Global Cubes in Space to launch in T&T

Fifteen NorthGate College students are to receive awards from the Canadian High Commissioner for the school’s winning entry in the global Cubes in Space programme.

Cubes in Space is a no-cost global design contest in which teams of secondary school students from around the world compete by developing science experiments for launch into space. The T&T-based campus of NorthGate College won the 2014 global prize for experiment design.

Each student will receive an award from Canadian-based Cubes in Space organisers, iDoodlesSoftware, at the special ceremony hosted at the High Commissioner’s residence in Port-of-Spain on September 26.

“It is significant that students from a school in a Caribbean country with no space programme could design an experiment, have that experiment sent into space and win our global contest,” iDoodleSoftware Inc. founder and chief executive Robert Sowah told the Guardian.

The prizegiving will double as the global launch of the 2015 Cubes in Space programme, which targets 11- to 14-year-old students. The ceremony will feature presenters such as US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) astronaut Dr Roger Crouch, who flew on two US space shuttle missions, and Bevil Wooding, chief knowledge officer of Congress WBN.

"The hope is that more kids from around the world will be taking part in this one as a result of the Caribbean’s and NorthGate College's success," Amber Dee-Hart, coordinator for the Cubes In Space program said in an interview.

The Cubes In Space program is a partnership between idoodlesoftware inc., Rubik Learning Initiative, the Colorado Space Grant Consortium’s RockSat-C program and supported by the Sounding Rocket Program Office at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility.

The launch is being held in conjunction with the BrightPath Foundation TechLink event, which is being held on September 27 at the Cipriani College of Labour and Cooperative Studies, Valsayn.

How new runoff rules would have impacted 2007 polls

If the constitutional changes being proposed by Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar were in effect during the 2007 general election, former United National Congress (UNC) political leader Basdeo Panday would have been forced to face a runoff vote for his Couva North seat. And he would have had plenty company. On Monday, the PM proposed a series of changes to the electoral process, including term limits, the right to recall non-performing MPs and the introduction of a second ballot runoff vote system.

“A runoff poll is proposed so that each member of the House of Representatives will only become such a member if he obtains more than 50 per cent of the votes cast in a constituency,” the PM said. The map (Page A1) of the 2007 general elections results highlights the potential impact of that specific proposed constitutional change. Fourteen of the 41 electoral districts—more than 33 per cent of the available seats—would have required a runoff vote.

That election was won 26-15 by the People’s National Movement and interestingly, the winner is likely to have remained the same, as the runoffs would have been required mostly in the 15 constituencies won by the UNC. Including Panday, a total of nine UNC candidates would have gone back to the polls for runoffs, in Caroni Central, Couva North, Couva South, Cumuto/Manzanilla, Fyzabad, Mayaro, Princes Town North, Tabaquite and Vasant Bharath’s St Augustine.

Bharath’s runoff would have been against his current coalition counterpart Winston Dookeran, who was then political leader of the Congress of the People (COP). The remainder of the UNC wins—Caroni East, Jack Warner’s Chaguanas West, Naparima, Roodal Moonilal’s Oropouche East, Oropouche West and the Prime Minister’s Siparia constituency—would have been won outright. The People’s National Movement (PNM) would also have been affected, although to a lesser degree.

Of their 26 seats, five would have been returned to the polls—Barataria/San Juan, Chaguanas East, Pointe-a-Pierre, Princes Town South/Tableland and St Joseph.

In this scenario, the PNM would still have won 21 seats outright—Arima, Arouca/Maloney, D’Abadie/O’Meara, Diego Martin Central, Diego Martin North/East, Diego Martin West, La Brea, La Horquetta/Talparo, Laventille East/Morvant, Laventille West, Lopinot/Bon Air West, Point Fortin, Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West, Port-of-Spain South, San Fernando East, St Ann’s East, Tobago East, Tobago West, Toco/Sangre Grande and Tunapuna.

In the May 24, 2010 polls, none of the winning candidates got less than 50 per cent of the votes so no runoffs would have been needed. The People’s Partnership coalition government beat the PNM 29-12 in that election.

From T&T Guardian

Changing the game for data collection in the Caribbean

A mobile SMS-based survey service from a Caribbean-based company could change the way data is collected and analysed in the region.

If Kenfield Griffith has anything to say about it, his company will soon be adding potent fuel to the digital revolution smouldering quietly throughout the islands of the Caribbean.

Born in Montserrat and of Barbadian extract, Griffith is the CEO of mSurvey, a mobile surveys company based in Kenya. Kristal Peters, Director of Business Development and Strategy, runs the company’s Trinidad and Tobago office.

"It's Friday morning. Let's create a survey together," Griffith says to a group of relative strangers gathered in a small room in the Max Richards Building at the Faculty of Engineering of The University of the West Indies, St Augustine for mSurvey’s workshop on data collection and surveying using mobile technology.

His confidence seems well placed. Within minutes, the demo survey is set up and sent to a pool of prospective participants located in Kenya and Trinidad and Tobago, who immediately start returning their responses via SMS technology. Soon, their data start streaming in to a dynamic web page, which aggregates and visualises the survey results in real-time. In no time at all, the roomful of workshop participants, about fifty in all, are analysing the fresh data.

The audience is an interesting mix of academics, researchers, policy makers, mobile carrier representatives, students and software developers, and many seem eager to learn more.

“Do you sell data to third parties?” asks one man seated toward the middle of the room.

"We have the technology that folks use to get other people's data. But we don't sell anyone's data to third parties," Griffith replied.

Moments later, he clarified his business model. The primary service that mSurvey provides is to help people, businesses and organisations to use mobile technology to get the precise data they need to make high-impact decisions quickly.

"We're trying to solve a problem here and that problem is getting data.”

To have some idea of what Griffith means, you need only to have tried to get survey data quickly and reliably in the Caribbean context. For many organisations trying to use survey data to harvest meaningful insights and increase their ROI, the biggest stumbling block is the inability to gather data in the first place. Door-to-door surveys are costly and painfully slow. Open data sources like the World Bank are always just a click away but don't necessarily give the specific insights required for contextual decision-making. And commissioned online surveys are challenged by the limits of the local population's access and connectivity to the Internet. By some estimates, residential broadband Internet penetration in Trinidad and Tobago, for example, remains as low as 45%.

“Getting information in emerging markets is a pain point for most of us,” Griffith said.

But for every problem, a solution. Mobile penetration in Caribbean islands like Trinidad and Tobago can be as high as 140%. Everyone, statistically speaking, has a phone...or two. So the mSurvey platform allows the entire survey process to be completed over a regular mobile SMS plan at no cost to participants. Respondents don’t need mobile or Wi-Fi broadband Internet connection, nor even a smartphone.

For mSurvey, the ubiquity of the mobile phone has become the answer to one of the region's biggest obstacles to data collection.