'BeFree' Text Shortcode Helps Victims of Human Trafficking

Matt Petronzio2013-03-29 17:21:49 UTC

Human trafficking victims and concerned citizens across the United States can now send quick and discreet text messages for help, thanks to a new joint initiative to end modern slavery.

Polaris Project and Thorn: Digital Defenders of Children — formerly known as the Demi and Ashton (DNA) Foundation — have teamed up with communication API service Twilio and Salesforce Foundation, providing an SMS-based program that instantly connects people to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC) hotline.

As of Thursday, the new system is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, through which victims or people with knowledge of a trafficking situation can text "BeFree" (233733), and NHTRC call specialists will respond via text to address each individual’s needs. This could include immediate crisis response, referrals to nearby shelters and emotional support.

Twilio provides the BeFree shortcode and the delivery of the SMS messages for the system, while the Salesforce Service Cloud, a social customer service application, powers the NHTRC’s hotline database. The confidential hotline, operated by Polaris Project, has a network of 2,700 service providers nationwide.

Since the hotline began in 2007, the NHTRC has received more than 70,000 calls, connected more than 8,300 victims to assistance and support, and reported more than 3,000 cases to law enforcement. This new initiative furthers the hotline's influence by tapping into a form of communication that many victims already use — texting.

"Based on our experience working directly with survivors of human trafficking, we know that many of them regularly communicate via text," Sarah Jakiel, deputy director of Polaris Project, told Mashable. "Victims are heavily controlled by their exploiters — what they wear, where they go, how much they work, what they eat — but they may be able to send a quick, discreet text message."

It's also much easier for someone in need in help to remember the shortcode rather than memorizing a 10-digit phone number to dial.

With an estimated profit of $32 billion a year, human trafficking is the third largest criminal industry in the world (the first and second being illegal drugs and arms trafficking, respectively). The International Labor Organization estimates that there are 20.9 million victims of human trafficking worldwide, with hundreds of thousands of victims in the United States. The integration of text messages in crisis response has the potential to increase thousands of victims' chances of escaping from exploitation.

"When Thorn explained the problem and how important it would be to have texting capability with Polaris's hotline, we didn't hesitate in offering our support," Jeff Lawson, co-founder and CEO of Twilio, said. "This is a problem that affects every level of society — whether it's men or women, adults or children, foreign nationals or U.S. citizens. Anyone from any background can become a victim of trafficking. We are very pleased that we are able to make a difference against this often unmentioned problem facing our society."

Image via iStockphoto, DougSchneiderPhoto

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The Strategy Behind the Viral Red Marriage Equality Campaign

Zoe Fox2013-03-29 16:44:27 UTC

The Human Rights Campaign's Director of Marketing Anastasia Khoo didn't decide to change the organization's equality sign logo from blue to red on a whim.

The team at the HRC, the largest lobby organization dedicated to fighting for LGBT rights, knew that the two cases the Supreme Court heard this week on marriage equality were major, that Monday and Tuesday were moments of historic significance. The organization also foresaw that people would want to show their support for marriage equality. During the planning process, Khoo had the idea to turn the iconic blue and yellow equality sign logo red.

"The color is synonymous with love, and for us, that's what these cases are about," she told Mashable.

On Monday afternoon at 1 p.m. EDT, HRC posted the red version of its logo to Facebook and asked supporters to change their profile pictures and share the campaign with their family and friends.

Prior to changing its logo, the HRC focused on visual outreach, sharing infographics on Facebook and emailing its supporters to ensure they understood the significance of the two cases. Khoo notes early outreach with celebrities helped kickstart the red profile photo movement, as well. George Takei was one of the earliest to change his picture on Tuesday morning. Martha Stewart, Beyonce and corporations like Bud Light and Bonobos followed suit.

"It was everyone from senators and public figures to your everyday individual," Khoo said. "I think what that says to the young person who's feeling isolated and alone is that there are people out there that love you. When the Internet is washed with red, it has some significance."

Beyond the viral swapping of Facebook photos, Khoo says she's excited by how widespread this issue has become. Eight out of 10 Americans, she said, now know someone who is openly gay.

"That only happens from the act of courage of people saying, 'This is who I am,'" she said. "This is a really great first step for many people who hadn't come out or for straight people who had never shown their support before."

BONUS: 18 Creative Red Facebook Pics

Image composite by Mashable

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Robots Mimic Ant Colony Behavior

Charles Q. Choi, TechNewsDaily Contributorfor TechNewsDaily 2013-03-30 01:12:23 UTC

Robot swarms can mimic how ant colonies navigate complex mazes relatively mindlessly, researchers have found — knowledge that could help to improve designs for manmade transportation networks.

Scientists are fascinated by ant colonies because they can form collectives called "superorganisms" that function as single organisms do. Investigation into how ants behave has revealed more about how such group behavior arises, and some researchers are using that knowledge to help build smarter robot swarms, said Simon Garnier, a scientist who studies animal behavior at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Scientists are making ants wander through mazes, just as they do with rats. These labyrinths mimic the twists and turns in ants' journeys between their nests and places rich in food.

Ants that reach a fork in a road usually follow the branch that diverges the least from the direction in which they came, recent studies have shown. This habit, combined with the chemical pheromone trails the ants leave behind, results in a greater chance that the ants will collectively pick the shortest, most direct route between their nest and food.

"Ants have 100,000 neurons — less than we have in our fingers," Garnier said. "Despite that, they can form networks that help them navigate so much."

It was uncertain whether ants had or needed the brainpower to calculate which path deviated most from their original direction. Other ant experiments could not solve this mystery. However, "Since we can control the behavior of robots, we could use them to decide what information ants were using to navigate," Garnier said.

The researchers experimented with a swarm of sugar-cube-size antlike robots called "Alices." A camera followed the Alices' movements and used a video projector above the robots to lay down trails of light marking where the robots had traveled — similar to the way real ants lay down chemical trails of pheromones.

The robots were programmed to follow light trails with a pair of light sensors, avoid obstacles and otherwise move forward, randomly changing the angle at which they moved every few seconds. The robots lacked more sophisticated navigation techniques.

At the beginning of the experiment, in which the branches of the maze had no light trail, the robots simply moved forward at random angles. If the robots detected a light trail, they would follow that path.

This basic strategy naturally led the robots to choose the path that diverged least from their trajectory at each fork.

"They just follow the path of least resistance," Garnier said. "If I were to blindfold you and make you walk straight down a corridor, if you arrived at a fork, hitting a wall, you would most likely push toward the path that deviated less."

"If you were to imagine water going down pipes, the same thing would happen," Garnier added. "If a pipe were to split, with one branch going in almost the same direction as the original pipe and one branch set at a big angle compared to the original pipe, say 90 degrees, more water would flow down the pipe that deviated less. The robots are just getting physically deflected."

The robots' behavior provides some insight into ants' cognitive abilities, Garnier said.

"The robots show that you don't need complex cognitive processes to navigate these mazes," Garnier said.

Although such research aimed only to answer questions about ant biology, it may be relevant to other applications.

"The principles that ants use to find shorter paths have actually been the basis of computer programs developed in the last 10 years to help decide what are the best paths for trucks to transport merchandise between cities, the so-called traveling salesman problem," Garnier said. "One of the most efficient algorithms to solve this problem is directly inspired by the same logic studied in our work, and is also used by telecommunications companies to route packets of information between cell phones."

The scientists detailed their findings online on March 28 in the journal PLOS Computational Biology.

Image courtesy of Simon Garnier

This article originally published at TechNewsDaily here

Topics: Dev & Design, Robot, Science, Tech, transportation TechNewsDaily is a Mashable publishing partner that is an exciting new and accessible source of technology news and information for non-geeks seeking to learn about the cool gadgets, powerful software and unavoidable technologies of everyday life. This article is reprinted with the publisher's permission.

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Marriage Equality Campaign Causes 120% Increase in Facebook Pic Swaps

Zoe Fox2013-03-29 20:46:38 UTC

If you thought you were seeing all your Facebook friends swap their photos to red equality signs Tuesday, you were right. Facebook reported a 120% increase in profile picture swaps, as compared to an average day.

According to a post from Facebook data scientist Eytan Bakshy, 2.7 million more users swapped their photos Tuesday, March 26, than on the previous Tuesday, due to the viral marriage equality Facebook campaign started by the Human Rights Campaign.

The HRC kicked off its call to action Monday afternoon at 1 p.m. EDT, in anticipation of the two gay marriage cases argued before the Supreme Court Tuesday and Wednesday.

Facebook dug into the trend to evaluate just how many U.S. users changed their photos. The following charts show the usual profile picture changing habits of users (above) and the increase in the average number of changes (below). Facebook confirmed that the increase began when the HRC shared its call to action, which is noted on the graph with a dotted line.

Facebook also looked into who were the power profile picture-swappers. Comparing changes March 26 (in red) with the previous Tuesday (in black) by user ages, Facebook found the most significant increase among its users closest to age 30, 3.5% of whom changed their profile pictures. Females were slightly more likely than males to change their pictures, with 2.3% of self-reported females making the swap, compared to 2.1% of self-reported males.

Facebook also investigated which counties' users were most likely to change their pictures. In the below map, the darkest red counties showed the most significant changes.

Roughly 6.2% of users in Washtenaw County, Mich., home of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, swapped their photos in response to the HRC's campaign. The top 25 counties were loaded with universities, including the University of North Carolina, Duke University, Indiana University, the University of Iowa, Ohio University, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Colorado and the University of Texas.

Urban areas, including San Francisco County, San Mateo County (Silicon Valley) and Washington, D.C., ranked highly, while Los Angeles, New York City and Chicago showed more modest increases.

BONUS: 18 Creative Red Facebook Pics

Image courtesy of Facebook; composite by Mashable

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8 Reasons Easter and Children Don't Mix

Neha Prakash2013-03-30 00:28:04 UTC

Easter has had a strong hold as a kid-friendly holiday. Sure, it's well advertised with its bunnies and chocolate and pastel colors, but in its truest form the holiday is quite dangerous to children.

Just ask the kids in these eight videos who have been scared hare-less by these hopping mammals or had their parents plot cruel Easter eggs tricks on them. There is no holiday cheer for them, especially when they're forced to take pictures with a creepy bunny.

The Hot Commercials has compiled the most epic Easter fails in a round-up that might influence you to skip the egg-dying and bunny costumes this year and opt for something less terrifying to kids — perhaps an Easter pony? No one is scared of ponies.

Image courtesy of Flickr, somewhereintheworldtoday.

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