When Google Apps arrived in 2006, it stood on the cutting edge of Web-hosted email and collaboration suites for businesses, a bold pioneer clearing a path in the new, wild frontier of enterprise cloud computing.
Seven years later, complacency has diluted that innovative spirit, and Google Apps now trails competing suites from IBM, Cisco, and Microsoft in areas like enterprise social networking (ESN) and unified communications (UC).
Although Google improves Apps continually, the suite's main draw remains its Gmail component, as has been the case from the beginning. But is cloud email still enough to attract prospective customers and retain existing ones? Is Google leaving Apps vulnerable to rivals by taking its time boosting its ESN and UC capabilities?
One company eyes rival Office 365 At healthcare company Schumacher Group, Google Apps is at risk of losing its place to Microsoft's Office 365. The Lafayette, Louisiana, company uses Apps to provide email to about 3,000 independent contractor doctors and Microsoft Exchange on premises for its full-time employees.
After relying on Apps for about four years, Schumacher Group is taking a close look at Office 365, which comes with online versions of Exchange, SharePoint, Lync and Office, said Schumacher CIO Douglas Menefee. "We're evaluating Office 365 and Google Apps, and discussing the strengths and weaknesses of both products," he said. "Microsoft has made great strides with Office 365. The sleeping giant awoke two years ago."
Menefee was referring to the launch of Office 365 in 2011, when Microsoft finally released a cloud email and collaboration suite that was comparable to Google Apps. "We have seen a major shift in the maturity of Microsoft's cloud-based products," he said. "They seem to be gaining a lot of traction."
Currently, Schumacher Group uses an on-premises Lync server for unified communications, and Salesforce.com's Chatter for ESN.
Customers want more Even new customers adopting Apps with unbridled enthusiasm want Google to know they expect it to continue developing the suite in innovative ways.
That's the case at Whirlpool, the home appliances giant, which recently announced plans to migrate from an IBM Lotus Notes system to Google Apps. Getting cloud email and other basic productivity functions wasn't what tilted the scales in favor of Apps.
"Email and calendaring are commodity services," said Whirlpool CIO Michael Heim. "You don't do this kind of implementation just for email and calendaring." In fact, Whirlpool, which will deploy Google Apps to about 30,000 employees worldwide, hopes to reduce its reliance on email. "If we could make email go away, we would, because there are better ways to work, and that's what's exciting for us," he said.
Whirlpool wants to push its employees to communicate with video conferencing, to share and co-edit documents in real time and to exchange ideas in internal online communities. Thus, Heim's excited about the real-time collaboration capabilities in the suite's Docs office productivity apps, and he's interested in the new Hangouts UC tool in the Google+ consumer social networking app.
Hangouts, announced in May, will replace several Google audio, video and IM tools -- including Chat, Talk and Google+ Messenger -- consolidating and improving their functions.
Problem of gender differences on physics assessments remains unsolved
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
1-Nov-2013
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Contact: Sarah McKagan smckagan@aapt.org 206-335-4325 American Physical Society
The mystery of why women consistently score lower than men on common assessments of conceptual understanding of physics remains poorly understood
In a new synthesis of past work, researchers found that women consistently score lower than men on common assessments of conceptual understanding of physics. However, when examining the factors that may account for these differences (such as student background and test-taking strategies), no clear pattern emerged. Thus, despite previous claims that the causes of this gender gap have been pinpointed, the problem remains unsolved and poorly understood. This has critical importance for science education reform.
Many changes have been made in college science instruction in the past decades. Numerous classrooms have shifted from a traditional lecture presentation to more interactive formats that aim to engage students in building their own knowledge. Physics has been a forerunner of this movement, in part because of early and ongoing research on how students grapple with key ideas in this difficult field. Comparisons of student understanding have been made possible through the development of "concept inventories" multiple choice tests of student understanding, developed through years of research, enabling the same test to be given to students in a variety of classrooms.
"These tests have been very important in the history of physics education reform," said Dr. McKagan, who co-authored the new analysis. Past studies have shown that students in classrooms using interactive techniques get significantly higher scores on these tests than do students in more traditional lecture settings; "these results have inspired a lot of people to change the way that they teach," said McKagan.
But several studies had also reported that women's scores on these tests are typically lower than men's. "We set out to determine whether there is a gender gap on these concept inventories," said lead author Madsen, "and if so, what causes it."
The authors combined results from 26 previous studies of several common physics concept inventories, covering 12 different institutions. They found that women almost always score lower than men on these tests (12% on average for tests about force and motion), both before instruction, and at the end of the course. The same trend is also found when comparing male and female students' gains on the tests, showing that this gap is not simply due to differing levels of incoming knowledge. There is some variation across studies the gender gap sometimes goes up and sometimes goes down, but rarely goes away, observe the authors. Women also receive lower scores on course exams (4% on average) than do men, which can impact course grades. These results mirror those in other studies of gender differences on other types of science and math tests, such as standardized placement exams.
One key finding from the study is that, while there is a gender gap in performance on concept inventories, the performance of both men and women is improved when they experience an interactive classroom. These teaching techniques improve student gains on these tests by four times as much as the size of the gap between men's and women's scores. Thus, previous results on the positive impact of interactive teaching techniques are still valid for both men and women.
Another important result of the authors' analysis is that no obvious factor appears to be responsible for women's lower scores. Unlike the impact of interactive engagement on student performance, "we haven't found a miracle that solves the gender gap," said McKagan. The authors cross-checked the results from studies investigating the potential impact of student background, their beliefs about physics, the teaching method used, their ingrained stereotypes about women's abilities, and the wording of test questions. Some studies several of which were quite high-profile demonstrated that one or more of these elements had a significant influence, but most were contradicted in other studies. One of the more promising findings is that women's poorer background preparation in physics may account for much of the gender gap, but those results have not been replicated outside of a single university and may be reflective of several underlying causes.
Such contradictory results suggest that gender differences in physics performance are a particularly thorny and complex issue. When a single study claims to have found a solution to gender differences in science, it should be treated with healthy skepticism. (Research on female performance in math and science more broadly have also met with contradictory results, though social factors such as stereotypes appear to contribute powerfully to gender gaps.)
While the gender gap on physics concept inventories remains an unsolved problem, the researchers suggest some take-home messages for instructors. One is that the use of interactive teaching techniques can improve student understanding for both genders. Another is simply to recognize that there is a gender gap on conceptual assessments and exams, and that addressing this gap will require creativity on the part of the instructor. Prior work suggests some strategies that an instructor may take (such as having students reflect on their values prior to a test), but it is important not to rely too heavily on any one technique. The authors call for researchers to devote additional attention to investigating the underlying causes of this gender gap and possible interventions.
###
Citation:
"The gender gap on concept inventories in physics: what is consistent, what is inconsistent, and what factors influence the gap?" A. Madsen, S. B. McKagan and E. C. Sayre, Physical Review Special Topics Physics Education Research. To be published online November 7
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Problem of gender differences on physics assessments remains unsolved
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
1-Nov-2013
[
| E-mail
]
Share
Contact: Sarah McKagan smckagan@aapt.org 206-335-4325 American Physical Society
The mystery of why women consistently score lower than men on common assessments of conceptual understanding of physics remains poorly understood
In a new synthesis of past work, researchers found that women consistently score lower than men on common assessments of conceptual understanding of physics. However, when examining the factors that may account for these differences (such as student background and test-taking strategies), no clear pattern emerged. Thus, despite previous claims that the causes of this gender gap have been pinpointed, the problem remains unsolved and poorly understood. This has critical importance for science education reform.
Many changes have been made in college science instruction in the past decades. Numerous classrooms have shifted from a traditional lecture presentation to more interactive formats that aim to engage students in building their own knowledge. Physics has been a forerunner of this movement, in part because of early and ongoing research on how students grapple with key ideas in this difficult field. Comparisons of student understanding have been made possible through the development of "concept inventories" multiple choice tests of student understanding, developed through years of research, enabling the same test to be given to students in a variety of classrooms.
"These tests have been very important in the history of physics education reform," said Dr. McKagan, who co-authored the new analysis. Past studies have shown that students in classrooms using interactive techniques get significantly higher scores on these tests than do students in more traditional lecture settings; "these results have inspired a lot of people to change the way that they teach," said McKagan.
But several studies had also reported that women's scores on these tests are typically lower than men's. "We set out to determine whether there is a gender gap on these concept inventories," said lead author Madsen, "and if so, what causes it."
The authors combined results from 26 previous studies of several common physics concept inventories, covering 12 different institutions. They found that women almost always score lower than men on these tests (12% on average for tests about force and motion), both before instruction, and at the end of the course. The same trend is also found when comparing male and female students' gains on the tests, showing that this gap is not simply due to differing levels of incoming knowledge. There is some variation across studies the gender gap sometimes goes up and sometimes goes down, but rarely goes away, observe the authors. Women also receive lower scores on course exams (4% on average) than do men, which can impact course grades. These results mirror those in other studies of gender differences on other types of science and math tests, such as standardized placement exams.
One key finding from the study is that, while there is a gender gap in performance on concept inventories, the performance of both men and women is improved when they experience an interactive classroom. These teaching techniques improve student gains on these tests by four times as much as the size of the gap between men's and women's scores. Thus, previous results on the positive impact of interactive teaching techniques are still valid for both men and women.
Another important result of the authors' analysis is that no obvious factor appears to be responsible for women's lower scores. Unlike the impact of interactive engagement on student performance, "we haven't found a miracle that solves the gender gap," said McKagan. The authors cross-checked the results from studies investigating the potential impact of student background, their beliefs about physics, the teaching method used, their ingrained stereotypes about women's abilities, and the wording of test questions. Some studies several of which were quite high-profile demonstrated that one or more of these elements had a significant influence, but most were contradicted in other studies. One of the more promising findings is that women's poorer background preparation in physics may account for much of the gender gap, but those results have not been replicated outside of a single university and may be reflective of several underlying causes.
Such contradictory results suggest that gender differences in physics performance are a particularly thorny and complex issue. When a single study claims to have found a solution to gender differences in science, it should be treated with healthy skepticism. (Research on female performance in math and science more broadly have also met with contradictory results, though social factors such as stereotypes appear to contribute powerfully to gender gaps.)
While the gender gap on physics concept inventories remains an unsolved problem, the researchers suggest some take-home messages for instructors. One is that the use of interactive teaching techniques can improve student understanding for both genders. Another is simply to recognize that there is a gender gap on conceptual assessments and exams, and that addressing this gap will require creativity on the part of the instructor. Prior work suggests some strategies that an instructor may take (such as having students reflect on their values prior to a test), but it is important not to rely too heavily on any one technique. The authors call for researchers to devote additional attention to investigating the underlying causes of this gender gap and possible interventions.
###
Citation:
"The gender gap on concept inventories in physics: what is consistent, what is inconsistent, and what factors influence the gap?" A. Madsen, S. B. McKagan and E. C. Sayre, Physical Review Special Topics Physics Education Research. To be published online November 7
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| E-mail
Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
She loves to share her new music with her fans, and Demi Lovato took to her Twitter account today (November 1) to announce the arrival of a new music video.
The “Skyscraper” singer tweeted, “Here's the #LetItGo video!!!!” along with a link to the clip, taken from the soundtrack for the upcoming Disney film “Frozen.”
Slated to hit theaters on November 27th, “Frozen” stars Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, Idina Menzel, and Jonathan Groff.
Per the synopsis, “Fearless optimist Anna teams up with Kristoff in an epic journey, encountering Everest-like conditions, and a hilarious snowman named Olaf in a race to find Anna's sister Elsa, whose icy powers have trapped the kingdom in eternal winter.”
There is "no way" the NSA's newly revealed surveillance activities could have been legal, asserted Fred Cate, director of the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research at Indiana University. "There is obviously a big security issue here," Cate explained. "It puts us in an almost surreal position, especially as there is no way that the NSA could truly differentiate between U.S. citizens and non-U.S. citizens."
The National Security Agency has tapped fiber-optic cables that connect Google's and Yahoo's overseas servers and accessed vast amounts of data including email and other personal information, according to a Wednesday report in The Washington Post.
Included in the data culled by the NSA is information on hundreds of millions of users, many of whom are American, the Post reported, citing documents obtained by NSA contractor Edward Snowden along with interviews with other officials.
The NSA's acquisition directorate reportedly sent millions of records daily from internal Yahoo and Google networks to a data warehouse at the agency's Fort Meade, Md., headquarters.
'Not True'
The NSA balked at the idea that it was looking into the personal information of American citizens.
"NSA has multiple authorities that it uses to accomplish its mission, which is centered on defending the nation," NSA spokesperson Vanee Vines told TechNewsWorld. "The Washington Post's assertion that we use Executive Order 12333 collection to get around the limitations imposed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and FAA 702 is not true.
"The assertion that we collect vast quantities of U.S. persons' data from this type of collection is also not true," Vines added. "NSA applies Attorney General-approved processes to protect the privacy of U.S. persons, minimizing the likelihood of their information in our targeting, collection, processing, exploitation, retention and dissemination."
NSA is "a foreign intelligence agency," Vines concluded, "and we're focused on discovering and developing intelligence about valid foreign intelligence targets only."
'We Are Outraged'
Both Google and Yahoo stressed that they did not participate in the NSA's data collection.
"We have long been concerned about the possibility of this kind of snooping, which is why we have continued to extend encryption across more and more Google services and links," said David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer. "We do not provide any government, including the U.S. government, with access to our systems.
"We are outraged at the lengths to which the government seems to have gone to intercept data from our private fiber networks," Drummond added. "It underscores the need for urgent reform."
Similarly, "we have strict controls in place to protect the security of our data centers," Yahoo spokesperson Lauren Armstrong told TechNewsWorld. "We have not given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency."
'A Gross Violation'
It's unclear exactly how the NSA achieved this tap, but the Post report suggests that "anything flowing between Google's data servers would be vulnerable, which means both metadata and content of millions of emails, among other things," Trevor Timm, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, pointed out.
Was the surveillance legal?
"The U.S. government thinks it is," Timm told TechNewsWorld. "We think it's a gross violation of the privacy rights of Americans and those abroad.
"Congress will act to make sure this will never happen again, and tech companies will implement changes to make sure the NSA can't do it again even if they tried," he added.
"There is obviously a big security issue here," Cate explained. "It puts us in an almost surreal position, especially as there is no way that the NSA could truly differentiate between U.S. citizens and non-U.S. citizens, as they claim."
A Fine Line
Of course, these revelations are just the latest in what's becoming a long stream of leaks about government surveillance.
"The truth is, even with all the public leaks and media reporting to date, presumably there's still much we neither know nor have the ability to accurately/fairly understand in full context," Jeffrey Silva, senior policy director for telecommunications, media and technology at Medley Global Advisors, told TechNewsWorld.
"Questions about the legality and appropriateness of certain government surveillance -- especially in the post-9/11 world -- are apt to persist on an ongoing basis with every new revelation," Silva added.
"The government may need to make a stronger case, and repeat it often, that expanded surveillance is a price that must be paid in the post-9/11era if U.S. citizens want to be safe," he concluded. "At the same, there's the question of whether current level of government surveillance, that even if legal, amounts to overkill and an unnecessary intrusion on American privacy."
A Chill Down the Spine
In the bigger picture, the revelations are "like layers of an onion," suggested Tim Erlin, director of IT risk and security strategy at Tripwire. "This period of information security history will do more to spur a renewed interest in verifiable security, including end-to-end encryption and distributed systems for validation, than anything we've seen in a long time."
The fact is, however, "we've tacitly agreed to allow our personal data be aggregated in large organizations like Google, Yahoo and Facebook," Erlin told TechNewsWorld. "These companies have so much intelligence that they have become too attractive as intelligence targets."
Indeed, "the companies involved should be the ones with most concerns," said Cate. "This is not good for their business."
Moreover, "when you look at it with the tapestry of all the programs that we've seen come to light," he added, "that is when the cold chill goes down your spine."
More natural sounding female voice replaces the old robotic tones
If you use Google Search's voice features in the UK, you may have noticed a fairly significant change today — the robotic male voice of old has been replaced with a new, more natural sounding female voice. The change brings the UK in line with the U.S., which has had realistic sounding voice playback for some time now, and it's a vast improvement on what we had before.
It looks like the change has taken place through Google's backend rather than any sort of app update, so Brits should hear the new voice right away — just tap the microphone icon as usual.
We've got a quick preview of the new British voice of Google search after the break.
Thanks to Chris for the tip, and to everyone who helped confirm it!
Contact: Andrea Boyle Tippett aboyle@udel.edu 302-831-1421 University of Delaware
Research into the best ways to arrange wind turbines has produced staggering results quite literally.
The University of Delaware's Cristina Archer and her Atmosphere and Energy Research Group found that staggering and spacing out turbines in an offshore wind farm can improve performance by as much as 33 percent.
"Staggering every other row was amazingly efficient," said Archer, associate professor of physical ocean science and engineering and geography in UD's College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment.
The findings, which appeared last month in Geophysical Research Letters, could help engineers plan improved offshore wind farms.
The researchers used an existing offshore wind farm near Sweden as the basis for their study, comparing the existing tightly packed, grid-like layout to six alternative configurations. In some, they kept the turbines in neat rows but spaced them farther apart. In others, they shifted the alignment of every other row, similar to how rows of theatre seats are staggered to improve the views of people further back.
In computer-intensive simulations that each took weeks to run, the team took into account the eddies, or swirls of choppy air, that wind turbines create downwind as their blades spin and how that air movement would impact surrounding turbines.
They found that the most efficient arrangement was a combination of two approaches. By both spacing the turbines farther apart and staggering the rows, the improved layout would decrease losses caused by eddies and improve overall performance by a third.
The optimal configuration had the rows oriented to face the prevailing wind direction, for example from the southwest in the summer along the U.S. East Coast. Most locations, however, have more than one dominant direction from where wind blows throughout the year. The optimal configuration for a season may not be optimal in another season, when the prevailing wind changes direction and intensity.
Considering these various factors could better inform where and how to configure future offshore wind farms, Archer explained.
"We want to explore all these trade-offs systematically, one by one," she said.
The study is part of Archer's overall research focus on wind and applications for renewable energy production. Trained in both meteorology and engineering, she uses weather data and complex calculations to estimate the potential for wind as a power source.
Last year, Archer and colleague Mark Jacobson of Stanford University found that wind turbines could power half the world's future energy demands with minimal environmental impact.
In a follow-up to that study, Archer and Jacobson examined how worldwide wind energy potential varies seasonally. They found that in most regions where wind farms could feasibly be built on land and offshore, capacity is greatest from December to February.
However, even factoring in seasonal variability, the researchers found there is enough wind to cover regional electricity demand.
Those results were recently published in Applied Geography and share detailed maps and tables that summarize the distribution of wind throughout the world by season.
"I'm hoping these will be tools for giving a general overview of wind at the global scale," Archer said.
###
About UD's College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
UD's College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment (CEOE) strives to reach a deeper understanding of the planet and improve stewardship of environmental resources. CEOE faculty and students examine complex information from multiple disciplines with the knowledge that science and society are firmly linked and solutions to environmental challenges can be synonymous with positive economic impact.
The college brings the latest advances in technology to bear on both teaching and conducting ocean, earth and atmospheric research. Current focus areas are ecosystem health and society, environmental observing and forecasting, and marine renewable energy and sustainability.
CEOE is the administrative base of the Delaware Geological Survey, the Delaware Geographic Alliance and the Delaware Sea Grant College Program and is home to the secretariat of the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Contact: Andrea Boyle Tippett aboyle@udel.edu 302-831-1421 University of Delaware
Research into the best ways to arrange wind turbines has produced staggering results quite literally.
The University of Delaware's Cristina Archer and her Atmosphere and Energy Research Group found that staggering and spacing out turbines in an offshore wind farm can improve performance by as much as 33 percent.
"Staggering every other row was amazingly efficient," said Archer, associate professor of physical ocean science and engineering and geography in UD's College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment.
The findings, which appeared last month in Geophysical Research Letters, could help engineers plan improved offshore wind farms.
The researchers used an existing offshore wind farm near Sweden as the basis for their study, comparing the existing tightly packed, grid-like layout to six alternative configurations. In some, they kept the turbines in neat rows but spaced them farther apart. In others, they shifted the alignment of every other row, similar to how rows of theatre seats are staggered to improve the views of people further back.
In computer-intensive simulations that each took weeks to run, the team took into account the eddies, or swirls of choppy air, that wind turbines create downwind as their blades spin and how that air movement would impact surrounding turbines.
They found that the most efficient arrangement was a combination of two approaches. By both spacing the turbines farther apart and staggering the rows, the improved layout would decrease losses caused by eddies and improve overall performance by a third.
The optimal configuration had the rows oriented to face the prevailing wind direction, for example from the southwest in the summer along the U.S. East Coast. Most locations, however, have more than one dominant direction from where wind blows throughout the year. The optimal configuration for a season may not be optimal in another season, when the prevailing wind changes direction and intensity.
Considering these various factors could better inform where and how to configure future offshore wind farms, Archer explained.
"We want to explore all these trade-offs systematically, one by one," she said.
The study is part of Archer's overall research focus on wind and applications for renewable energy production. Trained in both meteorology and engineering, she uses weather data and complex calculations to estimate the potential for wind as a power source.
Last year, Archer and colleague Mark Jacobson of Stanford University found that wind turbines could power half the world's future energy demands with minimal environmental impact.
In a follow-up to that study, Archer and Jacobson examined how worldwide wind energy potential varies seasonally. They found that in most regions where wind farms could feasibly be built on land and offshore, capacity is greatest from December to February.
However, even factoring in seasonal variability, the researchers found there is enough wind to cover regional electricity demand.
Those results were recently published in Applied Geography and share detailed maps and tables that summarize the distribution of wind throughout the world by season.
"I'm hoping these will be tools for giving a general overview of wind at the global scale," Archer said.
###
About UD's College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
UD's College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment (CEOE) strives to reach a deeper understanding of the planet and improve stewardship of environmental resources. CEOE faculty and students examine complex information from multiple disciplines with the knowledge that science and society are firmly linked and solutions to environmental challenges can be synonymous with positive economic impact.
The college brings the latest advances in technology to bear on both teaching and conducting ocean, earth and atmospheric research. Current focus areas are ecosystem health and society, environmental observing and forecasting, and marine renewable energy and sustainability.
CEOE is the administrative base of the Delaware Geological Survey, the Delaware Geographic Alliance and the Delaware Sea Grant College Program and is home to the secretariat of the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Showing up with a slew of celebrities, Kate Moss and Nicole Scherzinger were just a few famous faces who attended Jonathan Ross's Halloween Party tonight (October 31).
39-year-old Moss arrived alongside hubby Jamie Hince, each keeping it class in traditional "Day of the Dead" costumes while "X Factor" hottie Nicole came in wearing a long black coat over her leather Catwoman costume.
Nicole also posted a stream of Halloween tweets today, the first connected to an Instagram picture of her from her younger days, reading, "Happy Halloween!! Here's a pic of me at 7 years old, dressed up as Carmen Miranda!! Chica Chica Boom Chic!!"
She also included a snapshot of herself at a Halloween party overseas. She looked like a villainous fem fatale out of a James Bond flick, and her caption read, "Happy Halloween from London everyone! #MEOW #lethal."
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