Latest news with #RobertGordon
Hamilton Spectator
4 days ago
- Business
- Hamilton Spectator
Lakeshore, UWindsor sign deal to boost innovation, housing and learning
The University of Windsor and the Municipality of Lakeshore have signed a new agreement to promote innovation, improve local planning and boost housing development while creating learning opportunities for students and businesses. The five-year memorandum of understanding (MOU), signed at the Atlas Tube Recreation Centre, sets the stage for collaboration in research, experiential learning and community development. 'This agreement marks an exciting step forward in our commitment to fostering innovation, education and community impact,' said Dr. Robert Gordon, president and vice-chancellor of the University of Windsor. 'By partnering with the Municipality of Lakeshore, we are building new pathways for research collaboration, student learning and regional development. Supported by our Centre for Cities, Office of Experiential Learning and dedicated researchers, we will drive meaningful change and create opportunities that benefit both our students and the broader Lakeshore community.' The partnership will focus on tackling housing, environmental and economic challenges, and will be supported through various university units, including the Centre for Cities and Office of Experiential Learning. It will also involve faculty and student placements, community-based projects and innovation programs. 'This partnership is an incredible opportunity to bring the energy, talent and expertise of the University of Windsor into our communities,' said Lakeshore Mayor Tracey Bailey. 'While the initial focus will be on our housing initiatives, I look forward to seeing this partnership grow in the spirit of collaboration and public service.' The MOU outlines a wide scope of joint efforts, including access to national research funding, knowledge sharing, community outreach and joint workshops. It provides a framework to create project-specific agreements that support research, innovation and student development. The agreement also aims to address shared priorities like housing development, environmental sustainability and economic growth, using the strengths of both institutions to create local impact. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
Gizmodo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
A Brief History of the ‘Galaxy Quest' TV Show
It's just a passing nugget in a new interview with producer Mark Johnson. But since it's been 10 years since we first heard about a potential TV show based on the much-loved 1999 cult classic Galaxy Quest, any update at all is worth seizing upon. Speaking to Deadline, Johnson was asked about the most recent iteration of the project. In 2023, we learned it was still in the works at at Paramount+, the home of Star Trek's recent TV renaissance. He couched his response in a way that also covered a TV show based on the recent Oscar-winning drama The Holdovers: 'Both are being written, so we'll see.' At least he didn't say 'the Galaxy Quest TV show is dead in the water,' which might be what some fans had started to think. The show was first announced a decade ago; a brief Variety article published April 21, 2015, wrote that 'Robert Gordon, who co-wrote the DreamWorks feature with David Howard, is in negotiations to work on the TV adaptation, as are original director Dean Parisot and executive producers Mark Johnson and Melissa Bernstein.' No further details were given, but the trade speculated it would be a re-telling of the movie's story spread out across a season of episodes. (For the three people who haven't seen Galaxy Quest, it's about the washed-up stars of a cult-beloved sci-fi series; aliens, believing the show to be real, recruit the actors to help win a real-life intergalactic conflict.) A few months later, in August 2015, Entertainment Weekly reported the Galaxy Quest TV show was in development at Amazon. By 2017, comedian Paul Scheer had come aboard the project. He spoke about it to Slashfilm then and explained a bit more about his vision. 'Right now, I just handed in my first script to Amazon, so I'm in that zone. I'm excited about it … The thing I keep on saying about it, without giving too much away—because it's going to be so long before people get to see it, I don't want people to get too burnt out on me telling you what it's about before it gets to that point— but for me, it was really important to do service to a Galaxy Quest story that gives you everything that you want and indoctrinates people who have never seen Galaxy Quest into what the fun of that world is … and also to continue the story of our original characters and have consequences from the first film.' He also noted that the show would be 'mixing two casts. It's separate kind of adventures that kind of merge, and I'm looking at this first season not as episodic, but as a serialized story. So, the only way I've been looking at it is, using everything from the first movie and making the reasons for everything not just—I want to avoid anything that could be viewed as a reboot for reboot's sake. There are real reasons behind these choices—maybe too much so.' Talking to the Wrap in 2018, Scheer said it would be a good-natured spoof not just of Star Trek, but also Star Wars and nerdy fandom at large. 'My pitch for Galaxy Quest was, 'How can we kind of blow this out and pay off things for the fans that love Galaxy Quest, but more importantly—and the thing that I really wanted to do is—appeal to the 'me' of now. Who's the 18-year-old version of me that loved Galaxy Quest now? What would they want to see? Because I think that that is a movie that we haven't really made yet: the Tropic Thunder in the world of modern-day science fiction … When Galaxy Quest came out, it was a niche thing, Star Trek fandom is a niche thing. Now it is selling out Hall H in Comic-Con, so that's kind of the impetus for the continuation.' That all sounded very promising, but after 2018, Galaxy Quest more or less went radio silent. Then in 2023—after covid, but just before the summer of industry strikes—fans got a fresh update. Variety wrote that the show had shifted to Paramount+, with only Johnson still attached. That article also noted that the original push to adapt the movie had faded after the death of Alan Rickman, but he passed in early 2016—long before Scheer, who is seemingly no longer involved, was talking about his pitch for the show. Variety's 2023 story said Paramount+ and Paramount Television Studios were 'in the nascent stages of adapting the cult classic comedy film into a television show.' It also noted 'there have [since 2015] been various writers attached to the project, though none of their versions have ultimately gone forward.' Today's Deadline interview with Johnson notes that Paramount Television Studios is no more, but by Grabthar's Hammer, the Galaxy Quest TV show is seemingly still holding on. If there are any future developments besides the fact that it's 'being written,' we will certainly keep you posted. Do you think there's hope for this one—and will it be worth the wait if it ever happens?
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
DOGE begins to freeze health-care payments for extra review
The U.S. DOGE Service is putting new curbs on billions of dollars in federal health-care grants, requiring government officials to manually review and approve previously routine payments - and paralyzing grant awards to tens of thousands of organizations, according to 12 people familiar with the new arrangements. The effort, which DOGE has dubbed 'Defend the Spend,' has left thousands of payments backed up, including funding for doctors' and nurses' salaries at federal health centers for the poor. Some grantees are waiting on payments they expected last week. Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post. The Trump administration is pushing to cut federal spending and crack down on grants that political officials say conflict with White House priorities. DOGE, which stands for the Department of Government Efficiency, said the new initiative, which is being rolled out across parts of the Department of Health and Human Services, will force grantees and officials to justify spending and create transparency. 'Thanks to the great work by @HHSGov, for the first time ever, the American people will be able to see line-by-line payment descriptions & justifications - coming soon to the DOGE website,' the group posted on X last Saturday. Typically, an organization that has been awarded a grant does not receive the funding up front. The money is held in a secure account managed by the government, and an organization will request 'drawdowns' - tranches of money periodically throughout the year - to cover expenses such as salaries or research costs. Under Defend the Spend, organizations must now include a justification for each transaction. Federal officials then review the justification before deciding whether to approve the payment. The process has been abruptly instituted at the National Institutes for Health, the Administration for Children and Families, and other parts of HHS, with inconsistent instructions on how to proceed, said the people familiar with the arrangements, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisal. They also described immediate backlogs in processing payments. HHS said in a statement that the DOGE effort would not threaten 'support for critical programs' and was intended to root out fraud and abuse. 'The era of rubber stamping is over,' the HHS statement said. Current and former federal officials said the process would create bottlenecks. 'Instead of cutting red tape, they are strangling grantees with it,' said Robert Gordon, who served as the HHS assistant secretary of financial resources during the Biden administration. Some officials have been told that only Trump political appointees can sign requests to disburse funds, even if a career official has already approved it, adding an additional layer of review. The justification for each payment also must include an explanation of how the money will be used to advance Trump administration priorities, according to two employees in separate agencies who received high-level briefings on the process. Federal officials also have been instructed to use a website run by DOGE to approve grant payments, according to an email sent by defendthespend@ and obtained by The Washington Post. NIH officials on Thursday were still determining who would approve grant payments at their agency and did not expect to finalize the process until next week, two NIH officials said. Some outside organizations have been told their delayed payments are 'in transit,' but several federal officials said that is not true. It is unclear whether all the federal health-care grants will be approved and when. 'All funding is on hold,' an NIH official told colleagues at a meeting on Thursday, according to audio obtained by The Post. 'The bottom line is no one is getting any money right now. But they don't know they're not getting any money because it just says that it's 'in transit.'' In the first months of the Trump administration, government officials have taken multiple steps to delay or halt federal grants. Those include slow-walking billions of dollars in research grants issued by agencies such as the NIH, and freezing or terminating grants to higher-education institutions, on the grounds that the universities did too little to combat antisemitism on campus, did too much to support transgender athletes or for other, indeterminate reasons. DOGE engineers also recently inserted themselves into the government's long-established process to alert the public about potential federal grants and allow organizations to apply for funds. The group - which is backed by billionaire Elon Musk and stocked with young engineers and Musk allies - has said it is focused on cutting wasteful spending and making the government more efficient. But the new initiative is creating holdups, staffers who award grants at the health agencies said in interviews. They described a hurried, uncertain process to roll out Defend the Spend, which involves fields added to Payment Management Services, a centralized system that processed nearly 500,000 transactions and more than $850 billion in payments last year. A DOGE engineer was given access to the system on Jan. 22 and was made an administrator, according to a Trump administration court filing last month. At a meeting of grants management staff Wednesday, NIH officials explained that DOGE's process was instituted the previous Friday and that they would halt all payments until they had been through an extra layer of review, according to an NIH staffer. The freeze had been put in place without any sort of formal announcement, leaving thousands of payment requests backed up and confusing organizations waiting for federal funds. Catholic Charities of Fort Worth last week referred to the new requirements in a court filing that is part of its lawsuit against the Trump administration, saying it was 'concerned' by the requests for additional information before drawing down funds. Catholic Charities of Fort Worth did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Another grantee said they had requested funds in the last week but hadn't received them. An unsigned email told them to reach out to the agency. 'The payments are going through extra review,' the email said. Until this month, grantees had to provide progress reports and quarterly reports for federal review, but government staffers did not examine every single 'drawdown' of funds requested, said one HHS employee. Thousands of such 'drawdowns' take place every day, the employee said. The DOGE system has imposed an extreme workload on government staff, the employee said. Among those immediately suffering consequences are federal health centers, which provide services for low-income people and those who lack insurance, the employee said. Those centers rely on regular drawdowns for their operational expenses, such as doctors' and nurses' salaries and basic medical supplies. If the funding delay continues much longer, the situation will grow dire for such centers, imperiling their ability to assist the poor, the employee said. Related Content Ja Morant dares the NBA to punish him, knowing it won't pull the trigger Scientists are 'X-raying' the Amazon, unlocking a lost human history The Smithsonian could be the beginning of Trump's plan to edit history. Or the end.
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Are Scottish students using AI to cheat their way to a degree?
More than 600 Scottish students were accused of misusing AI during part of their studies last year - a rise of 121% on 2023 figures. According to a freedom of information request by BBC Scotland, less than 10 students were kicked off their courses at both Robert Gordon and Glasgow universities in the last year - the first time AI-linked expulsions have been recorded at any Scottish university. So when does turning to the internet to help find the answer to a question cross the line into cheating? That's the big issue facing Scottish universities, as day-to-day reliance on generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools, such as Chat GPT, becomes the norm. Dylan Walch is an education advisor with the University of Edinburgh's Students' Association and said the number of staff and students seeking advice around the use of AI was on the rise. He says students who are already using AI often come to the association to seek clarity around its use, while a minority have been caught misusing it. He told BBC Scotland News that low-level cases would prompt a discussion with a lecturer which might lead to a small mark deduction, but in more severe cases the university would interview the student in front of a panel. "It can be quite intimidating and quite a big procedure and they can lose anywhere from 10 to 50 marks," he said. Scotland has a student population of 292,240. Figures among AI misuse remain low, but academics say it poses a real challenge around keeping the grading process "fair". Prof Sian Bayne is leading the research around the use of AI in higher education at the University of Edinburgh and says it is a "complex" debate. "The most high-profile concern has been around misconduct and cheating in assessments by generating essays and coursework," she said. "I think one of my main concerns is there's increasing research which shows that it enables a cognitive offloading, instead of reading a complex text and analysing it, it's much easier to put a complex text into generative AI and get that generative AI to do that complex work for them." Only two universities in Scotland, Robert Gordon and Abertay, have dedicated software to help detect the misuse of AI, yet misuse rates remain higher at other universities - with Stirling recording the highest level at 262 cases in the last year. "Some institutions are thinking about investing in generative AI detection software," Prof Bayne said. She said lecturers were "pretty good" at spotting work turned in using AI, but warned that would become more difficult as the technology evolved. She said: "At the moment we are thinking about ways which we can redesign assessment so that we're using more multi-model methods like images, audio and video or more oral assessments or more in-person exams, as other ways of protecting against that kind of misconduct". BBC Scotland News met a group of Edinburgh university students who argue that AI serves them more as a tool than a shortcut when it comes to their learning. Masters student George Karabassis, 26, uses AI to assist with translation as English isn't his first language. He said: "If I don't understand a certain question I can copy and paste a certain phrase and ask Chat GPT, for example; 'could you please explain this in simpler terms' so I can understand it." Akrit Ghimire, 18, said many of his friends used AI to help with their studies. He said: "Some of the best prompts that they use is 'now explain it to me like I'm a five-year-old or a 14-year-old'." Others in the group also use AI, but warned about the accuracy of some of the search results that they received. Law student Hannah Dong, 20, said she had come across false content in her use of AI. "Sometimes if you search for cases they don't really exist and even if you do find cases that do exist then AI gives you lack of context," she said. The group told the BBC they wanted better guidelines set out from institutions on AI, and its use, to keep everyone on a level playing field. In less than three years, generative AI has flipped the conversation on technology and education, but the debate on how best to tackle its use in coursework continues.
BBC News
06-03-2025
- Science
- BBC News
Are Scottish students using AI to cheat their way to a degree?
More than 600 Scottish students were accused of misusing AI during part of their studies last year - a rise of 121% on 2023 to a freedom of information request by BBC Scotland, less than 10 students were kicked off their courses at both Robert Gordon and Glasgow universities in the last year - the first time AI-linked expulsions have been recorded at any Scottish when does turning to the internet to help find the answer to a question cross the line into cheating?That's the big issue facing Scottish universities, as day-to-day reliance on generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools, such as Chat GPT, becomes the norm. What are the penalties? Dylan Walch is an education advisor with the University of Edinburgh's Students' Association and said the number of staff and students seeking advice around the use of AI was on the says students who are already using AI often come to the association to seek clarity around its use, while a minority have been caught misusing told BBC Scotland News that low-level cases would prompt a discussion with a lecturer which might lead to a small mark deduction, but in more severe cases the university would interview the student in front of a panel."It can be quite intimidating and quite a big procedure and they can lose anywhere from 10 to 50 marks," he said. What else can universities do? Scotland has a student population of 292, among AI misuse remain low, but academics say it poses a real challenge around keeping the grading process "fair".Prof Sian Bayne is leading the research around the use of AI in higher education at the University of Edinburgh and says it is a "complex" debate."The most high-profile concern has been around misconduct and cheating in assessments by generating essays and coursework," she said."I think one of my main concerns is there's increasing research which shows that it enables a cognitive offloading, instead of reading a complex text and analysing it, it's much easier to put a complex text into generative AI and get that generative AI to do that complex work for them." Only two universities in Scotland, Robert Gordon and Abertay, have dedicated software to help detect the misuse of AI, yet misuse rates remain higher at other universities - with Stirling recording the highest level at 262 cases in the last year."Some institutions are thinking about investing in generative AI detection software," Prof Bayne said lecturers were "pretty good" at spotting work turned in using AI, but warned that would become more difficult as the technology said: "At the moment we are thinking about ways which we can redesign assessment so that we're using more multi-model methods like images, audio and video or more oral assessments or more in-person exams, as other ways of protecting against that kind of misconduct". What do students think about AI? BBC Scotland News met a group of Edinburgh university students who argue that AI serves them more as a tool than a shortcut when it comes to their student George Karabassis, 26, uses AI to assist with translation as English isn't his first said: "If I don't understand a certain question I can copy and paste a certain phrase and ask Chat GPT, for example; 'could you please explain this in simpler terms' so I can understand it."Akrit Ghimire, 18, said many of his friends used AI to help with their studies. He said: "Some of the best prompts that they use is 'now explain it to me like I'm a five-year-old or a 14-year-old'." Others in the group also use AI, but warned about the accuracy of some of the search results that they student Hannah Dong, 20, said she had come across false content in her use of AI."Sometimes if you search for cases they don't really exist and even if you do find cases that do exist then AI gives you lack of context," she group told the BBC they wanted better guidelines set out from institutions on AI, and its use, to keep everyone on a level playing less than three years, generative AI has flipped the conversation on technology and education, but the debate on how best to tackle its use in coursework continues.
