A research team at NYU's Tandon School of Engineering recently performed a study that investigated Craigslist's failure to identify and remove up to half of its entries in a timely manner. According to the team's research paper, 29,000 out of two million listings on the site are actually scams. The study aimed to quantify the rental scam issue and also analyze the various types of scams on Craigslist. "The study empirically measures rental scams on Craigslist and the main finding is that there is a diverse range of scams targeting apartment hunters," said Damon McCoy, an assistant professor at the Tandon School of Engineering. While the study does propose innovative solutions to detect such scam advertisements, the researchers still think students looking for off-campus housing online should be careful. "Most of the scams advertise apartments well below market value," McCoy said.

Every second counts is an active shooter situation and that is one of the many reasons why Nichols College in Dudley has become the first college in Massachusetts to implement the COPsync911 threat-alert system, which helps establish immediate direct contact with law en-forcement, according to the college's Chief Information Officer Kevin Brassard. This threat-alert system is part of the Dallas-based COPsync Inc., which operates the nation's largest law-enforcement, real-time in-car information sharing, communication and data interoperability network. The shock and disappointment in the aftermath of recent mass shootings on college campuses caused Nichols, along with many other colleges, to examine security options. The Dudley Police Department has been working with Nichols to test and set up the system, which has been well received on campus, Mr. Brassard said.   

Driverless microbuses started serving the college town of Wageningen, Netherlands, in the first open-ended test in Europe of automated public transport on city streets. Dutch partners including navigation provider Mapscape, Robot Care Systems and the Technical Uni-versity of Delft introduced two six-passenger automated vehicles into service on Thursday that could replace standard buses on unprofitable routes. The trail will provide a push to ef-forts to set up European Union rules for the technology, Minister of Infra-structure Melanie Schultz van Haegen said at the opening event. The WEpod models, supplied by French-Indian venture EasyMile, can travel as fast as 40 kilometers per hour, but they'll be limited to 25 kph for safety reasons. One of the biggest challenges of autonomous public transport is deciding on how to classify the technology, said Schultz van Haegen.   

The College Town Film Festival is returning to downtown State College from Wednesday to Sunday. The festival shines a light on independent cinema, films that either because of their subject matter or the fact that nobody with the last names Spielberg, Nolan or Adams was involved, tend to fall through the cracks. "Most of what we get are kind of studio films," said Matthew Jordan, an associate professor of film/video and media studies at Penn State. Outside of the films themselves, workshops such as Everyone's a Filmmaker and Original Script Reading will explore how life is breathed onto the written word and the immediacy with which a solid idea can now be committed to film. "The filmmakers have been giving us a lot of good buzz, nationally and internationally," said Jordan. All films are open to the public; admission to the festival is free with a student ID.  

Leaders of UC Berkeley, the cities of Berkeley and Richmond and a host of East Bay organizations celebrated ties between the university and its neigh-bors, exemplified by two local education and training programs. "We chose these two groundbreaking efforts because they were born out of local leaders' commit-ment to education," Chancellor Nicholas Dirks said. Berkeley 2020 Vision addresses some of the most pressing and salient societal issues we currently face. A community wide effort to end disparities in academic achievement based on race and economic resources, the 2020 Vision for Berkeley's Children and Youth is a partnership between Berkeley Unified School District, the City of Berkeley and UC Berkeley. Also sharing the limelight was RichmondBUILD, an award-winning program that has trained more than 900 Richmond residents for employment in construction, green building, solar installation and environmental remediation.  

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The ITGA strengthens town and gown partnerships by providing a network of professionals and resources, identifying and sharing leading practices, innovative solutions and professional development opportunities for municipal and university communities.