THE COBALT PIPELINE: Tracing the path from deadly hand-dug mines in Congo to consumers’ phones and laptops | Washington Post | September 2016 The world’s soaring demand for cobalt is at times met by workers, including children, who labor in harsh and dangerous conditions. An estimated 100,000 cobalt miners in Congo use hand tools to dig hundreds of feet underground
THE COBALT PIPELINE: Tracing the path from deadly hand-dug mines in Congo to consumers’ phones and laptops | Washington Post | September 2016 The world’s soaring demand for cobalt is at times met by workers, including children, who labor in harsh and dangerous conditions. An estimated 100,000 cobalt miners in Congo use hand tools to dig hundreds of feet underground
iPhone manufacturer Foxconn is replacing 60,000 workers with robots | South China Morning Post | May 2016 “The Foxconn factory has reduced its employee strength from 110,000 to 50,000, thanks to the introduction of robots. It has tasted success in reduction of labour costs,” said the department’s head Xu Yulian. References: Julia Limitone, “Fmr. McDonald’s USA CEO: $35K Robots Cheaper
The Impact of Computer Usage on Academic Performance: Evidence from a Randomized Trial at the United States Military Academy | May 2016 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology via Inside Higher Ed As reported by Inside Higher Ed: When faculty members at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point took away students’ computers and tablets in an introductory economics courses, their
Democratizing education? Examining access and usage patterns in massive open online courses | Science | December 2015 Abstract: Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are often characterized as remedies to educational disparities related to social class. Using data from 68 MOOCs offered by Harvard and MIT between 2012 and 2014, we found that course participants from the United States tended to
Compulsive Texting Takes Toll on Teenagers | New York Times | October 2015 The study of more than 400 eighth and 11th graders found that many teenage texters had a lot in common with compulsive gamblers, including losing sleep because of texting, problems cutting back on texting and lying to cover up the amount of time they spent texting.