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  • Cameras and Software Track Our Shopping Behavior

    Next time you go to a store, take a minute to look at all the things that are trying to grab your attention. With so many products available and so many stores and websites, how do you decide what to buy and where to shop? Whether it’s convenience, good service or finding the best deals, store owners want to know what attracts you to their stores, and what it takes to keep you coming back. Turns out, there’s a science to all this.Macy's New York store

    With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), computer scientists Rajeev Sharma, Satish Mummareddy and their colleagues have developed software that breaks down shopping behavior much like websites do. Sharma’s company, VideoMining, uses overhead cameras to put together a top down view of how people shop and what they buy.

    “Basically, what VideoMining does is use software along with cameras mounted on the ceiling of stores to track shoppers as they move around the store and create data that helps us understand how shoppers are shopping,” explains Sharma. The software creates maps of a store’s traffic patterns by digitally analyzing the video. Using the traffic data, VideoMining creates charts and graphs showing well travelled areas in a store and dead spots — places people ignore. The software also can tabulate how long shoppers take before that “moment of truth” when they select an item to purchase. Cameras are positioned directly above and picture resolution is intentionally set low so all shoppers remain anonymous.

    “You cannot identify individual shoppers,” says Sharma. “The computer is actually watching the video and generating numbers that represent [each] shopper’s behavior. It’s all about capturing human behavior so you can really understand it over a long period of time.”

    The idea is to show retailers and manufacturers the best areas in the store to place products, and how to create a comfortable place for people to shop. “By providing the data to retailers and manufacturers,” says Sharma, “they can customize and design the stores and the shelves and the products to match the shoppers’ interest.”

    Sharma identifies trends. For example, people prefer wider aisles when they shop. Women take a lot longer to shop than men, and, except in a few cases, brand loyalty is not always strong. “What we’re finding in some categories, people are going to the store and making up their mind right there. You can see people coming in, going between brands and picking up the product based upon price; based upon other attributes.”

    The software was initially created to monitor the elderly and disabled in their homes. Now it’s keeping an eye on shoppers, giving businesses a scientific leg up in the rat race of figuring out how to best serve their customers and keep them coming back.

    Miles O’Brien, Science Nation Correspondent
    Ann Kellan, Science Nation Producer

    Courtesy of the National Science Foundation

  • Tax Supporters Turn To The Ballot Box

    By Josh Goodman, Stateline Staff Writer

    As Colorado contemplated large cuts to public education earlier this year, Rollie Heath wished that the state would raise taxes instead.Although Heath is a member of the Democratic majority in the state Senate and sits on the powerful appropriations committee, he didn’t try to use his legislative influence to persuade lawmakers to pass a tax increase. Instead, his approach was to do something any Coloradan could have done: He offered a citizens’ initiative.

    Heath’s measure would raise both sales and income taxes over the next five years and use the roughly $3 billion generated to restore money to education, from preschool to higher ed. The measure officially qualified for November’s ballot last week. So a momentous decision about taxing and spending will be made by Colorado’s voters, not the state’s legislators.

    In Colorado, Heath’s approach was the only one available to him. Under the state’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, all tax increases must be approved on the ballot. Yet even in other states where the legislature retains the power to set tax rates, supporters of tax increases are contemplating the same approach of going to the voters. In Nevada, business and labor groups are talking about bringing a major tax increase to the ballot. In California, leading labor unions are considering the same strategy for 2012.

    Historically, ballot initiatives have more often been used to curtail taxes than to raise them. That’s been true in California, Nevada and Colorado as much as anywhere else. It’s not clear that voters today are any more amenable to tax increases than they’ve been in the past.

    What has changed, though, is the obstacles to passing tax increases in legislatures. Those obstacles include supermajority requirements and other rules that make it particularly difficult to raise taxes. They also include a Republican Party that has become more united in opposition to tax hikes at the same time that it enjoys control of either the governorship or at least one house of the legislature in 39 states. In that context, supporters of higher taxes have begun to wonder whether going directly to the ballot is now the easiest way — and perhaps even the only politically plausible way — to raise taxes.

    Signature strategy

    When Heath began promoting his initiative earlier this year, most of the Colorado political world scoffed. Governor John Hickenlooper, a Democrat like Heath, declared that the state had “no appetite” for tax increases this year. Even the Colorado Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union, withheld its endorsements. Heath, who lost by a 2-to-1 margin as the Democratic nominee for governor in 2002, seemed to be on another quixotic quest.

    That changed when Heath turned in 142,000 signatures to get his measure on the ballot, including 1,000 he gathered himself. Now, teachers’ unions and the state association of school boards are backing the initiative. Heath hopes he’s building a popular movement for increasing revenues in a state where per-pupil spending is $1,800 below the national average and where K-12 education was cut by more than $200 million this year. “We’ve gone too far,” Heath says. “You can’t separate jobs and economic development from education.”

    Credit: Credit: istockpihoto

  • Protecting Women from Unlawful Mortgage Lending Practices

    (Editor’s Note: This post appears on the White House website,  a Council on Women and Girls section entry. We’ve added the links)

    Bringing a new child into a family and buying a house are two momentous and happy occasions for any family.  When HUD’s Office of Fair Housing & Equal Opportunity (FHEO) learned that some mortgage lenders had policies or practices that make qualifying for a mortgage more difficult for pregnant women or parents on parental leave, we leapt into action.  We knew that treating pregnant women and parents differently when issuing a mortgage could be a violation of the federal Fair Housing Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender or family status, amongst other categories.

    With the help of Moms Rising, a 1.1 million member strong virtual community, we are uncovering cases around the country.  Our partners at Moms Rising describe the stories of mortgage discrimination their members report as “heartbreaking and infuriating.”  I would add one more word: “Illegal.”

    I got to know Dr. Elizabeth Budde, an Asian American immigrant who has become a top cancer researcher in Seattle.  Dr. Budde initially received approval for a mortgage while she was pregnant, but the offer was rescinded when she took maternity leave after the birth of her child.  Dr. Budde stepped forward to bring this issue to light, and inspired others to bring forward their own stories of discrimination.   A dedicated team in our FHEO office is leading the way to provide relief to Dr. Budde and other victims of discriminatory mortgage policies and to foster industry changes so that families will no longer face roadblocks to qualifying for a mortgage.

    This week, I accepted a Superhero Award from Moms Rising on behalf of our team, who did the real work.  Together, all of us will continue to make progress for women and their families because fair treatment when getting a home loan is a real family value.  Housing discrimination based on gender or against families with children was not covered when President Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act of 1968, but has since been added to the list of protected groups.  These types of discrimination, along with disability, race, religious and national origin discrimination, constitute important parts of our work today.

    For more information and HUD help on housing discrimination, call 1-800-669-9777 or visit www.hud.gov/fairhousing.

    John Trasvina is Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development

    See more about Women

     

  • Patients at Small, Isolated, Rural Hospitals More Likely to Receive Lower Quality of Care

    hospital sign (hospital_sign_release_page.jpg)In the first national study to examine care at critical access hospitals (CAHs) in rural areas of the US,  Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers found that CAHs have fewer clinical capabilities, lower quality of care, and worse patient outcomes compared with other hospitals. The researchers found that patients admitted to a CAH for heart attack, congestive heart failure, or pneumonia were at greater risk of dying within 30 days than those at other hospitals. The study shows that despite more than a decade of policy efforts to improve rural health care, substantial challenges remain.

    “Critical access hospitals face a unique set of obstacles to providing high quality care, and our findings suggest that their needs are not being met by current health policy efforts,” said Karen Joynt, a research fellow in HSPH’s Department of Health Policy and Management and the lead author of the paper.

    The government defines CAHs as geographically isolated facilities with no more than 25 acute care beds. More than a quarter of acute care hospitals in the United States have been designated CAHs by the Medicare Rural Hospital Flexibility Program of the 1997 Balanced Budget Act. The program created payment reform that has kept small rural hospitals financially solvent, preserving access to care for rural Americans who might otherwise have no accessible inpatient provider.

    Joynt and her colleagues analyzed the records of 2,351,701 Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries at 4,738 hospitals (26.8 percent of which were CAHs) diagnosed with acute myocardial infarction (heart attack), congestive heart failure, and pneumonia in 2008-2009. Compared with other hospitals, CAHs were less likely to have intensive care facilities, advanced cardiac care capabilities, or even basic electronic health records. These hospitals were less likely to provide appropriate evidence-based care, as measured by the Hospital Quality Alliance metrics.

    Patients admitted to CAHs had 30 to 70 percent higher odds of dying within 30 days after being admitted for heart attacks, congestive heart failure or pneumonia. “We were surprised at the magnitude of these findings,” said Ashish Jha, senior author on the study and an associate professor in HSPH’s Department of Health Policy and Management. “These findings suggest that we need to redouble our efforts to help these hospitals improve.”

    “To improve the quality of care patients receive at CAHs, policy makers could explore partnerships with larger hospitals, increasing use of telemedicine, or inclusion of these hospitals in national quality improvement efforts,” said Joynt. “Helping these hospitals improve is essential to ensuring that all Americans receive high-quality care, regardless of where they live.”

    Study authors included Yael Harris, director of the Office of Health IT & Quality at the Department of Health and Human Services and E. John Orav, associate professor in the Department of Biostatistics at HSPH.

    “Quality of Care and Patient Outcomes in Critical Access Rural Hospitals,” Karen E. Joynt, Yael Harris, E. John Orav, Ashish K. Jha, Journal of the American Medical Association

  • Stateline: The Aging States of America

    Infographic by Carla Uriona and Evan Potler

    As the baby boomers grow older, America is getting older, too. According to the 2010 census, the nation’s median age has increased to 37.2, up from 35.3 in 2000. The aging trend held up in every state — only the District of Columbia has a younger median age now than a decade ago. For states, changing demographic patterns, visualized below as “population pyramids,” have major implications for policy and politics. Older states, such as Maine, Vermont, West Virginia and New Hampshire, may have less time than others to prepare for challenges such as providing long-term care for a growing elderly population. At the same time, younger states such as Utah and Texas must wrestle with educating relatively large school-age populations
    —  Christopher Swope

     

    Infographic: the aging states of America, age-sex population pyramids of the 50 states based on 2010 U.S. Census data

     

    Stateline.org is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news service of the Pew Center on the States that reports and analyzes trends in state policy.

  • An Apology for Demon Rum

    by Joan L. Cannonglass of white, red wine

    I’m pretty sure “demon” isn’t the right epithet. I know about the “moderate” use of spirits and the virtues of red wine, and I’m familiar with the dubious advantages of extra relaxation and reduction of inhibitions. Those aren’t the qualities I’m thinking of. Drink can be a great tool for assessing character.

    As a wonderful elderly friend used to say, “Comparisons are odious,” so I try not to indulge in them too often, but sometimes I can’t help myself. For instance, when I read a certain kind of supposedly sophisticated fiction, I often feel a glow of satisfaction if I spot some reference to a foreign city I’ve visited or a wine I’ve tasted. I’ll remember that when, as recently happened, it was drink what was on offer or go thirsty (and the weather was pretty warm.) I really did find the celebrated local product was worse than anything I had ever imagined would be bottled and sold.

    I’m equally embarrassed when a similar reference leaves me out in the cold because I never heard of it. That’s when I decide it’s time to begin reading the weekly wine column in the daily paper. I’ll never be an expert, but it’s like doing crossword puzzles. If you guess right, it makes you puff up a little.

    One thing I’ve learned, however, is the danger of becoming a doctrinaire pain in the usual place about wine. I honestly do prefer white over red with some food, and the reverse with other food. I know perfectly well that one should drink what one likes, and the experts be damned, but since I think they’re right most of the time, I’ve had to learn to keep my mouth shut and go along with the crowd, say in a restaurant where a bottle is the only sensible purchase, and there are too few of us to order more than one. Especially important if I’m the only one who doesn’t like the choice.

    After all, as a dear French friend commented years ago when my husband and I took him to see the oldest vineyard in the US, “Oh, wine is not poison.” Maybe not, but you couldn’t tell from the samples at the tasting counter. Or maybe it was one weekend when he was visiting. I’d put together lunch from leftover lobster (sic!). I was teaching at the time, and a grateful (?) graduate had brought us a bottle of Pouilly Fuissé. We were saving such a treasure for a special occasion. We discovered to our chagrin on a Sunday morning that it was the only white wine in the house, so we stuffed it in the freezer to chill.

    The bottle was nicely misted when my husband applied the corkscrew. The glass was green, so we didn’t much consider what was inside, until it flowed into the first glass. It looked exactly like iced tea. Then we checked the year on the label. It was ten years old. Maybe it was then that poor Gabriel made his wonderfully ambivalent remark. The lobster salad was good, and after a glass each, we drank the rest, as I remember. As you can tell, he was right; it wasn’t poison.

    It upsets me when the occasional teetotaler who isn’t a recovering alcoholic expresses horror over the consumption of alcohol. I keep wanting to remind that person that Jesus turned water into wine, not the reverse. Like most people who have lived as long as I have, I’ve seen some pretty terrible ravages wrought by overindulgence, so I have to remind myself to be tolerant. What I object to, though, is the inability of people on the other side to do the same.

  • Lillies, Lanterns and Sunshine: The Chrysler Museum’s Collections

    The Chrysler Museum of  Norfolk, Virginia  was unknown to us until recently. It clearly represents a stunning collection gathered by a knowledgeable and discerning collector. We were drawn to the decorative arts section originally but there is much more here to be explored, comprising 62 galleries for 30,000 works of art from around the world:

    The painting to the right, Helen Turner’s “Lillies, Lanterns and Sunshine,” 1923, oil on canvas, is a collection favorite.

    Walter Chrysler, Jr., scion of the automotive company founder, donated nearly 10,000 objects as part of an arrangement where the Norfolk Academy of Arts and Sciences became the Chrysler Museum of Art.

    The story of his gift goes far beyond the sheer numbers. It’s what his collection contained that remains breathtaking to this day. A late, legendary New York Times art critic called Chrysler the most underrated American collector of his time, and it’s easy to see why.

    As a young man he met the top avant-garde artists of Paris (including Picasso) and was soon purchasing works by them all. He spent his summers in American artist colonies (such as Provincetown, Mass.), and bought works from many future art stars well before they way famous. He was known for buying against fashion, as he had confidence that the special qualities he saw in various pieces would gain acceptance later.

  • Women Were the Foundation of the Civil Rights Movement

    by Jo Freeman

    Women were the secret weapon of the civil rights movement. For the most part, the men made the speeches and did the press interviews, and the women did the work. If they hadn’t, all those great plans would not have gotten past the talking stage.

    At the luncheon for Women Who Dare to Dream, a part of the MLK memorial celebration, Memorial Foundation CEO Harry Johnson Sr. acknowledged that women’s contributions to the movement were often overlooked.

    Ella Baker

    As more biographies and histories are written, the contributions of women are becoming better known. Ella Baker’s work as a founder of both SCLC and SNCC has finally been acknowledged, as has the importance of Fannie Lou Hamer and Rosa Parks.

    But the women who refused to give up their seats on the segregated Montgomery buses before Parks live on only as plaintiffs in the court case that finally resulted in a Supreme Court decision that segregation had to go. The role of the Women’s Political Council in bringing about the boycott has similarly received little attention. And the thousands of women who worked in their own communities to talk their neighbors into registering to vote and other acts of defiance will probably go unrecorded.

    Few know that the groundwork for the civil rights movement was laid by the citizenship schools that started in South Carolina in 1954. The idea of teaching adults to read and to fill out the complicated forms necessary to register to vote was taken up by Septima Clark. After she was fired from her job as a Charleston elementary school teacher for the crime of belonging to the NAACP, she ran the program from the Highlander Folk School.

    When Highlander was closed by a vengeful State of Tennessee in 1961 for practicing and preaching integration, SCLC picked up the program and brought it to Georgia, where it was placed under a new Director of Education, Dorothy Cotton. Funded with foundation grants and run by women, the Citizenship Education Program brought 10,000 people from all over the South to be trained to teach literacy back in their home counties.Fannie Lou Hamer

    They formed the popular base of the movement — the ones who made repeated trips to the county Board of Registrars. Their willingness to stand in line for hours, endure loss of jobs and homes, and still keep coming back demanding to vote, created the record needed to persuade Congress to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

    Images: Ella Baker; Bottom: Fannie Lou Hamer. Both images from Wikimedia

  • Shop for a 50s Dress, Rocking Chair and Unraveling Knitted Calendars and a Persistence of Vision Toy

    We’re admirers of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s shop; shipping to the US is relatively painless (though not cheap), though not all items are shipped. Some items, however, have been consistently carried over the past couple of years, including a range of 50s-style fashions popular in the United Kingdom, on display in the museum and copied.V&A shop

    Consider the 1950s ‘Rose & Bow’ Dress (Size 12), a design adopted from a Steiner pattern. The dress is developed from an original 1950s day dress in the V&A’s archives. Fitted waist and boice, free hips, 100 % cotton. The dress is worn over a productions “Superwhoosh” 1950s petticoat for additional volume. There’s a  Mauve Stripe Slip (Large) whose design is adapted from a fabric designed by Joyce Badrocke for Horrockses Fashions, 1950s in the V&A’s archives. And don’t overlook the zwoosh underskirt.

    Other unusual items include a rocking chair calendar that’s set up and display the months.  Continuing the calendar theme, consider the Unraveling Knitted Calendar for 2012. (*Available to pre-order, due September 2011*). This is a very, very long knitted scarf; pull down the thread at the bottom of the scarf to unravel the days until you reach the end of the year.  (Includes wood hanger).  And holiday cards have arrived.

    The Museum of Childhood has it’s own separate section, including the Dictionary of Children’s Clothes. a mini-Pengun fan and tiger mittens. There are over 15 pages of jewelry including a sunset moth necklace inspired by the vivid colors and detail seen in the florilegia, or botanical illustrations of the 18th century by artists such as George Dionysus Ehret.

    We have no idea of what motorway masking tape is.  Racers tape? But then again the shop features a Thaumatrope’ Optical Toy:Thaumatrope

    “The Thaumatrope was a popular optical toy of the nineteenth-century. Cards that were usually either circular or rectangular were printed with a picture on each side. When the card was spun, sometimes using attached pieces of string, one complete image was formed. A popular example was a bird and a cage. The images were often humorous and this set features a boy being thrown from a donkey and a bull chasing a man. The illusion is created due to the phenomenon know as ‘persistence of vision’. This is when the eye will remember an image for a brief moment and, given two images to see in a short space of time, will combine them. “

  • Dr. King Was Only One of Many Martyrs

    by Jo Freeman

    Almost 700 miles from the new MLK memorial in Washington, DC, is another civil rights memorial, with another curved black granite wall, whose artist is also of Chinese ancestry.Montgomery Alabama Civil Rights Memorial

    Located in Montgomery, Alabama, around the corner from the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church that was Dr. King’s first pastorate, its theme is Justice. The Biblical quotation on its wall was borrowed by Dr. King for his Aug. 28, 1963 speech. It says “We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

    In front of the wall is a black granite table with the names of 40 people who were killed in seven states between the May 17, 1954 Brown decision and Dr. King’s assassination on April 4,1968. Most were black men; six were female; seven were children; eight were white. Some were killed for being “uppity;” some because they were actively working for civil rights; some as random acts of white-on-black violence. Dr. King, the last on the list, was killed for being Dr. King.

    What they have in common is that justice for their deaths was a long time coming, and for some it has yet to arrive. In the South in those days, some killings were simply not crimes. As press secretary George Reedy told President Johnson in October of 1965 “In … certain Southern communities … the white residents …. believe that they have the same right to exterminate civil rights workers that a farmer has to kill rabid dogs. It is absolutely inconceivable to them that a man can be tried and convicted for such actions.”

    The first four listed on the table were killed in 1955: three in Mississippi and one in Texas. Only the name of Emmitt Till is much remembered today. His murderers confessed in public print a few months after they were acquitted by a jury of their peers. In two of the deaths, no one was ever charged. A Texas jury convicted one killer after a full confession, then suspended his five-year sentence so he could walk free.

    Six were killed in 1965: five in Alabama and one in Louisiana. The killers of two black men were never charged. The killers of three whites were tried and acquitted. The third black man — a guy driving home from work shot by a carload of whites who had just left a rally of the National States Rights Party and were showing off their macho — got a modicum of justice. Three of his killers were convicted and sentenced to ten years.