Hasta La Gadget!

The Nintendo Game Boy had long been a symbol of success for the Japanese gaming company for many, many years, and it goes without saying that many of us who grew up in the 1990s had our fair share of fond memories of the Game Boy. Well, it looks as though an official Game Boy emulator for mobile devices could be in the pipeline, according to a recent patent filing by the Japanese giant.

Of course, this is not to say that there has been no Game Boy emulators running on mobile devices thus far, but those have tended to be unofficial emulators – which would mean that there is no official backing or support. All of this looks set to change, as the recent patent filing would enable the playing of Game Boy games that have been converted from their original medium via an emulator, which will see action on mobile devices – and that would mean smartphones and tablets, although I would think that smartwatches are out of the equation.

There should not be any kind of snags or roadbumps when it comes to introducing this emulator on the Android platform, taking into consideration the number of emulators available on the Google Play Store in this day and age. iOS is a different creature, since Apple does not allow game emulators to be released on the App Store.

Nintendo Official Game Boy Emulator For Mobiles Could Be On Its Way

, original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

At the end of last week, we did bring you word on how Sony could be working on an e-paper watch. Well, it seems that more light has been shed along the way, where a secret project known as FES from Sony, or Fashion Electronics in full, has managed to pick up more than its originally intended goal of $17,000 over on a Japanese crowdfunding website.

The Fashion Electronics project came into being in September earlier this year, but there was no mention of the Sony brand at all since Sony wanted to check out the real world demand of e-ink wearables as depicted on the website. It took all of just three weeks to meet the initial goal, and has picked up $20,000 from 150 backers along the way.

Sony has since stepped forward to say that the FES watch is their project, but does not want to reveal additional information such as the launch timeline for its devices. Those who have supported the Fashion Electronics project should want to set their calendars to May 2015, as that is when they can expect to receive the long awaited FES Watch. The FES Watch is said to come with two dozen design patterns, and can change with user’s gestures, now how about that for added customization?

Fashion Electronics Passes Crowdfunding Goal

, original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

While high school dropout percentages in the U.S. are much lower today than they were a few decades ago, there is still a lot of room for improvement.

So what are the underlying causes? And how does every student who does not earn a high school diploma hurt society as a whole? My hope is that in discovering shared traits among dropouts, we can achieve higher high school graduation rates as a nation.

Why are students dropping out?

One unchanging factor when it comes to the dropout rate is socioeconomic background. Since the National Center for Education Statistics first started tracking different groups of high school students in the late 1960s, the socioeconomic status of each pupil has impacted the graduation rate. Students from low-income families are 2.4 times more likely to drop out than middle-income kids, and over 10 times more likely than high-income peers to drop out.

Household income is the not the only disadvantage many dropouts have, though. Students with learning or physical disabilities drop out at a rate of 36 percent. Some behaviors that are often characteristic in dropouts include being retained from advancing a grade level with peers, relocating during the high school years and the general feeling of being left out or alienated by peers or adults at the school. Overall, a student who does not fit the traditional classroom mold, or who falls behind for some reason, is more likely to lose motivation when it comes to high school and decide to give up altogether.

How valuable is a high school diploma?

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that dropouts bring in just $20,241 annually, which is $10,000 less than high school graduates and over $36,000 less than a person holding a bachelor’s degree. The poverty rate for dropouts is over twice as high as college grads, and the unemployment rate for dropouts is generally 4 percentage points higher than the national average. In the end, the lifetime earnings of high school dropouts are $260,000 LESS than peers who earn a diploma.

Why should I care?

The financial ramifications of dropping out of high school hurt more than the individual. It’s estimated that half of all Americans on public assistance are dropouts. If all of the dropouts from the class of 2011 had earned diplomas, the nation would benefit from an estimated $154 billion in income over their working lifetimes. Potentially feeding that number is the fact that young women who give up on high school are nine times more likely to be, or become, young single mothers. A study out of Northeastern University found that high school dropouts cost taxpayers $292,000 over the course of their lives.

It’s not just about the money though. Over 80 percent of the incarcerated population is high school dropouts – making this an issue that truly impacts every member of the community. Numbers are higher for dropouts of color; 22 percent of people jailed in the U.S. are black males who are high school dropouts. As a society, we are not just paying into public assistance programs for dropouts, but we are paying to protect ourselves against them through incarceration.

I wonder what these numbers would look like if we took the nearly $300K that taxpayers put in over the course of a dropout’s lifetime and deposited it into their K-12 learning upfront. If we invested that money, or even half of it, into efforts to enhance the learning experience and programs to prevent dropping out, what would that do to dropout, poverty and incarceration rates? Right now the process seems to be reactionary. What would it look like if more preventative actions were put in place?

What are some underlying causes of the high school dropout rate not mentioned here?

CHICAGO (AP) — A former high school quarterback followed in the steps of one-time pro and college players Saturday by suing a sports governing body — in this case the Illinois High School Association — saying it didn’t do enough to protect him from concussions when he played and still doesn’t do enough to protect current players.

The lawsuit, filed in Cook County Circuit Cook on the same day Illinois wrapped up its last high school football championship games, is the first instance in which legal action has been taken for former high school players as a whole against a group responsible for overseeing prep sports in a state. Such litigation could snowball, as similar suits targeting associations in other states are planned. The lead plaintiff in the lawsuit is Daniel Bukal, a star quarterback at Notre Dame College Prep in Niles from 1999 to 2003. He received multiple concussions playing at the suburban Chicago school and, a decade on, still suffers frequent migraines and has experienced notable memory loss, according to the 51-page suit. Bukal didn’t play beyond high school.

The IHSA did not have concussion protocols in place, putting Bukal and other high school players at risk, and those protocols remain deficient, the lawsuit alleges. It calls on the Bloomington-based IHSA to tighten its rules and regulations regarding head injuries at the 800 high schools it oversees. It does not seek specific monetary damages.

“In Illinois high school football, responsibility — and, ultimately, fault — for the historically poor management of concussions begins with the IHSA,” the lawsuit states. It calls high school concussions “an epidemic” and says the “most important battle being waged on high school football fields … is the battle for the health and lives of” young players.

Bukal’s Chicago-based attorney Joseph Siprut, who filed a similar lawsuit against the NCAA in 2011, provided an advance copy of the new lawsuit to The Associated Press. The college sports governing body agreed this year to settle the NCAA lawsuit, including by committing $70 million for a medical monitoring program to test athletes for brain trauma. The deal is still awaiting approval by a federal judge in Chicago.

The IHSA lawsuit seeks similar medical monitoring of Illinois high school football players, though it doesn’t spell out how such a program would operate. It contends new regulations should include mandatory baseline testing of all players before each season starts to help determine the severity of any concussion during the season.

An IHSA spokesman had no immediate comment on the lawsuit.

The lawsuit only targets the Illinois association. High school football isn’t overseen by a single national body equivalent to the NCAA, but rather by school boards, state law and 50 separate high school associations. Siprut says he intends to file suits against other state governing bodies.

Washington was the first state to pass laws addressing sports concussions in children in 2009, including by barring concussed players from going back into the same game. All 50 states have now adopted such laws.

But the new lawsuit alleges respective governing bodies, like the IHSA, have had patchy, insufficient implementation of various state mandates.

Around 140,000 out of nearly 8 million high school athletes have concussions every year, most of them football players, according to the NFHS. Some estimates put the number of concussions much higher, in part because many go unreported.

Eight high school students died directly from playing football in 2013 — six from head and two from neck injuries — while there were none last year in college, professional or semi-professional football, according to a 2014 report by National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research.

Speaking Saturday after the filing, Siprut said the legal action wasn’t intended to undermine high school football or America’s most popular sport as a whole.

“This is not a threat or attack on football,” he said. “Football is in danger in Illinois and other states — especially at the high school level — because of how dangerous it is. If football does not change internally, it will die. The talent well will dry up as parents keep kids out of the sport— and that’s how a sport dies.”

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Follow Michael Tarm on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mtarm

Joerg Sprave is YouTube’s pre-eminent creator of all things slingshot. On The Slingshot Channel, he shows off his various crazy-genius creations varying from all different levels of lethality. This Sunday Sprave debuted, as he describes, “the world’s first drill-powered, fully automatic dart launcher.”

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