11 people who could change the world – Courtsey forbes.

I warned you at my first post.. didn’t I ..that we won’t be only talking about teaching and studies and schools and cognitive learning and such stuff ..we will make this a very inclusive platform..

A colleague from IFMR just forwarded this thing -from forbes.com ..it talks bout 10 ppl. who chould change the world …change the way we see things ..change the way we perciver things ..can change the way we live …isn’t it then about education ? okay lets come to the point ..here are those 10 ppl. according to forbes..

Courtesy of Esther Duflo

Fighting Poverty Efficiently

Esther Duflo, 34
Economist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

While politicians tend to espouse solutions like “more aid” or “more trade,” entrenched poverty is a great lingering economic mystery. Duflo designs studies to figure out which kind of aid projects work, and which don’t. She was among the first development economists to evaluate aid projects using randomized trials, long the gold standard in scientific testing..

 

Courtesy of Kevin Eggan

P.C. Stem Cells

Kevin Eggan, 32
Cellular Biologist, HarvardUniversity

Eggan is leading the way to a world where stem cells–which have tremendous medical promise because of their potential to replace any damaged cell in the body–could be made without destroying embryos. Eggan is also becoming one of science’s more outspoken voices, defending the necessity of pursuing embryonic cell research through all available means as a way of understanding scourges like diabetes and Lou Gehrig’s disease.  

© Caroline Webb

Tree Rights

Thomas Linzey, 38
Executive Director, Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

Last year the borough of Tamaqua, Pa., passed an unprecedented law giving ecosystems legal rights of their own. Yes, you read that right. The trees, rivers, mountains and all the little critters that live in them have rights just like people. Linzey drafted the law, and is working on passing more ordinances around the country. His efforts fly in the face of thousands of years of Western legal precedent that treats nature strictly as property. 

© McGill University

Altering Human Memory

Karim Nader, 40

A scientist asks you to recall a memory, gives you a pill and alters your recollection. It sounds like a scene from the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the sci-fi romance in which ex-lovers have their memories of one another erased. But it’s exactly what Nader is doing with folks who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (rape survivors, war veterans and the like). The method does not aim to actually erase bad memories, but it can significantly reduce the severe pain of traumatic memories. His work could revolutionize how doctors treat epilepsy, obsessive compulsive disorder and even drug addiction.Neuroscientist, McGillUniversityCourtesy of Max Tegmark

Measuring the Invisible Universe

Max Tegmark, 40
Cosmologist, Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyIf the laws of physics as we know them are correct, the vast majority of the universe–some 96% of it–consists of invisible, mysterious stuff known as “dark energy” and “dark matter.” Tegmark’s ambition is nothing less than to map and measure the entire universe, including these “dark” bits.  Courtesy of Josh Tenenbaum

The Human Computer

Josh Tenenbaum
Cognitive Scientist, Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyScience fiction is rife with intelligent, self-aware computers, from the benevolent “Mike” of Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress to the murderous HAL 9000 in Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. But before we can actually design and build super-smart machines like those in our books and movies, we need to better understand the nature of human intelligence. That’s where Tenenbaum comes in. He’s using a combination of mathematical modeling, computer simulation and behavioral experiments to explain how people learn new things. 

 Courtesy of Christopher Voigt

 

Reprogramming Life

Christopher Voigt, 30
Synthetic Biologist, University of California, San Francisco“We program cells like robots,” says Voigt. He’s at the forefront of a group of young researchers working to deliver on the profound promise of genetic engineering: Rebuilding living organisms to fight disease, make bio-fuels and solve industrial problems. To do this, Voigt works hard to understand what “commands” are programmed on the DNA of simple organisms like the E. coli bacteria. Then he changes the commands so the organism does his bidding.

 

 

To be completed …

 

Balsakhi Program – Poverty Action Lab (MIT) and Pratham

Recently I cam across a very interesting study being conducted by the Poverty Action Lab (MIT) with its Indian Partner, Pratham. Following is the brief summarry of the project..

Project Overview:

This project evaluated the impact of a remedial education program implemented in several Indian cities by Pratham, a Mumbai-based NGO focusing on education. In this program, Pratham hires young local women (Balsakhi, or child’s friend) to provide remedial education to children in standard three and four who have not aquired the basic competencies of standard one. Students are pulled out of regular class for two hours of the school day for the remedial education program, focusing on the reinforcement of basic literacy and numeracy skills. The program costs five dollars per child per year, and has already proven its ability to be easily replicated, with current implementation in 20 cities.

The evaluation was conducted in two cities (Vadodara and Mumbai) over two years. Schools were randomly assigned to one of two groups: one group received the balsakhi program in one grade and the other in the other grade. A simple cognitive test designed by Pratham (given as a pre, mid, and post-test) was used as the metric for the program’s effectiveness. Grade three students in schools where the program was allocated to grade four form the comparison group for grade three students in schools where the program was allocated in grade three. Results cover two evaluations over two years, decreasing the chance of the program evaluation endogenously affecting the program’s management and results.

Sample:

Mumbai and Vadodara primary schools (standards 3 and 4)

Main Results:

The program improved overall test scores by 0.14 standard deviations in the first year, and 0.25 standard deviations in the second year. These impacts are large and significant. Treatment effects were similar across standards (grade level), gender, and city.

The program was more effective for children initially at the bottom portion of the class (i.e. those actually removed from class for the remedial education), so the program effectively decreases inequality in classroom test scores. The improvement in math scores for the bottom third of the children was 0.51 in the second year.

A cost benefit analysis shows that the average balsakhi is 4.5 times more cost effective than hiring an additional teacher for the first year and 6.7 times more cost effective in the second year. Cost effectiveness is based on improvement in test scores.

Researchers:
Abhijit Banerjee, Shawn Cole, Esther Duflo, Leigh Linden.

Papers:
Balsakhi Briefcase
.
May 2005

Remedying Education: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments in India
Abhijit Banerjee, Shawn Cole, Esther Duflo, Leigh Linden.
October 2006

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Data:

The data for this project is available for download

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Partners:
Pratham

Country:
India

Themes:
Education

Funding:
ICICI corporation, World Bank, MacArthur Foundation Network on the Costs of

The full paper can be downloaded from the following link..
http://cep.lse.ac.uk/seminarpapers/11-02-05-DUF.pdf