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Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Disgraced Drexel professor reportedly stole $185,000 in grant money for strippers

A former Drexel University professor has been charged with stealing $185,000 in grant money and making it rain at area strip clubs.

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office said in a public statement that Chikaodinaka Nwankpa, 57, is currently facing two felonies, theft by unlawful taking and theft by deception. It is alleged that the professor stole research grant money and used it for purchases at adult clubs, restaurants, iTunes and other places. Many of the alleged purchases occurred between midnight and 2 a.m., the district attorney’s office said.

The Philadelphia District Attorney further detailed that Nwankpa spent over $96,000 on local Philadelphia strip clubs and sports bars and $89,000 on food and iTunes purchases.

READ MORE: University of Kansas apologizes for Snoop Dogg’s stripper-pole performance

“Mr. Nwankpa inappropriately and criminally diverted tens of thousands of dollars that were allocated for research purposes toward his own private enjoyment. He betrayed Drexel University and tuition-paying students he was paid to educate,” District Attorney Larry Krasner told CNN.

The purchases were made over a seven-year timeframe, from 2010 to 2017, and were discovered during an audit. The district attorney’s office noted that Nwankpa told officials that the strip club expenses were to cover food catering.

Niki Gianakaris, a Drexel spokeswoman, told CNN: “Drexel takes allegations of unethical or unlawful business conduct on the part of any members of the University community very seriously. The University initially reported this situation to the US Attorney’s Office and has worked cooperatively with federal and state investigations into the matter.”

Nwankpa, who formerly headed up Drexel’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, was placed on administrative leave once the purchases were discovered. He later resigned.

READ MORE: Black student calls out white professor who used the n-word in class as an ‘experiment’

According to CNN, Drexel University had previously paid $190,000 in a settlement from another federal investigation into Nwankpa’s alleged misuse of grant funds. In that matter, Nwankpa repaid $53,328 to Drexel.

After Nwankpa was arrested by university police, he was released on a $25,000 bail. He also turned in his passport and is due back in court on January 29 for a preliminary hearing.

The post Disgraced Drexel professor reportedly stole $185,000 in grant money for strippers appeared first on TheGrio.



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AI Can Do Great Things—If It Doesn't Burn the Planet

The computing power required for AI landmarks, such as recognizing images and defeating humans at Go, increased 300,000-fold from 2012 to 2018. 

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Dyson's New Task Light Is Easy on the Eyes

The sleek, internet-connected lamp uses real-time data to illuminate your workspace and protect your precious peepers from strain.

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The Unbearable Softness of Engineered Fabrics

The human senses never cease detecting things the brain finds a way to dread.

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Worried About Privacy at Home? There's an AI for That

How edge AI will provide devices with just enough smarts to get the job done without spilling all your secrets to the mothership.

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The Secret History of Facial Recognition

Sixty years ago, a sharecropper’s son invented a technology to identify faces. Then the record of his role all but vanished. Who was Woody Bledsoe, and who was he working for?

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Behind the Scenes at Rotten Tomatoes

Humans, not algorithms, determine those ubiquitous scores. Good ingredients, imperfect recipe.

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The Blurred Boundaries of Work-From-Home Parenting

The same technology that's made working from home easier than ever has fundamentally changed what “home” means to me.

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All the Cool Kids Are Using Tiny Clackety Keyboards

People love mechanical keyboards for their tactile springiness, but their size can overwhelm your desk space. Try a compact version instead.

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Six-World Sci-Fi: Reboot Democracy for the Digital Age

Each month we publish a six-word story—and it could be written by you. 

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ASMR and the Soothing Power of Experts

Come for the tingly auditory triggers, stay for the existential coping mechanism.

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Angry Nerd: YouTube Can't Help You

All I wanted was some advice on fixing my Xbox voice chat. I'm never getting that time back.

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Upgrade Your Business Trip With These In-Flight Essentials

Stay productive, comfortable, and entertained while you wing your way to another very important meeting.

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These Standing Desks Rise Above the Competition

Get up, get down. Get your work done at a flexible desk. Here are two outstanding options.

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Automated Solar Arrays Could Help Incinerate Global Warming

Software-driven systems can produce enough searing heat to power manufacturing processes that now gorge on fossil fuels.

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Villa sign Tanzania's Samatta for £10m

Aston Villa complete a £10m deal for Genk's Tanzania striker Mbwana Samatta.

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Monday, January 20, 2020

MIT to conduct full-scale emergency exercise

In an effort to further enhance the preparedness of MIT’s first responders, MIT Emergency Management and MIT Police will conduct a full-scale emergency exercise on Wednesday, Jan. 22, at Kresge Auditorium (Building W16). Due to the realistic nature of the police training drill, which will include simulated gunfire, the entire building, the Kresge Oval, the Kresge BBQ pits, and the Kresge parking lot will be closed to the public from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. on that day. 

An email about the emergency exercise was sent today to the MIT community by Chief of Police and Director of Public Safety John DiFava.

DiFava explained that the exercise is in keeping with best practices in higher education emergency management, and is designed to allow first responders both internal and external to MIT to practice their response efforts in a realistic, yet controlled, environment. In addition, this exercise provides the Institute with the opportunity to evaluate its emergency protocols and to ensure a coordinated, timely, and effective response in the event of a real threat to the campus.

To ensure that the MIT community is aware of the exercise, the exercise area will be fenced off, ample signage will be posted, and MIT Police officers will be stationed at entrances to ensure that only authorized and screened participants are allowed inside. The exercise has been scheduled between semesters, during Independent Activities Period (IAP), to minimize disruption to campus operations.  

In conjunction with the exercise, a campus-wide test of the MIT Alert system will be conducted. This test will be used to evaluate and review the various procedures, responsibilities, and connections of the system. The text message and email alerts will state “This is a test of the MIT Alert system,” and will allow the community to provide feedback about MIT Alert.

“We want to acknowledge the nature of this exercise and the impact it could have on community members who have witnessed or been involved in traumatic incidents in the past,” DiFava wrote, adding that anyone who needs support is encouraged to access these resources:

Questions or concerns about the exercise can be addressed to MIT Emergency Management at em-staff@mit.edu or 617-452-4368.



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Study uses physics to explain democratic elections

It may seem surprising, but theories and formulas derived from physics turn out to be useful tools for understanding the ways democratic elections work, including how these systems break down and how they could be improved.

A new physics-based study finds that in the U.S., elections went through a transition in 1970, from a condition in which election results captured reasonably well the greater electorate’s political preferences, to a period of increasing instability, in which very small changes in voter preferences led to significant swings toward more extreme political outcomes in both directions.

The analysis also shows this instability can be associated with an unexpected situation in which outcomes swing in the opposite direction of how people’s true preferences are shifting. That is, a small move in prevailing opinions toward the left can result in a more right-wing outcome, and vice versa — a situation the researchers refer to as “negative representation.”

The findings appear in the journal Nature Physics, in a paper by Alexander Siegenfeld, a doctoral student in physics at MIT, and Yaneer Bar-Yam, the president of the New England Complex Systems Institute.

“Our country seems more divided than ever, with election outcomes resembling a pendulum swinging with ever increasing force,” Siegenfeld says. In this regime of “unstable” elections, he says, “a small change in electorate opinion can dramatically swing the election outcome, just as the direction of a small push to a boulder perched on top of a hill can dramatically change its final location.”

That’s partly a result of an increasingly polarized electorate, he explains. The researchers drew from a previous analysis that went through the Republican and Democratic party platforms in every presidential election year since 1944 and counted the number of polarizing words using a combination of machine learning and human analysis. The numbers show a relatively stable situation before 1970 but a dramatic increase in polarization since then.

The team then found that the Ising model, which was developed to explain the behavior of ferromagnets and other physical systems, is mathematically equivalent to certain models of elections and accurately describes the onset of instability in electoral systems.

“What happened in 1970 is a phase transition like the boiling of water. Elections went from stable to unstable,” explained Bar-Yam.

The increasing instability also results in part from the structure of party primary systems, which have greatly increased their role in candidate selection since the ’70s. Because the voters in primaries tend to have more extreme partisan views than those of the general electorate, politicians are more inclined to take positions to appeal to those voters — positions that may be more extreme than those favored by more mainstream voters, and thus less likely to win in the general election.

This long-term shift from a stable to unstable electoral situation closely resembles what happens to a ferromagnetic metal exposed to a magnetic field, Siegenfeld says, and can be described by the same mathematical formulas. But why should formulas derived for such unrelated subject matter be relevant to this field?

Siegenfeld says that’s because in physics, it’s not always necessary to know the details of the underlying objects or mechanisms to be able to produce useful and meaningful results. He compares that to the way physicists were able to describe the behavior of sound waves — which are essentially the aggregate motions of atoms — with great precision, long before they knew about the existence of atoms.

“When we apply physics to understanding the fundamental particles of our universe, we don’t actually know the underlying details of the theories,” he says. “Yet we can still make incredibly accurate predictions.”

Similarly, he says, researchers don’t need to understand the motives and opinions of individual voters to be able to carry out a meaningful analysis of their collective behavior. As the paper states, “understanding the collective behavior of social systems can benefit from methods and concepts from physics, not because humans are similar to electrons, but because certain large-scale behaviors can be understood without an understanding of the small-scale details.”

Another important finding from the study is the phenomenon of “negative representation.” This is when an overall shift to the left in voter opinions results in a rightward shift in the election outcome, or vice versa.

This can happen, for example, if voters are faced with a choice between a center-left candidate and a far-right candidate. If the overall sentiments of the electorate move further to the left, that may result in more far-left voters deciding to stay home on election day because the centrist candidate’s views are too far removed from their own. As a result, the far-right candidate ends up winning. Or, if a rightward swing in the electorate leads to the nomination of an extreme far-right candidate, that may increase the odds of a more liberal candidate winning the general election. “This negative representation undermines the entire purpose of democratic elections,” Siegenfeld says.

The study finds that in unstable electoral systems, there is always negative representation. But a number of measures that could help to counter the trend toward instability and thus also reduce the incidence of negative representation, the authors say.

One such solution to reducing election instability would be a shift toward ranked-voting systems, such as those used in Australia, Maine, and the cities of San Francisco and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Such systems reduce the need to select “lesser of two evils” candidates, and allow people to vote for their real preference without the disruptions caused by third-party candidates, they say.

Another approach would be to increase voter turnout, either through incentives, publicity, or legislation (such as Australia’s required voting). The lower the percentage of voter turnout, the greater the potential for instability, the researchers found.

“Most people say ‘go vote’ so your voice is heard,” Siegenfeld says. “What is less appreciated is that when candidates can count on people voting, it is more likely that future elections will become more stable. Our research scientifically demonstrates that high voter turnout helps democracy, since low voter turnout destabilizes elections and results in negative representation.”

“I love this research,” says Soren Jordan, an assistant professor of political science at Auburn University in Alabama, who was not involved in this work and wrote a commentary piece in Nature about it. “The cross-over is exciting, and seeing physicists do mathematical heavy lifting that’s really outside of the traditional scope and training of political science really enhances both disciplines.”

He adds, “This model is an excellent heuristic for understanding some critical phenomena, like how slow-moving concepts like partisanship can still yield large-scale effects in aggregate outcomes.”

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Hertz Foundation



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How Nigeria's cricket team 'shocked the world'

Nigeria's Under-19 side are world cup debutants but cricket remains a minority sport at home.

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Rutgers to name Jonathan Holloway as first Black president in school’s history

New Jersey’s Rutgers University is expected to hire Jonathan Holloway, provost of Northwestern University, as the school’s first Black president in it’s 253-year-old history.

Dory Devlin, a spokeswoman for Rutgers, did not comment on the decision, but said a meeting would take place Tuesday for the election of “an executive-level position,” The New York Times reports.

READ MORE: Widow gifts Howard University with $2.5 million worth of art

Holloway, 52, is slated to replace Robert L. Barchi, who is scheduled to step down at the end of the school year. Barchi is credited with increasing student population, creating new facilities and creating a merger between Rutgers and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.

Holloway received a bachelor’s degree with honors in American studies from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in history from Yale University, according to Northwestern’s website. At Stanford, he played football alongside U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.), reports NJ.com.

Holloway was selected because of his understanding of both academics and athletics in the Big Ten Conference.

“I believe the board [members] will be over the moon for him,” the anonymous Rutgers official told NJ.com.

READ MORE: 80-Year-Old graduate Donzella Washington makes history at Alabama A&M University

Holloway received praise from New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy stating in a tweet he “clearly showed he had the vision & experience to put the needs of students first & lead Rutgers to the next level.”

Holloway was hired as provost at Northwestern University in 2017. Prior to Northwestern, he was dean of Yale College, which is considered one of the most prestigious positions in academia.

Before Holloway, Rutgers had 20 white male presidents. The students and faculty suggested the hire should promote diversity and reflect the student body. Currently, 35 percent of Rutgers students are white, according to NJ.com.

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