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Parmy Forbes writes at Forbes Magazine that Cruise Automation, a San Francisco-based startup, thinks it can get driverless cars to market faster than Google with something far more simple: a $10,000 accessory you can strap to the roof of your car and plug into your footwell. Cruise is taking pre-orders for 50 units of its RP-1 product, and says it will start installing them in cars early in 2015. One caveat: the system only works on Audi A4 and S4 vehicles, but Cruise is working towards making its technology compatible with other car manufacturers too. Cruise's founder Kyle Vogt refers to his product as a "highway autopilot." To work, drivers take their car onto the highway and onto the lane they want to be in, then they push a button for the system to take control of the accelerator and brake pedals, along with the steering. Drivers can then turn the system off in several different ways, including by tapping the gas pedal or by taking control of the steering wheel.

The technology works just like the cruise control button most vehicles already have, with some additional perks. RP-1 kicks in at a desired speed, but unlike traditional cruise control, it can bring the car to a stop, navigate through stop-and-go traffic, and keeps the driver in the center of the lane without the driver touching the steering wheel. It is not able to weave in and out of lanes though.

Vogt says the reason a startup can compete in this space is because of the intersecting trends of cheap and good sensors and cheap and good computers. Because many of the big-picture pieces are already laid out, Vogt and his team can spend their days tweaking their algorithms to do things like making steering smoother. "We are a new company, and I understand some people are not going to trust us in the same way they would trust a car company that's been around for 100 years," says Vogt. "This is not the holy grail. But it's a first step, and I think some people will really enjoy it."

The NYT reports that a federal judge has upheld a New York City policy that bars unimmunized children from public school when another student has a vaccine-preventable disease. Citing a Supreme Court ruling that gives states broad power in public health matters, the court ruled against three families who claimed that their right to free exercise of religion was violated when their children were kept from school, sometimes for a month at a time, because of the city's immunization policies.

Under state law, parents claiming religious exemptions do not have to prove their faith opposes vaccines, but they must provide a written explanation of a "genuine and sincere" religious objection, which school officials can accept or reject. One plaintiff, Dina Check, says that the city had improperly denied her 7-year-old daughter a religious exemption. Check says she rejected vaccination after her daughter was "intoxicated" by a few shots during infancy, which she said caused an onslaught of food and milk allergies, rashes and infections. Combined with a religious revelation she had during the difficult pregnancy, she said, the experience turned her away from medicine. "Disease is pestilence and pestilence is from the devil," says Check. "The devil is germs and disease, which is cancer and any of those things that can take you down. But if you trust in the Lord, these things cannot come near you."

Ohio, which granted more than three times as many religious and philosophical exemptions to kindergarten students last year as it did in 2000, is struggling to contain a measles outbreak that has recently spread to 339 Amish people who were largely unvaccinated. The outbreak began after Amish missionaries returned from the Philippines. The Philippines is experiencing a large, ongoing measles outbreak with more than 26,000 cases reported, according to CDC.

Anu Passary writes at Tech Times that the FCC has imposed a fine of $34.9 million on Chinese GPS signal jammer vendor CTS Technology who has been found guilty of advertising and selling around 300 types of signal jammers in the US over a period of two years. The $34.9 million fine is the highest the agency has ever imposed. FCC claims that CTS Technology also lied to customers that its products are FCC approved. According to the FCC document an undercover stingoperation was conducted to stop the illegal sale of signal jammers when FCC agents purchased 10 of the signal jammers sold by CTS Technology. They found that the jammers were effectively able to block mobile phone signals as well as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, satellite and GPS signals. Moreover, some of the signal jammers were able to block signals over a distance of half a mile.

"Signal jamming devices (also referred to as signal jammers) operate by transmitting powerful radio signals that overpower, jam, or interfere with authorized communications. While these devices have been marketed with increasing frequency over the Internet, they have no lawful consumer use in the United States. Jammers are not only designed to impede authorized communications and thereby interfere with the rights of legitimate spectrum users and the general public, their operations also place the safety of the public at risk," per the FCC document.

There are numerous jammers offered on the CTS site, ranging in size from handheld to a rolling suitcase. One handheld model, made in Guangdong, China, and priced at US$240, is advertised as having a range of 20 meters, "ideal for a large room, restaurant, cinema ... Or whilst having a conversation and you want to eliminate others from using mobile telephones." A larger, stationary model with eight antennas is said to cover "all of the popular wireless RF signals including, 2G/3G/4G mobile phone, WiFi Bluetooth, UHF, VHF, GPS, LoJack, remote control and so on."

They are among America's busiest workers but they've been declining sharply in recent years due to various factors, including pesticides, mite infestations and loss of genetic diversity. Now Faith Karimi wries at CNN that President Obama has created a task force to address the issue of rapidly diminishing honey bees and other pollinators. "The problem is serious and requires immediate attention to ensure the sustainability of our food production systems, avoid additional economic impact on the agricultural sector, and protect the health of the environment," Obama said in a memo was sent to Cabinet secretaries and agency heads.

Friends of the Earth says that the US needs to immediately ban the use of neonicotinoids, a class of pesticides chemically similar to nicotine that has been linked to bee deaths. "The administration should prevent the release and use of these toxic pesticides until determined safe," says Erich Pica whose organization is conducting a campaign and has collected more than half a million petition signatures asking Home Depot and Lowe's to stop selling plants treated with neonicotinoids (neonics). So why isn't the US moving more quickly to ban neonics? Neonics play "a major role in pest management for pest control, agriculture and the ornamental plant protection industries. They serve as a group of highly effective insecticides with low risk to people and birds, which can be applied systemically to the soil," notes a Texas A&M AgriLife Extension blogger. This is a safer, better pesticide than many alternatives.

Another reason to hold off on a ban: There are still doubts that neonics are the principal cause of bee colony collapse. "In other words, while neonics might be one of the precipitating causes, they might not be the principle cause of CCD in the US and Europe," says David Clark Scott. "Saving the honey bees may require a more complex solution than banning one group of insecticides. And it may require more investigation into other possible causes of CCD, including parasites, viruses, climate change, bee nutrition, lack of genetic diversity and bee keeping practices."

Eduardo Porter writes at the NYT that AT&T and Udacity, the online education company founded by the Stanford professor and former Google engineering whiz Sebastian Thrun, have announced something meant to be very small: the "NanoDegree" intended to teach anyone with a mastery of high school math the kind of basic programming skills needed to qualify for an entry-level position at AT&T as a data analyst, iOS applications designer or the like. "We are trying to widen the pipeline," says Charlene Lake, an AT&T spokeswoman. "This is designed by business for the specific skills that are needed in business." Nanodegrees are designed to be completed in less than a year, at a cost of just $200 a month. Udacity's non-accredited nanodegrees aim to be a series of what CEO Sebastian Thrun calls "stackable" programs that complement different skills. "By putting in half a year of work, less work that you put in for a regular degree, we can get you from one point to another," said Thrun in an interview. "For instance, if you're a skilled programmer, we can turn you into a mobile programmer, and for mobile programmers, there's an endless number of open jobs right now. Or we can take you from programmer to data scientist."

"We are designing nanodegrees as the most compact and relevant curriculum to qualify you for a job," says Udacity. "The sole goal is to help students advance their career: whether it's landing their next job, their next project, or their next promotion. It should take a working student about 6-12 months to complete without having to take time off. We will teach all the necessary skills together with why those skills matter along with career guidance. In other words, you won't just learn *how* to code, but also *why.*"

UPI reports that the United Kingdom has banned the teaching of creationism as scientifically valid in all schools receiving public funding releasing a new set of funding agreements that include clauses which specifically prohibit pseudoscience. "It does not accord with the scientific consensus or the very large body of established scientific evidence; nor does it accurately and consistently employ the scientific method, and as such it should not be presented to pupils at the Academy as a scientific theory," the agreement states. The funding agreement notes that the discussion of beliefs about the origin of the Earth including creationism are permitted in religious education "as long as it is not presented as a valid alternative to established scientific theory."

The United Kingdom's position on creationism in the classroom and public discourse is an interesting contrast to the United States', where celebrity scientist BIll Nye engages in public debate about the validity of creationism and two states, South Carolina and Missouri, saw anti-evolution bills proposed in the last month.

The NYT reports that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has ruled that the Washington Redskins name is disparaging, stripping the team of federal protections for six of its trademarks. "The writing is on the wall, on the wall in giant, blinking neon lights," says Senate majority leader Harry Reid who has called the name a slur. Last month, Reid and 49 other Democratic senators urged NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to pressure the Redskins into changing the name. They cited action taken by the N.B.A., which gave a lifetime ban to Donald Sterling, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, after he made racist remarks.

Team owner Daniel Snyder has been standing firm. In a statement, Bob Raskopf, a trademark lawyer for the team, pointed to a similar decision in 1999 that was reversed years later. "We've seen this story before," he said. "And just like last time, today's ruling will have no effect at all on the team's ownership of and right to use the Redskins name and logo. We are confident we will prevail once again, and that the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board's divided ruling will be overturned on appeal."

Every year, vitamin A deficiency inflicts between 250,000 and 500,000 helpless and malnourished young people with early-life blindness and in half of those cases, it also brings death. Now the Washington Post reports that, backed by nearly $10 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, scientists are now working to genetically engineer "super" bananas that are fortified with crucial alpha- and beta-carotene, which the body converts to vitamin A. "There is very good evidence that vitamin A deficiency leads to an impaired immune system and can even have an impact on brain development," says James Dale. "Good science can make a massive difference here by enriching staple crops such as Ugandan bananas with pro-vitamin A and providing poor and subsistence-farming populations with nutritionally rewarding food."

The Gates Foundation has a history of supporting GMO research and technology - at least since 2010, when the non-profit invested in a low amount of shares in biotechnology giant Monsanto. Gates has amped up support for GMOs so that "poor countries that have the toughest time feeding their people have a process," adding that "there should be an open-mindedness, and if they can specifically prove [GMO] safety and benefits, foods should be approved, just like they are in middle-income countries." Such support has resulted in criticism and suspicion of the foundation's agenda. As for the worry that GMO seeds are increasingly consolidated in the hands of major agribusiness powers, Gates said in February 2013 - after his foundation reportedly sold the approximately $23 million in Monsanto shares it owned - that there are "legitimate issues, but solvable issues" with GMO technology and wider use. He added that one solution may be offering crops already patented but requiring no royalty dues.

Jim Kouri reports that Republican lawmaker Steve Stockman is asking the NSA, a government agency being investigated for misconduct, to help in locating evidence lost by the IRS, another government agency accused of misconduct, to locate the so-called "missing emails" between the IRS's former director of Tax Exempt Organizations, Lois Lerner, and other Obama administration officials at departments such as the Justice Department. The request comes just hours after the IRS claimed it "lost" all of Lerner's emails to or from Lerner and outside agencies or groups during that period, in which she allegedly coordinated with the White House, House Democrats and political groups to harass and deny tax-exempt status to groups critical of the President. The IRS blames a "computer glitch" for erasing the emails which could have implicated Agency employees in illegal activity. "The metadata will establish who Lerner contacted and when, which helps investigators determine the extent of illegal activity by the IRS," says Stockman.