Packing the Substitute Teacher Pool With Outside Experts, Charging Cars By the Mile (Not By the Gallon) and More

 
What Can Substitute Teachers Do for City Schools? CityLab

The average teacher misses 9.4 days each school year. Total it up, and by high school graduation, a student will have spent six months of class-time with a substitute teacher. Rather than having a sub plod through an unfamiliar lesson plan or just distribute worksheets, a new model at two Boston schools places local experts in urban farming, animation, robotics, puppetry — you name it — at the blackboard to teach about their field.
Taxing Drivers by the Mile, Instead of at the Pump, The Denver Post

Hybrid and electric vehicles may be a boon to the atmosphere, but they’ve caused some headaches for government administrators, namely, how to pay for bridge and road repairs. Prius drivers travel farther on a tank — functionally discounting their share of the gas tax — so the Colorado Department of Transportation is testing the feasibility of a fairer standard: charging for each mile driven instead.
Can Hypothermia Save Gunshot Victims? The New Yorker

Most people who suffer a traumatic gunshot wound die within an hour. Having lost so much blood, their heart can no longer circulate what’s left. A new procedure at University of Maryland’s Shock Trauma Center, near Baltimore, buys more time by putting the body on ice. When a victim is wheeled in, doctors fill the body with freezing saline, pausing heartbeats and giving them just enough time to sew up the wounds.

Plug Your Phone Into Your Car and You Might Just Save Money and Lives

Want to save money on gas and improve road safety? Automatic, a new San Francisco-based startup, is helping drivers learn “hypermilling,” a practice in which drivers reduce bad habits that waste fuel. By hooking up a smartphone to a car’s OBD-II Data Link Connector (found underneath the steering wheel in most cars produced after 1996), and downloading the corresponding app, drivers can be alerted when they make errors such as accelerating too quickly or slamming on the brakes. The information is then consolidated by the app to give the driver a final grade between 60 and 100. The idea is that observant drivers will modify their behavior (even if just to avoid the beeping, which goes off when a mistake occurs), saving up to hundreds of dollars each year on gas.
But Automatic also goes a step further by providing drivers with various “smart enhancements” to keep them safe. The app can diagnose mechanical problems, and dial emergency responders or family members if the car is in an accident. For the forgetful, Automatic can even remind you where your car is parked. You may not earn a perfect driving score, but peace of mind might be worth the frequent beeping.
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