Imagine being in the ocean, trapped in a swell some 700 meters from shore. Suddenly a yellow package drops out of the sky as if sent by a god, hits the water next to you and expands into a flotation device. That was the experience of two unlucky, then lucky teenage boys off the coast of Lennox Head in Australia last week. Someone spotted the boys in distress and called it in, but the nearest lifeguard station was a kilometer away. Just that morning, however, Lennox Head had brought their new lifesaving drone into service. In a little over a minute, a lifeguard supervisor had launched the drone, spotted the boys, flew it over to them, and remotely dropped the flotation device. The boys were able to grab it and swim to shore. Here’s the footage: The drone is manufactured by a company called Little Ripper Lifesaver , founded by Kevin Weldon after he witnessed a drone canvassing the streets of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and realized its lifesaving potential. The Marine Pod dropped over Lennox Head contained a water-triggered flotation device, which is repackable and reusable. The company is now testing a saltwater-activated electromagnetic shark repellent device, with plans to include that in future kits. Little Ripper also makes a Land Pod, which contains an automatic defibrillator, a location beacon, a thermal blanket, a radio, a highly-visible rescue banner and a first aid kit. Lastly they make a Snow Pod, which adds skin warmers and energy bars to the Land Pod. Lennox Head received the drone as part of a trial set up by an organization called Surf Life Saving NSW and the New South Wales Government. According to ABC News , Surf Life Saving NSW project manager for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), Kelvin Morton, said the project was a world-first. “These UAVs that we’re using to drop these inflatable pods is innovative, and we know that most or all of the lifesaving organisations around the world are stepping back and waiting to see how this goes.” Mr Morton said the drones gave surf lifesavers a new advantage. “It gives them eyes across the water at a height of 60 metres and they can move at 50 kilometres an hour, ” he said. “They’ve never had that ability before. They can see things in the water that a jet-ski simply cannot.”
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Rescue Drone Saves Two Boys from Drowning on Its First Day in Service
theodp writes: Citing statistics that showed a whopping 46 more boys than girls passed the AP Computer Science Exam in 2011-12, the 640, 000+ student Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) on Tuesday approved a waiver to enable the District to operate a single-gender, all-girls STEM School called the Girls Academic Leadership Academy (GALA). Students in GALA will follow a six year sequence of computer courses starting in middle school that will culminate in AP Computer Science Principles. “Fewer females take AP courses in math, science, or computer science, and they are not as successful as males in receiving passing scores of 3, 4 or 5, ” argued the General Waiver Request (PDF, 700+ pages). “An all girls environment is reasonably necessary for the school to improve the self-confidence of girls in their academic abilities, especially in STEM areas where an achievement gap currently exists. GALA’s admissions shall also comply with AB 1266 to ensure male students who identify as female are admitted to the school.” The school’s CS-related Partners include the UCLA Exploring Computer Science Program, as well as Google-bankrolled Girls Who Code, Black Girls Code, and NCWIT. One of the reasons the all-girls STEM school reportedly got the green light is that its backers satisfied federal regulations requiring a “substantially equal school” for excluded male students by submitting a plan for a companion all-boys school that would emphasize English Language Arts, where they often fall short of girls’ test scores, rather than GALA’s focus on STEM. One suspects the no-fan-of-gender-restricted-public-schools ACLU may call BS on this maneuver. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Anne Thwacks writes Assistant Chief Constable Wayne Mawson told the [Scottish Police Authority] committee that a total of 20, 086 records had been lost because a computer programmer pressed the wrong button between May and July last year. He added: “….they had been properly put on the system by the officers as a result of stopping and searching people, but we lost the outcome of it as a computer programming error. We have been working really hard to recover that data. I have personally overseen the sending out of several thousand emails to officers and follow-up audits. We have been working hard with HMICS to oversee everything that we do, to make sure it is done properly and I am pleased to say that the vast majority of that data, those results, are now back on the system.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
