Last Monday was the first day that French schoolchildren under 15 could not use their cellphones at any point during the school day, thanks to a new nationwide law.

The ban, passed in July following a campaign pledge made by French President Emmanuel Macron, will affect elementary and junior high schools across the country as they return from the summer break.

The new law, which went into effect on August 5, bans all types of cellphones, as well as tablets and smartwatches.

While a ban on cellphones during class hours was already in place since 2010, the new law extends to breaks and mealtimes.

Schools are free to choose themselves if they implement the ban for students over 15. There are also some exceptions to the prohibition, such as for students with disabilities.

Under the new law, students have to turn their phones off during the day or put them in lockers. Schools will independently deal with the logistics of how students will be kept away from their phones.

The law was introduced amid fears that students were becoming too dependent on and distracted by their smartphones.
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Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer in June hailed the legislation as "a law for the 21st century," and said it would improve discipline among France's 12 million schoolchildren.

It's not a secret that Microsoft hasn't been winning the hearts and minds of consumers lately.
Killing off products like the Groove Music service, Microsoft Band fitness tracker, and Windows Phone have left many questioning whether Microsoft's grand plan is to focus on business users and leave consumers to its competitors.

But at the company's recent Inspire conference, Microsoft execs told their partners that Redmond isn't giving up on consumers.

Yusuf Mehdi – whose new title as of June 2018 became corporate vice president of Modern Life and Devices – led a session at the partner show in Las Vegas, Nev., where he outlined the company's vision for what officials plan to christen "Modern Life Services."

"Modern Life” and "Gaming" are the two new additions to Microsoft's core digital solution areas that its sales force and its partners are meant to target in fiscal 2019 and beyond. The others, which Microsoft announced a year ago at Inspire, are “Modern Workplace,” “Business Applications,” “Applications and Infrastructure,” and “Data and AI.”

In teeing up his presentation, Mehdi acknowledged that "in the last couple of years, we've lost a little of that magic with consumers," according to attendees who asked not to be named.

Most consumer companies are laser-focused on one thing, Mehdi said. Amazon is focused on shopping; Spotify, on music; Netflix, on movies. Microsoft's core value proposition is productivity, he said. The company's job is to try to make productivity sexier.

Microsoft is targeting so-called "professional consumers" with these services, Mehdi said. These are people who already know how to use technology but need to figure out how to use it better to make them more productive. The goal of these services will be to give users back time and help them focus on what matters to them.

Microsoft officials believe because the company already "owns the work calendar with Outlook," that it has a foothold in working to blur the line between consumer and commercial activities.

What, exactly, will qualify as a Modern Life Service? Mostly they will be apps, services, and features that Microsoft already makes available or soon will in Windows, Outlook, and PowerPoint, but which officials will attempt to position as well suited to the needs of professional consumers on Windows PCs, iPhones, and Android phones.
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One example is the Microsoft "Your Phone" app, which Microsoft execs first showed off at the Build 2018 developer conference earlier this year. Your Phone on Windows 10 will allow users to respond to text messages on their Windows desktops, as well as drag and drop photos from their desktops and send them via their phones without actually having to access the phones. Microsoft believes that by not having to interrupt their workflow, users will save time and be more productive.

It's fun when I get to include an article on my former firm. Recently, Ernst & Young LLP (EY) announced it is launching a new program to collaborate with universities and usher in the digital workforce. This program, Day One Ready, prepares students for today's real business world and connects them to potential internship opportunities. It is the newest element of the Tax practice's proprietary upskilling initiative designed to create the workforce of the future and to help EY meet the demand for digitally skilled talent. This program is an expansion of a successful pilot cooperative curriculum with the University of Dayton in Ohio.

"Our approach to staying ahead of disruption will create jobs for people in many ways," said Martin Fiore, partner, Ernst & Young LLP, and EY Americas Tax Talent Leader. "We are driving the development of the right skills for those jobs by working collaboratively with academic institutions and modifying learning at all ages and levels to develop a total workforce with the needed capabilities for the future."

The courses offered by EY to associated universities include: Lean Six Sigma; Robotics Process Automation; Excel Power Modeling; Data Analytics and Visualization; Autonomous Systems; Coding; and Mindfulness to enhance the ability for students to innovate in the future. The new curriculum is taught by a combination of university faculty, EY trainers and guest lecturers who deliver mini-courses on the most in-demand skills for future professionals, mainly consultants.

Other elements of EY's dedication to the future of work include: collaboration with more universities in 2018; changes to recruiting targets with science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) backgrounds; coursework for current employees to develop capabilities for the future; and executive-level training for digital certification. Among the upskilling programs to help current EY professionals deliver new skills and work more effectively with clients, the latest is Elite Skills Week. This week-long session of courses is held at the innovative Q Center in Chicago to develop five of the Day One Ready skills critical to the workforce of the future.
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Fiore explained the change of focus on recruiting and training: "The future will be governed by predictive analytics, algorithms and artificial intelligence. Our strategy is to shift the workforce, adjust hiring and evolve learning programs with technology-enabled processes, chatbots, and critical thinking. Our curriculum is far from static and will gradually include more advanced learning that helps our people to understand, use and innovate our services with each generation of digital disruptors. We will continue to have new and exciting job opportunities and are willing to help develop people to bring the right skills."

While blockchain adoption remains slow, industries including finance, manufacturing, and healthcare are exploring the developing technology's potential to create business advantages like reduced operational costs, faster transaction speeds, and more secure records.

An estimated 1,520 blockchain startup companies are now looking for workers, along with a number of corporations like IBM and Microsoft. As the market continues to grow, more lucrative career options will open up for those who are skilled in the various blockchain technologies.

Here are six of the best blockchain jobs on the horizon, according to the report.

1. Blockchain Project Manager.Companies are interested in developing blockchain solutions and will need to communicate their needs to a blockchain development firm. Project managers will be required to manage and facilitate these projects, especially as companies take on more clients. The project manager will be responsible for translating the company's needs into technical language, and the blockchain developers' needs into plain English. They are also tasked with planning and supervising the execution of the blockchain project.

2. Blockchain Developer.Blockchain developers may have the strongest career opportunities in the industry right now. Before companies can use blockchain to improve efficiency and speed, developers will need to create the necessary platforms and programs. Required skills for blockchain developers include Microsoft SQL Server, Visual Studio, .NET, MVC, AJAX, SQL, C, C++, C#, Javascript, Node.js, JQuery, SOAP, REST, FTP, HTML, XML, XSLT, XCOD, Neural-networks, Regression, Agile Scrum, and MYSQL.

3. Blockchain Quality Engineer.A blockchain quality engineer is responsible for all areas of quality in the development environment, including automation frameworks and tests, manual testing, and dashboards. This professional is typically responsible for planning and delivery of complex blockchain projects, as well as developing, applying, and maintaining QA automated test standards.

4. Blockchain Legal Consultant/Attorney. Many attorneys working in tech have reported getting more calls from potential clients seeking advice about how to structure and govern cyber currency Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) as well as on the issues they may face as they launch blockchain and fintech projects. The need for legal professionals to guide these projects will only grow as the technology matures.

5. Blockchain Designer. Companies will need designers to create websites that inform customers what they offer in the blockchain space. For example, a recent job posting for a user interface (UI) designer wanted a professional who could create a UI design with Sketch, PS, and Figma that would work in both mobile and web applications. These professionals should also have excellent communications skills, and be able to work with content, operations, and marketing teams.
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6. Blockchain Engineer.This year, there were 14 open jobs for every one blockchain developer or engineer. These professionals are responsible for creating and implementing digital solutions for companies using the blockchain. Engineers must study the blockchain tech needs of their company and create the applications to meet those needs. They should be skilled in Java, Hyperledger Fabric, Ripple, Solidity, Python, Bitcoin, Oracle Identity, and access management solutions.

A new, low-cost technology could provide drinking water in regions where resources are scarce, or where natural disasters have struck.

Scientists have developed a new technology that uses the sunlight to purify water with near-perfect efficiency.

The idea of using energy from the sun to evaporate and purify water was reportedly described by Greek philosopher Aristotle over 2,000 years ago.

By draping black, carbon-dipped paperin a triangular shape and using it to both absorb and vaporize water, researchers have developed a method for using sunlight to generate clean water with near-perfect efficiency.
“Our technique is able to produce drinking water at a faster pace than is theoretically calculated under natural sunlight,” said Qiaoqiang Gan, an associate professor at the University at Buffalo in New York.

“Usually, when solar energy is used to evaporate water, some of the energy is wasted as heat is lost to the surrounding environment. This makes the process less than 100% efficient. Our system has a way of drawing heat in from the surrounding environment, allowing us to achieve near-perfect efficiency,” said the associate professor.

Researchers have launched a startup, Sunny Clean Water, to bring the invention to people who need it. The company is integrating the new evaporation system into a prototype of a solar still, a sun-powered water purifier.

Solar stills have been around for a long time. These devices use the sun’s heat to evaporate water, leaving salt, bacteria, and dirt behind.

Then, the water vapor cools and returns to a liquid state, at which point it’s collected in a clean container.
The technique has many advantages. It is simple, and the power source — the sun — is available just about everywhere. However, even the latest solar still models are somewhat inefficient at vaporizing water.

Researchers addressed this challenge by increasing the efficiency of their evaporation system by cooling it down.

A central component of their technology is a sheet of carbon-dipped paper that is folded into an upside-down “V” shape, like the roof of a birdhouse.

The bottom edges of the paper hang in a pool of water, soaking up the fluid like a napkin. At the same time, the carbon coating absorbs solar energy and transforms it into heat for evaporation.

The paper’s sloped geometry keeps it cool by weakening the intensity of the sunlight illuminating it. Since most of the carbon-coated paper stays under room temperature, it can draw in heat from the surrounding area, compensating for the regular loss of solar energy that occurs during the vaporization process.

Using this set-up, researchers evaporated the equivalent of 2.2 liters of water per hour for every square meter of area illuminated by the regular sun, higher than the theoretical upper limit of 1.68 liters, according to the new study.

The team conducted its tests in the lab, using a solar simulator to generate light at the intensity of one regular sun.

“Most groups working on solar evaporation technologies are trying to develop advanced materials, such as metallic plasmonic and carbon-based nanomaterials,” Professor Qiaoqiang said.
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“We focused on using extremely low-cost materials and were still able to realize record-breaking performance,” he said.

"The world is rapidly running out of computing capacity", Satya Nadella said at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The head of tech giant Microsoft warned that superfast quantum computers were needed to solve some of the most difficult problems.

Mr. Nadella cited the quest to create a catalyst that can absorb carbon, in order to help tackle climate change.

This, he cautioned, would likely not be achieved without an increase in computer processing power.

"Moore's Law is kinda running out of steam," Mr. Nadella told assembled delegates, referring to the maxim that the power of computer chips doubles every two years.

The Microsoft chief executive also took aim at so-called "re-skilling programs", calling them "one of the greatest wastes of money".

Such schemes, which are designed to retrain those whose professions have been lost to globalization or automation, are often "done without a true understanding of where the labor market is going," Mr. Nadella argued.

Instead, the India-born chief executive, who took over at the helm of Microsoft in 2014, said that reforming school curriculums was of paramount importance.

"We can, with some certainty, say that we will need more people graduating from our schools who will need to be comfortable with these augmented realities," he predicted.

"The fact that most curricula in schools still don't recognize computer science like they do math or physics is just crazy."

Mr. Nadella added: "We need middle school teachers of computer science of the highest quality."
He also emphasized that artificial intelligence, on which Microsoft is increasingly focused, could be a part of the solution to joblessness, rather than merely its cause.

Earlier, Klaus Schwab, the man behind the World Economic Forum, called for leading tech executives to consider the disruption that their products may cause to economic, political and social life.
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"If we act now," Mr. Schwab said, "we have the opportunity to ensure that technologies - such as artificial intelligence - sustainably and meaningfully improve the lives and prospects of as many people as possible."

Do you use a laptop or tablet to take notes during school lectures or meetings? If so, you might want to reconsider pen and paper; there’s increasing evidence that using laptops during academic presentations decreases learning, which can result in lower grades, reports The New York Times.

To study this, researchers at Princeton University and the University of California asked a group of students to take notes at a lecture using pen and paper while another group used laptops. The experiment found that the students who used a computer did not understand the lecture as well as those who wrote their notes out by hand. The researchers hypothesized that this was because students who wrote notes by hand had to process what the lecturer was saying and, in effect, summarize what was being said to keep up with the lecture. Additionally, they found that laptop note takers had a “tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim,” which meant they were less likely to process information into their own words, thus preventing them from truly understanding what was being taught.

Another study by researchers at York University and McMaster University tested students by asking them to look up things on their laptop that were unrelated to their lecture, like cinema session times. Unsurprisingly, the distraction caused them to remember less of the lecture, and those sitting near them were adversely affected too.

Lastly, a study from the United States Military Academy tested students’ achievements in an economics class by comparing student performance based on whether laptops or tablets were restricted, unrestricted, or not permitted at all. The study found that the students who did not have access to a device performed significantly better than those who did. 
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Writing things by hand is becoming less common as gadgets and speech recognition software continue to replace pen and paper, but it’s long proven that handwriting improves motor skills, memory, and creativity. So even though note taking with a laptop might be faster, you might want to think about how much of any presentation you’re retaining.