It's not that simple. A lot of groundbreaking work is the result of side project within a larger research effort. Google is a good example of this. The ideas and approach had their origins in the NSF project Larry and Sergey were working on. While the SDLP project probably had an impact on digital libraries, the stated goal of the work, the larger impact was the creation of a technology behemoth with thousands of US jobs and a major influence on the digital economy. Using your model, would Google have happened? Probably not.

Also, the way you posed the question is interesting for other reasons. Whether a person changes their behavior is often based on far more than just basic science and technology advancements. Issues like federal policy (political science) can have a huge impact. For example, I'm working on technology research related to the aging of the population. This is a very real societal need and it is easy to justify the work from a financial perspective (take a look at nursing home and caregiver costs). However, many health and independence technologies are intertwined with privacy, whether Medicare will pay, and other non-technical issues. We rely on the insights of our colleagues doing research in the social sciences to help us understand the interplay between functionality and barriers to acceptance and commercialization. Without their research, we'd probably make very expensive paperweights.

Exactly. If the researchers didn't account for traveling behavior (i.e., check to see if the person was posting from their typical geographical region) then the results would be heavily skewed by vacations. Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Utah and Vermont are all popular vacation locations.

It won't stop them, but it gives you the ability to get the plagiarized material pulled. Remember, plagiarism is antithetical to academia. Mashups are fine, as long as you give appropriate credit.

... which, of course already exists

I'm not so sure about that. PhD Comics broke down the FY 2009 budget. It's worth taking a look. $68B out of $3,518B, or about 19%. Now, having said this, there are impacts from government research funds that reach far beyond a large corporation research budget. Research can produce massive savings that last decades, grow whole new industries, or create entirely new "really large corporations" (Google came from an NSF grant). A typical corporate lab is not focused on problems that lead to societal-level savings or whole new fields. They lack the large-scale funds and are often constrained to the company's best interest. Government funded research generally covers a sector of the research map that companies avoid due to risk, long-term payback, or scale.

An important distinction is that Deaf Culture members are not speaking on behalf of all deaf people. There are many, many deaf and hard of hearing people who use cochlear implants and hearing aids. Most of this population were raised by hearing parents who opted for their child to grow up in their world, rather than the world of the DC-oriented state school for the deaf system. Since 90% of the children born deaf have hearing parents, it is not surprising that many of their parents choose an oral, mainstream route. If an insular community that spoke a different language told you that, because of a physical feature on your new baby, your child should grow up in a culture other than your own, would you? It is also hard to dissuade a hearing parent of a newborn when they see an older implanted kid talking and singing - the evidence is staring them in the face.

While some kids in the oral mainstream education path end up migrating away from technology for various reasons, most stay on this track and are very technology friendly. This isn't surprising given the outcomes. Extensive, longitudinal research shows the vast majority of children implanted with a CI in their first few years and enrolled in an oral school (e.g., Option Schools) are mainstreamed into regular classrooms by kindergarten/1st grade. Mainstreaming is a huge predictor of English reading literacy (ASL is not English), which as we all know, is important for many higher income employment opportunities. You don't hear about this population because most of them melt into society.

The advance mentioned in TFA is likely to receive the same attack the DC crowd is waging on cochlear implants. They claim deaf kids should make the decision for themselves. This is a smokescreen. Kids implanted after the early language development windows (pre-5) have a much harder time learning to understand and use the sound provided by the implant due to reduced brain plasticity. If they are much older, they are also less likely to be mainstreamed and therefore behind the curve on literacy. Therefore, it is not surprising kids who are "given a choice when they are older" would have poorer outcomes and are more likely to abandon technology.

Having said all this, many adult cochlear implant and hearing aid users are unlikely to opt for this advance. If they are like my wife, they are comfortable with their hearing loss, get good use out of their cochlear implant, and don't see a strong need to change. However, this advance would have a huge impact on newborns and kids still in the language development window.

I've seen OPT used properly and effectively for very talented foreign students. I've been around very good universities and I can confirm OPT is critical at keeping top-tier foreign students here in the US. The most common cases are (a) the summer grad school gap when changing schools and (b) a gap between graduation and an employment visa. The former may seem trivial, but it can allow a student to finish up a research project at University A before moving on to University B (e.g., undergrad to grad, MS to PhD, etc). Losing three months of an integrated, talented student has significant impact on a research project. For the latter, I've met numerous students who used OPT as key step towards gaining eventual permanent status.

Magnets are used to keep the internal and external antennas aligned for cochlear implants. CIs have been around for a while, so the community has learned some important lessons. First, you need to plan for magnet removal in the event of an emergency MRI. Most CI users don't get MRIs but sometimes there is a critical need. Therefore, newer implant models allow a qualified doctor to make a small incision, pop the magnet out without damaging the implant, and then put everything back after the MRI. This is extremely rare for obvious reasons.

Second, the magnet in the external component is usually tailored to the individual. The need for different strengths is due to magnet depth, hair, etc. There are several strength levels (e.g., high, medium, low) and you want one that will hold the coil tight, but not so tight that it leads to skin damage.

I'm fortunate enough to know some of the people on the team. They come from robotics backgrounds and are very experienced in highly reliable systems. For example, a big chunk of the Google team was hired out of the Carnegie Mellon Tartan Racing team. That team tested their systems so much that they wore out hardware. The Carnegie Mellon team also originates from the Field Robotics Center which sends robots to Antarctica, volcanoes, sinkhole lakes, the mountain deserts of Chile, and abandoned mines. These are hardened systems developed using hard core systems engineering and serious software engineering methods. Trust me, this is not a group of ivory tower AI people ignoring version control and using latest beta release of LISP. One of the technical leads, Chris Urmson gave a talk last year at Carnegie Mellon. It was apparent that they have continued these practices in Google. The incredible volume of field testing is the outward evidence.

Actually, the screening is Global Entry, which is also associated with border crossing things like NEXUS and SENTRI. These programs are very popular for people who drive over the US border a lot since they let you go through a faster customs line. For example, NEXUS can shave 20+ minutes off a border crossing in/out of Canada (it works both ways). The time savings can really add up if you drive across the border a lot. Also, the fee is only once every few years.Therefore, people of all classes get NEXUS, SENTRI, etc. For example, when I went for my interview the waiting room was overwhelmingly middle class. These programs automatically enroll you into Global Entry. Global Entry gets you faster entry into the US when arriving through certain airports, which is a nice byproduct for people living in border towns.

In short, most people get Global Entry for border crossing and could care less about TSA. Given the background check needed for these Global Entry programs, it is not surprising that someone finally realized they could re-use the prescreening for TSA purposes.

In reality, the auto companies and their partners in university labs have been doing work research on HUDs for a while. The augmented reality approach has been tried in research studies as a result of successes in the aviation community. However, there are huge differences between augmented reality for cars when comparing to planes and pedestrians. The point of this post is not that HUDs are bad or unlikely to succeed, but rather that the designers of trade show concepts are ignoring much of the existing research. The concepts in TFA are unlikely to be used for actual products due to safety issues. Expect simpler HUDs focused on safety oriented problems. Here are some of the safety problems:

First, cars tend to hit things quicker. This is a crude point about recovery time, but a major one.

Second, there is considerably more variation in scene brightness due to driving speeds and local factors like buildings and trees. This leads to challenges perceiving the HUD imagery. Demos on trade show floors and labs usually gloss over this factor.

Perhaps the biggest concern is that there humans have perception errors due to the way our brains integrate augmented reality with the real world. First is the issue of cognitive capture. This is when you ignore the real world and just use the HUD for your information. For example, the collision warning system may highlight all the moving vehicles, so you learn to just look for the highlighting. Unlike a video game where every object is known, automotive sensing doesn't work 100% and objects will be missed. Cognitive capture is when you fail to perceive the kid running into the middle of the street because he wasn't highlighted. This can be demonstrated easily in the lab and many studies have concrete evidence of this.

The second perception problem is that HUDs can lead to misperception of distance. A HUD can only have one focal length while the real world has an infinite amount. Mismatches can lead to the driver misinterpreting the distance of an object. This isn't a problem when flying (everything is at optical infinity) or walking (you're moving to slow), but can cause problems when driving.

The third perception problem is masking. This is when the information about the new cafe covers the pedestrian crossing the street.

If your organization has access to this paper, it is an excellent primer on the issues. And yes, it was written in 1997.

This is not a patent on autonomous driving. That would be very hard to do given the extensive prior art. Instead, the patent is basically focused the vehicle switching modes or executing an autonomous motion based on a QR code or some other infrastructure based marker that points at an URL. Many other teams have used infrastructure markers to indicated a change in vehicle mode. For example, California PATH encodes a binary 0101 signal using N-S-N-S magnet orientation, several Japanese teams use RF-based roadway beacons, and a variety of teams use painted markings (e.g., Civis bus in Las Vegas). However, most of these use internally stored references and maps on the vehicles. Also, some of the DSRC implementations conceived by US DOT include autonomous actions based on information received over RF from nearby vehicles. The difference here is that this patent is about using the reference to look up a command over the internet. It is a small delta on existing work.

Having said this, the idea raises all sorts of questions about man-in-the-middle attacks.

Actually, the flagship Borders in Ann Arbor was notoriously difficult to get hired at. They had a hard core literature test for prospective employees. I know English majors who failed the test.

I got crumbs on my keyboard...