Daily Archives: March 7, 2021

Original article published by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Eight-year old Aseel had a surgery when she was a baby that left her partially paralyzed. She has spent most of her life finding ways to adapt and experience a normal childhood in a refugee camp in Jordan. Being a refugee hasnt made her life easier. Until recently, Aseel used a stroller as a makeshift wheelchair and struggled to get around and stay engaged in the classroom because the stroller hurt her back.

Thanks to WHOs work on globalizing wheelchair guidelines and UNICEFs disability-focused programmes, a wheelchair of appropriate size and design was provided to Aseel to help her be included in school activities and move around more easily.

Like Aseel, many people in the world today lack access to appropriate assistive technology. WHO estimates that out of the one billion people needing at least one assistive product, nine in ten go without. Children with injuries living in low- and middle-income or fragile countries mostly depend on donated wheelchairs, which are often of poor quality and inappropriate for the user or their environment.

The barriers are manifold, but mostly they have to do with the cost and availability of assistive products, the lack of harmonized specifications, broken supply systems, and the fact that society is still not as inclusive of persons with disabilities as it needs to be. The result for many people in low- and middle-income countries: either no access or only access to low-quality, inappropriate products.

To address some of those barriers, WHO has created the Assistive Products Specifications (APS) a guide-book with specs for 26 prioritized assistive products that describes the minimum quality requirements for manufacturing. Funded by UK Aid under Global Disability Innovation Hubs AT2030 programme, the APS supports a focus on innovative products, new service models, and global capacity to drive disability innovation for a fairer world.

This first compilation of the APS includes products selected from the Priority assistive products list and covers mobility, hearing, vision, communication, cognition and self-care. The products range from clubfoot braces and wheelchairs to hearing aids, alarm signalers and audio-players.

The main aim of the APS is to ensure countries get supply of good quality and affordable assistive products for all who need them. Each APS in the compilation describes the functional and performance requirements that can be used as a model to guide manufacturing and procurement.

This year, WHO and UNICEF will issue a joint tender for wheelchair and hearing aids and will ensure the products reach those who need them. The two agencies have already identified and are working with assistive technology manufacturers to ensure the specs are followed and that production and supply can be cost-effective for both bulk buyers and individuals. Both organizations will also support countries with training to adapt their national standards to improve access to quality, life-changing health products.

Appropriate assistive technology can have a direct impact on the well-being of children and adults of all ages by supporting their functionality and inclusion into society, thereby increasing the opportunities for education, employment and social engagement.

For example, a proper use of hearing aids leads young children to improved language skills. Or, an appropriate wheelchair - like the one given to Aseel - can increase the chances of people completing their education, finding employment and engaging in social activities.

The APS is the first global guide for quality-assured assistive products and will be updated on a regular basis. Quality assistive technology for all is the ultimate aim of this guide-book, and improved well-being for millions of people.

WHO works to change the landscape of access to assistive technology through a multi-pronged approach based on human rights, universal health coverage and the realities of low- and middle-income countries. In 2016, it issued the Priority assistive products list, a compilation of the 50 most essential assistive products, selected based on a survey done with persons living with disabilities and their carers. WHO has been active in wheelchair provision since 2004 and introduced the Wheelchair Guidelines, training and wheelchair provision standards.

UNICEF focuses on three key activities to ensure disability-inclusive supplies are available and accessible worldwide. First, the organization is analyzing and updating its products in the UNICEF Supply Catalogue to ensure they are disability-friendly. Second, UNICEF is introducing new assistive technology to programmes worldwide, such as the new disability-friendly latrine. This work involves collaborating with WHO and partners to develop guidance for AT suppliers who produce products and humanitarian staff who procure the products. Finally, UNICEF is increasing advocacy efforts to gain a global consensus for assistive technology.

More information: UNICEF webpage on assistive technology

To improve access to assistive technology for everyone, everywhere, on 28 July 2020, WHO and UNICEF signed a Joint Action Plan on Assistive Technology and included provision of assistive products under the Strategic Collaboration Framework between The World Health Organization and the United Nations Childrens Fund to bring a catalytic impact and provide quality assistive products to the 900 million people that are lacking it.

More information: WHO page onAssistive technology

AT2030 tests what works to improve access to AT and support solutions to scale. With a focus on innovative products, new service models, and global capacity support, the programme aims to reach nine million people directly and six million more indirectly to enable a lifetime of potential through life-changing assistive technology. GDI Hub is a research and practice centre driving disability innovation for a fairer world. Operational in 35 countries, the GDI Hub develops bold approaches, partnerships and ecosystems to accelerate change.

More information: AT2030

Excerpt from:

First ever global guide for assistive technology to improve the lives of millions - UNICEF

Edmonds School District Automotive Program Teacher Bryan Robbins gives instructions to students in an online video.

Members of the Edmonds School Districts Automotive Training Program recently defended their title as the top program in a Puget Sound-area competition for high school students.

The SkillsUSA automotive service technology competition, held virtually this year at the end of January, has two different skills divisions automotive service and automotive maintenance.

During the competition, students conducted various types of tests and diagnosed problems with both individual auto parts and vehicle systems. Participants perform these independently to demonstrate their understanding and application of automotive knowledge. During this years competition, students used an online training platform to complete the various tests and tasks from their own computers.

Students in the districts program swept the top four places for the automotive service contest Max Bird took first place, Cameron Skinner finished second, Marcus Coyle placed third and Izaha Bart finished fourth. This was the second consecutive year that participants in the school districts program took home all four top spots in the region.

Several other district students also placed highly in the automotive maintenance portion of the competition Jonah Peterson (second), Britain Smith (fourth), Muhenad Al-Haddad (fifth), Corey Hawkins (seventh).

Their instructor, Bryan Robbins, said the automotive service competition is designed for more advanced students who have already completed at least one year in the program. Its sort of the difference between like you need an oil change done (maintenance) versus your check engine light comes on (service), he said.

Robbins noted that students in his automotive program have now taken first place at the regional competition three times in the past five years. Hes proud not only of those individual results but also the programs overall continued success.

Meadowdale High School senior Marcus Coyle, who is president of the schools automotive performance club, said the biggest challenge compared to last years competition was having to perform tasks within a software simulation. Rather than being able to provide a diagnosis of actual physical components, it was a lot of the knowledge and the kind of mindset behind everything, not really the hands-on, he said.

As an example, he said, when it came to using tools in the simulation, participants would move a slider representing a wrench until they heard a click, which was meant to represent that the correct foot-pounds of torque had been applied. Coyle said it paled in comparison to the actual feeling and full experience of how to properly use and handle the tools themselves.

Robbins actually took the same auto shop classes he now teaches, back when he was in high school and first participated in the SkillsUSA competition as a student in 2003. He also has a family connection to the school district program because at that time his father, Dave Robbins, was teaching its automotive technology classes.

The experience of being a student in this program and then becoming the teacher, far and away thats why we do so well in SkillsUSA every year, he said.

The events organizers change the specific skill tests involved every year and then keep those secret until the actual day of the competition. Typically my students come in just as nervous as everyone else, but Ive spent so many years both as a competitor and a coach that they end up really well prepared for what tasks may be thrown at them, Robbins said.

Preparation before the competition this year was quite different from what Robbins was used. Rather than doing hands-on reviews involving vehicles and equipment in the shop, Robbins instead spent time with students online training them how to use the contests website and software. His predictions about the specific tests required at each individual station in the competition were also almost entirely wrong under the new format, he said.

Coyle said he felt that getting familiar with the new platform before this years contest was still a helpful training experience. He added that throughout his four years in the automotive technology program, Robbins has always put together an amazing class.

Robbins, who has been the instructor since 2014, said he typically eschews software programs and is instead heavily dedicated to hands-on performance training in the programs auto shop facility which has nine vehicle work stations. In addition to providing pupils with an explanatory foundation of repairs, it makes a lot more sense for them to physically know how to fix a car, he said.

Then classes had to suddenly pivot to a virtual format last March due to the pandemic. I was completely technologically backward before all this, Robbins said. I was one of the teachers that fought against actually having all the students being one-on-one with Chromebooks. And woo am I ever happy that I got voted down on that one, because those things have saved our lives this year.

Beginning last April, he started preparing curriculum and content, including 80 textbook chapters, that could be delivered online an undertaking Robbins soon found to be both large and taxing. Its more work than I have ever put into anything else, he said. I thought being a mechanic was the hardest that I had ever worked in my life. Then I found out that no you can stare at a computer screen and physically youre not doing anything but mentally it is taxing.

Robbins created a YouTube channel to show various shop tools and large equipment and to demonstrate tasks that would normally be done during in-person classes at the shop. To mix things up, he put together various quizzes, slide show-type presentations and lined up guest speakers from college programs and professional auto shops. But he said that it was important to also provide some hands-on experiences for his auto shop classes.

Robbins worried that if students were only given online lessons, they might grasp the vocabulary terms, theories and principles involved with the course material but still lack in practical applications of that knowledge. Youre going to end up with a kid who knows the names of all the parts, who knows how they work, how they function together, but tightens a bolt to take it off, he said.

Last fall, students in the program were given special kits, that included a 364-piece set of Kobalt tools, courtesy of the foundry10 educational philanthropy organization. These enabled them to participate in remote auto repair activities from home. Each month, students picked up mechanical projects that focused on a different aspect and would then return those to the auto shop for grading after completion.

Those assignments included working on drum brake assemblies, rebuilding a single-cylinder engine and constructing a wire harness to test its electrical circuits for faults. All students will be allowed to keep their tool sets, in order to help jump start a career in the automotive industry, after completing the course which is certified by the Automotive Service Excellence (ASE) organization.

Coyle said that even though he has participated in the automotive classes all throughout high school, it was a little scary going into this year knowing that it would involve remote learning. He missed being around the shop and cars but appreciated having projects to take home and said overall the class went great for him personally. As a senior, I do have a good understanding of the automobile and how it works, but all the incoming freshmen it was saddening to hear that they werent going to get the full experience, he said.

Mountlake Terrace High School junior Matthew Lentz, who participated in the automotive program for the first time this year, said he found it somewhat frustrating at times attempting to learn and comprehend the material delivered by recorded video rather than through in-person classwork. But he appreciated the instruction and feedback received from Robbins during class meetings on Zoom. He also enjoyed the hands-on aspects provided by take-home projects which were, he said, fun just taking apart and putting back together a few times.

Robbins said the online lessons and video tutorials put together for this year will continue to provide supplemental teaching dividends to his classes in the future. But he also looks forward to when students will be allowed back in the auto shop again for instruction. There are currently 50 students in the programs two classes. Beginning March 29, groups of 10 individuals at a time will be able to go to the facility for in-person learning activities one day per week.

There will be a statewide virtual SkillsUSA competition in April pitting those who advance from the different regional contests against each other. This Januarys Puget Sound regional contest was the first one in the nation to be held online after many of last years events were cancelled due to the pandemic.

The automotive technology classes are open to all high school students in the Edmonds School District through its Career and Technical Education program.There is an inter-district bus available to bring students who take an auto shop class back and forth to the facilities at Meadowdale High School. Classes in the program last two periods a day for the full school year.

By Nathan Blackwell

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Edmonds School District automotive technology students continue their winning ways - My Edmonds News

Janet Coats has a daunting task as the first managing director of theConsortium on Trust in Media and Technology at the University of Florida: helping to mend the deep woundsin our civic life and head off the next pandemic of disinformation.

An interdisciplinarygroup of scholars have been studying these issues:how media and technology can become more trustworthy,and develop programs for the application of new knowledge and toolsand the creation of new policy and law, as its website frames the mission.

Coats has been on the job for less than three months. A former editor at the Sarasota Herald Tribune, more recently director forthe Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, and dean of faculty at Poynter, Coats brings more real-world experience and less of an academic background to therole.

Despite the dire circumstances for trust in media and technology, or perhaps because of this,the consortium has beenbuoyedbysome recent news beyond the arrival of its new director: a $2million gift from Gainesville developers Linda and Ken McGurnthat aligns with the fight against disinformation, and HiPerGator -- a supercomputer that has come online to providethe fastest artificial intelligence tool in higher education.

With all of that, Coats sat down for a Zoom conversation recently from her office at the UF College of Journalism and Communications where a new dean, Hub Brown, is set to over next month.

What is themission of the consortium?

To some degree,we are enteringa new phase to the consortium. There hasnt been apermanent.managing director.Sopart of my job is to figure out where we go from hereand how to build on the work of the people associated with the consortium to date.

There is so much conversation going on around trust. A lot of it is focused on things like media literacy and the platforms like Facebook and Twitter. That will be part of what werelookingat, but Im really trying to push us forward into things like artificial intelligence.

UFs new supercomputer gives an opportunity to look at AI and large data sets that other universities and journalism programs dont really have.Sotrying to think about how technology is moving, where its moving and what some of the new issues of trust might be.

It really feels like an inflection point, where some of theconversations about trust may be shifting.Theres certainly going to be more conversation about what regulation and access mean.And I also think theres going to be a different conversation about AI, machine learning and things like that. Both as ameansof surfacingmore factual information, and alsoas away of understanding where things are coming from.

My goalsright noware to look at those places where theuniquecapabilitieswe have with our research and our access to computing can help fill in the gaps.

Some of the things I was working on with my colleagues at Arizona State, we have aprogramthere on media literacy. I believe that is a really important element of this, but we are now where people can be reading from the same book, but theirinterpretation of it is completely different depending onwhereyouarecoming from

Jan. 6 is a great example of this. We call be sitting and watchingwhat isunfolding in front of us on the television screen, and the literacy people are bringing to this is very much informed by beliefsand peer groups, associations, where you are in the social media sphere. It is such a challenge to think we are all watching the same thing but seeing so differently.

How can the consortium address some of these challenges to civic trust?

In termsifwhat the consortium is focusedon,Iwant to be sure were not fighting the last battle. We did not see the kind of power and influence the platforms were going to have when they were first emerging. When I first went onto Facebook, it was cool to see my high school friends and what was going on with them. But it has morphed into this political and social firehose, commentary, and means to spread a lot of information and disinformation.

Some of our scholars are looking at things like interaction with political news and the psychology of how you come to information. We have to grapple with how traditional news coverage re-enforcessome of thedisenfranchisementof voices.The news is not reflective of a lot of peoples reality. Not only does it notreflectit, it suppresses it.

Its more than a common set of facts, its also about experiences. For instance, trust about health information. Some of that is based on very legitimate experiences with the medical system. We think about distrust of media, but there is a lot of institutional distrust that underpins thatthat is separate from news coverage.

Its not just in the media that things are moving so fast. Its in science and medicine.You think about the evolution of the vaccine.When the pandemic first began, the conversationwas that this can take years as you go through all the testing and safety procedures. And then for it to come so quickly.Just reading how scientists talk about that: in the last few years, in ways that werent obvious to people others than scientists working on this,the process hadaccelerated.Expectations about what waspossiblechanged even within the science community in ways the rest of us had not caught up to.

Trust is broken in our elections in ways that may be hard to fix within an election cycle.

"Were Floridians, so weve been living with can you trust an election, now for 20 years. Im still traumatized by hanging chads. Even the machinery of elections, the process, has all kinds of ways people mistrust things beyond the political information.

"Theres the how we convey information, and then trust in the institutions themselves. Theres interplay between those things of course."

Are you optimistic about where things are headed and the impacts the consortium can have?

"I have to be optimistic or I wouldnt do this. For me, this is theculminationof years and years of work as a journalist. Issues of trust are not new. We could see diminished trust in our work andpolarization. Thats picked up speed in thedigital age.

"I do think that intervention can make a difference. In one sense, I think an era ended (on Jan. 6), the first 20 years of being in a truly connected world. For a lot of people, the flaws in social media, the echo cambers, really became stark.

"Soin one way, Im optimistic that this is a chance to engage the conversation in a different way. And in a way thatreally gets into the rights andresponsibilitiespieces of this. For social media platforms, what should that look like in a regulatory environment?

"When the president getsdeplatformedon Twitter, different people look at that, some with cheers and some with arguments about taking the voice of the president out of the public square, or at least a corner of the public square.No matterwhere youcome down on that, the implications are broad and the conversation is one that is ripe."

Will that conversation happen in academic papers, in classroom lectures or in ways that are somehow more direct outreach to the community?

"One of the advantages of a college of journalism is that we can do all those things. Because it is interdisciplinary, were able to have collaborativerelationshipswith scholars all over the university.Sowe have that rigorous scholarship. We can take the current moment that were studying into the classroom. The students are teaching us. They are living in this world in a very different way than I do.

"Those of us who grew up with three channels on the television are never going to be native to this digital world. These young people will shape the dynamic. And the public scholarship is something that journalism educators do particularly well because were used to writing in the mainstream media.

"One of the things that Im eager to do is to get the consortium in that broader trust dialogue that is going among researchers and the broaderconversation among people who are navigating this world and wanting help with that.

What are the goal posts that will help you know youre heading in the right direction?

"Im still trying to find out where light switches are over here. There is a body of work to draw from, from what the scholarshave been pursing in their research, and I'm having conversations with them on what theyre learning and where we think we should go.

"Part of my job as managing director is to be just that, to manage consortium. I would never hold myself up to be an expert in this, certainly not in a scholarly way in understandingtrust. A lot of my job is bringing together the thinking of others and facilitating collaborations within UFand the business world too.The KPIs are going to come.

"As someone who watched the internet change the world inwayswe were slow to understand in the 90s, AI is that force now. The resources and commitment of UF has in place make that a real opportunity. The consortium stands right at the intersection of that: AI and technology, and how information is moving, and what that means for trust, and what that means for ways people communicate, share information and collect information. That is exciting to me."

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Trust, media and technology: A conversation with Janet Coats at the University of Florida - Gainesville Sun

Ive been reading and rereading novels of the great writer Ursula K Le Guin over the past year, and they have had me thinking about the difficulty of writing about technologies that will (or wont) be in use in ones imagined future worlds.

Much has been written about the influence of science fiction on eventual science fact. Although writers and filmmakers create fanciful worlds, many of their tech fictions have shaped the actual technologies we end up with years later.

The topic even features in serious academic work. One 2018 study examined how often science fiction has been referenced in papers presented at a top international conference on human-computer interaction, noting: Sci-fi movies, shows or stories do provide an inspiration for the foremost and upcoming human-computer interaction challenges of our time, for example through the discussion of shape-changing interfaces, implantables or digital afterlife ethics.

When science fiction creates particularly compelling representations of future technologies, people remember them. Later on that fictional tech can seem an obvious way of realising the possibilities of real-world technologies when technical capabilities advance.

Star Trek is regularly referenced in this connection, and little wonder: the technologists designing the first 20th century iterations of personal tech were the 1960s kids who grew up with TV Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

No surprise then that mobile handsets might seem an obvious step along the way towards Trekian communicators, with the mid-90s Motorola flip clamshell model paying obvious homage in its StarTAC name.

Then there were the Enterprises touchscreens and its speaking computer. iPads and iPhones and Alexa and Siri, anyone?

Many years ago I interviewed a number of leading voice technology experts and every one referenced Star Trek and 2001 as inspirations. New generations of technologists will have a further half century of screen and fiction technologies to inspire tomorrows devices.

And yet it can take time for us to adapt to new technologies even when weve been given them in fictional format. Again take mobiles. For a lot of us (okay, me) who became the first generation of untethered mobile phone-users in the 1990s, a mobile sure didnt seem like an obvious mass market device.

Which brings me back to Le Guin. Ive been reading her novel The Lathe of Heaven, considered one of her best. Written in 1971 and set in Portland, Oregon, its a dystopian tale set (then) in a future in which climate change and overpopulation has created a bleak, impoverished world.

The climate element is eerily spot on. So-called cli-fi, a term coined in 2007 for climate-related fiction, might seem a more recent invention but step aside Al Gore Le Guin pretty much nailed the how and why of the reality we are living through. Her overpopulated earth is trying to accommodate seven billion people, a number weve surpassed.

The reader eventually discovers that events are unfolding in 2002. Yikes: in what is now our own past.

A minor detail has preoccupied me. On her future earth there are phones. But, jarringly, there arent mobile phones. Characters use landlines. They do not even have anything like an answering machine connected to the phone.

Plot elements involve people not answering their landlines. And yet there are other advanced technologies, such as a device that enables a researcher to manipulate the brain during sleep.

This landline-only futurescape creates an odd feeling of anachronism. By the 1980s the first mega-brick mobiles were in use by shouty financial sector yuppies. By 2002 about half the US population had a mobile phone.

Noticing this is not to critique Le Guin. Id wager science fiction writers do at least as well in guessing what might come next as professional futurologists, the people paid to apply their noggins to this task.

Instead what really intrigues me is how this case of the missing mobile phones exemplifies how hard it can be for any of us, much less the finest of science fiction writers, to imagine the mundanities of how long-standing technologies might morph into something utterly new.

Add in uncertainty about what the general public might want and use. And, of course, what technologists think people will use a device for is often not what it gets used for as writer William Gibson famously noted in a novel, the street finds its own uses for things.

In retrospect, the incremental microchip-enabled changes that replaced landlines with powerful pocket computers, where the ability to make a phone call is now a minor if useful feature, were neither obvious nor a foregone conclusion even in the 1990s, much less the 1970s.

Its the very human flip-side of the supposed science fiction predicts our future technologies truism. Sometimes futuristic fiction later foregrounds how hard it can be to see what is wrongly believed to be the obvious.

In this sense Le Guin makes me (as always) feel a bit more human this time (like the 1990s me) in really not having seen that amazing phone revolution coming at all.

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Technology really can be stranger than fiction at times - The Irish Times

TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Engineering (MHIENG), part of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) Group, has entered into an agreement with Technology Centre Mongstad (TCM) to test its proprietary solvent for capturing CO2 at the amine plant located in Mongstad, Norway. The test campaign will start in May.

The proprietary solvent to be tested is the KS-21TM, an amine-based adsorbent used in the Advanced KM CDR ProcessTM newly developed by MHIENG in collaboration with Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc. (KEPCO). Its long-term usage will be demonstrated in Norway, one of the worlds most advanced countries with respect to environmental regulations on CO2 capture, in a quest to achieve commercialization within 2021. Compared to the earlier KS-1TM solvent, which has been adopted at 13 commercial plants delivered by MHIENG, KS-21TM has a number of advantageous properties such as lower volatility and greater stability against degradation. The newer solvent is also expected to enable reduced running costs and other economic benefits.

At a time when CO2 capture needs are expanding in the United Kingdom and Europe, the test program at TCM, which has state-of-the-art facilities and specialized knowledge, will confirm KS-21TMs long-term durability and assess its environmental impact, thus providing MHIENG with technological data relating to its significantly higher CO2 capture rate. The test program will enable MHIENG to set a timetable for KS-21TMs commercialization, opening the way for the company to expand orders in the UK and European markets.

Since its establishment in 2012, TCM, equipped with the worlds largest-scale CO2 capture testing facilities, has provided users with profound knowledge, online analysis, and advanced analytical technologies relating to the trace components of gas emissions. Its data accumulated through testing exceed 1,000 categories and contribute significantly to commercialization of absorbents.

On reaching the new agreement with TCM, Kenji Terasawa, MHIENG President & CEO commented: MHI Group today is strengthening its efforts in the energy transition field, to help realize a carbon neutral world on a global scale. For many years, MHIENG has strived to minimize CO2 emissions from gas emissions, utilizing its cutting-edge technologies. Today we possess reliable and economically feasible carbon capture technologies supported by more than three decades of research and development activity and a robust track record of commercial plants around the world. TCMs abundant knowledge and experience in environmental impact assessment, and its state-of-the-art testing environment, will raise the level of our CO2 capture technologies further, enabling us to accelerate business expansion in the vital UK and European markets. We expect the new testing program will contribute to realizing carbon neutrality in the years ahead.

Ernst Petter Axelsen, CEO at TCM, also welcomed the new collaboration. Its very satisfying that a leading capture technology developer like MHIENG has chosen TCM as the arena for their carbon capture tests. Our staff is ready to ensure effective execution of the tests, and to provide expert advice throughout the campaign.

About KM CDR Process

MHI Group together with Kansai Electric Power Co, Inc. (KEPCO) started the development of the Kansai Mitsubishi Carbon Dioxide Recovery KM CDR Process, a post-combustion carbon capture technology, in 1990. As of February 2021, MHIENG has delivered a total of 13 commercial plants with the KM CDR Process, making it a global leader in carbon capture technology deployment. Two more plants are currently under construction.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PtnuRWOQAY&t=1s

TCM offers unique test facilities

TCMs test facilities for CO2 capture consist of an amine plant, a chilled ammonia plant, as well as an area for new, groundbreaking modular capture technologies. Both the amine and the chilled ammonia plants capture CO2 by means of a chemical liquid known as a solvent, consisting of a mix of water and either amine- or ammonia-based solutions. Starting in 2021, the site for modular technologies will be used for testing technologies such as membranes and adsorbents (solid materials that bind CO2).

TCM uses two different industrial live flue gas sources (fluidized catalytic cracker and combined cycle gas turbine) from Equinors refinery at Mongstad, with different content of CO2.

The amine plant is a unit with generic capabilities developed to serve as a demonstrator for solvent-based capture technologies. The unit has so far been utilized by five technology developers in addition to scientific testing using non-proprietary solvents (monoethanolamine and CESAR 1) for helping developments in the global carbon capture community.

Originally posted here:

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Engineering to Test Carbon Capture Technology at Technology Centre Mongstad in Norway - Business Wire

March 4, 2021

Montclair State professor will develop digital toolkit to support young peoples advocacy campaigns for racial justice education in public schools

Posted in: Communication and Media, Research

Assistant Professor Tara L. Conley of Montclair State Universitys School of Communication and Media has been awarded the prestigious Race and Technology Fellowship by Stanford Universitys Digital Civil Society Lab and Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity.

Conley, a transmedia storytelling professor, is one of 14 scholars to receive the 2021 fellowship, which is awarded to exceptional social sector leaders around the world working on ideas to benefit civil society.

Her project will serve as a catalyst for change in Americas K-12 schools. Conley will work with students around the country to create Ruby a digital toolkit for youth activists and advocates of color to support civic campaigns that push for comprehensive and accurate Black and ethnic studies curricula in public schools nationwide.

Named for Ruby Bridges, the first African-American child in United States history to integrate a white elementary school in the South, the idea for the project was born during interviews Conley conducted with students specifically, the Okolo sisters, Nene (19) and Ekene (16) from San Diegos Poway Unified School District in the spring of 2020.

When I was researching and interviewing the Okolo sisters last year, I was inspired by their passion and tech-savvy approaches to engage the community and force school change at the local level, says Conley. I quickly learned they were among a growing group of young activists of color across the United States currently taking up the fight for equitable and accurate representation in school curricula.

The goal of Ruby is to address the challenges young activists currently confront as they develop digital advocacy campaigns. Ruby will address this challenge by providing interactive tools and resources that young activists like the Okolo sisters can use, distribute, and build off of to support their efforts for educational reforms in their local school districts.

These young people are in the midst of what I believe to be a paradigm shift in public school education across the U.S., says Conley. But they are also up against powerful institutional forces that are violently resistant to change, especially now, as the former administration worked to condemn educators, journalists and scholars who confront Americas so-called exceptional history.

Tara L. Conley is an interdisciplinary Black feminist scholar, media-maker and writer. Her scholarship centers Black life in the study and exploration of place, media histories and technoculture.

In 2013, she founded Hashtag Feminism to locate and archive feminist discourse by way of tracking Twitter hashtags on the web. In 2015, she produced a short documentary, Brackish, about life in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. Most recently, her reporting and creative nonfiction essays have appeared in Bloomberg, ZORA magazine, Parents magazine, Courier Newsroom, and in the anthology Black in the Middle: An Anthology of the Black Midwest. She is also the founder of Media Make Change, a media company that specializes in social justice storytelling through media production, strategic communications, curriculum development and research.

Im really excited about the potential impact of this project, says Conley. I have an amazing group of folks supporting me at Stanford, as well as the opportunity to help build a network of youth activists across the country. Ruby is coming at a moment when theres a strong desire from both the institution and community to make a difference. Im just really grateful to be part of this work while the stars are aligning.

Learn more about Tara Conleys scholarship and multimedia projects by visiting http://www.taralconley.org and http://www.mediamakechange.org.

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Tara Conley Awarded Stanford University Race and Technology Fellowship - Montclaire News

NEW HARTFORD, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--PAR Technology Corporation (NYSE:PAR) today announced that it will report its fourth quarter financial results on Monday, March 15, 2021. The results are scheduled to be released at 4:00 p.m. ET, followed by an investor presentation and conference call at 4:30 p.m. ET.

PAR Technology President and Chief Executive Officer Savneet Singh, Chief Financial Officer Bryan Menar and VP for Business Development, Christopher Byrnes will provide a business update and address questions from call participants.

To participate in the call, please call 844-419-5412, approximately 10 minutes in advance. No passcode is required to participate in the live call. Individual & Institutional Investors will have the opportunity to listen to the conference call/event over the internet by visiting the investor page on PARs website at http://www.partech.com/about-us/investors/. Alternatively, listeners may access an archived version of the presentation call after 7:30 p.m. on March 15 through March 22, 2021 by dialing 855-859-2056 and using conference ID 2996764.

PAR Technology looks forward to your participation in this conference call. Please call Tiffani Temple at 315-738-0600 x 6325 with any questions.

About PAR Technology Corporation.

PAR Technology Corporation through its wholly owned subsidiary ParTech, Inc., is a customer success-driven, global restaurant and retail technology company with over 100,000 restaurants in more than 110 countries using its point of sale hardware and software. ParTechs Brink POS integration ecosystem enables quick service, fast casual, table service, and cloud restaurants to improve their operational efficiency by combining its cloud-based POS software with the worlds leading restaurant technology platforms. PAR Technologys Government segment is a leader in providing computer-based system design, engineering and technical services to the Department of Defense and various federal agencies PAR Technologys stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol PAR. For more information, visit http://www.partech.com or connect with PAR Technology on Facebook or Twitter.

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PAR Technology Corporation Releases Conference Call and Webcast Information for Fiscal 2020 Fourth Quarter & Year End Financial Results - Business...

Skeleton Technologies, Estonia-based manufacturer of graphene-enhanced supercapacitors, and Marubeni Corporation, one of Japans largest conglomerates, have signed a strategic cooperation agreement to support commercial scale-up and customer acquisition for Skeletons supercapacitors in the Asian automotive sector, with a strong focus on electrified vehicles and hydrogen transportation.

As part of this agreement, Marubeni Corporation also made an equity investment on top of the 41.3 million Series D financing round announced by Skeleton in November 2020. The sum of Marubenis investment was not disclosed.

The cooperation will primarily focus on the SuperBattery product line, which has 15-second charging capability and hundreds of thousands of deep charge/discharge cycles. In addition, Skeleton Technologies and Marubeni Corporation also aim to cooperate on new applications for curved graphene, Skeletons patented material enabling the companys technological and competitive advantages.

Enabling carbon-neutral electrification is a key priority for Marubeni Corporation. Skeleton Technologies fits perfectly in our portfolio as they fill the gap for high-power, extremely long high-cycles, and efficient energy storage devices, said Masayuki Omoto, COO of Next Generation Business Development Division of Marubeni Corporation.

According to Omoto, Skeleton has validated its competitive advantage in real-life applications and has shown strong commercial traction. We are delighted to back Skeleton because we see that, besides their technological advantage, they are going after scale as evidenced by their participation in the 3 billion European Battery Innovation project alongside companies such as Tesla and BMW, Omoto noted.

Skeleton Technologies is currently investing in technology development and scaling up a new product line for the automotive sector. The cooperation with Marubeni covers Asia, excluding China and India, and will offer new resources to commercialize Skeletons graphene-based SuperBattery. This new energy storage solution is the ideal complementary technology for lithium-ion batteries and hydrogen fuel cells, improving overall system efficiency and performance.

Our cooperation [with Marubeni] will drive the Asian automotive markets adoption of our technology in the near future as the cost down will be much faster than for lithium-ion batteries, stated Taavi Madiberk, CEO and co-founder of Skeleton Technologies.

While having a strong focus on the expanding electrified and hydrogen-based transportation market, Skeleton and Marubeni will also cooperate on new applications of Skeletons patented curved graphene material, the key enabling technology behind Skeletons supercapacitors performance advantage.

We have been cooperating with Marubeni for many years in introducing Estonian tech companies for investment purposes, noted Kaspar Kork, Director of Estonian Investment Agency, which helped to land the Japanese investment in Estonia. This is an extremely important investment for the Estonian CleanTech sector, which will open up the Asian market to Skeleton. Skeleton is a good example of how the combination of business experience and science creates synergy in Estonia, leading a company started as a spin-off and its unique product to the world market, Kork added.

Skeleton works with some of the largest companies in the world from leading Tier One automotive firms and industrial equipment OEMs to truck fleet operators and aerospace prime contractors to decrease CO2 emissions and fuel consumption, to improve power quality and protect equipment and infrastructure from power peaks, and to power electrification to fight climate change.

Skeleton Technologies Group has three main locations: its manufacturing in Grorhrsdorf, Saxony, Germany, materials development in Bitterfeld-Wolfen, Saxony-Anhalt and electrical engineering in Tallinn, Estonia. From its foundation in 2009, the company has grown from 4 to more than 140 people.

We established Marubeni Corporation Tallinn Office in 2019 to find investment and collaboration opportunities in Estonia. Estonia has one of the densest startup ecosystems around the world with many unique valued technology companies and supportive enablers like Estonian Investment Agency. We believe this strategic cooperation with Skeleton will be a good case of collaboration between Estonian companies and us, adding value through the cooperation, said Takao Fukuoka, General Manager of Marubeni Corporation Tallinn Office.

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Skeleton Technologies to enter Asian automotive market through strategic cooperation with and investment from Marubeni | Graphene-Info - Graphene-Info

HONG KONG--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Bare Cove Technology (BCT) is pleased to announce that Nine Masts Capital has successfully migrated to Bare Cove Technologys fully managed, cloud-hosted IT services platform. In addition to cloud hosting and IT support, Nine Masts has engaged BCT on an ongoing basis to provide CTO consultancy, cyber security advisory, and software development services.

Nine Masts believes investment in technology is key to staying competitive and furthering our growth strategy. BCTs commitment to innovation, cloud-based collaboration, and strategic technology decision-making made them the obvious path forward, said Alain Bordoni, Head of the Non-Investment Team at Nine Masts Capital. The BCT team managed our complex migration with calm professionalism and reliability. They continue to impress us with their commitment to high-quality engineering and support, continued Bordoni.

We are honoured Nine Masts Capital trusts us as their primary technology partner, said Emily Randall, Chief Executive Officer of Bare Cove Technology. We look forward to helping them drive their innovative technology strategy forward.

About Bare Cove Technology

Bare Cove Technology (BCT) is an award-winning IT and cybersecurity solutions provider. Our team is made up of proven leaders in the fields of cybersecurity, software development, cloud technologies, and IT infrastructure and design. Based in Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia, BCT supports the top asset managers in the Asia Pacific region, helping our clients meet the evolving expectations of institutional investors and global regulators.

To learn more about Bare Cove Technology, contact info@barecovetech.com or visit https://www.barecovetech.com.

About Nine Masts Capital Management

Launched in May 2010, Nine Masts Capital Management deploys market neutral, relative value related strategies with a focus on the Asia Pacific region through liquid trading activities predominantly across equity, credit and volatility asset classes.

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Nine Masts Capital Selects Bare Cove Technology as Their Cloud Technology Partner - Business Wire