Tag Archive for: place

How parents can foster ‘positive creativity’ in kids to make the world a better place | Opinion

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Sareh Karami, Mississippi State University; Mehdi Ghahremani, Mississippi State University, and Robert Sternberg, Cornell University

Creativity involves the production of ideas that are both new and also useful or effective. This definition makes it sound as though creativity is quite positive. And often it is.

During the pandemic, creativity gave birth to new ways to work, attend school, tour museums, experience concerts and more – not to mention to develop vaccines and cutting-edge COVID-19 treatments.

As university professors who have collectively studied creativity for over 50 years, we know the many personal and social benefits of creativity.

But we also know that there is a dark side of creativity, too.

Cybercriminals, for example, used their creativity to take advantage of the disruption and fears caused by the pandemic to attack countries, businesses and institutions and steal personal information from people.

Or think about how hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin were promoted as COVID-19 treatments. Some people gained something from these novel treatment ideas – perhaps money, power or the prospect of reelection – but the drugs had no empirical support and people who took them may have bypassed drugs that could have actually helped them.

The point is, creativity is not always socially desirable. So, merely teaching kids to be creative does not cut it in the modern age. Here we offer tips for parents and caregivers on how to minimize the negative forms of creativity in children – and themselves – and foster positive creativity instead.

1. Identify the purpose of a new product or idea

Discuss with children the objectives of innovations – their own or ones they use in everday life. Assess the objectives not only for novelty and usefulness or meaningfulness, but also for how they contribute to the common good. Like criminal hacking, creativity can be used to benefit the inventor but harm other individuals. Hacking itself is not bad unless done with the wrong intention. Ethical hackers use their creativity to help companies locate weaknesses and vulnerabilities of their information systems by using the same skills and tactics of criminal hackers….

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‘We have a dynamic process in place that keeps evolving’

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What makes you the best among engineering colleges in India?

One of the best things that distinguishes IIT Delhi from [others] is its faculty. We follow a three-level reviewer selection process to recruit our faculty. In the last four years, we have started nine new departments and centres. This means that we have created a new IIT within an existing IIT. Among the new centres are the Centre for Automotive Research and Tribology that focuses on electric vehicles (EVs). We also have three new schools—School of Public Policy, School of Artificial Intelligence and the School for Interdisciplinary Research.

We have a dynamic process in place that keeps evolving…. Institutions have to emphasise on new things that are important in society today such as EVs. If we do not, then India will have to import all those technologies. We are now recruiting at least 20 new faculty members in the EV space.

How important are collaborations and constant engagements for IIT Delhi?

Being in Delhi, we thought that we needed to get into policy studies in a major way. So we started a school of public policy. We are again recruiting a large faculty in the space. At the same time, Delhi also has a lot of location advantages. We get to directly engage with the ministries, and some of the finest institutions of India—AIIMS Delhi, National Institute of Immunology, Regional centre for BioTechnology—are also in Delhi. We have MoUs with all the major institutes, and have joint supervision of faculty and students between them, which helps in bringing a multi-disciplinary focus to our research.

Any new innovations you have worked on?

During the pandemic, we have undertaken and licenced at least 13 innovations. For instance, we have the cheapest low-cost RT-PCR kit. We also developed a Rs 50 antigen test. Around 70 lakh Kawach PPE suits, developed by IIT Delhi, have been sold until now. [Likewise,] N95 masks were very expensive and were not freely available. We launched masks under the Kawach brand for just Rs40, which met all the N95 specifications.

Are you introducing any new multidisciplinary course?

We have started an MTech in cyber security, which involves multiple departments in the institute,…

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‘Malware sample in Wilson case named after place in AP’ | Mumbai News

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Mumbai: There is an Andhra Pradesh connection to the alleged planting of evidence by the National Investigating Agency in the laptop belonging to Elgar Parishad accused Rona Wilson.
When the laptop was first allegedly compromised in 2016, the hacker had named the first malware sample “Puttakota.exe.” It turns out that Puttakota is in Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh and near it lie the ruins of a 13th century hilltop Kondaveedu Fort. The place was also in the news in February 2016 after two persons were shot dead by AP anti-Naxal police in the Puttakota forest. Police had refuted claims by tribals that the deceased were “innocent hunters.” Wilson has relied on a digital forensic report by US-based Arsenal Consulting to quash the criminal proceedings against him in the Bombay high court. The NIA has submitted a chargesheet against Wilson alleging Maoist links, a conspiracy to disrupt communal peace, waging war against the nation and several terror offences under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
The private cyber forensic report from the US said “this particular sample first connected to its C2 (command control) server on June 13, 2016 at 7.14 pm…and appears to have been customized on June 11, 2016.”
“Generally speaking and not commenting on this case, attackers usually name targeted malware based on what they perceive the target will find interesting enough to click upon. The name is the bait,” said Samir Datt, founder of Forensics Guru and president of Digital Investigators Association in India, on Thursday
The report by Mark Spencer of Arsenal Consulting said the “attacker” had a “naming convention” for the malware. “The NetWire (malware) sample ‘Puttakota.exe’ was launched from a folder named ‘requisition1302,’” said the report.
“It appears that the attacker included customization dates within ‘Host Id’ values to better identify particular Netwire samples deployed to victims such as Wilson,” the report by the consulting firm said.
While NIA has stood by the evidence it has collected, senior Pune police officers associated with the investigation of the case before it was transferred to the NIA in February…

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Extra security in place after shots fired near Mobile elementary school

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MOBILE, Ala. (WKRG) – Mobilians are divided on whether or not to get the COVID-19 vaccine as hospitals in Alabama and across the United States get their first initial doses of the Pfizer vaccine.

On Sunday morning, the first trucks carrying Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine left warehouses in Michigan and Wisconsin.

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