Solar panels cast shade on agriculture in a good way

By Ecological Society of America - Monday, July 29th, 2019

Combining solar panel (photovoltaic) infrastructure and agriculture creates a mutually beneficial relationship. This practice of co-locating the two by planting crops under the shade of solar panels is called agrivoltaics.

Steve Hodgkinson is banning ‘stupid digital stuff’. Relentless incrementalism, empowered staff and reusable platforms allow for cheap, fast ‘micro services’ that users love

By David Donaldson - Friday, July 19th, 2019

Hodgkinson has been driving the move to cloud-based platforms across DHHS, which recently completed the shift to Microsoft Office 365. This means that rather than persisting with running its own clunky, rarely updated software, the department can buy into an adaptable, ever-improving online system.

Report finds every $1 Australia spends on preschool will return $2, but this won’t just magically happen

By Jen Jackson, Education Policy Lead, Mitchell Institute, Victoria University - Monday, July 15th, 2019

A report released last week showed quality preschool would deliver a two-for-one return on investment for Australia: that is, for every dollar governments invest in preschool, two dollars will be returned to the economy.

Commissioned by early childhood research organisation the Front Project, and conducted by data analysts PwC, the analysis looked at the impact of Australia’s current system, which provides 15 hours a week of early childhood education in the year before school.

Drag-and-drop data analytics

By Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Thursday, June 27th, 2019

Northstar, an interactive data-science system, lets users drag-and-drop and manipulate data, and use a virtual data scientist tool to generate machine-learning models that run prediction tasks on datasets, on a user-friendly touchscreen interface.