Blerds

January 28, 2015January 28, 2015

Youth for Technology’s New Program Uses 3-D Printing to Get Girls in Africa Interested in STEM

Youth for Technology is taking a different approach to get girls in Africa interested in STEM subjects. While many programs and initiatives focus on coding or Web design, the 3D Africa program is making the most of 3-D printing technology to show the young girls just how fun STEM can be.

There has been an ongoing mission to get more Black girls interested in STEM careers, and that mission is especially dire in Africa.

African leaders and entrepreneurs believe investing in such technologies like 3-D printing could boost the continent’s economy.

Njideka Harry, the president and CEO of Youth for Technology, told TechCruch that 3-D printing “potentially could mitigate the unemployment situation in Africa by bridging the gap between education and employment.”

Harry said that 3-D printing alone is expected to generate roughly $550 billion a year worldwide by 2025.

That type of economic impact could cause major change across the continent but only if the next generation of innovators takes advantage of such opportunities.

Youth for Technology is vowing to make sure young African women are ready to compete in STEM careers and thrive in the 3-D printing industry.

It has already received a grant from Women Enhancing Technology (WeTech) to help fund the 3-D printing program and also launched an Indiegogo campaign to get more financial backing.

The program’s organizers believe 3-D printing is a great approach to getting girls interested in tech because the items they create will always serve was a reminder of the endless possibilities of science, technology, engineering and math.

The girls also will have to use all those skills in order to create their desired items with the printer.

Harry hopes it will encourage the young women to blaze their own trails in an industry that is currently dominated by men.

“There are cultural biases that hold that science is the domain of males and that it is not important for girls’ future lives and that girls are not as capable as boys when it comes to science learning,” Harry said.

Harry is hoping to boost young women’s confidence and inspire them to take more STEM subjects while they are still in school.

3D Africa will launch first in Nigeria, and Harry hopes to expand the program to other African countries after the first year.

January 27, 2015January 27, 2015

How Larry Wilmore’s Program Is Diversifying Nightly Talk Shows

Comedy Central has had its turn at bat trying to add a little color to late night. The short-lived Chappelle’s Show will live on forever in our hearts despite its host, shrewd comedian Dave Chappelle, getting out early while the getting was good (if you ask him, at least). David Alan Grier’s news satire, Chocolate News, made its best effort but wasn’t quite smart enough for an audience still in withdrawal from the Chappelle magic. The network’s most successful attempt at late night was Mind of Mencia and that show had more hate-watchers than a Dallas Cowboys home game (and about the same effectiveness). They just couldn’t seem to find the right formula.

Who would have thought that all you needed in the end was Stephen Colbert’s old time slot, a Daily Show alumnus and a fairly gimmickless format? Add all these together and you get The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore (originally meant to be titled The Minority Report). At first glance, the comedian’s new late-night follow-up to The Daily Show does a lot to mirror its big brother, hosted by Jon Stewart. You get a sharp, savvy monologue that’s half “A” block news rundown, half standup routine, and highly effective at both.

The real treat here is a raw fearlessness not seen on Comedy Central since Saint Chappelle himself. Not the “Senior Black Correspondent” Daily Show fans have grown to love nor a black version of Colbert’s hyper conservative caricature (modeled after Bill O’Reilly), Wilmore is unburdened by any mandate to play a character. When he expresses his disenchantment with Al Sharpton (“You don’t have to respond to every black emergency! You’re not Black Batman!), it’s not a well-landed Stewart gag that he’ll waste tweets clarifying later. When he stops to place extra exclamation points on his attitude toward Bill Cosby’s Dead Sea Scrolls’ worth … because “laundry lists” are too short … of rape allegations (“That motherf***er did it!”), that’s him talking.

The courageousness goes even further as The Nightly Show follows Wilmore’s well-crafted monologue with a panel discussion. Unless you count those “after-party” shows that talk about the popular show everyone just watched like Talking Dead, panels are rarely done with late-night comedians (with the exception of Bill Maher) because it means they control less variables for a funny show. And make no mistake, the panelists are not mere ringers. From cerebral hip-hop artist Talib Kweli and comedian John Leguizamo to news personality Soledad O’Brien and columnist Jamilah Lemieux, these are opinionated people of mention that give as good as they get.

Read more from Oz Longworth at Black Nerd Problems

January 27, 2015January 27, 2015

These ‘Terminator’-Style Robots Look Fascinating, But Raise the Question of Having A.I. Selecting Targets to Kill on Their Own

DARPA revealed upgrades to its Atlas robot on Jan. 20. The robot was redesigned for DARPA by Boston Dynamics, with the goal of improving power efficiency to better support battery operation. Approximately 75 percent of the robot was rebuilt; only the lower legs and feet were carried over from the original design. The upgraded robot will be used by up to seven teams competing in the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals, which will take place June 5-6 at Fairplex in Pomona, California. Admission to the event is free and open to the public.

Source: DARPAtv

January 27, 2015January 27, 2015

Afrofuturism-inspired Dance Theatre Performance Explores Art, Technology

(Warning: Mild nudity)

“Speech Sounds,” a dance theatre performance choreographed and curated by Makeda Thomas, explores the metaphors for art and technology that come out of Afrofuturist culture.

The dance theatre work calls on improvisation, dances of the Orishas, and Thomas’ “richly-honed” contemporary movement to ask, “What does it mean to be a performer of the present? Of the future?”

“Speech Sounds” gets its title from Octavia’s Butler’s Hugo Award winning science fiction short story about a future world “where the only likely common language was body language.” Three powerhouse performers engage a performative strategy that pushes its elements in, to, over and beyond themselves; and explores the metaphors for art and technology that come out of Afrofuturist culture. It looks at improvisation, as an exploration of the dancer’s self, and how it transitions to a shared experience with the audience. It further asks, then, what does it mean to be a performer of the present? Of the future?

Each performance, each iteration of the work exists in multiple variations, with each variation being characterized by the improvisations of the performers. In this way, the work is imbued with its own autonomous power that engages a more present performer—a future performer—in moments of infinite imaginations and re-creation. Speech Sounds is about the spaces between selves; of how individuals connect and disconnect; of isolation and companionship; of what happens when we lose that which we value the most—be that a person, symbol, idea or name; and, of arriving at a loss of words.

The choreographic work is being underscored by an ongoing global transnational historical research project that seeks new critical understandings of history and identity in the African diaspora. The research navigates through West Africa, Western Europe, the United States, Venezuela, Grenada, St. Vincent, and Trinidad.

The embodied aspects of that research explores how Orisha dance, which bears unique syncretisms of those distinct cultural histories, and as “an earthly manifestation of the divine through human movement,” is embedded into the improvisatory dance practices of contemporary dance artists and creates new choreographic, movement, and performance processes. This research, as “Bring de Power: Orisha dance as a mobile technology of African diasporic identity making,” was presented for Dancing the African Diaspora—Theories of Black Performance at Duke University in February 2014.

“Speech Sounds” is set to make its U.S. debut in Fall 2015, and is being made possible with a Performing Arts Award from Creative Capital and a fiscal sponsorship through Fractured Atlas.

Learn more at makedathomas.org/speechsounds.

Rasheedah Phillips is a Philadelphia public interest attorney, speculative fiction writer, the creator of The AfroFuturist Affair, and a founding member of Metropolarity.net. She recently independently published her first speculative fiction collection, “Recurrence Plot (and Other Time Travel Tales).”

January 26, 2015

New Wearable Brain Scanner Could Lead to Major Medical Breakthroughs

A team of scientists is currently developing a portable, wearable brain scanner that has the potential to lead to major breakthroughs in the medical field.

Current positron emission tomography (PET) scanners are large, bulky machines often used to detect cancer and measure the effects of certain cancer treatments.

They also can monitor blood flow to the heart, search for signs of coronary artery disease and much more.

PET scans give doctors and scientists a crucial look at the way our brains function, but the massive device hasn’t been able to reach its full potential.

There is currently no way for patients or test subjects to participate in physical activities while also undergoing a PET scan.

The new wearable version of the device is on the brink of changing that forever.

The helmet-like PET scanners are still very bulky, but they are portable enough to allow subjects to be active while wearing it.

“Every social experiment that has been done [in a brain scanner] is an artificially contrived experiment,” said Julie Brefczynski-Lewis, a neuroscientist at West Virginia University and one of the scientists leading the project, according to Live Science. “Here, you actually see what people are doing when they’re embarrassed, when they’re laughing, when they’re crying.”

That, researchers believe, could allow them to garner a better understanding of healthy brain functions and even provide more knowledge about neurological disorders like dementia, stroke and depression.

The possibilities of the wearable brain scanner concept, which was patented by Stan Majewski, got a lot of attention in the science community.

Brefczynski-Lewis and others then came together and teamed up with Majewski to start working on a prototype.

Building a wearable brain scanner is an expensive process, but funding for the project was made possible through the president’s BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative.

The National Institutes of Health awarded the research team $1.5 million through the initiative.

Some of the new possibilities with such a device would be the ability of researchers to monitor the brain of an autistic person in a social situation or monitor a stroke patient’s brain during rehab exercises.

Early testing with the prototype revealed that it is working efficiently, but not producing the type of quality results the researchers would want it to.

Studies on a “fake brain” revealed that while the device worked, the images it provided were fuzzier than they would be on the typical PET images.

As the team continues to try and improve the scanner’s results, the wearable scanners could make their medical debut soon.

January 26, 2015January 26, 2015

You Have to See This Black Entrepreneur’s Approach to Changing Silicon Valley’s Diversity Problem

Meet Tristan Walker, from diverse start-up Walker and Co., who has set out to prove that startups don’t have to be primarily male and white.

Source: USA Today

January 26, 2015January 26, 2015

For The Dark-Skinned Girls Who Were Never Casted For The Role Of X-Men’s Storm

The Nerd community is a really tough bastard to please. The Black Nerd community, maybe even more so. Still, because we rarely get what we want, throwing us a really big bone is often a good way to buy yourself some goodwill and keep our adamantium claws firmly in our hands a bit longer. Storm is probably the biggest get out of jail free card that may never get played. This week, Bryan Singer announced that they had found their next Cyclops, Jean Grey and Storm for the X-Men: Apocalypse film.

Now, you’ll probably notice…they are young. Like, could be Famke Janssen’s kids young. But that was to be expected, considering that the Apocalypse Film was essentially going to be set in the “First Class” timeline with no wonky time travel going on this time (new powered up Kitty Pryde not included). So, we weren’t going to get the old Scott, Jean and Ororo in their Hollywood Geriatric state and that’s fine cuz bruh, that’s actually a good thing. So, we can talk Sansa Stark playing Jean Grey (I’m going to need more convincing) or Tye “You might remember me from Mud, actually naw, you probably don’t” Sheridan playing Cyclops, but come on, fam. You’re on Black Nerd Problems right now…you know we’re gonna talk about Ororo Da Literal Gawd.

I do not come to bury Alexandra Shipp. I don’t know Alexandra Shipp. I like her politics though. I like that she likes President Obama as more of my Black friends complain about him (*cough*Omar Holmon*cough*).

I like that she is willing to take on big iconic roles that resonate specifically with the Black community. But I also know that the Aaliyah biopic was a derailed train into a forest fire. And when movies are that bad, but the lead actress or actor is amazing, that becomes the narrative. Like, Chadwick Boseman in Get On Up. Or most small films that Tom Hardy stars in. Or Viola Davis starring in this planet Earth. None such came out of that Lifetime Feature except it might take a Lifetime to erase that from Aaliyah’s legacy. None of this is really about Alexandra Shipp though. Which really sucks for her. But it isn’t.

What this is about is the way that Hollywood continues to pretend that no impact or history lies in the darkness of someone’s skin. Well, when I say Hollywood, in this case I mean Bryan Singer. And when I say “someone’s skin,” I really mean Black Women. “What’s the real issue, it’s not like they cast a white woman as Storm, does it really need to be this complicated?” Yeah, it kind of does. Even as a fictional character, Storm is a feminist symbol for Black Women the way that most assume Wonder Woman has been for women all these years. Storm has always been powerful, goddess-like and African. And no, not Charlize Theron, South African. Her dark complexion has always been part of her appearance and it’s not by accident. The same way it isn’t an accident that Storm has become a beacon and symbol for women with darker skin for decades now. The unwillingness to recognize that is just another thunderbolt in the side of a demographic of women who frankly, are plenty used to it by now. Still not understanding the public contempt for this casting choice? Ok…

(Actress Alexandra Shipp)

Read More from William Evans at Black Nerd Problems