Technology to Aid Multiple Users in Sharing Existing Applications: We propose an easy to implement interaction system that allows multiple users to share existing applications without modification. We call this system Metamouse. Metamouse provides each user their own mouse and cursor. These cursors are then mapped down to one metacursor, which interacts with the existing applications. This allows the applications to see just one cursor, as they expect, but the cursor is controlled by many students at once. Our preliminary tests have shown that this interaction paradigm is viable and achieves our goal of involving multiple students more thoroughly in a learning activity. We feel that with proper execution, this technology has the potential to enrich educational environments all over the world.
University: UC Berkeley
Men’s Story Project
The Men’s Story Project (MSP) is a replicable, performance-based, community discussion project through which participants critically examine social ideas about masculinity. The MSP mission is to strengthen social norms that support healthy masculinities and gender equality, and to help eliminate gender-based violence, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, and other oppressions that are intertwined with masculinities, through ongoing events of men’s public story-sharing and collective dialogue. The Bears Breaking Boundaries funds are supporting: a) bringing a production of the MSP to UCB in April 2009, b) filming the production for educational use, and c) conducting a qualitative study with UCB students and MSP presenters regarding project content, process, and perceived short-term impacts, to inform development of a Masculinity Studies DeCal and UCB MSP initiative for the 2009-10 academic year.
Hyoumanity
Patients facing the most complex and difficult diagnoses sometimes see dozens of doctors and spend years searching for answers. Ultimately, resolving many of these cases depends upon matching a patient with a unique, complex, and potentially rare condition to the doctor with the expertise, experience, and insight to recognize and diagnose it. By providing a forum that allows patients to post a structured medical profile and offer a monetary reward for information leading to a diagnosis, Hyoumanity flips diagnostic search around, giving doctors both a mechanism and incentive to find the patients they can help. Using the reach of the web and the power of market forces to better match patient needs with distributed medical expertise will help to lower medical costs, improve health outcomes, and alleviate pain and suffering.
Disability Awareness through Sport
The Disability Awareness Through Sport (DATS) project partners UC Berkeley and the Bay Area Outreach & Recreation Program (BORP) in a collaborative effort to increase disability awareness and student service on the Cal campus and in the surrounding Berkeley community. These two organizations will work together to implement a course in which students will use the sport of wheelchair basketball as a framework for exploring issues of disability awareness, advocacy, and outreach. In addition to learning how to play wheelchair basketball, students will also work in close collaboration with BORP as mentors, coaches, and community organizers.
Chronic Disease Tracking & Management
CS0: Beauty, Awe and Joy of Computing
We propose to develop Computer Science 0 (CS0): a new introductory general service course, available to students across the university, to share the beauty, joy and awe of computing. This course has the potential to serve as a model for a new CollegeBoard Advanced Placement course in the works, which could have national impact. Students will be gently introduced to programming and computational thinking using a new graphical programming language called Scratch, with the emphasis on problems relevant to themselves and society.
BTTR Ventures: Back to the Roots
BTTR Ventures (pronounced Better) stands for “back to the roots,” a phrase that encompasses the idea of creating a company that stands for sustainability, progress, and social responsibility. BTTR Ventures aims to turn one of the largest waste streams in the Bay Area, the tons of coffee ground waste generated daily, into a highly-demanded, nutritious, and valuable food product – specialty mushrooms. Along the way, not only do they play to create a healthy food source, but also to provide urban jobs, save thousands of tons of valuable substrate from being dumped into landfills, and donate substantial amounts of cash flow back into the communities from which the coffee ground waste originated. (Note: This project originally won in the Big Ideas “Social Innovation category.)
Policy Proposals to Reduce Overharvest From Marine Fisheries
Historically, marine management policies have been unable to ensure sustainable, economically viable fishing practices. These policies have been ineffective in regulating technological advancements in fishing, and flawed policies have contributed towards hastening the use of harmful technologies. As a result, several once-major fishing stocks are overfished or collapsed, resulting in both severe environmental degradation and large economic losses. This paper proposes a series of initiatives to encourage the fishing industry to adopt sustainable fishing practices and provide support to maintain healthy, profitable commercial fish populations.(Note: This project originally won in the Big Ideas “Science, Technology, and Engineering Policy” category.)
Magneto-Optic Technology Hits The Field: A pilot program to implement a new malaria diagnostic device in Southern Benin
Malaria is a disease endemic to regions of South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia that continues to do serious humanitarian and economic damage to developing countries. A new diagnostic tool (the MOT device) has recently been invented that would improve access to accurate malaria diagnosis at low costs. To collect information on the best way to bring these devices to the communities that need it, we propose a fact-finding pilot program to provide MOTmalaria diagnosis and treatment centers to 25,000 people in Southern Benin. (Note: This project originally won in the Big Ideas “Science, Technology, and Engineering Policy” category.)