Category Archives: Technology

With the current pace of renewable energy deploymentand emissions reductions efforts, the world is unlikely to achieve the Paris Climate Agreements goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. This trend puts in doubt efforts to keep climate change damages from sea level rise, heat waves, drought and flooding in check. A potential solution being widely discussed is removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, also known as negative emissions.

Stanford researchers say carbon removal techniques such as ecosystem restoration are well understood, but others involve immature technologies and may not scale up as fast as policymakers hope. (Image credit: iStock)

However, in a new perspective published in the journal Science, researchers at Stanford explain the risks of assuming carbon removal technologies can be deployed at a massive scale relatively quickly with low costs and limited side effects with the future of the planet at stake.

For any temperature limit, weve got a finite budget of how much heat-trapping gases we can put into the atmosphere. Relying on big future deployments of carbon removal technologies is like eating lots of dessert today, with great hopes for liposuction tomorrow, said Chris Field, a professor of biology and of Earth system science and director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

Some strategies for carbon dioxide removal are well understood, such as planting trees that will store carbon from the atmosphere. Others involve immature, little tested technologies, such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. In that strategy, carbon dioxide produced from biomass energy is stored deep underground. In another technology called direct air capture, chemical processes extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The models generating possible trajectories of climate change mitigation bet on planetary-scale carbon removal in the second half of the century, said Katharine Mach, a senior research scientist at Stanfords School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences. For policymakers trying to limit the worst damages from climate change, that bet is reckless.

The researchers dont reject carbon capture, instead arguing that there are important near-term opportunities for carbon removal at modest scale, often with other benefits for nature and people, and critical needs now for developing the technologies of the future. But heavy reliance on biomass energy with carbon capture and storage could require tremendous land areas. For example, relying on the technology to achieve a temperature increase of 2 C or less could require an amount of productive land equivalent to about 25 to 80 percent of total global cropland, up to about 8 percent of all of the land on Earth.

This puts climate change mitigation, global food security and biodiversity protection on a collision course with no easy off-ramps, says Field.

Many of the climate policy discussions supporting reliance on atmospheric carbon removal focus on the idea of peak and decline, which involves global temperatures peaking and then dropping as carbon removal technologies surpass emissions. However, the scientists argue that peak and decline may ignore climate impacts that wont disappear even if the planet starts to cool. For example, if warming triggers collapse of the Antarctic ice sheet, the resulting sea level rise would continue for hundreds of years.

Further, Field and Mach warn that hoping carbon removal technologies will kick in may delay concrete actions that could be taken now.

At the right scale, carbon dioxide removal approaches are a key tool in the climate solutions kit, Mach said. Avoiding can-kicking ethics, however, means putting aside assumptions that massive deployments will easily materialize decades into the future. Instead, we need to embrace whole-hearted mitigation today.

Ultimately, the scientists support a balanced approach that includes research and development of carbon removal technologies but also makes use of available means to limit and reduce carbon emissions, such as investing in renewable energy sources.

In managing the risks of a changing climate, we need a diversified game plan. An appealing long shot is not a plan and it is not a good way to protect the planet on which we depend, said Field.

Chris Field is also the Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies, the Perry L. McCarty Director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and senior fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy. Katharine Mach is also an adjunct assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, visiting investigator at the Carnegie Institution for Science and director of the Stanford Environment Assessment Facility at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

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Is carbon removal technology a high-stakes gamble? - Stanford University News

As hardcorepizza enthusiasts, were no stranger to the recent pizza-related innovations that have been made recently. You can order pizza with your shoes, get pizza in a box made of pizza, and even smoke weed with a pizza box. Though the latter two are fun ways to reimagine the pizza box, has any real progress been made since the standard cardboard box most of us are working with now? Not that were aware of, and while Apple has been making some of the worlds finest phones, computers and whatever other devices will dominate our lives next year, they also took a minute todesign, patent and make a pizza box of their own (via Engadget).

Its actually a pretty impressive pizza vessel. The ribbed and ventilated container was designed so pizza wouldnt get soggy by allowing air and moisture to escape. The boxs creation is largely due toFrancesco Longoni, the maestro of the Apple Park caf (which was profiled byWired, who included this odd bit of trivia in their story). Take a look at the patent image below:

The patent itself, which was filed in 2010 and approved in 2012, is fun to look at because of the detail and length of writing that went into describing a pizza box. For example, heres the first item from the Claims section of the document:

1. A molded fiber container suitable for containing a food item, comprising: a base, the base comprising: a plurality of ridges integrated with an interior surface of the base, wherein when the food item is placed on at least some of the plurality of ridges, a gap is formed between the food item and the interior surface of the base, the gap assisting in thermally isolating the food item and allowing moisture expelled from the food item to be transported away from the food item; and a lid, the lid comprising: a plurality of openings arranged in accordance with at least some of the plurality of ridges, and a moisture channeling feature integrally formed in the lid, the moisture channeling feature cooperating with at least some of the plurality of openings and the gap to provide a path by which at least some of the moisture expelled from the food item is transported out of the container and into an external environment.

Soggy pizza is a significant issue, obviously, but do you think Apples finally cracked the code? Let us know in the comments!

Image:cyclonebill/Wikimedia Commons, United States Patent and Trademark Office

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Apple's Latest Piece of Cutting Edge Technology Is A Pizza Box - Nerdist

The Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain-based advancements in the payments industry were among the many themes explored at TRANSACT, a tech-centric, payments industry conference held on May 1012 in Las Vegas.

A panel discussion entitled How IoT is Revolutionizing Payments included a brief discussion regarding the emerging intersection between the Internet of Things and blockchain technology in this industry.

On a similar trajectory as the blockchain, much attention has been given to the future of IoT, defined as an ecosystem of physical devices from mobile phones to wearable tracking sensors that gather and share electronic information with one another.

Research firm IHS Markit estimates that 30.7 billion IoT devices will be communicating with one another by 2021. This complements a global blockchain technology market thats expected to grow from $210.2 million in 2016 to $2.3 billion by 2021 according to Market Reports Hub.

The collision between the IoT and blockchain worlds portends some important payments industry developments around the efficient tracking of device payment history, all supported by a ledger of secure data exchanges among devices, web systems and users. Further, this technological convergence also shows promise in terms of the use of smart devices that are programmed to conduct a variety of transactions such as the automatic issuance of invoices and payments.

Dan Loomis, vice president and director of mobile product management at the business and financial software firm Intuit, is firmly entrenched in this evolving IoT/blockchain conversation through his work in creating payment experiences for businesses that operate on a global scale, and brought this expertise to the TRANSACT panel discussion.

In an exclusive interview with Bitcoin Magazine, Loomis remarked that for the small, emerging business clients he works with, cash is king. For our team at Intuit, it all comes down to how we can help these businesses create immediate operating capital. The ability to quickly onboard clients into a payment service and to get paid quickly is really important. Their mantra is often Pay me, pay me faster, and how can we as a business accept all methods of payment?

Loomis says that at his company and for the payments space in general, the thought of leveraging the blockchains immutable, permanent, auditable features is fascinating on a variety of levels. He notes that specific to Intuit, there is a lot of investigation going on into blockchain technology and how it may be applied to their payment models.

We facilitate a lot of invoice, payable and receivable experiences for our clients. Aspirationally, being able to track these logistics in a manner thats clear and transparent via blockchain [technology] would be very appealing. It has a high level of integrity as a technology and cannot be questioned in terms of its functionality.

Healthcare is one vertical market that Intuit is targeting. Loomis says that in this industry there is always a trail of information thats important to unravel and look at, from medical record information to who the patients service provider is. I think that blockchain [technology] can help wrap this together and be a critical vehicle for a healthcare space thats somewhat arcane and at the same time leading edge.

When asked about the immense possibilities around blockchain technology and IoT in terms of it being fully leveraged at Intuit, Loomis remarked, I have no doubt that a developer in our company ecosystem is at least thinking about this closely.

Loomis believes that IoT and blockchain technology will emerge at Intuit when these technologies have a strong, demonstrated fit that can actually be matched with end user value. I think market deploy in this space is one of those things well see come to fruition when the time is right and it meets our customer benefit.

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IoT and Blockchain Technology Collide in the Payments Industry - Bitcoin Magazine

The nascent off-Earth manufacturing industry is getting set to take its next big steps.

Made In Space, the California-based company that owns and operates the commercial 3-D printer aboard the International Space Station (ISS), is developing new technology, called Archinaut, that's designed to enable the assembly of large structures in the final frontier.

"The real difference maker for this technology is in the area of being able to put stuff up that you can't origami fold up [for launch], or that would be really, really difficult to do with a traditional deployable" system, Made In Space CEO Andrew Rush told Space.com last month.

Building structures off Earth would also allow them "to be space-optimized," Rush said, "rather than engineered to survive launch."

Related: 3-D Printing in Space: A Photo Gallery

The Archinaut concept integrates a 3-D-printer and flexible robotic arms into a single spacecraft capable of manufacturing parts and putting them together in space. In addition to building structures anew, Archinaut could help repair or upgrade existing satellites, Rush said.

Made In Space has been working on the project for about six months. NASA selected the idea for funding in November 2015 via a "tipping point technologies" solicitation, and the company (along with partners Northrop Grumman and Oceaneering Space Systems) got on the $20 million contract roughly a year later, Rush said.

Made In Space's work on Archinaut currently focuses on figuring out how best to manufacture "extended structures" in the space environment, Rush said. This research involves testing at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California Made In Space's next-door neighbor and analyzing samples created by the ISS commercial 3-D printer, which is called the Additive Manufacturing Facility (AMF).

The next step will involve adding the robotic-arms component into the mix, Rush said. All of this is part of the project's first phase, which will last a total of 18 months.

After such work is complete, Made In Space and its partners aim to launch an Archinaut demonstration mission to Earth orbit. That flight had been pegged for 2018, but the timeline might end up being pushed back a bit, Rush said.

"For the Archinaut development program through NASA, that's kind of dependent on Phase 2, which is to be announced," he said.

The demonstration mission will likely build a space structure a few meters across, Rush added. There should be bigger things to come, however.

"Where this gets really interesting is, tens [of meters] to 100 meters plus," he said. "And that's what we're angling toward."

For example, Archinaut could potentially enable the construction of gigantic space telescopes, Rush said: The technology could manufacture some parts in orbit and integrate them with others, such as mirror segments, that were launched from the ground. (At the moment, entire space telescopes must be folded up to fit inside a rocket's nose cone, limiting their maximum size.)

"That's what we think is the attainable future that Archinaut enables," Rush said.

NASA isn't the only organization interested in Archinaut. Rush said that Made In Space is also working with a commercial customer on an application for the technology and will turn over some hardware to this customer (which he declined to name) at the end of this summer.

Made In Space is also negotiating with a half-dozen other potential customers some of them government entities, others in the private sector on the possible use of Archinaut tech, Rush said.

Related: Here's Why Buzz Aldrin Wants to Retire the Space Station

Made In Space partnered with NASA to build the first-ever 3-D printer aboard the ISS, which reached the orbiting lab in September 2014. NASA owns that printer. But Made In Space owns and operates the AMF, a second-generation machine that arrived at the ISS in March 2016 and prints out parts for a variety of customers.

The company plans to develop Archinaut tech on a similar path, from demonstration mission to a series of increasingly capable, commercially operating machines, Rush said.

"Visions of what this could do have been with us for a long time," he said. "We want to do good work, and we want to learn from it."

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

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This Technology Could Help Us Build Huge Structures in Space ... - NBCNews.com

The latest technology being used in high speed police pursuits in Southern California can eliminate the chase altogether.

It's called StarChase.

For now, Tustin police are the only law enforcement agency in Southern California using it.

The most interesting part is how law enforcement officers get this technology on a suspect's vehicle.

The Orange County Sheriff's trainers observed Tustin Police Department's use of the technology.

"It's an impressive system, Orange County Sheriffs trainer Lt. Chris Thomas said.

Officers use a laser to sight the fleeing vehicle and then a grill mounted launcher uses compressed air to propel a canister with aGPS.

The canister uses a powerful adhesive to keep a grip on the vehicle and then the device immediately begins transmitting its location in real time to radio dispatch and pursuing officers.

Officers follow at a safe distance and speed, reducing the risks associated with high speeds, heightened adrenaline and emotions.

"I like the fact we can get distance and we can slow this situation down, Thomas said.

"We don't have to drive at the high speeds, but we can still chase him in a safe way, in an electronic way, Tustin Police Department Lt. Robert Wright said.

Wright said his department was involved in 10 pursuits in 2016, and only eight the year before. But this technology could eliminate the need for most, if not all, future police chases.

"Its ideal for us and ideal for the community. It decreases that threat and danger that is involved in pursuits, Wright added.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration tracks chase-related deaths.

According to a USA Today analysis of those records, in 2014 there were 385 people killed in crashes that occurred during a police chase. That's up 16 percent from the year before.

"Pursuits are inherently dangerous, Wright said.

Among the 2014 pursuit deaths, five were police officers, 73 were bystanders, and 77 were passengers in the fleeing vehicles.

In San Diego County, 21-year-old Marco Gutierrez was killed in an Oceanside police chase.

Investigators said pursuit speeds reached 80 miles per hour.

Gutierrez's brother-in-law Jorge Luis Lopez was behind the wheel of the getaway car. Lopez is serving a 19-year prison sentence for drunk driving and voluntary manslaughter.

But using GPS technology to track crime suspects in other situations has been challenged in court.

In an email to NBC 7, San Diego and Imperial counties ACLU Senior Policy Strategist Christie Hill said the group has not fully reviewed the new StarChase technology but "...Deployment of such tools and technologies must be guided by publicly-debated and approved policies that assure police accountability, create transparency, protect individual rights and allow for public scrutiny."

StarChase is limited to the pursuit of suspects already wanted for a crime. The intent of the technologyis to reduce crashes, property damage, injuries and deaths.

Tustin police said in the pursuit of safer crime fighting, StarChase is right on target.

The department outfitted some of its fleet with the device but not all vehicles.So far, they have not used the technology in a real pursuit but officers say they are excited to have it.

There are fewer than 100 law enforcement agencies using StarChase nationwide.

Published at 6:22 PM PDT on May 17, 2017 | Updated 4 hours ago

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New Technology Could Put Brakes on High Speed Pursuits - NBC 7 San Diego

3 Technology Questions for Mills College Inside Higher Ed (blog) What ideas might those of us in the higher ed technology and digital learning world contribute to reaching the goal of fiscal sustainability at Mills, and schools like Mills? Does the academic technology community have a constructive place to play in ...

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3 Technology Questions for Mills College - Inside Higher Ed (blog)

One mission for an adviser is to size up a new client. Are they eager to use the latest technology or do they want to make sure that a new innovation works before they risk their clients on an untested platform?

In 1962, sociologist and communications theorist Everett Rogers introduced his The Diffusion of Innovations Theory that explains how, over time, an idea, behavior or product gains momentum and spreads through a specific population. This theory applies to benefits advisers in terms of how you approach your clients and how your agency delivers innovation in service, processes and technology.

According to Rogers, adoption of any new innovation does not happen all at once. Rather, it is a process whereby certain profiles of people your clients are more likely to adopt an innovation earlier than others. These profiles fall into five categories.

Identity confirmed now what? As an industry, we see brokers looking to address exceptions to the rule in their book of business, rather than looking for a solution that will work for most of their client base. Often, objections like What about the brokerage with people over 60 who don't want to move away from paper? while well-intentioned, tend to paralyze or delay decisions. This delay can even result in bad investments that solve limited challenges rather than provide forward-thinking solutions that automate or eliminate old-school practices across the majority of a brokers book of business.

The reality is not every group is ready for technology and automation. This is the case in in rural areas and outdated industries. However, as a benefits adviser, building your technology strategy around the late majority or laggards in your book of business does your entire agency a disservice. Most of your clients want a forward-thinking adviser to guide them into the future, not a pushover catering mainly to the squeaky wheels in your client base.

A technology investment is an investment in the future. As youre looking to partner with a technology company, you need to look for technologies that innovate for the early adopters and fast followers, not the laggards and late majority in any given group. For your innovative clients, theyll appreciate your proactive approach, long-term investment in the future of their business, and the efficiencies a technology provides their team and their employees. For the groups in the latter categories, more hand-holding might be required at first, and the key is to find solutions and workarounds that work for all parties.

As you look for a technology partner going forward, start by looking within your current book of business, and identify your early adopter and early majority groups. Identify a common set of needs among that population, and focus on making decisions around innovation for those clients. These are the folks in your book that are most open to change, so implement technology with them first, learn from the process, and tease out success stories that will convince your late majority and laggard clients to adapt.

As an adviser, it is your job to think ahead. Advisers must also reach out to clients proactively to lead them into the future. They must approach their clients and partnerships through that lens. And most importantly, dont let the laggards in their book of business drag them down.

Gidwaney is CEO and co-founder of Maxwell Health, a company that simplifies benefits and HR for small- to mid-sized employers.

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Views Advisers must identify clients ready for new technology - Employee Benefit Adviser (registration)

#NotAllEdTech Derails Critical Educational Technology Conversations Inside Higher Ed (blog) The critique, offered by Downes and Kim, counters our underlying premise. They say: Not all educational technology is characterized by technocentric, market-centric, and product-driven ideologies. Downes argues that the way we describe educational ...

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#NotAllEdTech Derails Critical Educational Technology Conversations - Inside Higher Ed (blog)

Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital will be involved in the joint initative announced by Partners HealthCare and General Electric Co.

Two big Boston institutions, General Electric Co. and Partners HealthCare, on Wednesday launched an ambitious initiative to employ artificial intelligence to improve medical care.

The decade-long effort will include clinical and technology experts at the Partners-owned Massachusetts General and Brigham and Womens hospitals working alongside engineers and developers at GE. The companies will begin by building software to help doctors more quickly and accurately interpret medical images, but over time, they also want to create applications for genomics, population health, and other areas of medicine.

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Artificial intelligence also called machine learning technology refers to computers that can sift through vast amounts of data to recognize patterns, becoming more accurate over time. Executives from GE, one of the nations largest corporations, and Partners, Massachusetts biggest nonprofit hospital network, said such technology has the potential to help care providers do their jobs more efficiently so that patients receive more accurate diagnoses and better treatments.

Without disclosing specifics, both companies said they will spend a significant amount on the initiative. And both stand to gain revenue if theyre successful in creating useful software programs that can be sold to hospitals around the globe.

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GE, which moved its headquarters to Boston last year, is working to transform itself from an industrial company to into one that revolves around making software that powers equipment from MRI machines to jet engines.

What we see as the future of health care [is] applying data and analytics and machine learning to create a rapidly different outcome for patients, said John Flannery, chief executive of GE Healthcare, a business of 54,000 employees and more than $18 billion in annual revenue.

The possibilities are vast and significant, he added.

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As medical data has gone digital, it has become easier to store and track, but it can also be overwhelming for doctors who must sift through electronic health records, lab results, and more every day.

We are literally inundating our clinicians with data, said Dr. David Torchiana, chief executive of Partners. We have more and more information, and the information comes at our clinicians in a way that is almost unmanageable and at times can be overwhelming.

Artificial intelligence can help make sense of that data, Torchiana said.

Other big companies, including IBM, whose Watson Health division is in Cambridge, are investing heavily in AI. IBMs programs, for example, crunch data to help doctors prescribe treatments for cancer. Even Google and Amazon have developed technology that hospitals can use to comb through various data.

AI technology is part of the growing digital health field, which was about $61 billion globally in 2013 and is expected to grow to $233 billion in 2020, according to Deloitte. Massachusetts is home to hundreds of digital health companies, including startups.

At GE, digital health accounts for more than $1.5 billion in annual revenue, and executives said that is expected to increase at double-digit rates by 2020.

GE and Partners said they will develop an open platform that eventually can house hundreds of applications to help interpret medical data. Theyre starting with radiology because that field, dealing with digital pictures from MRI and CT machines, more easily lends itself to computer analysis.

A computer can read hundreds or thousands of images and use algorithms to identify patterns that radiologists should pay attention to. The goal is for the computer to help them provide a better diagnosis, and then a better treatment plan for patients with stroke, cancer, and many other conditions.

Theres hundreds if not thousands of applications throughout medicine, said Dr. Keith Dreyer, chief data science officer in the radiology departments of Mass. General and Brigham.

The partnership between Partners hospitals and GE to work on artificial intelligence is the biggest of its kind, though GE is working with other hospitals, including Boston Childrens Hospital, to develop medical software.

Dr. John Halamka, chief information officer at Bostons Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, said GE and and Partners are right to focus on radiology and other high value areas where machine learning can make a difference.

Its pattern recognition based on previous experience, Halamka said. Think of it as a safety net, a focus, a mechanism for ensuring you dont miss bad things.

Beth Israel Deaconess is using technology from Amazon to run pilot programs in machine learning, including one in which a computer quickly reads information from paper forms, minimizing some of the busy work for staff.

GEs health care business is based in Chicago and has operations throughout the world, but the companys decision to move its corporate headquarters to Boston helped seal the new partnership with Partners, executives from both companies said.

This is a concrete manifestation of exactly the reason we moved to Boston, said Flannery, the GE Healthcare CEO. This is exactly the idea we had in mind, which is to be in the middle of the action, in the flow of ideas, with the worlds best clinical partners [and] universities.

Originally posted here:

GE, Partners have a plan to bring more A.I. technology to health care ... - The Boston Globe

Nearly every modern parent has given a tablet or smartphone to a child for entertainment at some point. These devices are simply easy and always on hand and may not harm the child if given to him once in a while. If parents hand out a device regularly, though, could the technology slow early child development?

Speech Development

One newfindingpresented at the 2017 Pediatrics Societies Meeting did find a correlation. The study analyzed over 900 children using parent-reported data on amount of screen time received. The parents reported the screen time of their children at age 18 months.

PROTEIN SUPPLEMENTS FOR TEENS: ARE THEY SAFE?

Then, the researchers conducted an evaluation of the childrens development. Using the information reported by parents, researchers found that one-fifth of the children had almost 30 minutes of screen time each day. As screen time increased in some families, children were almost 50 percent more likely to have a speech delay as they developed.

On the other hand, senior investigator Dr. Catherine Birken does insist on caution when approaching these results. This pioneering study will need more testing to verify its accuracy. Interestingly, the study did not find a correlation between a childs screen time and other developmental areas.

Family Interaction

One major concern that doctors have with young children and technology is their interaction with other people. Babies and children under the age of 3 learn primarily by imitating other people. Technology can interfere with the time a child spends observing and imitating, a likely reason for the speech delays.

In addition, the screen time will interfere with bonding between the child and his family members. As he spends more time absorbed in media, even educational media, he will tune out family members and often fight with siblings over the device being used.

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Even when only the parent is using a smartphone or tablet, the device will still cause an interruption between parent and child bonding. In one smallstudypublished by the American Academy of Pediatrics, researchers studied 55 caregivers in fast food restaurants.

Over 70 percent of the caregivers pulled out a device during the meal, and researchers noted the various reactions of both the children and adults. They found that the children would either entertain themselves or increase antics to regain attention. In addition, many of the connected caregivers would react harshly to their children.

Adults simply need to disconnect, especially around their children, and children should entertain themselves in active play instead of technology. Researchers do need more tests and evidence that technology affects young children negatively. In the meantime, though, people should err on the side of caution.

Educational Technology

At this point, parents may be wondering about the use of technology in the classroom or educational technology at home. Within the past few years,researchhas shown that educational technology does improve childrens learning. The technology provides colorful, eye-catching images and interaction that children love.

7 CHEAP HOME REMEDIES FOR ACNE

In 2012, a smallstudyin Maine showed that kindergarteners actually improve in literacy more quickly when using iPads. During the study, 16 kindergarten classes participated with 129 students getting to use an iPad for learning.

The other half kept learning through traditional methods. After nine weeks, the students with the iPads actually scored higher on all literacy testing than the students who learned without the iPads.

The key here is that these children were using educational technology specifically targeted at improving their skills. In addition, the children had already developed the basic speech and motor functions needed to attend school. At this age, technology can assist in helping children learn more efficiently, especially visual learners.

At the same time, parents and teachers should take care not to use the technology to distract and entertain the children. This mindless screen time can still affect their interaction and bonding with other people.

For the most part, children should stay clear of technology in favor of interaction and active play. While school-age children can benefit from the support of technology, new research shows that younger children will experience developmental delays. Families should disconnect and spend quality time together instead. If they do so, they will strengthen their relationships and learn to spend quality time together.

This article first appeared on AskDrManny.com.

Dr. Manny Alvarez serves as Fox News Channel's senior managing health editor. He also serves as chairman of the department of obstetrics/gynecology and reproductive science at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey. Click here for more information on Dr. Manny's work with Hackensack University Medical Center. Visit AskDrManny.com for more.

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Technology in early child development: Good or bad? - Fox News