarrus County Schools. Also schools Motherboard found that appear to use e-HallPass include Mehlville High School, Eagle County School District, Hopatcong Borough Schools, and Pope Francis Preparatory School. These schools are spread across the country, with some in California, New York, Virginia, and North Carolina. Eduspire, the company that makes e-HallPass, told trade publication EdSurge in March that 1,000 schools use the system. Brian Tvenstrup, president of Eduspire, told the outlet that the company's biggest obstacle to selling the product "is when a school isn't culturally ready to make these kinds of changes yet."

The system itself works as a piece of software installed on a computer or mobile device. Students request a pass through the software and the teacher then approves it. The tool promises "hall omniscience" with the ability to "always know who has a pass and who doesn't (without asking the student!)," according to the product's website. Admins can then access data collected through the software, and view a live dashboard showing details on all passes. e-HallPass can also stop meet-ups of certain students and limit the amount of passes going to certain locations, the website adds, explicitly mentioning "vandalism and TikTok challenges." Many of the schools Motherboard identified appear to use e-HallPass specifically on Chromebooks, according to student user guides and similar documents hosted on the schools' websites, though it also advertises that it can be used to track students on their personal cell phones.

"A 17-year-old [named Robert Sansone] created a prototype of a novel synchronous reluctance motor that has greater rotational force -- or torque -- and efficiency than existing ones," writes Slashdot reader hesdeadjim99 from a report via Smithsonian Magazine. "The prototype was made from 3-D printed plastic, copper wires and a steel rotor and tested using a variety of meters to measure power and a laser tachometer to determine the motor's rotational speed. His work earned him first prize, and $75,000 in winnings, at this year's Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), the largest international high school STEM competition." From the report: The less sustainable permanent magnet motors use materials such as neodymium, samarium and dysprosium, which are in high demand because they're used in many different products, including headphones and earbuds, explains Heath Hofmann, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Michigan. Hofmann has worked extensively on electric vehicles, including consulting with Tesla to develop the control algorithms for its propulsion drive. [...] Synchronous reluctance motors don't use magnets. Instead, a steel rotor with air gaps cut into it aligns itself with the rotating magnetic field. Reluctance, or the magnetism of a material, is key to this process. As the rotor spins along with the rotating magnetic field, torque is produced. More torque is produced when the saliency ratio, or difference in magnetism between materials (in this case, the steel and the non-magnetic air gaps), is greater.

Instead of using air gaps, Sansone thought he could incorporate another magnetic field into a motor. This would increase this saliency ratio and, in turn, produce more torque. His design has other components, but he can't disclose any more details because he hopes to patent the technology in the future. [...] It took several prototypes before he could test his design. [...] Sansone tested his motor for torque and efficiency, and then reconfigured it to run as a more traditional synchronous reluctance motor for comparison. He found that his novel design exhibited 39 percent greater torque and 31 percent greater efficiency at 300 revolutions per minute (RPM). At 750 RPM, it performed at 37 percent greater efficiency. He couldn't test his prototype at higher revolutions per minute because the plastic pieces would overheat -- a lesson he learned the hard way when one of the prototypes melted on his desk, he tells Top of the Class, a podcast produced by Crimson Education. In comparison, Tesla's Model S motor can reach up to 18,000 RPM, explained the company's principal motor designer Konstantinos Laskaris in a 2016 interview with Christian Ruoff of the electric vehicles magazine Charged.

Sansone validated his results in a second experiment, in which he "isolated the theoretical principle under which the novel design creates magnetic saliency," per his project presentation. Essentially, this experiment eliminated all other variables, and confirmed that the improvements in torque and efficiency were correlated with the greater saliency ratio of his design. [...] Sansone is now working on calculations and 3-D modeling for version 16 of his motor, which he plans to build out of sturdier materials so he can test it at higher revolutions per minute. If his motor continues to perform with high speed and efficiency, he says he'll move forward with the patenting process.

The nation's top public health agency relaxed its COVID-19 guidelines Thursday, dropping the recommendation that Americans quarantine themselves if they come into close contact with an infected person. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also said people no longer need to stay at least 6 feet away from others. The Associated Press reports: The changes, which come more than 2 1/2 years after the start of the pandemic, are driven by a recognition that an estimated 95% of Americans 16 and older have acquired some level of immunity, either from being vaccinated or infected, agency officials said. "The current conditions of this pandemic are very different from those of the last two years," said the CDC's Greta Massetti, an author of the guidelines.

Perhaps the biggest education-related change is the end of the recommendation that schools do routine daily testing, although that practice can be reinstated in certain situations during a surge in infections, officials said. The CDC also dropped a "test-to-stay" recommendation, which said students exposed to COVID-19 could regularly test -- instead of quarantining at home -- to keep attending school. With no quarantine recommendation anymore, the testing option disappeared too. Masks continue to be recommended only in areas where community transmission is deemed high, or if a person is considered at high risk of severe illness.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: A dozen US midwestern research colleges and universities have signed up to a project intended to bolster the semiconductor and microelectronics industries with combined research and education to ensure work for their students in high-tech industries. The "Midwest Regional Network to Address National Needs in Semiconductor and Microelectronics" consists of a dozen institutions, made up of eight from Ohio, two from Michigan, and two from Indiana. Their stated aim is to support the onshoring efforts of the US semiconductor industry by addressing the need for research and a skilled workforce.

According to Wright State University, the network was formed in response to Intel's announcement that it planned to build two chip factories near Columbus, Ohio, and followed a two-day workshop in April hosted by the state. [...] However, the university network was also formed to help address the broader national effort to regain American leadership in semiconductors and microelectronics, or at least bring some of it back onshore and make the US less reliant on supplies of chips manufactured abroad.

The president of each institution has signed a memorandum of understanding to form the network, and the expectation is that the group will expand to include more than these dozen initial members. The intention is that the institutions taking part will be able to make use of each other's existing research, learning programs, capabilities, and expertise in order to boost their collective ability to support the semiconductor and microelectronics industry ecosystems. Challenges for the network include developing mechanisms to connect existing research, and training assets across the region, and developing a common information sharing platform to make it easier to identify opportunities for joint programming and research across the network. The institutions involved in the network include: Wright State University, Columbus State Community College, Lorain County Community College, Michigan State University, Ohio State University, Purdue University, Sinclair Community College, University of Cincinnati, University of Dayton, University of Michigan, and the University of Notre Dame, Indiana.

Further reading: Biden Signs China Competition Bill To Boost US Chipmakers

The chief executive officer of Pearson, one of the world's largest textbook publishers, said he hopes technology like non-fungible tokens and the blockchain could help the company take a cut from secondhand sales of its materials as more books go online. From a report: The print editions of Pearson's titles -- such as "Fundamentals of Nursing," which sells new for $70.88 -- can be resold several times to other students without making the London-based education group any money. As more textbooks move to digital, CEO Andy Bird wants to change that. "In the analogue world, a Pearson textbook was resold up to seven times, and we would only participate in the first sale," he told reporters following the London-based company's interim results on Monday, talking about technological opportunities for the company. "The move to digital helps diminish the secondary market, and technology like blockchain and NFTs allows us to participate in every sale of that particular item as it goes through its life," by tracking the material's unique identifier on the ledger from "owner A to owner B to owner C," said Bird, a former Disney executive.

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said they are planning an initial public offering of the Kingdom's $500 billion megaproject Neom as soon as 2024. Arabian Business reports: Talking to reporters in Jeddah, the crown prince said the Kingdom is setting aside $80 billion for Neom Investment Fund, where it would invest in companies that agree to operate in the futuristic city, Bloomberg has reported. The announcement was witnessed by global investors including Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio, Tim Collins of Ripplewood, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and Kuwaiti retail billionaire Mohammed Alshaya.

The Saudi crown prince also unveiled funding details of Neom. First phase, which runs until 2030, will cost 1.2 trillion riyals, with about half of that covered by the Public Investment Fund. Officials will then seek to raise another 600 billion riyals from other sovereign wealth funds in the region, private investors in Saudi Arabia and abroad, and the planned IPO on Tadawul. The IPO, which could happen by 2024, will add more than 1 trillion riyals to the Kingdom's stock market, the crown prince noted. In addition to the news about the IPO, a teaser video was released, revealing the design for The Line: a "vertical city" some 500 meters tall, 170 kilometers in length, and covered in mirrors.

"Although it looks like a wall, The Line is actually supposed to be comprised of two huge parallel buildings, connected via walkways and divided into neighborhoods that are supposed to offer all the amenities of city life within a five-minute walking distance," reports The Verge.

"Vegetables will be 'autonomously harvested and bundled' from community farms; 'a high-speed train will run under the mirrored buildings'; the Line will include a stadium 'up to 1,000 feet above the ground,' and there'll be a marina for yachts under an arch between the buildings." A report from the Wall Street Journal in 2019 also noted robots will outnumber humans and hologram teachers will education genetically-enhanced students.