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Do you still want to get a Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctorate in order to become a professor? Think again. Not only does it take a lot of time and resources, and while money may not be everything, you most likely will find yourself living in poverty, That's right, not poor, or lower middle class, but living in actual poverty. Here's academia's dirty little secret. Those professors that you respect and admire (hopefully), and who spend hours planning, grading, and teaching your classes, are most likely part-timers. Over half of all college instructors today are adjuncts. That means that they are not entitled to full-time pay or benefits even though many of them teach four, five, six, or even seven classes a semester in order to make a decent salary.  Do you have any idea how much time it takes to teach five courses? Let's think about it. You need to get to those courses, which may be at one, two, or even three different campuses. You need to pre...

One of the things that have kept some experts from freaking out about Skynet and the takeover of human existence by artificial intelligence is that AI takes ten times longer to learn than humans. Well that is until now. Google 's Deep Mind just created an AI that learns at about the same pace as humans. "If you’re unfamiliar with how deep learning works, it uses layers of neural networks to locate trends or patterns in data. If one layer identifies a pattern, that information will be sent to the next layer. This process continues until all the information is collected." The new way of AI thinking imitates the way human and animals learn, "replicating what happens in the prefrontal cortex and then, as a backup, in the hippocampus." But not to worry, no AI has reached a true human level of thinking, at least not yet. Robotics may soon take over all of our jobs, but "as AI gets better at learning, it can be taught more and more ways to improve our l...

Harvard says it's two years away from cloning a woolly mammoth. But maybe the question, should be, "Should we resurrect extinct species?" "Advocates, like Vanessa Adams from the University of Queensland, hope that this resurrection will be beneficial not only for extinct species, but also for modern species and our environment. Adams studies how applying economic concepts, like bringing back an extinct animal that people would pay to see, can increase the effectiveness of on-ground conservation action, like raise money that can be used to conserve other endangered animals." But there are detractors. If we decide to bring back dinosaurs, mammoths, and dodos what will that do for animals currently on the endangered species list. Will we just forget about them because of the novelty of these "new" animals? Conservation budgets are already stretched pretty thin. "In modeling the reintroduction of some recently extinct species, the scientists d...

Google has five tips for effective teamwork as discovered by their People Operation's Group. They asked 200 people in their Project Aristotle a series of questions hoping to figure out the proper mix of tech nerds to physicists to scholars to come up the proper ingredients for the perfect team. But what they found was not what they expected. It wasn't the mix of PhDs that made a good team, but how they worked together. Is it just me but doesn't that seem obvious? So what are Google's five keys to a successful group: 1. Psychological Safety. Are you free to safely take risks in your group or will you be ostracized or punished. Hopefully, your teammates are supportive and don't see risk takers as ignorant or disruptive. 2. Dependability . Anybody who has done a school project knows exactly what this means. 3. Structure and clarity . Does the group get the assignment (task), have a plan to accomplish the assignment, and will it be successful? If you can ans...

There is a lot of confusion about student loan forgiveness, so let's try to clear things up a bit. In 2014, 37 million Americans had student loan debt that averaged $23,200. Depending on where you live and where you go to school your student loan debt may be larger - a lot larger. I bet most college students are aware of student loan forgiveness programs, but they probably have no idea how they work. Over at Student Loan Hero , Eric Roseberg has outlined the basics of student loan forgiveness - and it's something to think about. Here's some of the basics (disclaimer: this stuff changes all the time, so stay caught up with new or revised forgiveness plans): Student forgiveness plans apply mainly to federal student loans (Perkins loans are another matter), so all those loans you took out with Wells Fargo will NEVER qualify for forgiveness. Most banks are private institutions out to make money, so avoid taking a loan with them at all costs. Federal loans for ce...