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  Big Data on Campus to Decline Dropout Rates?

  What if colleges could predict whether students would drop out of college before they had a chance to? How helpful would this information be in reducing dropout rates and increasing graduation rates?

  Well, a new system may be able to help do just that.

  "We have identified factors that can be predictors of student success, which gives colleges the ability to flag at-risk students," says Eric Reich of Higher One's Campus Labs platform. "Now, thanks to Higher One's Campus Labs platform, colleges are able to use sophisticated data analysis techniques to understand more about students."

  Clues to how students are doing include how often they participate in campus activities (like sporting events or student organizations), how often they use campus services (such as checking in at the financial aid office, career center or computer labs) and how engaged they are with their own course work (providing course feedback or visiting professors during office hours).

  All of these actions create data that institutions can capture, and all of these actions have been shown to increase the likelihood of a student to graduate. It makes sense, but only in recent years have schools embraced the technology that can gather and analyze these data so the college can really identify at-risk students and "tweak" their programs to help.

  "Using Campus Labs, an advisor can actually detect patterns of students who are not successful and intervene to give them the guidance at the critical time -- before it's too late," says Reich.

  Just look at Northern Arizona University, which recently partnered with Higher One to help the University collect data, collaborate across divisions, embrace student assessment and ultimately guide decisions by administrators.

  "Freshman outreach has been very successful for us," says Erin Grisham, executive director of educational support service at Northern Arizona. "Students we meet with retain at higher rates than those we don't meet with."

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  CES 2014: A Look Into the Future of Technology

  The first International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) took place in New York City in June of 1967. Since then, thousands of products have been announced at the yearly show, including the VCR in 1970, the CD Player in 1981, HDTV in 1998, 3D HDTV in 2009 and Ultra HDTV, Flexible OLED and driverless car technology in 2013.

  Tech expert Brett Larson and KillerApps.TV gave a glimpse of the cutting-edge tech unveiled at the CES 2014:

  TV Tech. Beside the big introduction of the new Ultra HD or 4k TV technology, DISH Network introduced three new ideas. Extending the capabilities of a Hopper, the SuperJoey gives users the ability to watch and record up to eight shows simultaneously. The Wireless Joey system opens up installation options where coaxial or Ethernet wiring is difficult to achieve or undesirable, like above the fireplace or in the kitchen. And Virtual Joey provides a nearly identical experience to the Hopper's hardware-based Joeys within the new Sony PlayStation 4 with a Joey app for the PlayStation 3 system and select smart TVs.

  For the home hobbyist. Brother featured the ScanNCut machine -- a revolutionary new home and hobby cutting machine with a built-in scanner. It's the only home and hobby cutting machine that can take an image, photo or hand drawn sketch, scan it and allow you to precisely cut the shapes or outlines you want to create unique, one-of-a-kind scrapbooks, greeting cards, appliqués, quilts, and crafts.

  Gaming Tech. The Logitech PowerShell Controller + Battery turns the iPhone 5s, iPhone 5, and iPod touch (5th generation) into a mobile gaming console. Just insert the device into the PowerShell like a standard case, and enjoy favorite games on the go, with double the play time, thanks to an onboard battery.

  Wearable Technology. The LG Lifeband Touch is a physical activity-tracking wristband with a full touch OLED display. It offers a convenient way to view key fitness data such as time, distance, speed, number of steps taken, calories burned and projected pace. The device enables data to be easily transmitted to LG's smartphone app for the connected user's convenience and tracking.

  The connected car. Audi presented its newest electronic technologies at CES in Las Vegas for the fourth year in a row. The Audi stand showcased the integration of 4G LTE technology into Audi connect services. This technology allows for a faster transfer of data to the car for info on parking availability, social media, video streaming and more.

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  New Hope for the Medically Disabled

  Among the marvels of modern medicine are neural prosthetics, tiny bioengineered devices that surgeons implant in brain tissue to compensate for a variety of disabilities to the human nervous system. Physicians already have had much success with cochlear implants for the hearing impaired, with future research programs aimed at assisting epileptics, victims of Alzheimer's disease, and even individuals who have sustained spinal cord injury and loss of limbs.

  Neuroscientists see a vast horizon for these micro implants, which are able to read electrical and chemical signals from the nervous system to stimulate sensory function lost through disease or injury. What the amazing devices do is avoid the damaged neural lines of communication in the body to restore function. In the case of the cochlear prosthetics, for example, sounds gathered from a tiny microphone are converted to electrical signals and used to stimulate the auditory nerve of deaf patients.

  Neurologists, orthopedic surgeons, materials scientists, and mechanical engineers are all collaborating on the research and development of neural prosthetics, which each year receive $6.5 million in funding at the National Institutes of Health.

  Engineers play a significant role in the interdisciplinary research and development of neural prosthetics. Engineers will be called on to make innovative use of materials to design and fabricate devices that allow sustained electronic functioning in the environment of the human body, without causing tissue infection or other serious conditions. Research efforts have focused on technologies that enable the micro devices to be safely implanted in human tissue for long periods. Sarah Felix, a research engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), is making gains with thin-film flexible polymer materials that allow devices to conform to the live tissue in which they are implanted.

  Lawrence Livermore is currently developing neural implants that are able to restore auditory, motor and bladder function, aid speech, and control depression and epilepsy. Future programs at the lab include experimentation with deep brain and spinal cord simulation, which will enable physicians to advance neural prosthetics to the next level of human health and rehabilitation.

  Promising clinical studies are underway at some of the most prestigious medical research centers in the U.S. as the scientific community continues to advance neural prosthetics to help disabled persons achieve quality of life. Indeed, neural prosthetics will be an intriguing pathway of multidisciplinary scientific and engineering development for years to come.