Climate change and disaster risk management are issues of high priority to the Solomon Islands Government, given the current and future impacts expected, and the associated risks posed to natural ecosystems such as coastal and marine environments, fisheries, agriculture, water resources, health, biodiversity, infrastructure and industry. Solomon Islands, as a Small Island Developing State (SIDS) and Least Developed Country (LDC), requires up-scaled and targeted financial resources to be able to effectively respond to the adverse effects of climate change and disasters. In recognition of this, the Solomon Islands Government requested for this Climate Change and Disaster Risk Finance Assessment to…
Author: Loknath Das
News stories on international large-scale education assessments (ILSAs) tend to highlight the performance of the media outlet’s home country in comparison with the highest-scoring nations (in recent years, typically located in East Asia). Low (or declining) rankings can be so alarming that policy-makers leap to remedies—often ill-founded—on the basis of what they conclude is the “secret sauce” behind the top performers’ scores. As statisticians studying the methods and policy uses of ILSAs (1), we believe the obsession with rankings—and the inevitable attempts to mimic specific features of the top performing systems—not only misleads, it diverts attention from more constructive uses…
This report brings data from the newly-released 2016 National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) to the robust policy and research debate over the extent to which differences in aggregate special education participation rates over racial and ethnic groups represent differences in underlying needs for special education. The NSCH allows me to compare not only how student characteristics are related to participation in special education, but also how they relate to children’s access to speech therapy, occupational therapy, and physical therapy—services that may be delivered as part of a child’s special education plan. Like the existing literature, these analyses cannot control…
We often look at competition through the lens of winners and losers, but sometimes, in competition, even the winners lose. Consider boxing, a sport where the greatest champions are almost guaranteed a life of cognitive decline, the necessary price of those championships. Something similar is proving true in football. Of course in sports, we recognize that this kind of sacrifice may be necessary to achieve or even attempt greatness. We don’t wish for the competitors to be harmed, but we understand and even honor those sacrifices. But our reverence for competition as a method for fostering achievement has limits, and…
From someone impersonating Hulk Hogan and trying to get players into pseudo wrestling matches to the assassination of the character of one of the game’s core creators, the story of Ultima Online is full of things that had a huge impact on so many aspects of the the way we make and play games today. So many of the ideas implemented into Ultima Online have spread throughout the industry 20 years later. Some of the original developers gathered to take a look back at the development process during a talk at this years Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. “We kept debating about whether…
The irritating thing about Sea of Thieves living just on the Windows Store—aside from the process of using the store itself—is that you’re bound by the game’s price on there. You can’t buy Rare’s co-op pirate game through Steam or other third-party retailers. In the UK, that means the PC version is a relatively steep £50, more than most major publisher games are priced on Steam. This led to a recent conversation among the PC Gamer staff: how much are you willing to spend on a game? How much have you spent on games in the past? We had wildly…
If you have a friends who are PC or Xbox gamers, you’ve probably heard some buzz about Sea of Thieves. Microsoft, Amazon, B&H, and Walmart are offering a bundle with the rollicking pirate adventure, a new Xbox One S, a wireless controller, a month of Xbox Live and a month of Xbox Game Pass for $299, if you want to get in on the action. If Xbox One isn’t your jam and you’re more of a Nintendo person, you’re in luck. Nintendo Switch consoles really aren’t bundled or discounted very often, but eBay is bringing some heat by packaging a Switch with Neon Blue and Red Joy-Cons with…
Education has long been notoriously slow to change. Most classrooms around the world look scarcely different than they did a century ago. But as the World Bank’s education lead Harry Patrinos told Devex at the Global Education & Skills Forum in Dubai, “the race is now being led by technology, and education is having trouble keeping up.” With automation and artificial intelligence likely to cut off the traditional path to development for many countries, which has included employing large numbers of workers in low-skill manufacturing, education systems simply aren’t ready. Take India, itself a global leader in advanced technologies. Between 50 and…
Normally, when Apple goes to the trouble of putting on an event, it’s somewhere near the company’s home base in sunny Cupertino. Not this time! After deciding not to hold a March keynote last year, Apple now has plans to hold court in Chicago’s prestigious Lane Tech College Prep school. This “field trip,” as Apple’s calling it, is far from business as usual, but with days to go before the event kicks off, we’ve got a few ideas about what you can expect Apple to unveil in the Windy City. Cheap new iPad(s) Around this time last year, Apple revealed its $329…
Just two months ago, comparing Facebook to cigarettes was a confronting and jarring suggestion when it was made by technology billionaire Marc Benioff. The founder of cloud computing company Salesforce was arguing for more regulation of social media companies and was blunt when asked how he would do this. “You’d do it exactly the same way you regulated the cigarette industry,” he said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Like cigarettes, he said, Facebook was “addictive”, “not good for you” and there were “all kinds of forces trying to get you to do certain things.” Adrian Turner,…