Blog archive

The story of technology in education is too often the story of a rollercoaster ride: the anticipatory climb to new heights of innovation, the thrilling stories about teachers’ and students’ initial use of new tools, and the terrifying plummet once evidence of low impact rolls in. Technology has undeniable promise for improving learning; yet the evidence is often too hard…

New product innovation is as much about making advanced technology accessible to a broader market as it is about adding wow-factor features. Iris authentication—once a niche component of high-end security systems—will debut in compact, cost-competitive form factors at this year’s ISC West security industry trade show. SRI International will demonstrate several new Iris on the Move®-powered solutions, including…

The health of the world’s oceans impacts all of our lives, because oceans are much like the lungs of our planet, albeit acting in reverse—consuming carbon dioxide (CO2) and releasing oxygen. The Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE aims to improve understanding of how CO2 emissions are acidifying the oceans through a $2 million competition to create pH sensor…

President Obama, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and Office of Educational Technology (OET) Director Richard Culatta recently convened “ConnectED to the Future,” a gathering of more than 100 school district superintendents and other education leaders at the White House. On the agenda: increasing broadband connectivity access to and throughout schools as well as planning for the…

The airline industry is undergoing tremendous changes. Higher capacity airplanes are being built, flights along major routes are increasing, and airports are expanding to meet growing travel demands. The International Air Transport Association (IATA), projects that global travel will grow 4.1 percent per year over the next 20 years, from 3.3 billion passengers in 2014…

A recent San Jose Mercury News article looked at innovation in Silicon Valley and what makes it tick like no other technology hotbed. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the National Bureau of Economic Research built a map pinpointing the location of successful start-ups based on criteria such as IPO or acquisition and the factors…

As Linked Learning—an innovative high school approach that integrates rigorous academics with real-world experiences—continues to gain momentum among educators and policymakers across the state, SRI Education’s Center for Education Policy has released its fifth annual evaluation report on the progress of the California Linked Learning District Initiative. Whereas previous reports focused on the development and implementation of systems within…

Sequencing an organism’s genome is an important step in understanding how an organism functions. It elucidates the set of genes present in that organism, but genome annotation—the identification of genes within the DNA sequence and the assignment of functions to those genes—is an inexact science. Some genes receive incorrect functional assignments, functions for many genes…

While advances in energy efficiency, electric cars and renewable energy make the news, the big story is how advances in materials science make it all possible. New classes of materials, plus innovations in manufacture and use, have already helped cars and planes use less fuel; produced batteries that are smaller, lighter, and run longer; and…