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building

Parents are building a Texas neighborhood just for autistic adults

by Rajdeep April 5, 2024

written by Rajdeep

(Facebook)

For years, the parents of a boy on the high-needs end of the autism spectrum have been brainstorming what to do when he enters adulthood. When he was a pre-teen, they hit on the idea of a housing complex designed specifically for adults with autism, and now that he’s 19, they are about to break ground on their dream.

Debra Caudy, a retired medical oncologist, and her husband Clay Heighten, a retired emergency doctor and founder of a real estate management company, invested $745,000 in 2015 to purchase 29 acres of rolling meadows and woods in Cross Roads, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, and have created the nonprofit 29 Acres as they seek to reach their fundraising goal of $12 million, reports WFAA.

“We couldn’t find anything, so we just decided to do it ourselves,” Caudy tells the Dallas Morning News. With so many young adults like their son, she adds, “The need is enormous.” Some estimates put half a million students with autism entering adulthood in the next decade.

With 200 staff, the complex will include 15 homes, a community center, a “transitional” academy that teaches life and work skills to those who might be able to live independently, a bus stop, and easy access to ride-sharing for residents needing to shop, get to work, etc.

The first residents are expected to move in next year. Caudy hopes her idea will prove successful in Texas and throughout the world. “This is just the beginning,” she says.

[Source:- foxnews]

April 5, 2024 0 comment

Education

Students are building apps with a social conscience

by Rajdeep April 4, 2024

written by Rajdeep

Ben Kaube, 26, is studying in his final year for a PhD in quantum mechanics at Imperial College London. He’s also the co-creator of a new app which allows frustrated commuters to claim fare refunds for lengthy train delays. His inspiration? “Hundreds and hundreds of hours of my life wasted on delayed trains. I just thought: there’s got to be a better way.”

After Kaube first got the idea about a year ago, the new TrainTrick app launched last month, and Kaube says they’ve already processed claims from thousands of people. It’s a simple concept: users upload a photo of their ticket if a train has been delayed, and Kaube and his colleague do the rest, taking a 10% cut of any refund (though it is free until October).

Kaube says the true purpose of the app is to apply pressure on train franchise operators to invest and improve their service for customers. Users are given the option to donate their refund to a JustGiving cause.

“Older generations often say our generation is apathetic, we just do hashtag activism,” he says. “I think that’s because they often don’t understand that the way to get things done has changed. Now you can have a much bigger impact with an app than you could do by other means. Where before you might write a letter, now building an app has been a more effective way of getting momentum behind an idea and support for your cause.”

Under-35s dominate the market, accounting for over half of app developers in the UK. Although such research doesn’t break down the purpose of these apps, Kaube is far from alone in being a young person designing one to tackle a social issue.

‘Founding a company on your own is incredibly stressful’

Cameron Graham, 21, had a lengthy spell in hospital in 2014. The economics and finance graduate from the University of Strathclyde shared a ward with an elderly dementia patient, and noticed a transformation in his demeanour – becoming happier and calmer – when his granddaughter showed him photographs of his family during visits. Upon leaving hospital, and surprised that nothing like it existed already, Graham established Storii, a platform which allows those in care settings, including carers and families, to log life stories, care plans and even music and videos to aid patients through reminiscence therapy.

The app is now being used in care homes. Graham’s company employs nine staff, and is currently raising £1m of seed funding. He says that being so young was no hindrance. “This isn’t something that comes up very often. To customers, I’m the CEO of a company developing a product they want to use, not a recent graduate.”

That said, it was difficult for him to juggle a thriving business with his degree. “I asked Strathclyde University to defer my studies after third year to work full time on Storii. During third year, I managed to work both on the business and studying, but it wasn’t very healthy and I wouldn’t recommend it. Doing both, especially when founding a company on your own, is incredibly stressful.”

Kaube’s experience has been similar: “it’s been a real challenge trying to balance the two.”

Craig Docherty, 23, then vice-president of Stirling University’s computing club and about to commence a research degree in computing science, responded to a call from the local council for help with its autism strategy. He led a project team, made up of a number of programming students, to create an app that allows people with autism to cope better with life changes. It lets users choose options to reflect how they feel about new situations, such as moving from primary to secondary school, input their likes and dislikes, and outline their preferred method of communication.

It’s already proved popular among a range of council departments, and will fully launch in October to coincide with the its nomination for a prize at the Cosla (Convention of Scottish Local Authorities) Excellence Awards.

“I thought it would be a good learning opportunity for our students, and a nice way to do a project with a purpose. So we’re not just sitting confined within the university, [but] doing something that really does make a difference,” Docherty says.

He hopes it can begin a partnership between students and bodies who desperately need their help – “in the first instance, hopefully between students and councils, connecting students with those opportunities. But also it’s a conversation in general about how to digitise services and make lives easier.”

‘Young people are being empowered to tackle problems’

Risha Jindal’s older sister had just moved away to university and didn’t know what to do with the leftover ingredients after cooking. So, a 16-year-old Risha and her sister devised Digimeal, an app which creates recipe ideas when they enter three ingredients they have in their cupboards. It won the £15,000 iDEA award for young digital entrepreneurs in 2014, which funded the app’s creation, and is on course for a full launch within a year.

“There is the positive effect of helping students and teaching them how to cook and giving them ideas but then there’s the other side of trying to reduce food waste by reducing the amount that gets wasted due to a lack of ideas,” explains Jindal, now 19, who has recently completed her first year studying economics and international development at the University of Sussex, where she and her friends use the app.

She thinks such apps are a way of young people being empowered to tackle problems. “It’s our generation trying to help each other rather than leaving it to someone else to look after us… We have this opportunity to be creative and to make our ideas happen. Young people are taking it into their own hands.”

[Source:- theguardian]

April 4, 2024 0 comment

Internet

EU policy doc recommends building ‘European Internet Firewall’ similar to China’s – “Let’s build a new digital Europe!”

by Loknath Das June 6, 2020

written by Loknath Das

EU flag

A team of authors asked by the Policy Department of the European Parliament to provide a “visionary worldwide overview of new digital services” and to derive an action plan for MEPs has this week published its findings. Surprisingly, one of the key recommendations for the long-term is for the EU to build its own ‘European Internet’ – making direct comparisons to the ‘Great Firewall of China’.

China has long been criticised by Western countries, academics and companies for its locked down approach to the Internet. Through a combination of legislative and technological levers, China restricts access to foreign websites, information and internet traffic.

The criticism typically refers to the founding ambitions for the Internet, which were focused on open access for all and enabling the free exchange of ideas and information. It has been argued that China has used its ‘great firewall’ to limit opposition to its one party state and there have been reports of the government using control of the Internet to make citizen arrests.

For a detailed background read on the implications of China’s firewall, you can read resources here and here.

The report published this week by the European Union assesses a range of digital opportunities for the trading block across the short to long term. I won’t go into all the details, but it covers everything from 5G, to using DNA to provide personalised services, to brain controlled digital tech.

It seems that without any sense of irony, the authors of the report state:

The conceptual foundation for this report is benign and positive. We do not look too deeply into the risks and potentially dangerous scenarios, but rather attempt to understand the possible chances and opportunities.

They also go on to advise that the European Parliament take a “leading stance in the global digitalisation”. Not sure how globalisation squares with a territorial focused Internet, but we will leave that aside for one minute.

On the topic of a ‘European Internet’, the firewall idea is one of the key recommendations for the EU over the long term. The authors write:

The EU should include an action plan for a digital cloud – a European Internet – in the DSA [Digital Services Act]. This European Cloud would foster a European digital ecosystem based on data and innovation. It would drive competition and set standards. Foreign web services could become part of such a digital ecosystem but must adhere to the rules and standards of the EU – such as democratic values, data protection, data accessibility, transparency and user friendliness.
Technologically, it would require a top-level infrastructure, high-speed 5G or a 6G data network and a firewall. Setting up such a network would promote many European companies and therefore boost business and drive innovation.
Like the Chinese firewall, this European internet would block off services that condone or support unlawful conduct from third party countries.

It would appear that the ambition is to use the firewall to favour European technology companies, much in the way that China has been able to push its domestic tech into the hands of citizens by restricting access to international services.

That is one sure fire way to drive EU growth, but does limit consumer choice and international competition. That may be the aim, but it’s a very different scenario to the one EU citizens currently live.

Elsewhere, the report talks about the impact of COVID-19 and the need to aggressively pursue further digitisation. The report notes:

At the time of writing this report in March and April 2020 it becomes visible that digital technology has become the backbone of all aspects of European society. The shutdown of many EU countries due to COVID-19 (Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2) demonstrates how important a sophisticated digital infrastructure is to keep economies running even at a basic level. During quarantine and under curfews, digital services enable working from home for many people.
They also support private life, as digital services and e-commerce assists in providing the European population with food and supplies, entertainment, and the possibility to meet remotely. Governments and administrations in the EU can continue to govern and take decisions by digital teleworking and remote meetings. Without digital solutions the crisis would have had a worse impact.”

My take

It’s hard to know at this point if this report will be taken at all seriously by the European Parliament. However, it’s an idea that will be highly controversial and will likely raise questions about what sort of market interaction the EU wants to have with the rest of the world. In addition, member states will likely – and rightly – have questions regarding the level of control this gives the EU.

source: diginomica

June 6, 2020 0 comment