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291,860 | liveaction--2019-07-28--Puzzled officials say minorities are shunning assisted suicide Heres why | 2019-07-28T00:00:00 | liveaction | Puzzled officials say minorities are shunning assisted suicide. Here’s why. | In California, where assisted suicide became legal three years ago, officials have noticed something puzzling: most of the people taking advantage of the ability to have so-called “death with dignity” are white, with minorities refusing the opportunity to take their own lives. And it’s not just in California; the same effect has been seen in other states as well, leaving advocates questioning why. The California Department of Public Health has been tracking the demographics of people who take advantage of assisted suicide since the law was passed in 2016, and found that 88 percent of people using it are white. Jill Weinberg, a sociologist at Tufts University, said the same thing has been happening in other states with legalized euthanasia, like Vermont and Oregon. But she expected California to be different. “California is the first state in which we’re starting to expect to see more diversity,” she said in an interview with Capital Public Radio. “And in fact, we’re not seeing that.” READ: Justice Clarence Thomas gives epic history lesson on abortion and eugenics According to geriatrician Vyjeyanthi Periyakoil, minorities trust doctors less and get diagnosed with serious illnesses later, which Periyakoil says means they have less time to think about their “options.” But Elana Shpall, another geriatrician, told Capital Public Radio that it comes down to philosophical differences as well. “We talk a lot about their end of life choices and planning for the future, and most of them say something like ‘when God wills it, it will be my time’,” she said. “Based on my population, I would say it’s a big cultural barrier.” Meanwhile, assisted suicide advocacy organization Compassion and Choices — formerly known as the Hemlock Society — claims that it just needs to be sold better so minorities can kill themselves, too. “The information that’s written right now is written primarily for a white audience,” executive director Kim Callinan told Capital Public Radio. “We need to have messages and materials that will resonate given the culture and the community we’re trying to reach, from credible messengers in that community.” If people truly want to understand what makes minorities less likely to undergo assisted suicide, Washington, D.C. would be a good place to start looking. Black residents vocally opposed the bill, which passed anyway. Leona Redmond, a community activist who fought against the legislation, didn’t mince any words. “Because of Jim Crow laws . . . we didn’t have the opportunity to have the same jobs, to have the same insurance, the same retirement benefits,” Redmond said to the Washington Post. “It’s really aimed at old black people. It really is.” She likewise pointed out that the advocates pushing for it “are not people who look like me.” Rev. Eugene Rivers III, a black minister from Boston who helped a group called No DC Suicide, was more explicit, calling assisted suicide “back end eugenics.” READ: Could the funding of abortion by wealthy Americans be rooted in eugenics? The exact concerns these residents have had proven to be valid, looking at places where assisted suicide is legal around the world. In Belgium, for example, a father of four children who suffers from a rare blood disorder is planning to be euthanized because he cannot afford the expensive medication he needs in order to live. In the United States, in both California and Oregon, insurance companies have refused to pay for people’s treatment, while offering to pay for assisted suicide instead, even though the patients had not requested to die or shown any interest in it. “As soon as this law was passed, patients fighting for a longer life end up getting denied treatment, because this will always be the cheapest option,” Stephanie Packer, a California resident who has been fighting a terminal illness and opposes assisted suicide, has said. Black Americans live below the poverty line at a rate more than double that of white Americans, and they suffer poorer health care outcomes than white Americans. According to Families USA, a non-profit health care advocacy organization, Black Americans get lower quality care in numerous areas, including “pain management, asthma treatment, and even getting a simple aspirin in the ER when they present with angina.” Given this information — the poverty rates, the poorer health care, the injustices black Americans have faced in the past and still face today — it’s not difficult to figure out why black Americans and other minorities are not willing to jump on board the assisted suicide bandwagon. Assisted suicide inherently preys on people at their most vulnerable, people who are poor, elderly, disabled, and ill. It’s disturbing to know that the assisted suicide lobby’s next move is to learn how best to manipulate vulnerable people into thinking death is their best and only option. “Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary! | Cassy Fiano-Chesser | https://www.liveaction.org/news/minorities-shunning-assisted-suicide-heres/ | 2019-07-28 17:32:41+00:00 | 1,564,349,561 | 1,567,535,511 | society | values |
291,871 | liveaction--2019-07-30--Law student argues that prison inmates should have access to assisted suicide | 2019-07-30T00:00:00 | liveaction | Law student argues that prison inmates should have access to assisted suicide | A law student has written an article in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology arguing that prison inmates should be allowed to undergo assisted suicide, with evidently no concern for the ethical problems such a scenario proposes. Noting that assisted suicide is becoming increasingly acceptable across the country, Kathleen Messinger argued that terminally ill prisoners should be allowed to kill themselves too. Created in 1910, the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Northwestern University School of Law, and it is the second most widely subscribed journal published by a law school in the United States. In Messinger’s article, she drew a comparison between prisoners having the ability to refuse medical treatment, but not having the ability to kill themselves. “Aid in dying is often supported by notions of autonomy and dignity in choosing the conditions of if, when, and how to end one’s life, however, there is one noticeable segment of the population entirely left out: incarcerated individuals,” she wrote in the introduction. “The incarcerated population is particularly relevant to the aid in dying conversation because, as the justice system continues to balloon and incarcerate more people, prisons are overcrowded, underfunded, and ill-equipped to support terminally ill and aging inmates. This leaves the aging incarcerated population vulnerable.” READ: After he was paralyzed, he considered assisted suicide. Now, he’s running. Messinger then positively framed an example of a patient who was allowed to starve himself to death. “The ability of prison officials to force feed inmates is another example of how courts treat incarcerated and nonincarcerated individuals’ autonomy differently. Based on the holding in Cruzan—that a competent person has a Fourteenth Amendment liberty interest in withdrawing medical care—prisoners should be able to starve themselves under the Fourteenth Amendment and autonomy principles,” she wrote. “While the Supreme Court has not weighed in on a constitutional right to starve, several state court cases are informative on the issue.” She noted that while the state of Georgia wanted to force-feed one prisoner who starved himself, the Supreme Court disagreed, and then bemoaned that other states did not follow the precedent set in the case, Zant v. Prevatte. Messinger then moved on to complain that while assisted suicide is being legalized in more and more states, prisoners cannot take advantage. “While aid in dying is available in states that permit it, the same compassion is not extended to prisoners with terminal illnesses,” she said. “Prisoners over the age of fifty represent the fastest growing prison population. The aging and terminally ill prison population poses unique health care challenges such as chronic illness, heart disease, and diabetes that prisons are ill-equipped to manage. Incarcerated individuals age faster than their nonincarcerated counterparts. Research has shown that a prisoners’ physiological age averaged ten to fifteen years older than their chronological age. Furthermore, medical care is woefully inadequate for the aging and terminally ill prison population.” Because prisoners don’t have access to adequate health care, denying them the right to assisted suicide, Messinger argues, is “cruel and unusual punishment,” while also pretending that assisted suicide is health care. What Messinger fails to acknowledge at all is that prisoners are a uniquely vulnerable population, and it’s for that very reason that assisted suicide for inmates is a horrible idea. Someone who is imprisoned is literally incapable of giving consent freely. And, as Messinger points out, inmates often do not have access to quality health care, but that does not mean the answer is to kill them. The answer is to provide them with better health care. And the fact that the prison population is becoming older and sicker than the general population only means that, were assisted suicide available for them, they would be even more susceptible to coercion and pressure. As it is, numerous studies from reputable medical journals have found that people who want to undergo assisted suicide don’t do so because of fear of pain or a long, undignified death; they want to die because they are depressed, hopeless, have a lack of support, and fear they are a burden. When these issues are addressed, the request is withdrawn. All of these issues — hopelessness, a lack of support, feeling they are a burden — easily apply to inmates. How, then, could it ever be considered a good idea to allow such people to take their own lives? It’s profoundly unethical, and everyone, even someone in prison, has the right to life. “Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary! | Cassy Fiano-Chesser | https://www.liveaction.org/news/assisted-suicide-prison-inmates/ | 2019-07-30 13:01:01+00:00 | 1,564,506,061 | 1,567,535,298 | society | values |
291,903 | liveaction--2019-08-04--Never morally justified New Jersey Bishop condemns states Medicaid-covered assisted suicide | 2019-08-04T00:00:00 | liveaction | ‘Never morally justified’: New Jersey Bishop condemns state’s Medicaid-covered assisted suicide | New Jersey’s Medicaid-covered assisted suicide law drew strong words of condemnation from one Roman Catholic bishop in New Jersey Monday. Governor Phil Murphy, a Catholic who claimed he didn’t support the law, nonetheless signed it in April, calling it the “right thing to do.” The new law, which took effect August 1st, allows anyone over the age of 18 with a terminal illness and 6 months or less to live to end their own life on the taxpayers’ dime, either through self-administered drugs or by information about lethal doses of drugs. But legality does not imply morality, as Bishop James F. Checchio of Metuchen reminded his flock. “Assisted suicide is a grievous affront to the dignity of human life and can never be morally justified,” Bishop Checchio said in his letter on July 29th. “The legal permission now granted to this practice does not change the moral law.” Because the state of New Jersey has refused to uphold the moral law with this new measure, it has failed its primary duty, he says. “Passage of this law points to the utter failure of government, and indeed all society, to care truly, authentically and humanely for the suffering and vulnerable in our midst, especially those living with an incurable disease as well as the frail elderly, the infirm and those living with disabilities.” And in fact, the vulnerable do suffer under legal assisted suicide. The Netherlands, which legalized assisted suicide in 2002, is a sobering case study of social degeneration through the slippery slope of euthanasia. What started out as a law intended for terminal conditions has in recent years been used to euthanize people who have conditions like dementia, mild disabilities, or even autism. Legalized euthanasia creates a culture in which vulnerable populations are pressured to kill themselves, a situation that led a prominent former euthanasia advocate in The Netherlands, Theo Boer, to warn, “Look closely at the Netherlands because this is where your country may be 20 years from now.” Instead of euthanizing those at the end of their lives, Bishop Checchio urged instead a new commitment to caring for those suffering at the natural end of their lives. “As Catholics, we are called to show a different approach to death and the dying; one which accompanies every person as they are dying and allows them to love and to be loved to the very end.” And because “the purposeful termination of human life via a direct intervention is not a humane action,” the bishop pointed out that, since Saint Peter’s University Hospital is a Catholic hospital compliant with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (ERDs), it is prohibited from condoning or participating with euthanasia or assisted suicide, and thus is would not be complying with the law. Respecting human dignity and human life from conception to natural death is at the core of Catholic healthcare, the bishop said. “We ought to look instead to minimizing the pain and suffering of the dying and those who are tempted to end their lives,” he said. “Let us, as a society and as individuals, choose to walk with them, in their suffering, not contribute to eliminating the gift of life.” “Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary! | Laura Nicole | https://www.liveaction.org/news/new-jersey-bishop-condemns-medicaid-assisted-suicide/ | 2019-08-04 14:00:58+00:00 | 1,564,941,658 | 1,567,534,863 | society | values |
291,924 | liveaction--2019-08-08--Death with dignity Woman throws grandmother an assisted suicide party | 2019-08-08T00:00:00 | liveaction | Death with dignity? Woman throws grandmother an assisted suicide party | As assisted suicide grows in popularity across the world, advocates continue to insist it is necessary to prevent people from dying long, painful deaths from terminal illnesses. This, they say, is death with “dignity.” Rather than dying of cancer, it is better for someone to commit suicide with the help of a doctor, they claim. Yet this is rarely what ends up happening; the supposed safeguards in place fail to limit assisted suicide to those who are dying, and it instead becomes a free-for-all for anyone who is vulnerable to suicidal thoughts. In Canada, one woman’s editorial in Toronto Life served as a perfect example, as she wrote about throwing her grandmother an assisted suicide party. Susie Adelson wrote about the decisions that led her grandmother, Sonia Goodman, to decide she wanted to die. Goodman wasn’t dying, but had lost her husband and two of her children. Other issues were also affecting her decision. “Over the years, she had suffered a few serious falls. One resulted in a broken hip, and the subsequent procedures to restore her mobility had taken their toll,” Adelson wrote, adding that Goodman felt she was “done” with life at 88. It’s important to note that Goodman was not dying when she made this decision, although she had become ill. “During a visit to the ER with sepsis and extreme pain, she informed the team at Sunnybrook that she wanted help ending her life,” Adelson explained. “At first, the doctors suggested palliative care, but she was adamant: no more surgeries, no more drugs, not even antibiotics. She had watched her friends pass away and my mother suffer, and she didn’t want to go through that.” READ: Study: Assisted suicide can be painful, prolonged and inhumane So doctors agreed she could go through with assisted suicide, in just 10 days. Adelson said no one in her family argued, because they knew Goodman was “strong-willed.” And Adelson helped throw her grandmother a party, where she would die in front of her family and friends. Everyone toasted her and shared memories, and watched as doctors killed her. On Twitter, one of her doctors shared her story as an example of what a “good death” could be, despite noting that Goodman was not dying; she was simply elderly. Goodman was septic, yes, but her doctor told her this was treatable with antibiotics. She was also in pain, but her doctor said the pain was alleviated with other procedures, and she improved — but still wanted to die. “She foresaw being confined to her apartment, in pain, struggling with her walker,” the doctor tweeted. “No more walks outside. No trips to the grocery store. No playing bridge with her friends, as she had done for years. She wasn’t interested in living like that.” He then said that Goodman’s death was “the best death” he had ever witnessed. Here we have a woman who was, without a doubt, very much loved and who led a rich and fulfilling life. But this is what assisted suicide does: it makes it possible for people to kill themselves — or be killed by their doctors — simply because they are elderly. Goodman was not dying. The conditions she had were treatable. Quality of life is a valid issue, but it is seemingly only when someone is a member of an undesirable class that it becomes an issue worthy of death. If a young, able-bodied person sees their life as no longer worth living, citing what they feel is a poor quality of life, suicide is rightly seen as a horrific thing, and we fight against it. There are countless resources and support systems in place to show this person that life is still worth living, and that their death would be a tragedy. In other circumstances, for other people, suicide is seen as party-worthy. If someone is elderly, like Goodman, then no longer do we fight to convince them that life is not worth living. And if they are poor, sick, disabled, or mentally ill, death is considered acceptable — even dignified. This is not a good death. It’s a tragedy. “Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary! | Cassy Fiano-Chesser | https://www.liveaction.org/news/death-dignity-woman-grandmother-assisted-suicide-party/ | 2019-08-08 14:51:41+00:00 | 1,565,290,301 | 1,567,534,559 | society | values |
291,939 | liveaction--2019-08-10--Sick First assisted suicide in Australian state of Victoria called an historic moment | 2019-08-10T00:00:00 | liveaction | Sick: First assisted suicide in Australian state of Victoria called ‘an historic moment’ | A mother in the Australian state of Victoria has become the first casualty of the state’s legalization of assisted suicide. Kerry Robertson, 61, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010. In March of this year, she decided to stop chemotherapy and other treatments, as the side effects had become too much to bear. According to BBC News, her family claimed she had “the empowered death that she wanted.” Victoria’s Parliament passed the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act in 2017, and the law went into effect in June of this year. The law requires that a person wishing to legally commit suicide must be terminally ill with no more than 6 months left to live, or 12 months if they have a neurological condition that is degenerative. The patient must make three requests, and have two doctors sign off on the requests. Robertson became the first person to use the law, and her family called it the “perfect” death, according to The Telegraph. “Mum has always been been brave – a real ‘feel the fear then do it anyway’ mentality to life – it’s the legacy she leaves with us,” Nicole Robertson said in an interview with The Guardian. “That was the greatest part, knowing we did everything we could to make her happy in life and comfortable in death.” Yet as the Catholic bishops in Victoria wrote in a pastoral letter in June, the legalization of assisted suicide is not a cause for celebration. “We object to the unnecessary taking of a human life; we object to the diminishment of the love that can be given and received in the last days of our loved ones; we object to the lack of adequate funding for excellent palliative care; we object to state-sponsored practices that facilitate suicide; and most of all we object to the lazy idea that the best response our community can offer a person in acute suffering is to end their life,” the letter read. The bishops stated that Catholic hospitals and all people of “principled opposition to euthanasia” can and must continue to resist the new law as “conscientious objectors.” Jenny Mikakos, Victoria’s Minister for Health, called Robertson’s use of the state’s Voluntary Assisted Dying Act “an historic moment.” “The Victorian parliament legalised voluntary assisted dying so that Victorians with an insufferable, terminal and incurable illness can have a genuine and compassionate choice at the end of their lives,” Mikakos said, according to the Telegraph. The experience of other nations where assisted suicide has been legalized, however, paints a grisly picture of the unintended effects on society’s most vulnerable members. As Peter Abetz of the Australian Christian Lobby said, according to Right to Life Australia, despite the safeguards, “what we do know is that in every jurisdiction that has gone down the path of physician-assisted suicide, there have been wrongful deaths.” In The Netherlands, where assisted suicide has been legal for nearly two decades, the situation has become so fraught with unintended consequences and abuses that people with disabilities, developmental disorders, autism, mental illness, sexual abuse, and other non-terminal conditions are being euthanized. The perverse social incentives set in motion by the law are so bad that former Dutch euthanasia advocate-turned-vociferous skeptic, Theo Boer has warned other nations to study first the horror that has gripped his country: “Look closely at the Netherlands because this is where your country may be 20 years from now.” In 1995, Australia’s Northern Territory became the first political entity in the world to legalize assisted suicide. Eight months later, the law was overturned by the federal government. Other Australian states, including Western Australia and Queensland, are now considering similar legislation, according to BBC News. “Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary! | Laura Nicole | https://www.liveaction.org/news/assisted-suicide-australian-victoria-historic/ | 2019-08-10 17:02:15+00:00 | 1,565,470,935 | 1,567,534,435 | society | values |
291,976 | liveaction--2019-08-19--Canadian man commits assisted suicide after struggling to afford care | 2019-08-19T00:00:00 | liveaction | Canadian man commits assisted suicide after struggling to afford care | The Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) reports that a man in British Columbia has ended his life by assisted suicide after years of struggling to secure the 24-hour care his condition required. Sean Tagert, 41, was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2013. After suffering cardiac arrest in 2017, he was resuscitated and required a ventilator. He leaves behind an 11-year-old son, Aidan. Tagert and his family set up his home to allow him to stay there and spend weekends with his son. Tagert had shared custody of his son with Aidan’s mother and refused to move to an institutional care setting because his son would not be able to stay with him. He told the CBC in an interview last year, “My boy is everything to me. I wouldn’t still be here if it weren’t for him.” Because Tagert refused to move to an institutional care facility, he had to piece together the 24-hour care his condition required with Vancouver Coastal Health only providing 20 hours after Tagert lobbied for more care. While struggling to live with ALS, Tagert had to use all of his personal savings to pay an additional $263.50 per day to receive adequate care at home. In April, Tagert was featured in a local news video regarding the fight for the health care needs of those with disabilities in Canada: READ: Puzzled officials say minorities are shunning assisted suicide. Here’s why. In a Facebook post following his death, friends and family wrote, “Ensuring consistent care was a constant struggle and source of stress for Sean as a patient. While he succeeded, with the help of many, in piecing together a suitable care facility in his own home… gaining the 24-hour care he required was extremely difficult.” The post said that leaving his home for care “likely would have hastened his death.” The post urges on Sean’s behalf “that the government recognize the serious problems in its treatment of ALS patients and their families, and find real solutions for those already suffering unimaginably.” Sean’s decision to end his life by assisted suicide was undoubtedly encouraged by the chronic shortage of adequate care. Many people do not realize that assisted suicide laws may be interpreted such that the inability to afford care is considered a valid reason for assisted suicide. Even patients suffering from a condition that would not be fatal with appropriate care could be eligible for assisted suicide if they could not afford the care or insurance denied coverage. Increasingly, insurers are refusing promising treatment while offering to pay for assisted suicide. Assisted suicide is marketed as increasing choice; the reality is that legal assisted suicide pushes patients to opt for suicide. “Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary! | Anna Reynolds | https://www.liveaction.org/news/canadian-man-assisted-suicide-struggling-care/ | 2019-08-19 21:38:09+00:00 | 1,566,265,089 | 1,567,533,991 | society | values |
291,984 | liveaction--2019-08-20--Judge temporarily blocks New Jerseys new assisted suicide law | 2019-08-20T00:00:00 | liveaction | Judge temporarily blocks New Jersey’s new assisted suicide law | A judge in New Jersey has issued a temporary restraining order blocking the state’s new assisted suicide law. The Medical Aid in Dying for the Terminally Ill Act, which took effect August 1, allows patients to self-administer lethal medication if they are deemed by a doctor to have less than six months to live. Because there was a two-week waiting period before a physician could administer the medication, no individuals in the state have yet fallen victim to the law. State Superior Court Judge Paul Innes granted the order last week in response to a lawsuit filed by Yosef Glassman, a physician who opposes the new law on religious and professional grounds. In the lawsuit, Glassman says that the law interferes with his religious beliefs as an Orthodox Jew and his training as a physician. He also objects to the law’s stipulation that a physician who refuses to participate in the life-ending practice must refer the patient to another doctor. “The Aid in Dying law, which we think should be called the Assisted Suicide Act, is something that goes completely against what a doctor is,” said E. David Smith, the lawyer representing Glassman, according to NJ 101.5. “A doctor has the mission to heal and to continue life as long as possible. It’s not for a doctor to be any way involved in ending life.” READ: Study: Assisted suicide can be painful, prolonged and inhumane During a news conference on Thursday, New Jersey governor Phil Murphy defended the law, saying the state would fight back against the recent court decision. Murphy supports the law despite the teaching of his Catholic faith. According to Fox News, Murphy said, “It is really hard for me, particularly given growing up as a Catholic. This one was not an easy one to get to, but I got convinced that it shouldn’t be the law that dictates how things end. But it should be you and your loved ones.” Last Friday, the state Attorney General’s office asked the Supreme Court to remove the temporary injunction. “Those terminally ill patients and their families that have taken affirmative steps in reliance on the timelines in the Act, which became effective August 1, 2019, will be forced to continue in the intense suffering, pain, and indignity of terminal illnesses from which they seek immediate relief,” the AG’s office wrote in a court filing. While the state insisted that it would fight to have the law reinstated, many pro-life advocates praised the recent court order. “New Jersey’s assisted suicide law is a bad public policy that leaves many New Jersey residents at risk of abuse and coercion,” Kristen Hanson, a community advocate for the Patients Rights Action Fund said in a statement to Fox News. “The temporary restraining order issued, which prevents the policy from going into effect, is a welcome reassessment of a law that threatens the lives of the poor, older people, the terminally ill, and people with disabilities. New Jersey deserves better end-of-life-care, not assisted suicide.” The restraining order is in effect until at least the next court date, which is scheduled for October 23. “Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary! | Bridget Sielicki | https://www.liveaction.org/news/judge-temporarily-blocks-new-jersey-assisted-suicide/ | 2019-08-20 18:00:14+00:00 | 1,566,338,414 | 1,567,533,924 | society | values |
409,209 | pinknewsuk--2019-04-01--Ofsted chief Parents protesting LGBT education set terrible example for kids | 2019-04-01T00:00:00 | pinknewsuk | Ofsted chief: Parents protesting LGBT education ‘set terrible example for kids’ | Signup to receive a daily roundup of the top LGBT+ news stories from around the world Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman has said that parents protesting against LGBT-inclusive education are setting a “terrible example” for their children. The official spoke out in a speech to the Muslim Teachers’ Association on Sunday (March 31), after Birmingham schools faced weeks of protests against LGBT-inclusive relationship education led by largely-Muslim groups of parents. Spielman, the head of the UK’s education watchdog, specifically noted the protests outside Parkfield primary school, explaining: “This is precisely where dialogue is essential. “I understand the strength of feeling in that community. But it serves no one well to intimidate teachers and start protesting outside the school gates. “All that does is make a difficult situation worse, while setting a terrible example for the children.” She added: “It is children’s voices that always get lost when adults stop talking and start shouting. “It must be better to engage in calm discussions in order to find a sensible middle ground – one that means children are prepared for life in a diverse, modern, progressive country like ours, but it’s done in a sensitive and careful manner that respects the concerns of age, religion or any other background or context.In such circumstances dialogue can be our ally. “It is through dialogue that we advance understanding and find common solutions.” Spielman added that it is “the duty of all schools in England” to promote “democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty [and] mutual respect for and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs.” She added: “I believe this is right. “These values make sure that government works for all citizens; they provide for a multi-racial society, building on what is already held in common. “They promote both trust and the willingness to contribute to the common good; and create a space in which different beliefs, lifestyles and cultures can exist freely and in harmony. “For us at Ofsted, making sure that the next generation understands, respects and is willing to adopt these values is an essential part of our work. It is about preparing children for life in modern Britain.” Spielman has been one of the few public figures to actively condemn the protests. Prime Minister Theresa May and opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn both came under scrutiny for failing to weigh in on the row. Meanwhile, Education Secretary Damian Hinds has backed the schools but stressed the ability for teachers to decide what is and is not taught as part of relationship and sex education lessons. | Nick Duffy | https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/04/01/ofsted-chief-parents-protest-lgbt-education-terrible-example-children/ | 2019-04-01 17:34:42+00:00 | 1,554,154,482 | 1,567,544,449 | education | parent organisation |
20,074 | anonymousconservative--2019-12-19--News Briefs – 12/19/2019 | 2019-12-19T00:00:00 | anonymousconservative | News Briefs – 12/19/2019 | I always see lots of r/K related stories I think might interest the readers here, but I only have time to blog about a few, so here are some additional news stories that might be of interest. Most articles will be more or less summarized in the description. For unknown reasons, in some browsers the tweets in these posts display best if you click on the post instead of viewing it on the main page. You can skim the titles and summaries, and click the links if they are of interest. Keep in mind, many of these reports are products of the Fake News, so although they will be what people are hearing and talking about, there is no guarantee any one of them is necessarily correct, and we have had cases of outright lies make it onto these pages, especially about President Trump. Q is going again. The format for Q’s posts will be a screenshot image of Q’s post, and immediately below each post will be any links reprinted as text hyperlinks so you can click them, and then my comments in bold. As always, you can see Q’s posts aggregated live, and new ones which may have gone live after our print deadline at http://www.qanon.pub It is funny though. The entire story of Cabal is basically the background of the story arc of the TV Show Burn Notice. When Management wanted some things done, they were actually sending active duty Green Berets out of Fort Bragg, who would moonlight on their downtime as Management operations guys in the US civilian theater. You’d see the show, and think how could there ever be anybody in the Military working for some extra-governmental covert operations organization? Surely the government would keep all of its high-speed assets on lockdown, and never let them develop divided loyalties. But every facet of that show was actually based on reality, just with Cabal scaled back dramatically and renamed Management, because if they had made it fully accurate, nobody would ever have believed it even vaguely possible. Link to the DARPA resignation. I don’t know the relationship of this guy to lifelog/facebook, but here is some on him from this link: A former DARPA program manager, deputy office director, and office director, Walker has devoted 13 of his more than 30 years of public service to the Agency and been a key figure in advancing the science and technologies associated with hypersonic flight and rapid access to space.. Walker served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Science, Technology and Engineering… He was responsible for developing the technology investment strategy for the Air Force’s annual $2 billion science and technology program… Walker is a member of the Senior Executive Service. Martha McCallum’s interview with Barr was preempted by the Impeachment vote, and will be re-aired tomorrow instead. There was a rumor her twitter was also briefly suspended when she indicated they might air the interview there, but I saw it afterward and it was either an error, or it was reinstated. Whatever Barr says, Cabal must think it might be devastating. It was an impressive operation. Once revealed, it should permanently conspiracy-pill everyone in the nation, because it will show that all the things they would say are impossible, to argue that conspiracies are impossible, are actually fully possible, and exactly how conspiracies work. The are moving slowly and methodically, but they are progressing and producing results. Prosecutors say surveillance footage of the outside of Jeffrey Epstein’s cell during his first suicide attempt has disappeared. Schiff may have broken the law with his subpoena of Nunes’ phone records. Devin Nunes says the FISA Court did ‘absolutely nothing’ when he warned of FBI abuse last year. The biggest redpill you can have on what was going on, is to encounter not only law breaking, but gratuitous, unnecessary law-breaking that accomplishes nothing, bring it to the attention of authorities who should be responsible for policing it, and see them completely unable to do anything about it. It tells you, in a matter of seconds, the entire story you were told about how things worked was a lie. The fact the FISA Court tried to cover itself with an accusatory letter to the FBI is a sign things are changing. Linsey Graham says FISA as it is today can not be allowed to exist. AG Barr says Federal Law Enforcement is going to surge out into 7 major cities to quell violence. He portrays it as an operation to quell existing crime, but you wonder if they are getting a grip on those sectors now before Cabal can launch final last ditch chaos operations there. Mark Levin thinks part of the Impeachment Plan is to try and prevent President Trump from potentially getting another SCOTUS pick in, if Ginsberg keels over. Flashback to 2012 – $1.5B contract in Iraq for Biden’s little brother exposes Obama ahead of debate. Judge rules in favor of U.S. effort to take Edward Snowden’s book money. Midland County officials just found a missing ballot box hidden on a lower shelf, and it may change the result of a $569 million bond election. It is OK, it is just an election. It is not like it is something important, or something. Also, it is in Texas. FBI Director Christopher Wray lied in a 2018 statement under oath to Congress, about the FBI’s complicity in deceiving the FISA Court and smeared Congressman Devin Nunes in an effort to cover for his agency’s FISA abuses. NY Post points out, by fostering disrespect for cops (and prosecuting them gratuitously) it reduces recruitment and retention of new officers. Which would make it easier for Cabal to infiltrate their ranks and take over departments fully, especially since Cabal agents would be immune to any of the shenanigans. A lot of what we have seen, has not been organic. It was part of a complex plan. Why would Hillary be able to CC all of her emails to China as Secretary of State, and sell access through the Clinton Foundation for hundred of millions, if not billions, with zero consequence, and yet Cops, who could fuck up all sorts of people’s days for the rest of their lives for trying to fuck up their Officers, are constantly getting the shit end of the stick with no recourse whatsoever? Only an intel operation which had carefully set the stage could create that set of circumstances. CBS/YouGov poll says Biden leads in Super Tuesday states, while Bloomberg trails in fifth place. Bank Of England “hijacked” audio feed was used to secretly leak confidential information to hedge funds. The Swedish government announced that it will be investing 1.7 million Swedish Krona (around $175,000) to encourage drag shows for kids in libraries, schools, and daycares around the country. The money will come from the Swedish Inheritance Fund, a fund that seizes the inheritance money of Swedish citizens who die without a written will and without any heirs. Notice how the media always tells us how these things are wonderful. That is not random. It is organized propaganda produced and supplied by paid agents of the conspiracy. It is not how the public feels about this kind of degeneracy, and if things were random, and not carefully organized by a well structured intel operation, some of the media would come out speaking the truth about it. But that doesn’t happen, because of the level of control Cabal created. ACLU calls for tampons in men’s rooms in order to achieve ‘menstrual equity.’ In a trial, Libella Gene Therapeutics says it will administer volunteers with a gene therapy that it claims can reverse aging by up to 20 years, however, despite the fact that this is the first human trial of the treatment, the company is charging volunteers $1m to take part. Oddly enough, the FDA put out a notice ordering people to stop injecting young blood, though they have no evidence about the procedure’s effect in humans and it has worked in mice. But they are allowing all sorts of other therapies which are much, much less likely to have any effect, and which are much more likely to have side effects. Singer Marc Anthony’s 120 foot yacht catches fire and capsizes in Miami. Maybe nothing. But you have to wonder if there are any videos out there that would have featured the inside of the yacht, which now cannot be positively identified. The Rise of Skywalker praised for featuring the first gay kiss in a Star Wars movie. In a movie where the hero is a 95 lb girl who is better at everything from swordplay to telekinesis, to long range sharpshooting, without trying, than the people who have worked hard and done it all their lives. I actually like seeing all of this captured for posterity in the most cringe-inducing form possible. When things turn K, and the MK Ultra programming is removed, let it all be put on display. I’m not sure real K’s could believe it was this silly and ever-present, without seeing it firsthand. Medical schools are beginning to include leftist indoctrination in their curricula. The International Association of Exorcists has issued a statement warning parents of the dangers of a 2019 children’s book that gives instructions on how to summon demons. French cops fire tear gas and charge protesters as tens of thousands take to the streets to fight President Macron’s pension reforms. Lisa Page, in her interview, exhibits extreme disgust with the left side of her face while not exhibiting it at all on her right. In general, no matter right or left handed, or the nature of the emotions, extreme facial asymmetry means one side of the face is consciously expressing an emotion to produce a response in the listener which is very different from the real baseline state on the other side of the face. These things are never 100%, but I would generally assume that is a deceptive personality who may operate often based on manipulation. Of course Page was reportedly boning both McCabe and Strzok behind her husband’s back, while maintaining her marriage through deception, and those are just the two we heard about because they were related to the biggest case of treason in American history. Multiple simultaneous affairs, while still wanting to keep the marriage as well through deception, is usually going to be a sign of a fairly aberrant psychology, of the sort which will exhibit extreme facial asymmetry in polite conversation. As an example fo the opposite of this, where emotion and presentation are fully congruent, picture an enraged glare preceding a violent attack, and how symmetrical it would be, compared to this social manipulation: FBI in Puerto Rico is offering $25,000 for anyone who recognizes three guys in a black Sedan who robbed an FBI agent of his wallet, FBI ID, and duty weapon. Blurry pic of the crew in a black sedan at the link for PR anons. On this next tweet, Breitbart says, Senate can acquit even if House withholds articles of impeachment: This next one could be true, if you flash back to Amy Robach having to stop and compose herself when she recalled hearing Epstein killed himself, and realizing (((They))) killed him. She was overtaken with emotion not because she felt bad for Epstein, but because that killing made her think about her own situation, and how helpless she was, and how some frightening entity she did not like had such massive power over her: Update on this next one is it was a 56 year old female Chinese national who was arrested after taking photos, possibly of security measures: 90% of Virginia counties become gun ‘sanctuaries,’ expanding movement to nine states. In a stunning, unexpected ruling, a judge on Wednesday tossed out New York State charges of mortgage fraud against Paul Manafort because of ‘double jeopardy’ laws. European leaders warned Friday that Britain could become a formidable rival now that Johnson has won. $312 million of cocaine seized from ‘go-fast’ vessels, narco sub, US Coast Guard says. Gallup polling finds, on House Democrats’ big day, Trump’s approval improves even more as a majority opposes impeachment. The U.S. stock market shrugged off the impending impeachment vote Wednesday morning, pushing major U.S. stock indexes to record highs. I never got how Flynn’s FISA or Carter Page’s FISA Declass would touch off enough outrage to bring down the house. But 33,000 FISA warrants, with three hops each bringing in an additional 25,000 targets on average per primary target, according to a study, and multiple targets per FISA, means there would be a minimum of 825 million people under surveillance, in a nation of 300 million people. Even with overlap, it means nearly everyone has a FISA. Declassifying that everyone has a warrant, and then declassifying their files, with all the surveillance in them, will bring down the house, and produce the kinds of effects Q has been promising – basically a unification of conservatives and liberals against a common enemy – the Cabal which was using our own government against us. This show has just begun: Spread r/K Theory, because we’re all about to get very, very pissed off. | Anonymous Conservative | https://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/news-briefs-12-19-2019/ | Thu, 19 Dec 2019 11:42:24 +0000 | 1,576,773,744 | 1,576,815,508 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
92,211 | chicagosuntimes--2019-01-16--Daley College opens 45 million manufacturing and engineering center | 2019-01-16T00:00:00 | chicagosuntimes | Daley College opens $45 million manufacturing and engineering center | City Colleges of Chicago opened the doors to a new $45 million manufacturing and engineering center with the mission of exposing students to technology being used in the field today. The 57,000-square-foot facility at Richard J. Daley College, 4101 W. 76th St., will replace mobile classrooms put in place nearly five decades ago. The Manufacturing Technology and Engineering Center is the largest and most advanced facility at any of the City Colleges campuses. It will serve as the hub for students looking to earn certification, an associate’s degree or transfer opportunities to four-year colleges for careers in manufacturing and engineering technology. “What you will see in the center is the kind of advanced equipment, robotics equipment, process controls, quality-control equipment, the kind of technology you are going to see in today’s high-tech advance manufacturing floors,” said Juan Salgado, City Colleges chancellor. City Colleges also modernized its curriculum to meet industry needs to make students strong prospects when they enter the job market. Guadalupe Escamilla, 24, said he is excited to use the new equipment while pursuing advanced certifications in welding. He received his basic certifications in 2016. “The classes I’m taking now can also be applied to an associate’s degree, and I am really considering that for the future,” Escamilla said. About 250 people attended the opening of the center, including Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson, Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan, D-Chicago, and several aldermen. Emanuel, who isn’t seeking re-election, called attention to the city’s efforts to improve City Colleges since he took office in 2011. “Today we open the doors to a new future at Richard J. Daley College, from right here to Truman to Malcolm X to Olive Harvey, we’ll have modernized four of our seven campuses and invested more than $560 million in capital projects to bring our community colleges into the 21st century,” Emanuel said. “What all this adds up to is a city that stands with the students who’ve been overlooked and underestimated, pushed to the side because ‘They weren’t our kids.’” “You’re our children, your future is our future, and we are going to invest in that future.” Only some manufacturing classes will be held at the new facility this semester as City Colleges continues to add equipment and put some finishing touches on the building. Manny Ramos is a corps member in Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster Sun-Times coverage of issues affecting Chicago’s South and West sides. | Manny Ramos | https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/daley-college-manufacturing-engineering-center/ | 2019-01-16 22:27:16+00:00 | 1,547,695,636 | 1,567,552,147 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
92,278 | chicagosuntimes--2019-01-21--2 new libraries in housing developments to be unveiled by Mayor Emanuel | 2019-01-21T00:00:00 | chicagosuntimes | 2 new libraries in housing developments to be unveiled by Mayor Emanuel | Watch for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to officially cut the ribbon Tuesday on two buildings containing libraries within housing developments on the city’s North and South sides — highlighting the modernization and growth of Chicago’s library system during his tenure. The co-located developments of shared spaces provide residents with both a state-of-the-art community anchor and mixed-income CHA housing, which will provide a total of 44 senior apartments, including 30 public housing and 14 affordable apartments at each site. While the library in Little Italy will be located at 1336 W. Taylor St., while the Independence branch is at 4024 N. Elston Ave. The Independence branch had been close in fall 2015 after a fire. A new West Loop library opened last week. Highlighting the more than $275 million in new investments to Chicago Public Libraries during his time in office, Emanuel tells Sneed: “When I was a kid, my mom would drop my brothers and me at the library to check out books that detailed the past.” He added: “Today, kids go to the library to turn on computers to explore the future. Albert Einstein once said, ‘The only thing you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.’ “It is truer today than it was when he said it. Chicago’s libraries are community anchors and early learning centers,” he said. “They are places to get homework help and search for a job.” Emanuel, who is this/close to former President Barack Obama and was his chief of staff, also emphasized upcoming plans for the planned Obama Presidential Center in Woodlawn. “Chicago will be the first city in the country to have a neighborhood library in a presidential library,” he said. “We are writing the next chapter on what a library looks like and does.” Sneed hears upcoming speeches will cover the park system, education and public housing. Our mayoral rocket man has already given two major speeches outlining his legacy of achievement at the Chicago Transit Authority and the City Colleges of Chicago at the grand openings of the new North Terminal at the 95th/Dan Ryan Red Line Station and the new Daley College Manufacturing Technology and Engineering Center. | Michael Sneed | https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/libraries-independence-little-italy-taylor-sneed-rahm-emanuel/ | 2019-01-21 11:00:15+00:00 | 1,548,086,415 | 1,567,551,462 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
118,877 | conservativehome--2019-08-04--Daniel Rossall-Valentine Tech now underpins prosperity in every sector so to thrive we need more | 2019-08-04T00:00:00 | conservativehome | Daniel Rossall-Valentine: Tech now underpins prosperity in every sector – so to thrive, we need more engineers | Daniel Rossall-Valentine is Head of Campaign for This is Engineering at the Royal Academy of Engineering, and Deputy Chairman of Sevenoaks Conservative Association. He writes in a personal capacity. “It’s the same formula: it is education, infrastructure and technology —those three things”, so said Boris Johnson in June when interviewed by the Evening Standard about his agenda for government. According to Boris, those are the three principles which informed his time as Mayor of London and will be his priorities as Prime Minister. These priorities are very welcome because they recognise the essential connections between three vital elements of wealth generation, and represent a more sophisticated view of economic growth than the one-dimensional and idealistic catchphrase of “education, education, education” which prevailed under a previous government. The UK is involved in a long running battle to raise its productivity. We have long needed a better vision of what we need to do to boost productivity and I believe that this vision is now being developed. Engineers and technicians must be at the heart of this new vision. Engineers are essential for innovation, they design, build and improve technology and have become central to national productivity, economic growth and living standards. Engineers are the people who turn scientific principles into practical application, social benefit and economic value. Our world is being unified in a new way; by a series of threats that know no borders. We face big challenges, including overpopulation, environmental degradation, malnutrition, biodiversity loss, cyber-terrorism and global warming, and technology is central to building solutions for each of these and making our world work better for everyone. In truth, technology is not a sector anymore; it is now the driver of productivity and economic success (and indeed survival) for organisations in every sector. The analytical and design skills of engineers have become more and more valuable as the rate of technological change accelerates. No sector of the economy is now protected from the forces of technological change; healthcare, agriculture, retail, and education are just four examples of sectors which are currently experiencing rapid technological change; change that offers significant improvements in productivity and benefits for users. Growing our domestic tech capacity offers great benefits to the UK. Tech firms have shown that they can scale very rapidly. The rise of “tech unicorns” (recent startups valued at over $1 billion) demonstrates the economic and social potential offered by tech. Engineering has been proven to be a very effective multiplier of economic growth. The UK should not be modest about its future in tech because we have significant advantages, including a trusted legal regime, access to capital and credit, access to support services, unparalleled access to tech customers, an educated workforce, world class universities, stable taxation and intelligent regulation. However, the UK has one great and persisting tech weakness which threatens to impede our growth, and that is an inadequate number of engineers and technicians. The UK needs to grow its pool of engineering talent, to ensure that UK-based tech companies can remain in the UK as they scale rapidly, and to enable engineering companies to win big projects. If the UK doesn’t expand its pool of engineering talent we risk losing tech firms, tech projects and tech investment and the huge economic and social value that they bring. The proportion of jobs that require technical skill is growing and Britain should aspire to a growing share of this growing pie. Young people are avid consumers of technology, but we need more of them to aspire to mastering the engineering that underpins the technology so that they can become developers, makers and creators of technology, rather than mere users. We also need more young people who combine engineering skills with the entrepreneurial and managerial skills that will enable them to form and scale business enterprises; so that the UK can capture an increasing share of lucrative engineering value-chains; and provide the GDP and employment that flow from end-to-end technology development. Increasingly people who are not tech-savvy are at risk of being automated out of a job, so the need for upskilling the UK in technical skills is pressing. This technical skills shortage has long been recognised and a multitude of projects have been started to encourage young people to consider engineering. And yet despite the number of initiatives, the shortfall of talent has not only persisted but seems to have grown larger over the last decade. We also need to diversify our talent pool and ensure we are attracting young people from all backgrounds; because only a diverse profession guarantees the diversity of ideas that technical fields rely on. The UK has made good progress in raising the profile of engineering in the last few years. The Industrial Strategy and Grand Challenges of 2017 were very welcome developments at putting technology centre-stage. The Year Of Engineering 2018 led to a very significant change in the perception of engineering amongst school pupils. This year-long Government campaign also encouraged greater collaboration between the many professional engineering institutions that make up the UK’s complex engineering landscape. We can be optimistic that the UK has got into the good habit of paying far more recognition to the engineers and entrepreneurs who enable, create and democratise the technology which improves lives, saves time and generates wealth. Too often we allow our natural British reserve about talking about wealth to prevent us talking about wealth creation. Social benefit and commercial success are too often portrayed as trade-offs, when they are mutually reinforcing; the best technology delivers for investors as well as society-at-large. Technological success is a stool with three legs; technical progress, commercial success and social benefit. Technology is more than technology: technology is inherently social, and inherently financial, and we need more technologists who look at the full picture rather than the purely technical aspects of technology. Without profit, technology is the greatest creator of loss and debt known to mankind, and without social benefit technology can be a force of social division, rather than a democratising force. To maximise the benefits of technology we need to close the technology skills gap, and this requires action by many players. We cannot rely on Government alone to solve this persistent problem. We know that too few young people are studying engineering related degrees and apprenticeships. One major factor is the image of engineering. Unfortunately, a number of unappealing stereotypes have become attached to the profession of engineering. Many young people assume that engineering involves hard, manual work, and male-dominated workplaces. Too many young people also believe that engineering is a narrow specialism that offers only a limited range of job opportunities. The problem is particularly acute with female students. Inspiring more girls to pursue STEM subjects and careers will not only help us to address the skills gap in science and technology, but it will also help us to create a more diverse workforce that truly represents the world we live in. The UK has a great tradition of innovation and enterprise but only by unlocking the interest of our young people by presenting a positive vision of business enterprise and technology can we continue to succeed in this increasingly competitive field. One recent example of success is the This is Engineering campaign which was developed by a number of the UK’s leading technology companies and launched in January 2018. The campaign presents young people with positive, modern, authentic images of careers in technology and engineering, through the medium of short films which are available on many social media platforms. The films also highlight the societal benefits that new technology delivers, the team-work that technology and engineering projects rely on, and the creativity that is required at every stage in the design and build process. By helping to promote careers in technology and engineering we can ensure that more and more young people see technology not just as a range of products to be consumed but also as a range of careers to be considered. | Daniel Rossall-Valentine | https://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2019/08/daniel-rossall-valentine-tech-now-underpins-prosperity-in-every-sector-so-to-thrive-we-need-more-engineers.html | 2019-08-04 06:00:21+00:00 | 1,564,912,821 | 1,567,534,884 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
173,339 | eveningstandard--2019-04-30--Evening Standard Business Awards 2019 Meet the Judges | 2019-04-30T00:00:00 | eveningstandard | Evening Standard Business Awards 2019: Meet the Judges | Producing our shortlist of nominees for the Evening Standard Business Awards, in association with London City Airport, entailed ferocious debate and compromises among our usually sceptical editorial business team and guest judges. Everyone who made it to the shortlist is doing something very special, and each of these businesses were able to demonstrate activity, innovation and commitment out of the ordinary - impressing our team. We’ve compiled an expert team of judges, consisting of CEOs and acclaimed business leaders, to help select a worthy winner in each category. The winners will then be announced at the Awards Ceremony and Lunch on 28 June 2019 at The Landmark London. Editor of London’s Evening Standard newspaper, George was previously the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2010 to 2016 and First Secretary of State from 2015 to 2016. George is also the Chair of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, a not-for-profit organisation he established with business and civic leaders to promote economic development in the North of England. He is an honorary professor of economics at the University of Manchester and a visiting professor at Stanford University. He is an adviser to the BlackRock Investment Institute and he is the Chair of the EXOR Partners Council. He received the Companion of Honour from Her Majesty the Queen in 2016. Annette started as CEO of Publicis Groupe in the UK in May 2018, overseeing all of the Groupe's operations. She joined them from Ogilvy, where she spent 17 years in various different roles, ranging from running and building OgilvyOne in the UK and then EMEA to leading Ogilvy UK Group's ten operating companies for the last four years. In this role, she was responsible for integrating the UK group's capabilities to partner clients such as American Express, IBM, Philips and Unilever as well as leading the teams to win new clients such as British Airways, Boots and Vodafone. Prior to that she worked for Wunderman in London and New York. She has worked with clients from most industries and has experience across all marketing capabilities, given her most recent role. Ulric Jerome is the CEO of MATCHESFASHION.COM, the leading global luxury fashion retailer for men and women. Ulric also sits on the Board of Zooplus AG, a European online leader of pet supplies with close to €1 billion in sales. Ulric has also served on the Board of Paddy Power plc from 2012 to 2016, where he was appointed as a Non-Executive Director and additionally sat on the Nomination and Audit Committees. Ulric was a founding partner of PIXmania.com, a €1 billion pan-European online retailer, spanning more than 30 products categories with operations across 26 European countries; the business was sold to Dixons Retail in 2006. Born in Paris, Ulric studied in France before completing his degree in Economics in Montréal. He lives in London with his wife and daughter. Wol has been instrumental in developing the Livingbridge strategy, leading the spin out from its parent F&C in 2005, building the team and a strong internal culture. He joined a predecessor of Livingbridge in 1993 and has led the business since 1998. His role encompasses overall responsibility for the leadership and strategic development of Livingbridge, senior-level involvement in winning deals and active involvement in selective key investments. Wol initially trained as an engineer, having studied civil and structural engineering at Kings College, London. After obtaining an MBA from Exeter University, he spent three years with Barclays before joining Livingbridge. Wol takes an active role in private equity industry initiatives and issues. He was previously a Chairman of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association in 2007/2008, a Council Member from 2002 - 2009 and Chairman of the Responsible Investment Advisory Board from 2009 - 2010. Wol is Chairman of the Guys and St Thomas' Charity, which has assets in excess of £800 million, making it one of the largest medical charities in the UK. The charity awards grants to facilitate improvements to healthcare services in the London Boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark. In 2018 he was also appointed as a Non-Executive Director to the NHS Improvement Board. Wol received an honorary doctorate from the University of Exeter in 2014. Viswas ("Vis") Raghavan is the Chief Executive Officer for J.P. Morgan in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). He is also the Head of Banking for the region’s Corporate & Investment Bank. Based in London, he has over 25 years of corporate finance experience. As CEO for EMEA, Vis works with the Senior Country Officers and business heads across J.P. Morgan, to ensure that clients are able to take full advantage of the firm's local knowledge and global capabilities, across all businesses. In addition, as Head of Banking for EMEA, Vis leads a team of coverage and product bankers across the region responsible for corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, treasury services and transaction banking. Before being appointed to his current role, he was head of Global Equity Capital Markets at J.P. Morgan. Prior to that Vis was head of J.P. Morgan’s Debt and Equity Capital Markets' businesses for Europe & Asia Pacific. Vis has been an integral part of J.P. Morgan’s EMEA business since joining from Lehman Brothers in 2000, where he was Head of Equity-Linked Capital Markets for Europe & Asia. Vis graduated from The University of Bombay, India with a BSc in Physics and holds a BSc Honours degree in Electronic Engineering & Computer Science from Aston University, Birmingham, UK. He is also a Chartered Accountant with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales. In 2016, he was awarded an honorary Doctorate in Science (DSc) by Aston University. Suranga joined Balderton as a General Partner in 2014. He was previously an entrepreneur and engineer. Suranga founded blinkx, the intelligent search engine for video and audio content in Cambridge in 2004. He lead the company for eight years as CEO through its journey of moving to San Francisco, building a profitable business and going public in London where it achieved a peak market capitalisation in excess of $1Bn. Before founding blinkx, Suranga was an early employee at Autonomy Corporation - joining as an engineer in the Cambridge R&D team and ultimately serving as the company's US CTO in San Francisco.. Suranga has a MA in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge. He holds patents in the area of video discovery and online video advertising and was awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering’s annual Silver Medal for his work in the field. He was also elected a Fellow of the Academy in 2012 and was chosen as one of the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leaders in 2009. In 2017, Suranga joined the UK Government's Council for Science and Technology. Suranga was granted an OBE for services to technology and engineering in the 2018 UK New Year's Honours. Richard joined the Merian Global Investors as head of UK equities in 2013. In early 2019, he announced his intention to step down from the CEO role (which he took on in 2015) and will remain with the business as head of UK equities. Richard was previously at Schroders, where he managed the Schroder UK Alpha Plus Fund for over 10 years. Prior to Schroders he spent more than a decade at Baring Asset Management, having commenced his investment career in 1985 at Brown Shipley Asset Management. Richard was awarded the Outstanding Contribution to the Industry honour at the Morningstar OBSR Awards in 2012 and has a degree in English language and literature from the University of Oxford. Helen Gordon is Chief Executive of Grainger plc the UK’s largest listed residential landlord and Vice President of the British Property Federation. Helen was appointed Chief Executive of Grainger in January 2016 from RBS where she had been Global Head of Real Estate Asset Management since October 2011. Prior to that Helen was Director of Legal and General Property, responsible for the Main Life Fund and c.8 smaller Funds, and Group Property Director of Railtrack and Managing Director of John Laing Developments. Helen sits on the Board of Derwent London as a non-executive Director and is currently a Board Director of the European Public Real Estate Association. Helen has held a number of non-exec positions and Government appointments including the Board of Covent Garden Market Authority, Board of British Waterways and was a Trustee for The College of Estate Management for nine years. June O'Sullivan MBE is Chief Executive of the London Early Years Foundation (LEYF), a social enterprise which currently runs 37 nurseries across ten London boroughs. An inspiring speaker, author and regular media commentator on Early Years, Social Business and Child Poverty, June has been instrumental in achieving a major strategic, pedagogical and cultural shift for the award-winning London Early Years Foundation, resulting in increased profile, new childcare model and stronger social impact over the past ten years. As CEO and creator of the UK's leading childcare charity and social enterprise since 2006, June continues to break new ground in the development of LEYF's scalable social business model. She remains a tireless campaigner, looking for new ways to influence policy and make society a better place for all children and families. June is a champion of community-based, multi-generational early years education as the basis for greater social and cultural capital to deliver long-term social impact. She continues to advise Governments as well as a range of organisations, academics and services at home and overseas about how best to implement a social enterprise vision for Early Years. June is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Director of Early Years Nutrition Partnership, Director of Social Enterprise UK, Member of the London Mayor’s Child Obesity Taskforce, and Founding Member of International Early Years. June was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday honours in 2013, for her services to London’s children. She won the Social Enterprise UK Women’s Champion Award in November 2014 and in February 2015 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Middlesex. In 2016 she was named one of the 500 influential People in the UK by Debretts. In 2017 she was delighted to receive the Most Influential Person In Early Years Award and joined the top 10 of the WISE100 – an initiative from the NatWest SE100 Index which recognises100 of the most inspiring and influential women in social enterprise, impact investment and social innovation. June is a published author, with an MA in Primary & Early Childhood Studies and MBA from London South Bank University. Jill is currently Chief Executive of Boden and is also a Non-Executive Director on the Board of Auto Trader. She was previously a member of the Executive Committee at Tesco PLC where she held a variety of strategic and operational leadership roles. Jill started her career at Marks & Spencer in buying and merchandising and also spent time as a management consultant with Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. Jayne Anne Gadhia was Chief Executive of Virgin Money from 2007 - 2018. A Chartered Accountant, she spent six years at Norwich Union (now Aviva) before becoming one of the founders of Virgin Direct in 1995. Three years later, she set up the Virgin One account, which was acquired by the Royal Bank of Scotland in 2001. She subsequently spent five years at RBS as part of its Retail Executive Committee, before returning to Virgin as the CEO of Virgin Money. In 2012, Virgin Money acquired Northern Rock, and in 2014 it successfully listed on the London Stock Exchange. In November 2016, she was appointed as the UK Government’s Women in Finance Champion, and in July 2017, she became a founder member of its Business Diversity and Inclusion Group. She sits on the UK Government’s Industrial Strategy Council, Scottish Business Taskforce and Scottish Policy Foundation’s Advisory Board. She is also a member of the Mayor of London’s Business Advisory Board and the Financial Conduct Authority’s Practitioner Panel. Jayne Anne was made a Dame in the 2019 New Year’s Honours list and has been appointed as an external member of the Financial Policy Committee. Jayne-Anne is a firm believer in the importance of businesses making a positive contribution to society. She won Leader of The Year at the Lloyds Bank National Business Awards in 2018 in recognition of her personal impact on the culture and success of Virgin Money as a force for good in the banking industry. A committed supporter of The Prince’s Charities, she is a Trustee of the Tate, Chairs the Dumfries House Trust and has previously served as Chair of Scottish Business in the Community. Jayne-Anne is married with one teenage daughter. | null | https://www.standard.co.uk/business/business-awards/evening-standard-business-awards-2019-meet-the-judges-a4129871.html | 2019-04-30 11:00:00+00:00 | 1,556,636,400 | 1,567,541,606 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
185,793 | eveningstandard--2019-10-03--The Progress 1000 Dina Asher-Smith and the Rebel Alliance power into our top 20 Londoners for 2019 | 2019-10-03T00:00:00 | eveningstandard | The Progress 1000: Dina Asher-Smith and the Rebel Alliance power into our top 20 Londoners for 2019 | Newly-crowned world champion sprinter Dina Asher-Smith today raced into the top 20 of the Standard’s annual celebration of London’s most influential people for the first time. She joined Fleabag acting and writing star Phoebe Waller-Bridge and members of the “Rebel Alliance” group of MPs blocking a no-deal Brexit. The full line-up for the Progress 1000, produced for the fifth year in partnership with the global bank Citi, is revealed today ahead of a glamorous party this evening. Orpington-born Asher-Smith, who stormed to the 200-metre gold medal in a UK record time in Doha last night, is ranked as the seventh most powerful Londoner after becoming the first British woman to win a major global sprint title. At the top of the list are the courageous MPs who put their careers on the line to stop a potentially disastrous departure from the European Union without an agreement with Brussels. They are collectively celebrated as London’s most influential men and women in 2019. Among those honoured are politicians who gave up Cabinet posts, such as Tories Amber Rudd and David Gauke, or were outspoken Labour critics of Jeremy Corbyn’s position on the great issue of our age, such as Stephen Kinnock and Luciana Berger. Some went on to set up a new centrist movement, including Anna Soubry, leader of the Independent Group for Change. Others, such as Sir Oliver Letwin and Dominic Grieve, were stripped of the Conservative whip after they refused to toe the party line on Brexit and now sit as independents. Yet more, such as former Conservative Sam Gyimah, quit their parties to join the Liberal Democrats. The other rebel MPs who are honoured are former Conservatives Nick Boles and Justine Greening, and Labour’s Stephen Doughty. All have played key roles in the spirited Parliamentary opposition to Boris Johnson’s pledge to lead Britain out of Europe on October 31 even if no agreement can be reached over Brexit. The price for them has been personal abuse and, in some cases, even threats of physical violence. The theme of this year’s list is the future and technology, embracing whole new sectors including augmented and virtual reality and cyber security, as well as a wide range of activists challenging inequality and helping the environment. Also featured are the social media stars shaping our spending habits and influencing our work and home lives. The names are curated by the Evening Standard editorial team led by Editor George Osborne, who said: “This year’s list is a celebration of the talent, diversity and energy of a future-facing London. Here are all the movers and shakers in our great capital. Prepare to be surprised!” The Rebel Alliance follow in the footsteps of last year’s winner, Sajid Javid, then Home Secretary and now Chancellor of the Exchequer. Previous top Londoners include Mr Johnson, London Mayor Sadiq Khan and 2017’s Everyday Heroes, who were given accolades for their courage and compassion in the face of terror and disaster. In second place this year is Waller-Bridge, the multi-award-winning actress, playwright, producer, and writer behind comedy drama Fleabag and spy thriller Killing Eve. Her extraordinary work has dominated the TV schedules this year. In third place is the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick, whose challenges this year have included tackling the rising toll of knife murders and the Extinction Rebellion protests. Fourth are the Prime Minister, Mr Johnson, and his chief adviser Dominic Cummings, while fifth is Sir David Attenborough. The top 10 is completed by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Asher-Smith, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, GlaxoSmithKline chief executive Emma Walmsley and BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg. The technology section includes AR/VR, biotechnology and engineering. It features chief executives and start-up founders such as Joseph Shepherd, co- founder of Lettuce Labs, which aims to prevent London throwing away nearly 900,000 tonnes of food each year, and Sophie Thompson, co-founder of VirtualSpeech, which uses VR to improve sales pitches and public speaking skills. As well as Brexit this has been the year of the activist. One of the youngest is 17-year-old schoolgirl and environmental activist Noga Levy-Rapoport, who helped organise the UK-wide school strikes in a bid for action on climate change — London’s answer to Greta Thunberg. Caroline Criado Perez, whose book Invisible Women exposed gender data bias, is in the equality section while the hero imam Mohammed Mahmoud, recently awarded an OBE for helping calm the Finsbury Park terror attack in 2017, earns a place in the faith category. Those who rule our social media apps have never been more powerful and it is not only the millennials dominating this arena. Charlie Mackesy is an artist who has found fame in his late fifties by becoming an Instagram sensation with more than 150,000 followers. This section also includes the gamer and boxer KSI, knitter Susan Cropper and podcaster Hannah Witton. | Jonathan Prynn | https://www.standard.co.uk/news/the1000/the-progress-1000-dina-ashersmith-and-the-rebel-alliance-power-into-our-top-20-londoners-for-2019-a4253151.html | 2019-10-03 10:02:00+00:00 | 1,570,111,320 | 1,570,221,712 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
204,858 | fortune--2019-07-23--Microsoft Invests In Artificial General Intelligence CEO Daily | 2019-07-23T00:00:00 | fortune | Microsoft Invests In Artificial General Intelligence: CEO Daily | Good morning. Microsoft demonstrated yesterday it is focused on the far future by investing $1 billion in OpenAI, the organization co-founded by Elon Musk in 2015, to help develop Artificial General Intelligence. Most A.I. work today is focused on specific tasks, like identifying images or translating language. But “A.G.I” refers to the kind of non-task-specific thinking and problem solving that humans do. That’s the stuff science fiction is made of, and most computer experts say it is likely to be decades before the capability is well developed. The Microsoft investment ensures OpenAI development happens on Microsoft’s Azure Cloud services, so there’s an immediate commercial lift there. It gives Microsoft the inside track on developing business applications based on breakthroughs OpenAI makes along the path to developing AGI. It also gives the company a say in developing rules of the road for scary-sounding AGI itself. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the goal is to “democratize A.I.—while always keeping A.I. safety front and center—so everyone can benefit.” Microsoft, by the way, moved up to number 60 on the Fortune Global 500 list, from 71 a year earlier, with its impressive 23% revenue gain in 2018. Some other fun facts from the Fortune Global 500, out yesterday: -One third of the Fortune Global 500 companies are based in just five cities: Beijing, Tokyo, Paris, New York and Seoul. -Air Liquide, the French industrial company, was last on the list this year, making its revenue total of $24.8 billion the new threshold. That’s up 5% from last year’s threshold. -Meanwhile, one-time Fortune 500 star GE earned a dubious honor: it lost more money than any other company on the list, with a $22 billion loss in 2018. More news below. Alan Murray [email protected] @alansmurray Boris Johnson was announced as the new leader of the U.K.’s Conservative party this morning, and therefore prime minister of the U.K. It was not a shocking announcement (though technically it was down to two: him and Jeremy Hunt.) That means it’s worth revisiting this profile in The Atlantic of Boris, whose leadership style while the mayor of London, the foreign minister, and as an early Brussels irritant will likely hold lessons for Brexit, amid repeated warnings that a no-deal this fall would likely plunge the U.K. into recession. BBC / The Atlantic Apple is in advanced talks with Intel to acquire its smartphone modem chip business, WSJ reports—a crucial step in Apple differentiating its iPhone, and getting a head start on the growth of 5G. That deal could be worth $1 billion, giving Apple access to technology and engineering talent, while Intel would shed a part of the business that’s been weighing on its bottom line. WSJ The White House and congressional negotiators have avoided hitting the debt ceiling, after reaching an agreement last night for a two-year budget that would raise the existing cap on borrowing. The deal still needs to be passed by Congress and signed by President Trump, and if that happens, it would push the showdown over debt past the 2020 elections, with the deficit already approaching $1 trillion. New York Times Leo Hindery Jr, the former CEO of AT&T Broadband, makes the case for Elizabeth Warren’s proposed bill to restrict the private equity industry. “Today, too many PE fund managers are generalists, with little or no experience in the industry they’re investing in,” he writes. “And we’re seeing them use a much-discredited playbook: cut costs, take out cash for their own short-term benefit, add little genuine competitive value, and then slash jobs and worker benefits in a desperate bid for greater operating cash flow.” Fortune The under-construction Oyu Tolgoi copper mine in Mongolia, funded by Rio Tinto and the Mongolian government, is set to be the world’s third-largest, and a significant contributor to the country’s economy. But in 2013, a “special advisor” to Rio named Henry Steel, a young Oxford grad who was doing a PhD funded by the company, concluded that the mine was a bad investment for Mongolia. He went on to work for the London hedge-fund manager Crispin Odey, and make high-profile bets against the project. FT The Economic Roots of the Hong Kong Protests Incredibly low wages, long hours, and very tiny apartments: these are some of the economic strains behind the Hong Kong protests, which are the most extreme since the former British colony was returned to China in 1997. That also means a gap between rich and poor that is at its widest in nearly 50 years, paired with the world’s longest working hours and highest rents, which have leapfrogged wage growth. New York Times An unexpected casualty of the U.S.-China trade war? American cherries. Demand for the fresh, imported fruit soared to nearly $200 million in 2017—from nothing seven years before—and has now shrunk back to a tenth of its size at its peak. The import tariffs on U.S. cherries are 50% of the price, and Beijing has lowered regulations for tariffs, instead, from Central Asia: a key Belt and Road Initiative region. But the numbers of imported cherries are now so small that fruit-lovers can’t get their fix. Reuters | Alan Murray | https://fortune.com/2019/07/23/microsoft-invests-in-artificial-general-intelligence-ceo-daily/ | 2019-07-23 10:34:27+00:00 | 1,563,892,467 | 1,567,536,058 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
217,364 | france24--2019-11-06--France to 'take back control' of immigration, says French PM | 2019-11-06T00:00:00 | france24 | France to 'take back control' of immigration, says French PM | Dominique Faget, REUTERS | French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe leads a meeting focused on immigration policies, next to French Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet, at the Hotel Matignon in Paris, France November 6, 2019. French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe on Wednesday unveiled the government's new immigration measures, including the first ever quotas for migrant workers, as President Emmanuel Macron's administration seeks to toughen its stance in response to right-wing criticism. Philippe said France needed to “take back control” of migration as part of a government push to listen to voters' worries about migration that risk playing into the hands of the far right. “It’s about sovereignty. We have to take back control of our migration policy," Philippe told a news conference, adding that the government’s new approach would offer a "fair balance between rights and obligations." The prime minister confirmed reports that the government planned to fix quotas on certain aspects of migration, without elaborating. "Our will is to make choices in how we welcome [immigrants]: set quantitative goals or quotas, both expressions suit me, for professional immigration", Philippe said. His announcements came a day after Labour Minister Muriel Penicaud said France would introduce migrant quotas for the first time next year. In a major policy shift, authorities working with employers will identify industries lacking qualified candidates and facilitate the hiring of foreigners to fill the gap, Penicaud said. "This is about France hiring based on its needs. It's a new approach, similar to what is done in Canada or Australia," Penicaud told BFM television. Currently employers have to justify why a French citizen cannot be hired in a complex administrative process, which resulted in around 33,000 economic migrants being granted visas last year. Construction, hotels and restaurants, and some retailing sectors have long complained of a shortage of people willing to take what is often low-paying work. Information technology and engineering industries, by contrast, say France does not produce enough qualified candidates. Penicaud did not say how many foreign workers would be granted visas, nor if an applicant's nationality would be taken into account, a proposal aired by Philippe last month. Philippe is spearheading Macron's move to toughen rules on immigration in a bid to woo right-wing voters who accuse the government of allowing in too many foreigners despite unemployment at 8.5 percent in the second quarter. Analysts say Macron's prime political rival in the run-up to 2022 presidential elections remains the far-right National Rally (RN) leader Marine Le Pen. The prime minister is to unveil a raft of measures Wednesday signalling the tougher line, after France received a record 122,743 asylum requests last year, up 22 percent from the year before. The measures could include restrictions on migrants bringing over family members, or limiting access to health care for asylum seekers while their claims are processed. France has also called for overhauling the EU's efforts to halt the surge of migrants fleeing conflict and misery in Asia, the Middle East and Africa since 2015. Macron also wants more EU members to share the burden of taking in migrants allowed to stay, a move opposed by several countries in Eastern and Central Europe. Macron drew the ire of Bulgaria's government last week after saying in a magazine interview that he wanted migrants from Guinea or Ivory Coast, who worked in a legal way, rather than "clandestine networks of Bulgarians and Ukrainians". | FRANCE 24 | https://www.france24.com/en/20191106-live-french-pm-unveils-immigration-plan-as-government-moves-to-implement-quotas | Wed, 06 Nov 2019 12:04:50 GMT | 1,573,059,890 | 1,573,063,942 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
383,466 | npr--2019-01-25--In A Hot Labor Market Some Employees Are Ghosting Bad Bosses | 2019-01-25T00:00:00 | npr | In A Hot Labor Market, Some Employees Are 'Ghosting' Bad Bosses | In A Hot Labor Market, Some Employees Are 'Ghosting' Bad Bosses If you've ever applied for a job, chances are you never heard back from some prospective employers — even after an interview. But now that jobs are plentiful, it seems the tables have turned on employers. In a report last month, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago said a number of employers reported being "ghosted" by workers — that's right, like how a Tinder date might stop answering your texts. The Fed defined ghosting on the job as "a situation where a worker stops coming to work without notice and then is impossible to contact." There's no official data on ghosting at work. But analysts say the uptick probably has something to do with the low unemployment rate and a hot labor market that's given workers more job options. Workers such as Kris say there's another reason: being disrespected on the job. Several years ago, when he was in college, Kris worked as a lifeguard at a water park in Cincinnati. After about a year, his bosses promoted him to a managerial role and promised him a raise. His new duties were more than just keeping an eye on the water. Kris managed the daily schedule for all lifeguards and tested the water's chemical levels. Each morning when he opened the park, he would be the first one down its waterslides — testing them for safety. More than six months into his new position, Kris' paycheck remained the same — $8 an hour instead of the $10 he was promised. "Week after week I would ask about it," he says, "and management would keep making excuses." Then came a corporate announcement. Kris' managers said they would cut employees' pay by 10 percent due to financial difficulties. Kris felt slighted — now his pay was less than what he started out earning, despite his managerial duties. "I decided, OK, if they really don't care about me and they don't value me and what I do for the water park, then maybe I'll just stop doing it," he says. So on a busy summer day, Kris didn't show up to open the park. He let the flood of subsequent texts and voicemails from his managers go unanswered. No one else with his level of training was able to come in that morning. "I ultimately caused the shutdown of the water park for that Friday," Kris says. He estimates he cost the park between $15,000 and $20,000 in customer revenue "for what would have been a yearly raise of a few thousand dollars." Soon after he ghosted, Kris landed a job making more money as a pizza delivery driver. He now works for a Fortune 500 company. Though Kris doesn't regret ghosting, he doesn't want his current or future employers to know about it. So NPR is not using his last name. As the Fed and others have noticed, Kris' exit strategy is becoming more common. Recruiters say applicants are increasingly ghosting on interviews and job offers. Raquel Anaya, a recruiter at a real estate company in Florida, says she's seen a spike in no-shows in both interviews and first days on the job over the past year. "I think most of the time it's that people interview more than one place concurrently and we get edged out on offers," she says. "So instead of just saying 'I got a better offer,' they just stop." Lydia, now an accountant, has been there before. NPR is not using her last name. As a "desperate for work" 20-year-old college student, she applied for a job at a small factory that makes plastic. When she arrived for her interview, Lydia says, she "immediately knew the atmosphere was off." The company's owner, a large and "aggressive" man, made her practice assembling parts for half an hour in view of a foreman. After she completed the task without a hitch, the owner took her and the foreman to a cramped room. He offered Lydia the job, but told her his expectations were low, all the while getting "way too close" to her, she says. "I was in a dark office with both of these large, intimidating men anticipating my answer," Lydia says. "I croaked a 'sure,' and they told me when to start and where to meet them. I almost ran out, knowing that I wasn't going back." And Lydia never did. She was able to get a different job where she felt safer, and she never mentioned the brief experience to other employers. Anaya, the recruiter, says that if an applicant who disappeared reapplies to her firm, she remembers who has ghosted. "And that doesn't look good," she says. She blames the increase in ghosting on a solid labor market with lots of opportunity. So does Andy Challenger, a vice president at the job outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. He says he most often hears of ghosting in industries "where jobs are the most plentiful and good employees are the most scarce," including technology and engineering. Ghosting is a learned behavior, Challenger says. After all, employers ghost applicants all the time and can fire workers without two weeks' notice. "Candidates today are saying, 'I'm just going to ghost them, I'm not going to respond to the calls and texts and voicemails that they leave me' because in some ways it feels like revenge," Challenger says. No matter how bad a boss is, both Challenger and Anaya don't recommend ghosting. As job searchers know, future employers do ask past ones for recommendations. Plus, sometimes quitting in person can be fun. "In some ways, people who leave without notice are missing out on one of the most satisfying parts of the human experience, which is quitting a job that you hate," Challenger says. "Even if you do it politely, that can be cathartic." Kris, the former lifeguard, cites one big reason for not telling off his bosses — the direct, financial impact his ghosting had. "I feel like I made a bigger dent than I would have if I just said, 'OK, I'm done,' " he says. But he says he'd never ghost on an employer that treated him with respect. | Emily Sullivan | https://www.npr.org/2019/01/25/688303552/in-a-hot-labor-market-some-employees-are-ghosting-on-bad-bosses?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news | 2019-01-25 17:52:10+00:00 | 1,548,456,730 | 1,567,550,926 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
441,777 | rawstory--2019-09-20--Trump may get much of the worlds manufacturing out of China but it wont be coming back to the US | 2019-09-20T00:00:00 | rawstory | Trump may get much of the world’s manufacturing out of China — but it won’t be coming back to the US | “Chimerica” is a term originally coined by the historian Niall Ferguson and economist Moritz Schularick to describe the growing economic relationship between the U.S. and China since the latter’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. In the words of Ferguson: “The Chinese did the saving, the Americans the spending. The Chinese did the exporting, the Americans the importing. The Chinese did the lending, the Americans the borrowing.” Much of the pre-crisis boom in global trade was driven by this economic symbiosis, which is why successive American presidents tolerated this marriage of convenience despite the increasing costs to the U.S. economy. The net benefits calculation, however, began to change after 2008, and the conflict has intensified further after the 2016 presidential election result. Today, the cumulative stress of Donald Trump’s escalating trade war is leading to if not an irreparable breach between the two countries, then certainly a significant fraying. The imminent resumption of trade talks notwithstanding, the rising cost of the tariffs is already inducing some U.S. manufacturers to exit China. But in most instances, they are not returning to home shores. It may have taken Trump to point out the pitfalls of the Chimerica link, but coming up with a coherent strategy to replace it is clearly beyond the president’s abilities. America is likely to remain a relative manufacturing wasteland, as barren as Trump’s own ill-conceived ideas on trade. At the same time, it’s not going to be an unmitigated victory for China either, as Beijing is increasingly suffering from a large confluence of internal and external pressures. Chimerica helped to launch China as a global trade power. To the extent that this marriage helped the U.S. economy, it skewed toward the largely blue state coastal regions. Wall Street banks located on the East Coast happily collected lucrative commissions and investment banking fees, as China’s export proceeds were recycled into U.S. treasuries, stocks, and high-end real estate while the capital markets boomed; on the West Coast, “new economy” companies thrived, their growth and profitability unhindered by the onslaught of Chinese manufactured exports. By contrast, facilitated by technological advances that permitted large-scale outsourcing by U.S. manufacturers, Chimerica laid waste to much of what was left of America’s Rust Belt, and the politics of many of the displaced workers mutated to the extent that Donald Trump became an appealing alternative to the establishment in 2016. The major legacy of Chimerica, then, is that too many American workers have been semi-permanently replaced by low-cost offshored labor. Prior to great advances in technology, along with globalization, displacement of the current labor force could only have occurred through immigration of workers into the country. Historically, displacement by immigrants generally began at the menial level of the labor force, and became more restrictive as when it became correlated with significant unemployment. Given the rise of globalization and the corresponding liberalization of immigration in the past few decades, however, policy no longer arrests the displacement of American workers. The policy backlash has consequently manifested itself more via trade protectionism. Trump has sought to consolidate his Rust Belt base of supporters by launching a trade war, especially versus Beijing, the ultimate effects of which he hoped would be to re-domicile supply chains that had earlier migrated to China. Early on in his presidency, there was some hope that Trump’s protectionism was at best a bluff or, at worst, an aberration, and that the return of a Democrat to the White House in 2020 would eventually reestablish the status quo ante. But the president still can’t get a wall, and his protectionism has become more pronounced almost as if to compensate. The problem today is that even if Trump is voted out of office in 2020, corporate America is becoming less inclined to wait out the end of his presidency to return to the pre-Trump status quo of parking the bulk of their manufacturing in China. There is too much risk in putting all of one’s eggs in the China basket, especially given growing national security concerns. Hence, U.S. companies are taking action. In spite of decades of investment in these China-domiciled supply chains, a number of American companies are pulling out: toy manufacturer Hasbro, Illinois-based phone accessories manufacturer Xentris Wireless, and lifestyle clothing company PacSun are a few of the operators who are exiting the country. But they are not coming back to the U.S., relocating instead to places like Vietnam, Bangladesh, Mexico, the Philippines and Taiwan. The chief financial officer of Xentris, Ben Buttolph, says that the company will never return to China: “We are trying to have multiple locations certified for all of our products, so that if all of a sudden there’s an issue with one of the locations, we just flip the switch.” Likewise, the CEO of Hasbro, Brian Goldner, recently spoke of “great opportunities in Vietnam, India and other territories like Mexico.” All is not lost for the U.S., however, as Goldner did celebrate the success of Hasbro’s facility in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts, which has resumed production of Play-Doh in the U.S. for the first time since 2004. It is doubtful, however, that this represents the recapturing of the high value-added supply chains that Trump envisaged when he first launched his trade assault on Beijing. In general, as Julius Krein, editor of American Affairs, writes: “United States industry is losing ground to foreign competitors on price, quality and technology. In many areas, our manufacturing capacity cannot compete with what exists in Asia.” These are not isolated examples. Defense One also notes the following development: “It came without a breaking news alert or presidential tweet, but the technological competition with China entered a new phase last month. Several developments quietly heralded this shift: Cross-border investments between the United States and China plunged to their lowest levels since 2014, with the tech sector suffering the most precipitous drop. U.S. chip giants Intel and AMD abruptly ended or declined to extend important partnerships with Chinese entities. The Department of Commerce halved the number of licenses that let U.S. companies assign Chinese nationals to sensitive technology and engineering projects.” This development consequently makes it hard to proclaim Beijing a winner in this dispute either. The country still needs access to U.S. high tech. The government announced yet another fiscal stimulus to the economy earlier this month in response to a cluster of weakening economic data, much of which is related to the trade shock. It is also the case that China is being buffeted politically, both externally and internally: externally, in addition to the escalating trade war, China’s own efforts to counter the effects of rising protectionism by creating a “reverse Marshall Plan” via the Belt and Road Initiative is floundering. China’s “iron brother,” Pakistan, is increasingly being victimized by India’s aggressive Hindu-centric nationalism. It is hard to imagine the Modi government opportunistically taking the step of annexing Kashmir and undermining Pakistan, had it not sensed Beijing’s increasing vulnerability. Internally, Beijing is finding it increasingly challenging as it seeks to enforce its “One China” policy in Hong Kong and Taiwan. The withdrawal of the controversial extradition law that first precipitated widespread demonstrations in Hong Kong has not alleviated the political pressures in the territory, but simply allowed an even bigger protest culture to take root and strengthen an independent political mindset. Similarly, Taiwan has also openly supported the Hong Kong protesters, pledging help to those seeking asylum. Both regions now constitute both a huge humiliation and challenge to the primacy of China’s ruling Communist Party. And now on top of that, foreign manufacturers are leaving the country, weakening a totally leveraged manufacturing complex. The implications of this divorce go well beyond the U.S. and China. They constitute another step toward regionalization, another step away from a quaint ideological “post-history” construct that saw Washington, D.C., as the head office and the rest of the world as a bunch of branch plants for “America, Inc.” It’s hardly comforting to contemplate that the last time we reached this historic juncture was the early 1900s, when a similarly globalized economy broke down, followed by the Great War. As Niall Ferguson points out, “a high level of economic integration does not necessarily prevent the growth of strategic rivalry and, ultimately, conflict.” There’s no doubt that both Washington and Beijing will likely making soothing noises to the markets in order to create favorable conditions for the trade talks in October, but their actions suggest that they are both digging in for a longer struggle. Today’s trade wars, therefore, are likely to morph into something more destructive, which is a lose-lose in an era where human advancement depends on greater integration between economic powers. This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute. | Marshall Auerback, Independent Media Institute | https://www.rawstory.com/2019/09/trump-may-get-much-of-the-worlds-manufacturing-out-of-china-but-it-wont-be-coming-back-to-the-u-s/ | 2019-09-20 18:43:58+00:00 | 1,569,019,438 | 1,569,590,605 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
483,776 | skynewspolitics--2019-09-11--International students to be allowed a two-year stay after graduating | 2019-09-11T00:00:00 | skynewspolitics | International students to be allowed a two-year stay after graduating | International students to be allowed a two-year stay after graduating to look for work International students to be allowed a two-year stay after graduating to look for work International students will be able to stay in the UK after graduating to look for work, under new proposals outlined by the prime minister. The changes, which would come into effect for those starting undergraduate courses or above in 2020/21, represent a loosening of the rules introduced by the then home secretary Theresa May in 2012, which stated that overseas students had to leave within four months of finishing their degree. The extension would be conditional on the students studying at institutions with a track record in upholding immigration checks. However Migration Watch UK described the move as an "unwise" and "retrograde" step which would "likely lead to foreign graduates staying on to stack shelves, as happened before". Chairman Alp Mehmet said: "Our universities are attracting a record number of overseas students so there is no need to devalue a study visa by turning it into a backdoor route for working here." The announcement of the rule change by Boris Johnson coincided with the launch of the world's largest genetics project, the £200m whole genome sequencing project in the UK Biobank, which aims to transform genetic research. Mr Johnson said: "Britain has a proud history of putting itself at the heart of international collaboration and discovery. "Over sixty years ago, we saw the discovery of DNA in Cambridge by a team of international researchers and today we are going even further. "Now we are bringing together experts from around the globe to work in the UK on the world's largest genetics research project, set to help us better treat life-threatening illnesses and ultimately save lives. "Breakthroughs of this kind wouldn't be possible without being open to the brightest and the best from across the globe to study and work in the UK. "That's why we're unveiling a new route for international students to unlock their potential and start their careers in the UK." The new rules are being seen as a particular boost for the so-called STEM subjects - Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths - where international students account for half of all full-time post-graduates. Home Secretary Priti Patel said: "The new Graduate Route will mean talented international students, whether in science and maths or technology and engineering, can study in the UK and then gain valuable work experience as they go on to build successful careers. "It demonstrates our global outlook and will ensure that we continue to attract the best and brightest." | null | http://news.sky.com/story/international-students-to-be-allowed-a-two-year-stay-after-graduating-to-look-for-work-11806673 | 2019-09-11 02:05:00+00:00 | 1,568,181,900 | 1,569,330,403 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
548,380 | sputnik--2019-11-06--Very 'Fresh' Idea! PM Philippe Urges France to Get Back in Control of Migration Policy | 2019-11-06T00:00:00 | sputnik | Very 'Fresh' Idea! PM Philippe Urges France to Get Back in Control of Migration Policy | Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said that France needed to "take back control" of migration policy, following his presentation of 20 new measures to potentially toughen immigration control, before parliament on Wednesday. The new plan would potentially include toughening the rules around asylum seekers' instant access to healthcare, closer control of migrants' claims to benefits and an introduction of quotas for migrant workers. On 5 November French Labour Minister Muriel Penicaud said that France would introduce the quotas based on the shortages in certain industries that lack qualified candidates, such as information technology and engineering. Some hospitality industries, including the restaurant and hotel segments, are also believed to require workers willing to take low-paying jobs. It is not clear so far whether these measures would be more attractive or repulsive to the country's potential immigrants, as currently, French employers have to go through a lengthy and complicated administrative process to hire non-French citizens. Penicaud also did not specify whether the applicant's nationalities would be taken into account according to the new plan. Around 33,000 economic migrants were granted French working visas in 2018 according to AFP, while a record 122,743 asylum requests were received by France, surging by 22% in comparison to 2017. The news comes following President Emmanuel Macron's recent bid to toughen immigration policy, and his calls on EU members to share the burden of asylum seekers. Macron also got into hot water with Bulgarian politicians last week, after the president argued that France was willing to accept migrants from Guinea or the Ivory Coast, rather than "clandestine networks of Bulgarians and Ukrainians". Emmanuel Macron, who is seeking re-election in 2022, is expected to see fierce competition from the nationalist party leader Marine Le Pen who has long criticised the French president for being too "soft" on immigration policy. France has been one among many European countries that recently moved to tighten its migration policies, following the unfolding of the European migration crisis in 2015, when many Middle Eastern and North Africa refugees crossed the Mediterranean Sea to arrive on the continent. Several countries, including the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia, refused to support the EU's "open border" policies, both in terms of illegal migration and welcoming economic migrants. In 2018 Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban pledged to protect his country's borders from illegal migration, with Budapest harshly opposing European Union mandatory migrant relocation quotas, and banning non-governmental organisations from providing aid to undocumented migrants. Italy has also adopted a series of measures against illegal migration, including the so-called "Salvini Decree", after the current government assumed office in June 2018. While France initially pledged to follow the EU "solidarity mechanism" for relocating migrants across the bloc, it now seems that Macron's government has become more cautious in its migration stance. | null | https://sputniknews.com/europe/201911061077238491-very-fresh-idea-pm-philippe-urges-france-to-get-back-in-control-of-migration-policy/ | Wed, 06 Nov 2019 18:48:14 +0300 | 1,573,084,094 | 1,573,064,861 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
661,862 | thedenverpost--2019-04-10--From handcrafted to high-tech Beer brewing is changing and a Colorado college is leading the way | 2019-04-10T00:00:00 | thedenverpost | From handcrafted to high-tech: Beer brewing is changing and a Colorado college is leading the way | Beer is blended with all sorts of exotic ingredients these days, from fruit to honey to cold brew coffee. On the Colorado State University campus in Fort Collins, it will soon be blended with the latest “Internet of Things” technology as the school and its partners aim to educate the next generation of beer industry workers. CSU and multinational technology and engineering firm Emerson announced plans Tuesday for the Emerson Brewing Innovation Center, a forthcoming lab space that will bring some of the latest in brewing technology to the school. Set to open in Gifford Building in the fall, the center will be home to two brewing systems built by an Emerson partner company. The beer will be brewed manually but the systems will include Emerson control systems, flow meters, measurement devices and other tools that will track and record data throughout the brewing process. That data will then be stored in a cloud accessible to students and instructors for review, allowing them to see where things went right or wrong in their efforts and to tinker with ingredients and processes. It’s all part of Emerson’s array of Internet of Things tech, smart devices that share information with one another via a web connection. “It’s getting back to some of the basic science of how you do things and how you brew beer, but then also keeping tabs on all of the steps,” Christian Grossenbacher, vice president of food and beverage for Emerson Automation Solutions. “We will be looking at working with them on a fully automated (system) down the road.” The systems will give students in CSU’s Fermentation Science and Technology program will an up-close look at how automated technology helps brewers optimize the operations and do real-time quality control. Emerson’s systems are in use by name-brand brewing companies like Miller Coors and Boston Brewing Co., maker of Sam Adams Boston Lager, according to Grossenbacher. “Partnerships like these enable us to give our students experience with industry standards and help them prepare for the job market,” Jeff Callaway, associate director of CSU’s fermentation science program, said in a news release. “The new center will enhance our fermentation science academic program while strengthening ties to the industry.” Fort Collins is home to some of the biggest and best-known craft brewing brands in the country, including fermentation sciences program supporter New Belgium Brewing Co. Emerson is from beer country, too. It’s based in St. Louis, home base for beer behemoth Anheuser-Busch, maker of Budweiser. Grossenbacher said the company has strong Front Range ties thanks to its Boulder-based subsidiary Micro Motion Inc. Micro Motion held a panel discussion with area brewers and Callaway last year that was the impetus for Emerson deciding to invest in a partnership with CSU, he said. The partnership also includes a $10,000 donation toward a diversity fellowship for the brewing and fermentation program. “We are focused on helping train the digital workforce of the future while advancing education, innovation and diversity in the industry,” Lal Karsanbhai, executive president of Emerson Automation Solutions, said in a prepared statement. “The Emerson Brewing Innovation Center will mark the beginning of a strong and continued partnership with CSU.” | Joe Rubino | https://www.denverpost.com/2019/04/10/beer-brewing-emerson-colorado-state/ | 2019-04-10 12:00:25+00:00 | 1,554,912,025 | 1,567,543,262 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
685,276 | theguardianuk--2019-01-15--Student loan ban some universities could lose a third of their intake | 2019-01-15T00:00:00 | theguardianuk | Student loan ban: some universities could lose a third of their intake | Some modern universities could lose about a third of their students and face a struggle to survive if plans go ahead to stop young people with lower grades qualifying for loans, data obtained by Education Guardian suggests. The prime minister’s review of post-18 education, due to report next month, is expected to recommend a cut to tuition fees. But another idea that has been leaked is to limit numbers by stopping young students qualifying for a loan if they get fewer than three Ds at A-level. The proposal has sparked anger in universities because it is likely to hit would-be students from the poorest families much harder than their middle-class counterparts. New data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) also shows 16 modern universities in England could lose between 15 and 36% of their full-time degree students overnight, based on 2016-17 figures. Many others would also see a substantial drop. Experts say the loss of income could push struggling universities to the brink, especially on top of a cut in fees. Simon Marginson, professor of higher education at Oxford University, says: “A huge cut in income like this would inevitably mean that institutions would flounder, and some would be surviving on a week-to-week basis. That is bad for the sector, bad for students, bad for graduates and bad for employers. It would throw everyone into chaos.” London Metropolitan University, whose student numbers fell by a third in the five years to 2017, according to the admissions service Ucas, would be worst hit. The data shows that 36% of its full-time degree students were admitted with fewer than three Ds at A-level or equivalent in 2016-17. It was closely followed by Bolton University, at 31%, and the University of Bedfordshire, 27%. The PM’s review, led by the former equities broker Philip Augar, is, according to another leak, considering a cut in fees from £9,250 to £6,500, for arts, humanities and social science subjects. Science, technology and engineering degrees, which typically lead to better paid jobs, could cost up to £13,500. Universities are not hopeful that the government will step in with extra funding to plug the gap, meaning they would lose nearly £3,000 a head for many courses. All universities are viewing this as a massive blow. But experts say it could sound the death knell for less popular institutions that are already struggling in the fierce new higher education market. Matt Robb, managing partner at the strategy consultancy EY-Parthenon, which advises universities, says: “If they cut fees to £6,500, some universities will bleed to death.” He argues that the government’s new Office for Students can no longer refuse to bail out failing institutions if fees are cut without new public funding to compensate. “If you slash university funding by a third you can’t just wash your hands of it all and say let the market solve the problem.” Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute thinktank, says some institutions have already had to take out bridging loans to pay staff wages while they wait for their first tranche of this academic year’s fees from the Student Loans Company. “If you push them over a cliff, what looks like a moderately popular policy of cutting fees suddenly becomes a major political scandal. There could be a dozen universities in serious trouble.” Hillman is fiercely opposed to the proposal to limit entry to those with three Ds and above, which he says would “dramatically damage overnight the government’s plans to get more working class young people into university”. He predicts it would finish off some troubled institutions. “To lose that many students would be a massive blow to an institution. If you had an exceptional VC who had somehow prepared for it, or valuable properties in central London, you might survive it. But many institutions aren’t in that position.” Marginson says the fallout from one or more universities going bankrupt would be profound, hurting current students and “trashing” the degrees of all previous graduates. “Generally a university is one of the biggest employers. It’s like closing a hospital – losing it would change the environment and make it a harder place to live in. These aren’t just businesses, they are public institutions that are subsidised by the state for good reason.” Steven Cummins, professor of population health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, one of the world’s leading centres for public health research, says he would not have made it to university at all had there been a cut-off based on A-level grades. Cummins, who has advised the Department of Health and the Food Standards Agency, got two Es and a U at grammar school in Southend, Essex. He says he wasn’t mature enough to work hard. He retook his A-levels at college in the evenings, doing an office job in the day, and pushed his grades up to CEE. Happily, it was enough to get on to what he describes as a “transformational” geography degree at his local HE college, now the University of Gloucestershire. “I finally found something I enjoyed and was good at,” he says. “Starting again in a completely different environment meant no one had any preconceptions and that was hugely liberating.” Cummins was the first in his family to go to university. His dad was a builder and his mum was a clerk. He says the advantages it has given him have been huge. “There are always people who, for whatever reason, don’t achieve their potential at the age of 18,” he says. “I think that writing them off at that age and not giving them the opportunity to experience the transformative power of higher education is a huge mistake.” Prof Graham Baldwin, vice-chancellor of Southampton Solent University, where 18% of students had A-levels below three Ds in 2016-17, says he is “frankly horrified” that this policy is on the table. “We’ve been monitoring students’ achievements and in 2017 more of our graduates who came in with three Ds or less were in professional or managerial roles than those who got three Cs or better.” Prof David Phoenix, vice-chancellor of London South Bank University, where 19% of students have fewer than three Ds, said writing off applicants based solely on their school results was “morally abhorrent”. He doesn’t think accepting lower grade applicants is a stigma for universities such as his, which serve disadvantaged communities. “We are in the bottom quartile for entry qualifications but we are in the top four universities in the country for graduate outcomes and in the top 10 for graduate salaries. “A student’s performance in school is often not an indicator of their performance at university, especially when they are studying a subject they really enjoy, taught in a way they haven’t experienced before,” he says. “We work very closely with industry so it feels relevant, and we work hard at building their self-confidence.” • This article was amended on 15 January 2019 because an earlier version misnamed the University of Gloucestershire as the University of Gloucester. This has been corrected. | Anna Fazackerley | https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/jan/15/student-loan-ban-universities-could-lose-third-of-intake | 2019-01-15 07:16:09+00:00 | 1,547,554,569 | 1,567,552,413 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
740,376 | theindependent--2019-01-11--Women are just as good as men at negotiating salary despite employersapos claims | 2019-01-11T00:00:00 | theindependent | Women are just as good as men at negotiating salary, despite employers' claims | Despite years of employers claiming otherwise, new research has revealed women to be equally as good as men at salary negotiations. Almost 50 years since the introduction of the Equal Pay Act (1970), the UK still has a glaring gender pay gap with figures from the Office for National Statistics placing it around 18 per cent. While many believe the chasm comes down to a combination of factors including childcare and discrimination, employers have often claimed that the gap is the result of women’s lesser negotiating skills when it comes to asking for pay rises and promotions. But a new study on how gender affects these discussions is disputing this excuse entirely. In a series of experiments conducted by Lehigh University, Pennsylvania, male and female participants were randomly assigned the roles of boss and employee. They were then asked to negotiate an agreement that would determine how much they were each paid for taking part in the experiment. The test showed no difference between men and women’s negotiating skills and found that women were just as self interested as their male counterparts. This indicates that a woman’s ability, or lack thereof, to discuss salary is in no way a significant factor when it comes to explaining the pay gap. “Some attribute the pay gap to perceived gender differences in wage contract negotiations or to a belief that women undermine their own bargaining position by extending too much trust to others in negotiations,” said Holona Ochs, associate professor of political science at Lehigh University. “Our findings suggest that the gender stereotypes that lead to the perception that men may negotiate better wage contracts than women are misleading, and that individual behaviour in hierarchical negotiation settings, like between a boss and employee, is more likely affected by the context, than by gender differences. “Our research report shows how institution-free environments (like experiments) which do not exist in the real world – provide a baseline to measure how institutions shape the behaviour of real public workers in real agencies.” The study follows the announcement that the global pay gap between men and women will take 202 years to close. The World Econonmic Forum said the gap has narrowed slightly over the past year, but that the number of women in the professional workplace has fallen. It also revealed that women are significantly affected by the automation of jobs and development of artificial intelligence, warning that unless more women are encouraged to enter the fields of science, technology and engineering, the gender gap could widen. | Sarah Young | http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/women-salary-negotiations-men-gender-pay-gap-study-lehigh-university-a8722781.html | 2019-01-11 13:26:40+00:00 | 1,547,231,200 | 1,567,552,909 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
744,225 | theindependent--2019-01-30--Post-Brexit salary caps for EU workers will be aposdetrimentalapos to science minister warns | 2019-01-30T00:00:00 | theindependent | Post-Brexit salary caps for EU workers will be 'detrimental' to science, minister warns | The government's refusal to give visas to science workers earning less than £30,000 could damage the research sector in post-Brexit Britain, the science minister has warned. Chris Skidmore said he was trying to convince home secretary Sajid Javid to scrap the salary threshold which has been recommended in a document underpinning future immigration plans. He said he was concerned about the impact on lab technicians and other employees who earn below the cap but make a vital contribution to UK science and technology. His comments came after the government's strategy for post-Brexit immigration policy was released. Mr Skidmore said he was committed to ensuring Britain “remains the best possible place for international researchers”. “We made quite a clear statement on ensuring we have no cap on international students, but I want to go further,” he told the Science and Technology Committee. “For instance the £30,000 cap on salary can be seen as quite detrimental to the science community.” He added that while he was new to the job, he understood the importance of not breaking up research groups and ensuring the families of scientists could accompany them to the UK. He said he was in the process of working with universities to build a case and make this clear to the home secretary. Asked by the committee's chair Norman Lamb if he wanted to remove the cap altogether, the minister said he wanted to “look at what alternatives there would be.” Last year, the Migration Advisory Committee recommended there should be no cap on high-skilled workers allowed into the UK, but that the existing £30,000 salary threshold should be maintained. Current policy is to allow 20,700 high-skilled workers from abroad into the country. The Home Office said they are now undertaking a period of consultations to establish what a suitable salary threshold would be. According to the union Prospect, keeping such a high cap on salaries for workers from the EU will have profound consequences for public sector science, technology and engineering. They list postdoctoral researchers, veterinary inspectors and agricultural research technicians as some of the professions earning below £30,000 for which the country currently relies on European workers. Dr Mike Galsworthy from campaign group Scientists for EU said Mr Skidmore's comments revealed a "woeful state of affairs". "The matter of highly-skilled, highly-talented but low-paid staff in our science and innovation system has long been known, but the new science minister only wants 'to look at... alternatives' at this late stage, on the eve of a potential crash out," he said. Science is a sector that faces a great deal of disruption following Brexit, given the extensive collaborations and shared funding networks operating between the UK and Europe. Many researchers have expressed concern about the UK’s future as a leading scientific power, despite assurances by ministers that any lost funding will be matched. Particularly concerning is the prospect of a no-deal Brexit, which Mr Skidmore admitted would be disruptive to British science. He said that while the government had underwritten guarantees to ensure UK researchers supported by the EU’s Horizon 2020 scheme would not lose funding, when it comes to future schemes such as Horizon Europe “we are crossroads”. He added: “We are leaving the EU but we do not want to break those long standing ties." The Independent has launched its #FinalSay campaign to demand that voters are given a voice on the final Brexit deal. Sign our petition here | Josh Gabbatiss | http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-science-eu-workers-30k-cap-research-chris-skidmore-technology-a8755036.html | 2019-01-30 19:27:11+00:00 | 1,548,894,431 | 1,567,550,227 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
757,701 | theindependent--2019-04-23--Formula One gender pay gap revealed to be above UK average at all but one British team | 2019-04-23T00:00:00 | theindependent | Formula One gender pay gap revealed to be above UK average at all but one British team | Formula One’s reputation as a male-dominated sport has been cemented in recently-released filings which reveal that all of the teams based in Britain paid their male staff more than women last year. It comes despite accelerating efforts to boost the appeal of motorsport to women. Campaign group Dare To Be Different was launched in 2016 to drive diversity in motorsport and next month the all-female W Series will host its first race. In contrast, F1 doesn’t have a female driver and women lose out lower down its rankings as well. Six of its ten teams are based in Britain and employ a combined 4,023 staff. The gulf in pay between men and women was higher than the national average at all but one of them last year. The best performer was Northamptonshire-based Force India which went into administration in July and was rescued by Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll, a former investor in fashion brand Tommy Hilfiger. Force India is one of F1’s smallest teams with 382 employees according to its latest accounts. Last year it paid women an hourly wage which was 12.6% lower than the amount earned by men. It is an improvement on the national gender pay gap of 18% which every other British F1 team failed to meet. Their annual filings were made under the Equality Act which came into force last year and requires companies with more than 250 employees to disclose the gender pay gap between men and women. One of the biggest gulfs in pay was at Williams in Oxfordshire where the average hourly wage for women was 25% lower than that of their male colleagues. It is particularly ironic as Williams employs the highest-ranking female team executive in F1. Its deputy boss is Claire Williams, daughter of the team’s controlling shareholder Sir Frank Williams, but she is in the minority. According to the team, just 17.6% of its workforce was female last year, up from 13.3% in 2017. “At the current rate of change, it will be many years before we, as a business, as an industry and as a society, reach a point of equality,” says Claire Williams. “With this in mind, Williams will continue to promote more women in the workplace and support their progression within our business, as these steps are key to any sustainable and successful organisation.” The hurdle is education. One of the biggest departments for any F1 team is engineering but, according to Williams, just 10.5% of its engineers were female last year. Turning this around could be an uphill struggle. Filings from F1’s parent company, which is owned by Liberty Media, state that “the motorsport industry remains predominantly male, largely because of the lack of women choosing to pursue careers in science, technology and engineering.” Testimony to this, research last year from campaign group WISE showed that only 15% of total engineering and technology graduates in Britain were women. In a bid to turn this around, F1’s educational programme, F1 In Schools, launched a marketing campaign targeting girls last year and, as a result, 40% of all participants in the competition were female Since Liberty bought F1 in 2017 it has driven up the sport’s headcount and its filings reveal that last year there was a surge in the number of women in executive positions. They state that “our legal team now comprises of 74% women and the financial department also recruited more women into senior roles with a 50/50 split, and 40% of those women being at a senior level.” Women were paid 81p for every £1 that men earned last year giving them an hourly wage which was 18.8% lower than the male staff. It is close to the national average but F1 isn’t satisfied. The filings add that “closing the gender pay gap remains a top priority for the F1 leadership team. Addressing this issue will take time but we are in no doubt that the steps we are taking to improve female representation in our business will have a positive impact in the long-term.” | Christian Sylt | https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/motor-racing/formula1/formula-one-gender-pay-gap-statistics-standings-uk-motorsport-a8882946.html | 2019-04-23 14:30:00+00:00 | 1,556,044,200 | 1,567,542,010 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
769,435 | theindependent--2019-08-23--Prince Andrew Who is the royal and where is he in line to the throne | 2019-08-23T00:00:00 | theindependent | Prince Andrew: Who is the royal and where is he in line to the throne? | The Royal Family has welcomed numerous new additions to its expanding brood over the years, most recently following the birth of Archie Harrison Mountbatten Windsor in May. However, there are several key members in the Windsor family who regularly make public appearances and speak on behalf of the Commonwealth. While the Prince of Wales and his offspring – the Dukes of Cambridge and Sussex – often hit the headlines as a result of their work supporting mental health charities, speaking about the threat of the climate crisis and make red carpet appearances at star-studded events, others go about life less in the spotlight. The Duke of York is one such individual. As one of four children of Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh, the 59-year-old has forged a prominent career for himself in the Navy and in international trade affairs. Here’s everything you need to know about Prince Andrew: When was he born? Prince Andrew Albert Christian Edward is the Queen and Prince Philip's second child. At the time of his birth on 19 February 1960, he was second in line to the throne behind his older brother, Prince Charles. As it currently stands, the royal is now eighth in the order of succession, moving down from seventh place following the birth of the Duke of Sussex’s child, Archie Harrison, on 6 May. What is his job? The royal holds the rank of commander and the honorary rank of vice admiral in the Royal Navy. During his career in the military, Andrew served as an active-duty helicopter pilot, instructor and the captain of a warship. He also served during the Falklands War in 1982 and Britain's Special Representative for International Trade and Investment until July 2011. The duke’s biograph on the royal family’s website states: “Much of The Duke of York's work is focussed on promoting economic growth and skilled job creation in the UK, with particular emphasis on education and skills, entrepreneurship and science, technology and engineering.” He is also founder of Pitch@Palace – an annual event at which budding entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas to a roomful of potential supporters from the business community. Does he have children? The royal has two children, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, from his marriage to Sarah “Fergie” Ferguson. The pair wed on 23 July 1986 at Westminster Abbey and separated in 1992, finalising their divorce in 1996. The pair remain very close and are regularly seen on outings and on holiday together. Beatrice was born 8 August 1988 and Eugenie was welcomed into the royal family on 23 March 1990. In 2016, the duke said there was “no truth” in rumours of a rift between him and Prince Charles over his daughters' participation as members of the royal family. In a rare public statement, Andrew posted a link on Twitter in response to rumours regarding Eugenie and Beatrice. He said: “It is a complete fabrication to suggest I have asked for any future husbands of the Princesses to have titles. “There is no truth to the story that there could be a split between The Prince of Wales and I over my daughters' participation as members of the Royal Family and any continued speculation is pointless.” On 14 October 2018, Eugenie married her financier Jack Brooksbank at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle. Where does he live? Royal Lodge is the official resident of the Duke of York, which is located in Windsor Great Park. The Queen Mother previously lived in the private resident before the site was gifted to Prince Andrew in 2003. In 2004, the prince moved into the property with his daughters Beatrice and Eugenie. Despite his divorce from Ferguson, she moved into Royal Lodge in 2008 and it is widely believed to be her permanent residence. “I’m in and out all the time and he’s in and out all the time,” the mother-of-two explained of their relationship in an interview with Australian radio host Kyle Sandiland in 2016. | Katie O'Malley | https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/who-is-prince-andrew-royal-family-throne-sarah-beatrice-eugenie-a9076156.html | 2019-08-23 14:38:20+00:00 | 1,566,585,500 | 1,567,533,589 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
770,980 | theindependent--2019-09-10--International students will be able to stay in UK for two years after graduation Boris Johnson says | 2019-09-10T00:00:00 | theindependent | International students will be able to stay in UK for two years after graduation, Boris Johnson says | International students will be able to stay in the UK for two years after graduating, to find work, under new proposals announced by the prime minister. Boris Johnson said the changes, due to come into effect for those starting courses next year, would help those studying in Britain to begin their careers in the UK. International students who have successfully completed a course in any subject at an institution with a track record in upholding immigration checks will be able to benefit from the measures. They will apply to students who start courses in 2020-21 at undergraduate level or above. The announcement coincides with the launch of the world’s largest genetics project, the £200m whole genome sequencing project in the UK Biobank, which aims to transform genetic research. Mr Johnson said: “Britain has a proud history of putting itself at the heart of international collaboration and discovery. Over 60 years ago, we saw the discovery of DNA in Cambridge by a team of international researchers and today we are going even further. Now we are bringing together experts from around the globe to work in the UK on the world’s largest genetics research project, set to help us better treat life-threatening illnesses and ultimately save lives. “Breakthroughs of this kind wouldn’t be possible without being open to the brightest and the best from across the globe to study and work in the UK. That’s why we’re unveiling a new route for international students to unlock their potential and start their careers in the UK.” Home secretary Priti Patel added: “The new Graduate Route will mean talented international students, whether in science and maths or technology and engineering, can study in the UK and then gain valuable work experience as they go on to build successful careers. It demonstrates our global outlook and will ensure that we continue to attract the best and brightest.” Alistair Jarvis, chief executive of Universities UK, said the announcement was “very positive news”. He said: “Evidence shows that international students bring significant positive social outcomes to the UK as well as £26bn in economic contributions, but for too long the lack of post-study work opportunities in the UK has put us at a competitive disadvantage in attracting those students. The introduction of a two-year post-study work visa is something Universities UK has long campaigned for and we strongly welcome this policy change, which will put us back where we belong as a first choice study destination. “Not only will a wide range of employers now have access to talented graduates from around the world, these students hold lifelong links.” However, Alp Mehmet, chairman of Migration Watch UK, said it was an “unwise” and “retrograde” step which would “likely lead to foreign graduates staying on to stack shelves, as happened before”. “Our universities are attracting a record number of overseas students so there is no need to devalue a study visa by turning it into a backdoor route for working here.” | Harriet Line | https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/international-students-uk-graduation-boris-johnson-priti-patel-a9100081.html | 2019-09-10 22:42:00+00:00 | 1,568,169,720 | 1,569,330,548 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
774,909 | theindependent--2019-11-09--In Lebanon, a woman's place is leading the revolution | 2019-11-09T00:00:00 | theindependent | In Lebanon, a woman's place is leading the revolution | Anti-government protests that have swept across Lebanon over recent weeks have been notable for their lack of leaders, but they have not been without leadership. On the front of marches and discussion groups, sit-ins and roadblocks, women have been a key driving force behind the movement. In a political system where women are chronically underrepresented, they are making themselves heard in the streets. “Women have been such an important part of this revolution,” says Mariana Wehbe, a public relations consultant, who has been protesting every day. “We have been on the front lines, we have been empowering each other and we have kept the peace.” On Wednesday evening, Wehbe organised a women’s candlelit vigil in the city’s main square, attended by thousands. It was a poignant moment, but the role of women in these protests has been more than symbolic; it has dramatically altered their character and direction. One of the most enduring images of the protests was taken on the first night, during a scuffle between a cabinet minister’s bodyguards and protesters. As one of the guards brandished a gun, a woman named Malak Alaywe delivered a swift kick to his groin. The image of a woman lashing out at this representation of the country’s corrupt and patriarchal political class instantly became a meme, stylised in an illustration, and appeared to quickly become a major catalyst in bringing more people out on to the streets. But the biggest impact women have had on the protests is making them more peaceful. The first two nights of demonstrations were marked by violent clashes between police and protesters that continued deep into the night. But on the third evening, a group of women decided to form a human shield to separate the two sides. “The purpose was for women to take control of how the protests were evolving,” says Dayna Ash, an activist who was among those who stood in the way. “They wanted a peaceful protest. So they took to the front lines to stop the violence,” she says. They called it the women’s front line. The clashes stopped immediately, and the protests continued to swell over the coming days. The reduction in violence that followed this direct action meant that more people felt comfortable enough to join the protests, which have been the largest in more than a decade. “I’ve had women come up to me who thought they could never speak up. We have built this tribe of protection for them to share their ideas and talk,” says Wehbe. A week later, when police began forcefully removing roadblocks set up by protesters around Beirut, the same thing happened again. Groups of women took to placing themselves in the front line, and the police backed off. The demonstrations have been different to anything that has come before in Lebanon, in more ways than one. Rather than targeting the government or any one political leader, protesters called out the country’s corrupt political class in its entirety. They were sparked by a raft of new taxes, but the roots of the movement go much deeper. The combination of an acute economic crisis and decades of rampant corruption has pushed the country to the edge. Protesters have repeatedly characterised their demands as nothing more than a fulfilment of their basic rights as citizens. But for women in Lebanon, those rights are fewer still. Despite some recent reforms, the country’s legal system is rife with laws that discriminate against women. Lebanese mothers cannot pass their citizenship on to their children. Issues such as divorce, property rights and child custody are decided by religious law, which is heavily discriminatory against women. Lebanese law also does not specifically criminalise marital rape and the country has one of the lowest maternity leave allowances in the world. Lebanon has only six women lawmakers in its 128-seat parliament, and women are underrepresented in key areas of the workforce such as science, technology and engineering. It is perhaps no surprise then that the country is ranked 140 out of 149 countries in the World Economic Forum’s 2018 Global Gender Gap report, which measures gender parity in the economy, education, health and politics. Women’s rights in Lebanon has been treated much like every other pressing issue the country faces: piecemeal reforms have papered over the cracks temporarily without making any meaningful change. Years of these unaddressed grievances have given women even more reason to come out on to the streets. “I believe women from all ages and backgrounds and classes have come to realise that they have such a large stake in everything that has been going on. They make up half the population and they are twice as oppressed,” says Ash. Wehbe says her 15-year-old daughter has been out protesting with her schoolmates too. “My daughter will not grow up in the same Lebanon I grew up in. We grew up in fear. There is none of that now. If we have a problem we are going to scream about it. Now we have voices,” she says. “This energy has always been there, we just found a way to unleash it and show who we really are.” | Richard Hall | https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/lebanon-protests-women-corruption-beirut-a9195166.html | Sat, 09 Nov 2019 18:28:00 GMT | 1,573,342,080 | 1,573,346,156 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
779,902 | theindependent--2019-12-17--Gender pay gap could take more than 250 years to close, report warns | 2019-12-17T00:00:00 | theindependent | Gender pay gap could take more than 250 years to close, report warns | Women could have to wait more than 250 years for economic parity, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has warned. As part of its annual Global Gender Gap Report, the organisation measured gender equality for 153 countries across four different criteria, including politics, economics, education and health. The WEF found that the economic gender gap will take approximately 257 years to close, even more than the 202 years it predicted in 2018. “None of us will see gender parity in our lifetimes, and nor likely will many of our children,” the report states, before deeming its findings as “sobering”. Last year, the WEF warned that unless more women were encouraged to enter fields such as science, technology and engineering, the gender gap could widen. The latest report claims that there are large inequalities in almost all of the job sectors of the future, including cloud computing, engineering, data and AI, and product development. Meanwhile, technological change is also having a disproportionate effect on the gap, with women more highly represented in positions hit hardest by automation such as retail. Furthermore, the forum adds that not enough women are entering professions where wage growth is fastest. “To get to parity in the next decade instead of the next two centuries, we will need to mobilise resources, focus leadership attention and commit to targets,” said Saadia Zahidi, head of the WEF Centre for the New Economy and Society The report did contain some positive developments, adding that the global gender gap – which accounts for health, education and politics alongside economics – has improved, thanks in part to an increase in the number of women in politics. However, women still hold just 21 per cent of ministerial positions worldwide and the WEF claims that the current trajectory for closing the global gender gap is 99.5 years. Seven out of the top 10 countries that came closer to closing their gender gaps in 2019 were in Western Europe, with Iceland topping the list. In the report, the UK has slipped from 15th to 21st place, leaving it behind a few developing countries and most rich ones. The WEF said the fall in 2019 in the UK's position partly reflected a decline in the number of women in ministerial positions. Klaus Schwab, founder of WEF, said the report highlighted the growing urgency for action. “At the present rate of change, it will take nearly a century to achieve parity, a timeline we simply cannot accept in today's globalised world, especially among younger generations who hold increasingly progressive views of gender equality,” he said. | Sarah Young | https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/gender-pay-gap-women-world-economic-forum-equality-a9249536.html | Tue, 17 Dec 2019 08:18:00 GMT | 1,576,588,680 | 1,576,586,398 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
793,206 | themanchestereveningnews--2019-01-17--Self-driving cars to be tested this year by Manchester Airport passengers and on the regions roads | 2019-01-17T00:00:00 | themanchestereveningnews | Self-driving cars to be tested this year by Manchester Airport passengers and on the region's roads | Self-driving electric cars will this year be tested on Greater Manchester's roads in a trial which will see passengers ferried across Manchester Airport in futuristic pods. The robot cars which use technology and sensors to run without a driver, are to be tested on both the airport site and along roads including the new Airport Relief Road. Dubbed 'Project Synergy', the trial has two parts. - Three autonomous cars known as Pods on Demand (PODs) with no steering wheel or controls to ferry passengers across Manchester Airport - Three converted sports cars which travel in 'convoy' along the airport relief road from Stockport railway station. The vehicles to take part in the £5m pilot - funded through a Government innovation grant - are currently being manufactured by Westfield Technology Group, which has now opened an office in Manchester. Run with partners including Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) and the airport, the trial will run in December and January. The Westfield Pod on Demand (POD) is a four-to-six seater vehicle with no steering wheel or pedals. There will be a steward on board who can stop or slow the vehicle down but not control it entirely. Similar to a cable car on the inside, and the latest model of an autonomous vehicle in use at Heathrow airport, it will run from the airport station to Terminal Two. Westfield told the M.E.N that the PODs would be tested by the public, with disability groups invited initially to try them out and consider whether they improve their access to the airport. Other members of the public will also be invited to give them a go. Passengers who trial them will be able to try out 'in-vehicle check-in' before they get to the terminal. The Grand Touring Mini (GTM) is a sports car which will have been modified to be electric and driverless. Three of these will be rolled out, running from Stockport railway station, down the A6, on to the 10km bypass which links to the M56 via the A555, where they will travel in 'platoon' or 'convoy' to Manchester Airport. The GTM will always have a driver in it to monitor the trial and take over the controls if necessary. This trial will not include passengers from the public and will be purely for research purposes. The sports cars will run in 'convoy' with the goal of saving energy by reducing drag and taking up less road space to look at future ways of improving congestion. Also being tested as part of the trials will be a 'virtual concierge' - an interactive voice for partially sighted users, as well as a communication system between the sports cars and the TfGM control centre to report back on congestion or roadworks information. Julian Turner, CEO of Westfield Technology Group: "We’re really excited to be trialling in Greater Manchester. "The city region has always welcomed innovation and new developments in technology and engineering, and this project demonstrates their local commitment to maintaining this outlook. "Project Synergy will do a number of things - it will offer travellers with reduced mobility a new option to try at Manchester Airport, to make their journeys easier and, it will help explore the potential positive benefits associated with platooning, including reducing congestion and improving energy efficiency." Also involved in the trial are Conigital Ltd, Manchester Metropolitan University, Harper Adams University, Cisco, Fusion Processing Ltd., Heathrow Airport, Manchester City Council and Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council. Clare Cornes, Intelligent Mobility Manager and Synergy Project Director at Westfield, is based at the firm's newly opened Manchester office. She said local support was key, adding: "Safety is paramount on this project, which is why we’ve put together a testing programme that will challenge the vehicles and control system, and ensure they’re safe for operations prior to both trials. Planning for the trials has already started and testing commences in July. "The trials themselves will be taking place in December 2019 and January 2020." Self-driving cars are included in the Greater Manchester Transport Strategy to 2040 but the Government predicts there will be fully autonomous cars on UK roads by 2021. It's part of a future trend dubbed 'shared mobility solutions' which are expected to grow, particularly among younger people, as car ownership declines. This will involve people buying schemes combining bike hire, car clubs, on-demand shuttle buses - and possibly self-driving cars travelling 'in convoy' for a shared commute. It means that someone will be able to use a train one day, a bus the next, and then maybe a car on a day it's needed And experts predict this could be the norm in 15 to 20 years time, when more people will have flexible working patterns and life styles and the current network becomes 'outdated'. Simon Warburton, transport strategy director, said: "We thought we could get some real value out of trialling the potential for autonomous vehicles to get more efficiency out of the network." The longer term goal is to have 'platooning' or 'tight convoys' of vehicles moving together to carry commuters or freight to make the most of limited road space. He added: "Clearly if you've got a set of autonomous vehicles that can all drive in formation then you could use them for future public transport services. The trial is also about learning what Manchester needs to do to get its infrastructure ready for future innovation. Simon added: "The Victorians looked at the railway and took a a while to get round to things like timetables. We need to start to look at the story of technology. This is not going to happen overnight. "But ultimately what we are looking to try and do is use the technology boost to help us improve the transport system in the interest of residents and businesses. "It's about making sure we get a model that's more flexible to give people a choice through the week. If someone needs to use the car on Tuesday to drop the kids off at school they're not locked into using the car all week. "We realise that a traditional season ticket model forces people into a decision at the start of the week and that's not the way the modern world works." A Manchester Airport spokesman, said: "We’re looking forward to working with TFGM and their partners on Project Synergy as the trials develop. "We are always looking at innovative ways to help people move around our site and also get to and from the airport as part of our sustainable development plan and we’ll provide a more detailed update at the appropriate moment." The project is funded by the Government's Innovate UK pot. | Charlotte Cox | https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/self-driving-cars-tested-year-15685902 | 2019-01-17 06:00:00+00:00 | 1,547,722,800 | 1,567,552,064 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
797,559 | themanchestereveningnews--2019-03-21--Why are there so few women in science technology and engineering | 2019-03-21T00:00:00 | themanchestereveningnews | Why are there so few women in science, technology and engineering? | Men continue to vastly outnumber women in science, tech, engineering and maths roles in the UK – despite more women graduating in the relevant subjects. According to WISE, a campaign for gender balance in science, technology and engineering, the sector is fast growing, with overall core STEM employment increasing by 6.3 per cent in 2017 – more than six times that of overall employment overall in the UK. Yet in 2018, women made up just 22 per cent of the core STEM workforce – down from 23 per cent in 2017. The WISE figures reveal that although there’s been an increase in women working in STEM in the UK since 2017, there also been an increase in the number of males entering the industry, and growth rates for women is 1% lower than the growth percentage for men. Testament to the industry’s rapid acceleration, a £10m investment in the North of England’s life science infrastructure was confirmed in December by Bruntwood SciTech, a joint venture between property company Bruntwood and Legal & General Capital, which owns the Alderley Park life science campus in Cheshire. The investment will see the development of more than 50,000 sq ft of ready-to-go chemistry and biology laboratory space at Alderley Park, which will be available from spring. Yet a study by STEM Learning, provider of STEM education and career support, shows that current skills shortages in the sector are costing businesses a total of £1.5bn per year in temporary staffing, recruitment, training costs and inflated salaries. Businesses are facing a shortfall of 173,000 skilled workers, and 89 per cent of businesses struggled to recruit staff last year, the report says. With bias, gender stereotypes, a lack of role models, and little support within the education system just some of the reasons cited for the shortage of women in STEM, it is important schools and businesses take a stance to help widen the talent pool. Former lawyer Michelle Hua is a consultant and founder and chief executive officer of Made With Glove, a wearable technology company creating fashionable heated gloves for women. She is also a STEM ambassador for the UK and a mentor at She Says Manchester, a network supporting women in the creative and tech industries. Hua says that as the sole female founder of her company, her experiences in the tech sector have been largely positive. However, she has faced some “bullying”. “I was exhibiting my prototype in the Start Up zone at the Wearable Tech Show in London in 2015 when a chief technical officer of a company approached me, looked at my prototype, and asked me if I knew what I was doing, because [he said] it didn’t look like I did. “It took me completely by surprise! He proceeded to belittle everything I said for the next half an hour and I quickly realised that he was testing me, and my knowledge. In the end, he offered me a job with his company and I politely declined saying I was too busy with my own start up. “The lack of women working in STEM could be partially due to this type of the bullying behaviour.” Hua believes that mentoring and more visible role models will help encourage female interest and participation. “I am a STEM Ambassador and I mentor women and girls in tech by offering advice, guidance, and an ear to listen to. My role is to teach what I have learned from experience and to actively guide and offer new ways of thinking when presented with a mentee’s challenges. “I also connect them to my network so they can be one step closer to reaching their goals. I am their cheer squad, too, when they need inspiration or motivation to overcome their challenge. “When I entered the wearable tech industry in 2014 I found a lack of women and so I co-founded Women of Wearables (WoW), a global organisation that connects and supports women in wearables, IoT and AR/VR.” In just 18 months, WoW grew an international community of more than 8,000 members. “We believe that without role models, you cannot be what you cannot see,” adds Hua. As tech becomes further embedded in our everyday lives, more people are becoming tech savvy and Hua believes this will have a positive impact on the gender imbalance in the industry. “Tech is now accessible to everybody, so those building tech should be as diverse as possible. People who are coming into senior management roles now, or have become parents and teachers themselves, have been using technology since they were at university or in their 20s. “They have gradually evolved with technology and have seen the radical and positive changes technology has had on their lives. It is inevitable that the traditional structures in schools and in organisations will change as my generation lead and pave the way for digital transformation. “Organisations need to embrace change and move towards a diverse and inclusive culture or they run the risk of no longer being competitive in the market both in terms of customers and attracting talent.” Dr Jun Zhang is chief executive officer of Atmos International, a company headquartered in Manchester providing pipeline leak and theft detection and simulation technology to the oil, gas, water and associated industries. She has a BSc in Electrical Engineering, MSc in Control Systems and PhD in Fault Detection and Diagnosis. Zhang joined Shell Research in Amsterdam in 1988 and developed Shell’s Statistical Pipeline Leak Detection system. “To put the system into operations, I moved to Stanlow Refinery, Ellesmere Port, in 1990. Between 1990 and 1994, I implemented the leak detection system on operational pipelines and worked on Statistical Process Control,” she explains. “In 1994 I joined Shell International in the Hague, the Netherlands, working on the design of gas treating plants where CO 2 and H 2 S are removed from hydrocarbon products. I then left Shell in 1995 to start Atmos International in Manchester.” In the past 23 years, Atmos International has mushroomed, now employing more than 150 staff working globally. Now Zhang tries to encourage young women into engineering by offering work placements and providing career talks in schools, revealing that she faced struggles early in her worklife. She says: “I knew I wanted to study engineering from the age of 13. “Fortunately for me, I did not experience any challenges or prejudices throughout my education from school to university and PhD research. “The first time that I encountered difficulty as a woman was working for a global oil company where the culture was very white and very male. “The first annual appraisal, when your boss rated you against a set of criteria, was critical in this company. Yet as all the criteria were based on the behaviour of white males, my rating as a Chinese woman was very low. “This meant that my boss did not believe that I had enough management potential to progress in my career. That was hard for me to accept. “To impress the managers within the organisation, I started to observe how the well-regarded male colleagues behaved and adapted myself to the local culture. “Luckily my boss in the UK organisation was a lot more open to female engineers! To avoid being regarded as a “technical expert” only, I convinced my new boss in the UK to sponsor me for an MBA through distance learning. “With the UK management support and my determination to demonstrate my high management potential, I eventually got my rating changed to a much higher level. I was put on a fast track for career progression before I left to start my own business.” To truly make change, and open up STEM to girls in the future, Zhang believes that the education system has a strong part to play in discouraging limiting stereotypes. “It is disappointing that schools do not encourage girls to choose STEM subjects, they do not provide role models for girls to realise that they can be just as good as boys in STEM. “Teachers’ lack of enthusiasm and passion in STEM subjects is probably another cause of few girls in STEM. “Role models and mentoring will help more girls and women to take STEM roles. However to have more fundamental change, society will have to alter to get rid of the gender stereotypes. This requires education of adults, parents, career advisors and teachers.” Antonia Oxley is a graduate process engineer for Essity, a hygiene and health company with offices in Manchester that produces household tissue brands such as Plenty, Cushelle and Velvet. She believes there is limited exposure to all the fun and interesting opportunities STEM can provide for girls. “People may think that careers in this area can only be dull or difficult or uninteresting,” she states. “If young girls have a natural ability or interest in maths or science, they should be encouraged as much as possible to pursue a career in these areas by educating them about the diverse range of amazing opportunities that are out there!” The role is Oxley’s first out of university, having graduated from Heriot-Watt University with MEng Chemical Engineering and Energy Engineering in 2017. She says that the gender balance was 40% female out of the total students on her course, but that she is the only female engineer in her team of ten at Essity. Nonetheless, she says Essity is passionate about supporting women and girls in engineering roles. “The workplace culture here is brilliant,” says Oxley. “The roles have clear career progression opportunities, everyone is friendly and there is loads of support, my gender does not affect the way I am treated. “With a shortage of skilled female engineers, we believe one of the best ways to close that gap is to invest in talented young women. “To do this, we have made a conscious decision to reach out to local schools and colleges and offer to lead on practical STEM-based activities which align with some of our processes within the area of tissue-manufacturing that Essity specialises in. “At career events at colleges, career fairs and universities we talk to women about how Essity can provide that much-needed step on the STEM career ladder through our fantastic graduate or apprenticeship schemes. “This year, we are also producing video content which we will be placing on our social channels, such as LinkedIn, in order to target young women and inspire an interest in STEM.” All three women offer the same advice, to girls, considering STEM careers: to simply ‘go for it’. Hua says: “It is truly rewarding to work in STEM. “I loved all the experiences I have had, from working in one of the largest companies in the world to running an engineering business. “Since girls have to fight the stereotypes to succeed in STEM it makes us stronger, more confident and successful.” | men | https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/business/business-news/few-women-science-technology-engineering-16002540 | 2019-03-21 15:00:00+00:00 | 1,553,194,800 | 1,567,545,380 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
800,437 | themanchestereveningnews--2019-05-07--Plans for third Circle Square development brought forward | 2019-05-07T00:00:00 | themanchestereveningnews | Plans for third Circle Square development brought forward | Plans have been accelerated for a third building at Circle Square in the city's innovation district thanks to £54m investment. Bruntwood SciTech - a partnership between Bruntwood and Legal & General - is bringing forward the next phase of its commercial plans at Circle Square, with work on a new 220,000 sq ft, 12 storey building beginning, subject to planning approval, in January 2020. The investment is in response to the increasing demand for workspace from leading science and technology companies looking to invest in Manchester. Circle Square’s first two commercial buildings – No.1 and No.2 Circle Square – are currently under construction. Both sites have received interest from high growth businesses from across the UK and internationally. Global technology company Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced in December 2018 it is to bring 300 employees to No.1 Circle Square, in order to capitalise on its collaborative community of leaders in technology, business, arts and science. Other significant pre-lets are currently under discussion, and with space at the two buildings in significant demand Bruntwood SciTech has accelerated plans for its next commercial building to cater for the anticipated continued growth of Manchester’s digital technology and engineering sector. Research by Tech Nation has illustrated the distance by which Manchester is outstripping its rivals, with tech deals growing at a quicker rate than anywhere else in Europe over the 2012-17 period, up 228 per cent compared to London (189 per cent) and Germany (51 per cent), with the North as a whole seeing a 114 per cent rise. The new build, 220,000 sq ft No.3 Circle Square will offer leased office space over 12 storeys. The design process is currently underway, led by architects FCBS, who designed No.1 and No.2 Circle Square. The ground floor will combine a reception area with retail and leisure amenities, while cycle and shower facilities and a rooftop terrace will also be incorporated, giving exceptional views across South Manchester and providing companies at Circle Square a private garden space from which to work. Located at the heart of Manchester’s Oxford Road Corridor innovation district, Circle Square - a joint venture between Bruntwood SciTech and Vita Group - is a pioneering new neighbourhood that will boast over 1,700 new homes, 1.2 million sq ft of workspace and over 100,000 sq ft of retail and leisure space, providing a variety of boutique retailers, restaurants, bars and pavement cafes, all centered around Manchester’s largest city centre park. The park itself will host a variety of community and cultural events that will celebrate the city’s dynamic and creative community. Tom Renn, managing director, Bruntwood SciTech - Manchester, said: “With No.1 & No.2 Circle Square opening in Summer 2020, we are delighted to be in a position, where the level of interest and excitement around what we are creating at Circle Square, has led to us accelerating the development of No.3 Circle Square.” “Circle Square will be an extraordinary place, full of life and activity. A place where incredible companies, working in some of the most interesting and disruptive digital technology sectors, like Cyber, FinTech, IOT and big data, will work alongside each other and where residents and visitors to Manchester, will come to experience the best of our cities cultural offer, through independent retailers and the programme of festivals and events that we plan to host in Manchester’s newest city park.” “Critically companies that we are speaking to are really identifying with Circle Square as a top location in the city to access talent and transport and with our network as one of the largest tech communities in the North. “ A planning application is set to be submitted in September of this year, with the aim of work on site starting in early 2020 ahead of completion in April 2022. | Shelina Begum | https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/business/business-news/plans-third-circle-square-development-16238826 | 2019-05-07 14:33:38+00:00 | 1,557,254,018 | 1,567,540,978 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
814,768 | thenewyorktimes--2019-07-05--Restoring Forests Could Help Put a Brake on Global Warming Study Finds | 2019-07-05T00:00:00 | thenewyorktimes | Restoring Forests Could Help Put a Brake on Global Warming, Study Finds | Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up here for Climate Fwd:, our email newsletter. What if we stopped cutting down forests to produce palm oil and cattle? What if we grew new forests on vacant city lots, old industrial buildings — even golf courses? For the first time, scientists have sought to quantify this thought experiment. How many trees could be planted on every available parcel of land on Earth , where they could go, and what impact could that have on our survival ? They concluded that the planet could support nearly 2.5 billion additional acres of forest without shrinking our cities and farms, and that those additional trees, when they mature, could store a whole lot of the extra carbon — 200 gigatons of carbon, to be precise — generated by industrial activity over the last 150 years. Parts of the study — led by researchers at ETH Zurich, a university that specializes in science, technology and engineering — were immediately criticized. | Somini Sengupta | https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/05/climate/trees-forests-climate-change.html?emc=rss&partner=rss | 2019-07-05 21:49:32+00:00 | 1,562,377,772 | 1,567,536,777 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
1,090,906 | vox--2019-06-26--The problem with tech people who want to solve problems | 2019-06-26T00:00:00 | vox | The problem with tech people who want to solve problems | According to a witty saying usually attributed to Albert Einstein, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” And when engineers try to solve a problem, says MIT’s Joi Ito, they often veer over that line. “Tech people tend to want to just solve the problem,” Ito said on the latest episode of Recode Decode with Kara Swisher. “But the problem with the problem is it’s not like previous problems, where you just solve it. You actually have to keep asking the question, ‘Is this even the right question?’ And this is why it’s much more difficult.” Ito has presided over MIT’s famous “antidisciplinary” research laboratory, the Media Lab, for the last eight years. Originally founded in an era of techno-utopianism, the MIT Media Lab now finds itself responding to the ways technology and engineering culture are accelerating and creating problems like climate change, inequality, and obesity. “You know that little girl in The Exorcist? That’s what the internet feels like to me,” Ito said. “You have this little girl and you think she’s going to become this wonderful kid and then she gets possessed and starts becoming this demon. And we have to exorcize her and we have to kind of bring her back.” Although some in the tech world may believe we’re living in a simulation, Ito told Swisher, that’s only because they’re looking at the world as an equation to be optimized and not the messy place that it is. “A lot of decisions that we make about how we feel about civil rights or gay marriage, whatever it is, those aren’t decisions that are optimizations,” he said. “Those are these cultural transformations that occur in society. And I think what’s missing right now in the conversation in AI is that that’s kind of the point of life, in my own personal opinion.” You can listen to Recode Decode wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and TuneIn. Below, we’ve shared a lightly edited full transcript of Kara’s conversation with Joi. Kara Swisher: Hi, I’m Kara Swisher, editor-at-large at Recode. You may know me as the author of an existential play narrated by the 20th letter of the alphabet, it’s called “Am I T?” But in my spare time I talk tech, and you’re listening to Recode Decode from the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today in the red chair is one of my favorite people I’ve known for a long time, Joi Ito. He’s the director of the MIT Media Lab, which is separate from MIT itself, which is a university. He’s also an activist, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and the editor of an upcoming essay collection called Resisting Reduction: Designing Our Complex Future With Machines. Joichi Ito: Can I amend your introduction a little bit? Because it is part of MIT. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. But it operates in its own, the Media Lab... It’s a peculiar part of MIT. And that’s what I meant to say. So why don’t you explain that? Explain what the MIT Media Lab is and how ... I want to talk about your getting to it, how you got to it, but explain what it is so people can get ... So the Media Lab is a weird part of MIT because normally you have labs which do the research and you have academic programs that do the degrees and the tenure and things. They’re usually at tension, like church and state. And the media lab is both an academic program, the program of media, arts, and sciences as well as a lab. It was created over 30 years ago by the then-president of MIT Jerry Wiesner, Nicholas Negroponte, and a few founding faculty. Jerry Wiesner sort of finally called it the “Department of None of the Above.” Seymour Papert, who was an educator, was one of the founders, and he had this idea called constructionism, which is learning through doing. So we often say learning through construction rather than instruction. The reason we were able to get the lab and the academic program together is instead of learning in classes we learn through doing projects. So the projects are funded by a consortium of over 80 companies. And it’s a very tight link between businesses, and making things that can be made, essentially, that can be used and deployed. That’s right. All of the students have to build the thing they’re talking about. And because it’s so interdisciplinary, we use the term antidisciplinary, the building of the thing is the way you sort of explain what it is you’re doing because it’s hard to explain it when you have three different disciplines trying to work together. And then also, MIT was traditionally more of a government-funded institution and the Media Lab kind of pioneered this consortium model of corporate funding. We’re corporate funded, but the other part about the Media Lab is we don’t do what they tell us to do. We’re sort of the ... The company is the funder... Yeah, we’re kind of a hedge against being wrong, so we often discover things that ... We do things that they wouldn’t otherwise do. And you’re there to do ... The reason they invest in you is because they want to be on the cutting edge of whatever’s next, right? With kind of crazy wacky ideas, versus stuff they don’t want to do for tomorrow. Maybe it’s 20 years out. And sometimes we tell them things they don’t want to hear. In the early days of high definition in Japan, the Media Lab said, “You’re doing it all wrong. It’s going to be progressive digital. It’s not going to be this analog thing.” And they were very unhappy, but we turned out to be right. These days, I think a lot of times it’s not even about technology. We have Hollywood companies that are members, but when they did the SOPA-PIPA bill, which was this anti-copyright bill, we formally went against it. These days I think more and more ... I mean, I think the Media Lab was very techno-utopian when it first started but I think there’s a huge chunk of the Media Lab that’s critical of technology these days. So we’re often criticizing the companies that support us. All right, so explain your journey, because I think that’s how I would explain you. You’ve been very tech forward — and at the same time you’ve always been someone very early who’s been talking about the downsides and upsides. I remember that from when we met 20 years ago. I think almost 20 years ago. Because Louie was ... You met me after I had my baby, so ... I always time things based on him. But talk a little bit about your journey of where you started and how you got to this job. I joined a little over eight years ago. And this is when they were doing a search. Initially Nicholas Negroponte, who was the founding director, and actually Megan, reached out to me, and they were doing a service ... Megan Smith. This is my ex-wife. Megan Smith, yes. Yeah. And I was on a bus and she said, “Hey, would you want to be director of the Media Lab?” I said, “Yes,” but then they looked at my resume which says that I didn’t even get an undergraduate degree and they said, “Well, this probably isn’t going to work.” So they went through a whole process for months, and I guess they went through lots of candidates, but they didn’t find one that worked. So they scraped the bottom of the barrel and picked up my resume and said, “Come in for some interviews.” Let’s talk about your bottom-of-the-barrel resume, then. Talk about your journey of where you went to as an entrepreneur. I went to college twice. I went to Tufts and I went to University of Chicago. I was interested in computer networking. You grew up in ... I was born in Japan, grew up in Michigan, went back to Japan for junior high, and then came to the United States for college. This is sort of early ’80s, so this is when computer networking was just starting, when the internet just started. I was interested in communities and in music and in networks. And there just weren’t programs like that. And the other thing that was interesting is, this is the early days of the internet, so if you went online and chatted a sysadmin and you said you were some kid from Japan, they’d give you access to everything. And if you emailed professors they would reply. So I found that I could meet just about anybody I knew to meet on the internet and I could sort of kluge together my own education. In fact there weren’t very many classes about online communities and things like that. So I dropped out of college and I just started doing startups, internet startups. I started doing a lot of internet governance, too. So I did things like ICANN and Creative Commons. So I was really interested in the sort of nonprofit structure of how the internet and communities came together. And why? Why was that? I’ve always been interested in parties and communities and just subcultures. When I dropped out of University of Chicago, I became a disc jockey in a nightclub. And the reason I dropped out was I realized that there was kind of a monoculture at the university, at least in the department that I was in. And then when I was going to the nightclubs, this is early ’80s when AIDS was kind of rampant, and at the nightclub, you had skinheads and drug dealers and drag queens, and everybody was coming together around this crisis. I realized that this working-class community was much more loving and much more sophisticated in the way that, the community dynamics were resilient than what I was learning in school. I felt like I needed to understand how communities worked in order to understand things. And then I realized that a lot of the stuff that was going on in these communities ... And also just being a DJ. You change the music and you change the way the community behaves. So I was trying to map my experiences in the nightclub onto what was going to happen online. And then I saw things ... I was still pretty optimistic at the time, but I’ve always been kind of trying to figure out that intersection. And when it got online, you thought that was even more people that you could reach out to and communicate with. Yeah. And in fact, when I was in high school in Tokyo and I was 16, people didn’t know I was a kid. I remember when I was I think 15, I went to — this is before the internet, but this is the source and these online services — I went to a wedding and we had people who had met for the first time showing up. And the best man had met for the first time. So I thought in the early days of online communities that this was going to change the world and if we could just connect everybody else we’d have world peace or something like that. Utopian, the techno utopian idea. I remember when I met you, you had all kinds of ideas. You were the first person who really did talk about this idea of online communities. You introduced me, I remember when I was in Japan, to a company called ImaHima, if you remember. Which was “I am here,” right? That’s what it means? No, “I am free.” Or, “I have free time now.” I remember it blowing my mind. I remember thinking there were two. There was Six Apart and ImaHima and they were, one was I am here, which was it would locate people who you could hang out with. Right? Yeah. And it was also for jobs. So it was like the first kind of gig economy site that was around. Yeah. It had a lot of concepts of “I am here, I want to have a beer in this part of Tokyo, do you want to meet me?” And it wasn’t just friends. It was just anybody. It was suspending belief that you can meet anybody just anywhere. There was a lot of trust to it. And then Six Apart was that you can be linked to anybody, which was really interesting. It was in Cambridge. Amazon ended up buying it, which was interesting. I think it was Amazon. Or one of them. Or was it Mark Pincus? Or Reid Hoffman? Six Apart — well, Reid and I invested, and Six Apart was in San Francisco, but I can’t even remember the name of the company that bought it! But anyway, these were two massive concepts of what was about to come. It precursored Facebook, to Tinder, to everything that was going to happen. But this was the idea of community and connection and using computers to do so. And linking people by their groups and stuff like that. So that was the concept. In your early days, you were an investor, right? You went around ... You were kind of a gadfly in a lot of ways. You wrote a lot? In the early days, I was actually an entrepreneur so I helped set up PSI Net in Japan, and I did InfoSeek in Japan. This was an early internet service provider. Yeah. And when blogging came out was around when I started pivoting a little bit towards investing, so I invested in Flickr, and later Twitter. I was mostly interested in social media. I unfortunately passed on YouTube and didn’t get into Facebook. It was interesting because when blogging started, if you remember, a lot of it was that you had all these unemployed smart engineers who had a lot to say. And they just wrote their own software. Even the founders of Six Apart had been laid off and they said, “Well, we’re going to do our own thing.” Right after the bubble, so it’s like early 2000s, I had raised a fund and I started investing in Silicon Valley. So the gadfly part of it was that there really weren’t ... I didn’t mean that in an insulting way. You were an idea person more than most investors. But also, it wasn’t very crowded. All the carpetbaggers were gone because they thought the party was over. And there were very few investors. Ev was there, a bunch of us were hanging out. You were there. And we just started blogging. I remember when I ... It was the early days of Google, too. So bloggers got the best search results. I remember writing a silly blog post saying, “Is Diet Coke Bad For You?” And when you searched for “Diet Coke,” it was the first result. Or when I quit drinking for a while, I wrote a blog post that said, “I quit drinking,” and when you search for “quit drinking,” it was the first result. And what was funny was that in the comments, people started sharing all their things. The comment section of my blog became a support group for people who needed to quit drinking, really. And then one of my friends created a website called We Quit Drinking, which became sort of an online AA, and it was this whole community of people who were supporting each other, sort of pseudonymously sharing journals. And then the FAQ, it says, “The origin of this site was this guy who quit drinking and wrote about it. We all found each other.” And so I, still to this day, although now with this podcast I’m out again, I now occasionally drink, but I don’t blog about it because I don’t want to sort of shatter this genesis story. You’re like the founder of bitcoin. We found you again! We’re very disappointed. But you were investing, you were doing all kinds of things, and again, were prominently talking about the concepts of what was happening. How did you look at the internet then? Because I want to sort of talk a little bit about how it is now, and then what you’re doing, obviously, at the Media Lab. I was concerned about certain things. Like I was very concerned about privacy. You’ll be proud of me. I won the lifetime achievement award yesterday from the Electronic Privacy Information Center. I’m getting to that age when I’m getting lifetime achievement awards. So I was concerned about things like privacy, but I was generally optimistic. I remember in 2000 and ... I’m trying to remember the year now, 2004 or so. A bunch of us who were just talking on the blogs thought about this idea. We called it emergent democracy. So I wrote this paper together with a bunch of other people called “Emergent Democracy.” And this was sort of before Arab Spring. We had this idea that instead of just mainstream media and polling, we could have conversations online, and that we could talk directly to government and that there would be a future public sphere and that democracy was going to change. We thought it was going to change for the better. When Arab Spring started, we said here it comes. I remember going to Tunisia like a week after the revolution, kind of as CEO of Creative Commons at the time, just sort of celebrating the social media’s rise. So those were the good times. Right. Right. So you were the head of Creative Commons, which ... explain to people what that is. Yeah, so Creative Commons was created by Lawrence Lessig and a bunch of other really smart people before I joined. It was this idea that with the internet, you had the ability to share content and build on the work of others, but because of a lot of the copyright restrictions that big media companies in Hollywood were putting on, even though people wanted to share, the technology was preventing it. So the idea of creative commons was to mark your work with the permissions you wanted to grant. So you can use this as much as you want as long as you provide attribution. And to build that into the code so that people could share freely. Creative Commons is now more widely used on Flickr and all these places you can tag your work. So this is an organization that coordinated an international effort to create the licenses. So you’re doing that, and then doing investing, entrepreneur. How did you decide you wanted to run MIT? This was ... What were you doing previous just before it? You were writing ... I had a place in Dubai. I was still investing. I was running around the world investing. I was going around the world literally twice. You had a place in Dubai? Yeah, yeah. An apartment in Dubai. So this is a good example. I went to Bahrain and I was so confused. I didn’t understand anything. I said, “I have to understand this part of the world.” So I got a place and just started hanging out. So for me, and this is similar to the Media Lab, my sister’s an academic and until recently when I said something was “academic” it was meant as a pejorative. And so when they asked if I was interested, my answer to just about anything like that is, “Sure, I’m interested.” So I went to visit. And when I visited I realized this is really different from what I thought of as academia. It was through that first meeting that I realized that this was possibly a really interesting place for me to hang out. Mm-hmm. So you have been there. So you’ve been there eight years. We’re going to talk a little bit about what’s going on at the Media Lab in the next section. When you joined ... What is the difference between when you joined and now? How do you look at that? I don’t want to take responsibility for the changes, really. I think that the Media Lab had wanted to do a lot of things and I have facilitated them. I think one of them is really that it was created in an explosion of techno-utopianism, and the students and a lot of the faculty, not all of them, have wanted the Media Lab to become more reflective and to think about what did social consequences and bringing social sciences in, things like that. So that’s one. I’ve grown in ... so a lot of it was just blocking and tackling some of the issues around accounting and dealing with members. It’s doubled in size and things like that. But we also — and this wasn’t me. I mean, the previous director had started to go into life sciences, but I’d say a pretty healthy chunk, maybe 30 or more percent — or more than that, maybe 40 percent — of the projects have something to do with life sciences. We’ve launched a space initiative. We’ve created a digital currency initiative. We’ve created a bunch of different things like that. And we, I think, probably integrated it more into MIT than it was before. I think it’s also personality because Nicholas came from MIT so he sort of made the identity of the Media Lab “not MIT.” Whereas I came from the outside and I saw all these really wonderful people and resources inside of MIT, so I’ve been sort of pushing the Media Lab back closer to MIT, I think. Give us a little overview of what’s going on at the Media Lab because media has always been ... you know, I’m trying to go and I went there, again, 20 years ago, the stuff they were talking about has now been commercialized. Everyone’s a billionaire from running it and everything else. But some of the ideas didn’t happen. A lot of them ... I remember haptic touch was one that everyone thought was going to be big. Last time I was there there was a lot of self-driving cars. There was an accordion fold-up car. Like, there were robots that self-care things. It’s, sort of, an explosion of just very creative ideas and what the professors and students want to do. Explain what’s going on there now. What do you think is the most exciting stuff? Yeah, I think first, I just ... I’ll say that the key for the Media Lab is to always try to do the stuff that other people wouldn’t do. And, if other people start doing it, we stop it. Stop doing it. Right. So, we were really into wearables in the ’80s and we’re [doing] less and less of it. And so, when we do a search, we’re always looking for, often for, things that we haven’t yet thought. The really interesting stuff that I think we’re going to do is stuff that we haven’t really thought of yet. So, it’s ... I think I’ll point that out, I think, let’s see. So, in the life sciences, for instance, Kevin Esvelt, who’s one of the inventors of CRISPR gene drive which is the technology that allows an edited gene to be inherited by all of the offspring so that you can use it for doing things like fighting Zika or trying to create mice that are resistant to ticks, or things like that. But it also has a lot of risks because you’re, you know, editing whole populations of genes. What could go wrong? And so, a lot of his efforts have been in trying to figure out how to do community consent, building safety systems and things like that. And that’s something, for instance, that couldn’t really happen in a traditional genetics lab because a lot of it is social. So, he’s, he joined after I joined. We’re doing, you know, conformable decoders and implantables. So instead of wearables, these are things like, that power themselves by the beating of the heart or ... Explain what that would do? These are devices that go inside your body. Implant? What is it? Implantable decoders? Well, the name of her group is, Canan’s group, is conformable decoders. Yes, so these are things like a pacemaker powered by something that goes around your heart, or something ... your brain is actually really hard to implant things in. I mean, we’ve wanted to do it for a long time, but they don’t ... yeah, it’s tricky. And then, we have people who are working on how to power these things, how to get signal out of these things. And so a lot of the work is also around the interfaces between, sort of, the human body and electronics. Is it to make people robots, or to add things to improve the human body via machines? I think if you go the history of the Media Lab, it’s always been somewhere around the interface between humans and machines, and then it was a lot of the early social media and internet stuff came from the Media Lab. It was networks and society, and more recently it’s data and AI in society. But there’s always something about human beings and technology. And in the life sciences, it’s often around the interface between the inside of your body and machines, or Hugh Herr’s group, biomechatronics. Yeah. And, he has, we have a thing called the Center for Extreme Bionics. We like to take words ... As in, like, The Bionic Man? It is, it is, it is. We ... words are really important. Yes, they are. I like “bionics.” And sometimes people throw away words and then we revive them. It’s really about robotic prostheses. How do you communicate with these prostheses? It’s interesting because there are cases where if you have a bad ankle and you’re constantly having surgery, actually amputating it and replacing with a robotic prosthesis will increase your quality of life. It’s just these ... and somewhat taboo. And so, some of these things are about poking at things that are taboo that might actually make you better. But to answer your question, I think generally, everybody’s working on trying to make the human condition better. But I think “better” is a really tricky word. It’s better for who, at what time scale? And, I think every faculty member has a slightly different view, but I think that we’re more and more asking the question, “Are we solving the right problem?” And I think one of the problems with just straight engineering is you sort of assume that the person who gave you the problem knows what the problem is and your job is just to solve it. And I think that ... Which is what you get when you have an engineering point of view. “Let’s just solve it.” Not any of the repercussions or what you did to get there or anything else. Yeah, and there is kind of science and engineering about understanding things like system dynamics and things like that, but the framing of why you’re doing this and for who ... I mean, so questioning is usually the artist and scientist, and the designers and the engineers are the ones that usually try to just kind of make it, create the utility. At the Media Lab, what we’re trying to do is bring all of those together: arts, science, engineering, and design, on a good day. Which is sort of like Apple, or there are some companies that did that. Yeah. All right. Talk about some more stuff you’re doing there. So, biomechanics? Biomechatronics. That must sound good to a big company. “We’re giving money to mechatronics.” We have Ed Boyden, who is doing synthetic neurobiology. So, he’s trying to understand all the different ways to understand the brain and perturb the brain to tackle some ... because the brain’s really complicated. And it’s connected to a bunch of things, and I think that we have a very simplistic view of how the brain works. Medicine is really about, kind of, trial and error, and not ... there isn’t as much understanding of underlying mechanisms as you think. I mean, a lot of the pills that you’d take, when it says mechanism of action, it says “unknown.” And so a lot of what Ed is trying to do is understand the brain, because most of the diseases that we have these days is, now we live longer and longer, are diseases that involve the brain. And so that’s a whole group, and in that group, it’s not just neuroscience; we have AI, we’ve got robotics, we’ve got nano tech and it’s a very integrated group. We have 25 groups and each one is very, very different. I won’t go through the whole list. That’s amazing. How do you decide which ones to pick? So, it’s really the faculty search process. I remember there was a faculty search process that the founder, Nicholas, was running, and we called it the Professor of Other; the candidate had to be proficient in at least two orthogonal fields and be antidisciplinary. But we were looking for this faculty member and we had a faculty meeting and we had this candidate everybody loved, and in typical of Nicholas form, he said, “That’s not ‘other,’ that’s ‘another.’” He’s like, “No.” I think what really is a key thing about the Media Lab which I love is that we really do embrace the other. We are always trying to bring in things that make us uncomfortable, things that we don’t understand sometimes. And I think that’s what’s very different from a traditional academic department, where you’re sort of extending but mostly going into areas that are either adjacent to or connected somehow to the thing that you’re doing. So, what is that to you right now? What’s something that makes you uncomfortable that’s being developed at the lab? Well, I think for me, the privacy — the surveillance capitalism conversation. This is Shoshana Zuboff at Harvard. As Shoshanna’s book ... yeah. I mean, the Media Lab, I’d say, plays a big role in her book. You know? She calls out a lot of the work at the Media Lab as the tools of the trade of surveillance capitalism. And I think that thinking about our role in the world that she describes and thinking about how ... Explain what Shoshana’s saying. She’s saying that capitalism is built to track us and sell us and sell to us. Yeah, yeah. I think she’s basically saying that the capitalist system that converged with the Silicon Valley big tech companies that realized that taking user information and behavior and turning that into money was the currency of the day. And all of the technology for collecting information, understanding the information, tracking that information, are the tools of the trade. And a lot of that was developed at the Media Lab. I think it’s an interesting book. I do think there are some things that I ... for instance, when I was fighting the copyright battles, the constant thing was ... So there’s rivalrous goods and non-rivalrous goods. If somebody steals your car, you don’t have it anymore. But if somebody takes your picture from Flickr, you still have it. And so, one of, I think, the problems with her book is she treats data as if it were a rival good, like oil. It’s different. I mean, some of the key points she points out I think are okay, but some of the ... You get to keep it even if someone takes it. Yeah, and it’s not exactly surveillance. I mean, “surveillance” is something that is a very loaded word that has a very ... Well, I think that’s why she used it. Yeah. But, I guess my point is that the word surveillance is usually used by law enforcement, and it’s used to catch bad people, in the eyes of the surveillor. Whereas, I think the surveillance capitalists today, I would say, are not using the data to catch these people and put them in jail. They’re using it to do stuff to you that, that may ... Sell you cornflakes, or whatever. Behavioral or otherwise. Yeah. And again, I think it’s a really important conversation to have, and this is, sort of, a longer conversation, but I also think, like, Cambridge Analytica, their sales pitch sounded a lot scarier than ... When you actually look at the data, it’s not nearly as effective. And so, one of the other meta questions is so how effective are these ads in making you buy cornflakes. And, I think, again, it’s probably more effective than the average person thinks, but I don’t think it’s nearly as effective as some people sell it. Well, I think people are especially warned by sci-fi that they see, and everything else that they’ve had over the course of their lives, it will be. You can iterate it out to the end and if it gets good, it gets really scary. Yeah, and I think my hypothesis is that it gets scary in a different way because I think people are more complicated and I don’t think machines can solve the complexity of human beings as easily as the technology people might think. I think we’re going to have intervention pretty soon. And again, books like that help the intervention happen, but I don’t think that ... I think that a lot of people who really believe in machines feel that the machines will get so smart that all of the messy complexity of human existence will no longer be a problem. I think that’s impossible. So I think that the worst-case scenario isn’t as scary, but I also think the best-case scenario isn’t as optimistic. Optimistic. All right. Finishing up on MIT, what would you like to be putting in there now? You know, you’ve been there eight years. What’s an area you would really like to see work on? So, since I got there, I got there as an administrator, but over time they made me a professor of practice and I started teaching. I’m taking students now. So, my own area of research is based on what I’ve observed being there. It’s really on understanding automated decision-making in criminal justice, or trying to understand the way that academic publishing, tenure, and funding creates silos and creates the way that science and knowledge get created, and to try and turn it on its head. What I’m trying to do is take what we’ve learned at the Media Lab and to try to push it out, to fix some of the problems that I see. And also, bring things like social sciences and history and other things that didn’t feel applied enough to the Media Lab into the Media Lab, because I think that’s really, really important. So that’s what I’m teaching, that’s what I’m working on. And, the idea of automated ... explain automated decision making for people that don’t know that. Yeah. So, for example, right now we have these risk scores that we use in criminal justice for setting bail, sentencing, and probation. If they’re going to do it again. Yes. Basically what it does is it predicts how likely you are to recommit a crime. But, for example, they use rearrests as a proxy for your likelihood to recommit a crime, and it turns out that rearrests have a lot more to do with policing practice than the inherent criminality of the individual. What it does is it tends to reinforce social biases. So, if you look at data ... For instance, there’s a famous study that shows that in Oakland, when you do a health study, everybody across Oakland does drugs. But when you look at the police data, only poor neighborhoods do drugs because all they’re looking at are drugs arrests, and they only arrest people where they go. But when you look at the police data and you put it into the algorithm, the algorithm thinks that only poor people do drugs. Right? So what happens with these risk scores, it reinforces the bias, it also takes the agency ... so, it says, “No, no, no. We’re just trying to predict the criminality of the pool people, and we’ll just make policing more efficient and make jails more efficient.” Instead of saying, “Wait. Is there something we can change in the system?” Automated decision making, the problem is the judge gets this risk score, and some of the risk scores ... like, the difference between like a five or six might be a few percentage points, but that’s, but they say, “Oh. It’s a six. We should sentence this person to a longer time in prison or not give them bail.” What happens is it’s taking ... And again, the argument is that humans are biased and these things are less biased, but the problem is that the data is biased. It’s dirty data, and even if it’s perfectly accurate ... So, society’s dirty. And so, what you’re doing is you’re reinforcing, sort of, backward-looking status quo. It doesn’t allow us to be progressive. So, you’re trying to figure out how to stop that, which is really hard. Well, it’s legally hard. There was a Reuters article about Amazon using its historical data to create an HR engine that just wanted to hire white men. Well, the engineers will say, “Oh. Well, we should just ... Okay. Got it. That’s bad. So, let’s just create a constant to give increased scores for women and minorities.” Well, it turns out Title VII, which is antidiscrimination, a part of the Civil Right Act, says that over the years now, because of all this lobbying, affirmative action is illegal. It’s illegal to put your thumb on the scale. So today we can still push for diversity by having the HR person lean towards minorities, but the problem is, if your data says we want to hire white people, it’s illegal to put your thumb on the scale. So what we’re seeing now is the law doesn’t protect us, the code isn’t projecting us, and all of these issues are just suddenly becoming ... And, they’re just ... and the problem is you need to understand both the law and technology. We’re here with Joi Ito, he’s the director of the MIT Media Lab. He’s someone I’ve known a long time and is always talking about interesting things, as usual. But this book, Resisting Reduction: Designing Our Complex Future With Machines, you were just talking about this idea of the ability to intersect humans with tech, with law, with other things. Talk about this book. What was your thinking of wanting to do these essays? What was happening is, as I was starting to get involved in this conversation about the ethics and governance of artificial intelligence ... I teach a course that’s cross listed between MIT and the Harvard Law School called “The Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence.” And what I realized was that a lot of the engineers who work in AI felt that you could reduce the whole world to a function, and that life, human life, was just optimizing and that the world could be simulated in a computer. And that if we could just ... and that world ... life was just a game that you could win. Right. There are a lot of sites like this. There were tons of them. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, but the ... they feel, though, a lot of them feel that the world can just be reduced to a very simple formula, so therefore then if you could create an AI that was smart enough, it would figure out how to win at life, and that we would either lose or this would save the world. And to me ... This is like that Tom Cruise movie, Minority Report. Pre-crime. Exactly, yup. The thing is that ... and again, this is almost religious because I think that there are people who have the kind of thinking where they look at their life as a game. Where they say, “Okay. I’m optimizing for money, and this, and how many minutes do I have to do this.” So, for them ... I tweeted out the other day, “Those people who think that we live in a computer simulation are the kinds of people who are most likely to be simulations.” Wait, explain the computer simulation ... people like Elon, I think Tony Hsieh, lots of people think we live ... this is a game. Well, yeah. A lot of people approach life like an engineering problem. For them, I could imagine that they could see their whole life being in a computer. But there are a lot of people, and I think they sort of sort out if you go into the humanities or the east coast, there are a lot of people who don’t think like a computer. They live life through experience and only things that happen actually matter. I think what’s interesting is that a lot of decisions that we make about how we feel about civil rights or gay marriage, whatever it is, those aren’t decisions that are optimizations. Those are these cultural transformations that occur in society. And I think what’s missing right now in the conversation in AI is that, first of all, I think that that’s kind of the point of life, in my own personal opinion. But also, you take things like the notion of fairness. There’s a conference called FATML: Fairness, Accountability, Transparency [in Machine Learning]. I think it’s just kind of FAT* now. But a lot of the papers that you see by the engineers say, “We’ll just define fairness as accuracy,” or something like that. And this is what I call reductionist, because fairness is really complex, and it’s always contextual. So, the risk ... and so reduction is important. Reduction is Newton’s laws. Reduction is what allows the engineering that created the Industrial Revolution and brought us all this stuff. But my concern is the stuff that we have, which is efficiency, productivity ... but that’s the stuff that makes us obese. That’s the stuff that creates climate change. That’s the stuff that ... The efficiency that creates income inequality sometimes. And this is an old thing. I’m not the first person to say this, but the problems that we have today are caused by the tools that we created, but I think there’s a lot of people who believe that more efficiency and more productivity will fix everything. And so this is sort of an almost religious kind of difference. And I think right now there’s a lot of power in the hands of the reductionists. And I would put economists and sort of neoclassic economics sort of in this, which is just reducing everything to just measuring GDP. So, you’re saying they think they have it figured out. As they have now found. Your point is being proven right now. Look at YouTube shifting back and forth on these things. They can’t figure any of it out, because it’s messy. And in fact, I was talking to a pretty big tech person and they were very frustrated with what was going on with all the platforms and I said, “Oh, life is messy.” They’re not ones and zeroes, I guess. That’s right. That’s a very Kara Swisher way of saying what I was trying to say, which is life is messy. And that if you ignore that, it’s going to get worse. And the reason that it’s a collection of essays, which I was excited, so I wrote this little manifesto-like thing ... Called “Resisting Reduction.” And then it triggered a whole bunch of responses from Silicon Valley and all over the place. So then we decided to collect these essays and put them together into a collection. So, I have a group of indigenous people. I have somebody who does the philosophy of science. It’s a really interesting response to ... So take the side of the reductionists. What is good about that? Because it’s been pushed at us a lot that we’ll get you cars that work, we’ll get you this that works, we’ll get you full communications. None of it has turned out the way they predicted. And again, for me ... Yeah. And I am and sometimes am still, and was, one of them. And I felt like if we connected everybody together ... That’s how I feel. I was one of them. ... we would have world peace. It just turned out to be more complicated. And you know, it’s kind of an old movie now, but you know The Exorcist? You know that little girl in The Exorcist? That’s what the internet feels like to me. I had this little girl and now ... Explain that. Take that one out. Draw that one out. Because you have this little girl and you think she’s going to become this wonderful kid and then she gets possessed and starts becoming this demon. And we have to exorcize her and we have to kind of bring her back. I’m actually long-term optimistic. Who gets to do that? You know what happened to the priest in that one. I know. He had to jump out the window, right? Several. Several priests went down. I actually feel kind of responsible for having been involved in some of this. I don’t feel innocent. And I feel that having been part of all of this, I have to do something about it. So, I’m not like a third-party observer in this. I think, though, that ... I do think that the changes that we make have to be technically well-informed, because I think that uninformed laws, whether they’re gun control laws or privacy laws ... Which I wrote about this week. That’s what I wrote about in the Times this week. That’s exactly what I was saying. You’re going to whiffle on it. It’s interesting, because everybody’s like, “Oh, you’re being pro tech.” I’m like, “No, I’m saying we’ve got to be informed or else we’re screwed even worse than we are now with no laws,” that kind of thing. And they have to be proactively forward versus looking backwards, because it’s hard to not understand where you need to go if don’t understand where you’re going. That’s right. I think GDPR is well-intentioned. It’s better than nothing. But it completely doesn’t hit the target yet. I think that the tech people have to get involved. I do think this public interest technologist idea, kind of like we had public interest lawyers, getting tech people more involved in coming up with how we move forward. The problem is also, tech people tend to want to just solve the problem. But the problem with the problem is it’s not like previous problems, where you just solve it. You actually have to keep asking the question, “Is this even the right question?” And this is why it’s much more difficult. I think it’s actually, to be honest, it’s a value shift. I think it’s about the younger generation, your kids, being disgusted with us, being so disgusted that they don’t want to work for that company. They don’t want to get on a private plane. They don’t want more stuff. And I think the problem is we’ve just started measuring our success with how much stuff we have. “How could he be smart? He’s not rich.” That kind of notion. And I think that the next generation’s at least in some part ... It’s an interesting concept, because this idea, reduction is actually an excellent word when I think about it because they do, they always have answers. And I’m always wary of people who always have answers to things. And one of the things that has happened is, because they reinforce each other in the society they’re in, they’re in violent agreement with each other, you know what I mean? And then they feel victimized if you start to go at them. And what’s interesting to me is there’s a lot of people like you, like me, Roger McNamee, who are in, who are like, “Wait a minute.” They know the inside and are saying, “You guys have to stop, because you don’t understand what you’re doing.” And to the outsider saying, we look like attackers when we’re not attackers. Someone the other day was like, “Why do you hate Facebook so much?” I said, “I don’t hate it. I love it. That’s the problem.” I don’t love Facebook particularly, but you know what I mean, the concept. And so, what’s really interesting is how do you educate these people who reduce into a new way, how do you think about that? First of all, it’s really hard ... You’re saying resisting it, so resisting it and then what? Because reduction is important to get anything done. You have to reduce a recipe to a recipe to give it to somebody, so reduction is important. But it’s resisting over-reduction. It’s the old “make it as simple as possible, but not simpler.” But it’s hard. I was just yesterday arguing with one of my friends in Silicon Valley about the role of advertising. In that community, since it’s so powerful, since it’s so reinforced by success, it’s almost impossible to have that conversation. Explain that argument to me. Explain what happened. You were arguing. They said, the advertising business by its nature is going to create these mutated situations. Yeah. And also this idea that things like fairness just can’t be reduced to a formula, and moved on. And that it’s messy. And the problem is that they’ve just been told over and over again that, “Oh, you’ll never be able to do this,” and then you can. So, when you go to Marc Andreessen’s office, it’s “Software will eat the world.” Because everybody kept saying, “Oh, you can’t do that in software. Only humans can do that.” And then they do it. So the experience of being in Silicon Valley over the last few decades is everybody kept saying you couldn’t do it and then they can do it. There’s really this interesting thing of, “There they go again, just telling us we can’t do it, but we can.” Although being dragged in front of Congress and stuff like that, that wakes you up a little bit. But it’s difficult. I think the solution is not going to be to go into Silicon Valley and convince them through argument. I think it really is about coming up with a different narrative outside. I do think, though, that there is definitely a movement. You see the “tech won’t build it” movement, which is the employees saying, “We don’t want our companies doing this.” You see consumers starting to say, “I like Lyft because of this.” So, I think values will change, even in Silicon Valley. And it’s interesting, when you look at the companies, the senior people are more oblivious of this than the younger people or the people who are more in the system. And so I think it’s going to change kind of bottom-up and I think it’s going to change from things like the Parkland kids who wake up and tell people what they think. It is interesting. Defensiveness is fascinating. The defensiveness is just one of my ... I can’t believe the richest and most powerful people in the world are victims. I just won’t listen to them talk about themselves like that. But they tend to do that as a group. Not everybody. A lot of people, it’s interesting, we’re having a panel at Code this year called “Inside Out,” the people who have left, all of a sudden are becoming quite critical in a way because now they’re like, “Wait a minute.” It’s sort of a born-again kind of thing. It’s more like, “Oh, I see the damage. I understand the damage.” And it’s a really interesting question whether it sticks or we do get these draconian rules from Congress or whoever, or abroad, the GDPR, or something happens somewhere where we get too much of a correction to it all, so that you don’t get the innovation that they desire. Yeah. And I guess the one thing I will say, though, is that there are a bunch of people who are making a business out of fear-mongering. And I do think that, for example, I recently wrote in Wired, there are great places online for kids to learn. And overreacting to the scary stories about kids having trouble online I think could destroy these public spaces that helped me learn when I was a kid. We don’t shut down churches and schools just because kids have problems, and they probably have more problems in churches than they do online. I don’t think we should be shutting these things down. I don’t think that we should be shutting even Facebook down. I think what we need to do is go in and make them better, just like we try to get institutions to be better. And I do worry that there’s kind of a whole generation of people who flipped out to the outside and now kind of go around sort of making money scaring people, which I think is also- Should I be nicer, Joi? I don’t think so. I think I’m being appropriately ... I think you should poke, but the problem is that you overshoot. One of the worst laws that was ever created, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act that was created the year after WarGames, it makes it a felony to breach a terms of service. When Julia Angwin shows that you can buy ads for “Jew hater” on Facebook, she’s probably a felon for doing that. And that’s stupid. And that’s because lawmakers overreacted to some dumb movie that scared the pants off of them. So that’s what I’m worried about. Right. I want to finish up, last thing. When you say “our complex future with machines,” right now, what is our future with machines? We already have a complex relationship with machines. Yeah. And Norbert Wiener, who was an MIT mathematician in 1950, wrote a book called Human Use of Human Beings. And he said that organizations are machines of flesh and blood. We already have machines, they’re called corporations. And our future is just supercharging what we already have. We can’t even control companies. To me, it’s like putting jetpacks and blindfolds on and just supercharging in whatever direction we’re headed. So what I think we need to do is we need to get our house in order before we put these jetpacks on. And it reminds me, I was just talking to my historian friends, and ’67 was 58 race riots across America. Fifty years ago, we had Vietnam protests on MIT campus. There’s a lot of similarities. And I think one of the concerns that I have is that we have a horrible relationship with ourselves right now and then adding more power to it isn’t going to help. So, the complex ... It really is a complex system. And regulating complex systems — our bodies are complex systems, the earth is a complex system where we’re somehow able to keep our body temperature relatively stable. And it’s not because there’s somebody in charge. It’s because we have a resilient, complex, adaptive system. And I think that’s like having a very good culture and very good norms. I think we need to create a society that is self-regulating and isn’t so centralized, and I think that, again, I think ... I keep going back to culture. This goes all the way back to the beginning of our conversation. I think it’s a lot like how to build strong, resilient communities and it’s less like trying to engineer a program. What do you think is key to that? I think what we’ve done is we have subordinated the humanities. If you go to, especially the places like MIT, you’ve got ... the engineers have all the power, all the money, and everything looks like an engineering problem. And we’ve made liberal arts sort of this sideshow. I think that we need the historians, the social scientists, the anthropologists, the qualitative people involved in setting ... asking the questions. Why are we here? What are we doing? Mark Cuban just did an interview like this, I was sort of shocked by it. And that’s, I think, the key. And it’s not just about ... And the problem is, again, vocational education is great, but again, economists are part of that thing, which is ... the reason you’re here isn’t to work. The reason you’re here is to live and ask questions and enjoy. So I think universities shouldn’t just be to get jobs. That should be something that’s important. But that’s like just cranking out widgets for the factory. That’s a famous saying, do you live to work or work to live? There you go. Those are the things that I think we really need to do. I think there’s a new version of the hippie movement that’s going to happen where people are going to say, “You know what? I don’t want to play that game anymore. I’m playing a different game. And the game that I’m playing and the thing that I’m solving for is something really different than what you want me to solve for.” And I think it’s going to be a kind of values rebellion. I think it’s already started. Sounds fantastic. I can’t wait. I’m hoping to be part of it. Last question, what is the most ... You always have the most interesting technology idea. What do you think is the craziest thing that you would like to see? What are you like, “This would be so cool”? Or something you’ve seen or you’re doing at Media Lab that’s really ... I don’t think of it as a specific technology, but one of the things that we’re working on or we see is a democratization of space. We’re seeing the cost of shooting up a satellite becoming the cost of a personal computer, thousands of dollars. Which has good things and bad things, but there are a lot of parallels. Space trash. Billboards in space. But it’s really similar to the early days of the internet, where we had this government system that became commercialized and we had good things and bad things. So, what I want to see is I want to get space right in the way we got the internet wrong. Whether it’s institution ... Space right in the way ... That’s nice. That would be great. Because I think we might screw it up like we screwed up the internet. I’m sure we will. I’m sure we will, Joi. Anyway, this is great. Thank you for coming on the show. Recode and Vox have joined forces to uncover and explain how our digital world is changing — and changing us. Subscribe to Recode podcasts to hear Kara Swisher and Peter Kafka lead the tough conversations the technology industry needs today. | Eric Johnson | https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/6/26/18758776/joi-ito-mit-media-lab-resisting-reduction-exorcist-kara-swisher-recode-decode-podcast-interview | 2019-06-26 10:20:00+00:00 | 1,561,558,800 | 1,567,538,111 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
5,249 | activistpost--2019-08-10--FCC Decides NO CHANGE to Radiation Limits For 5G Despite Research Supporting Public Outcry Over Risk | 2019-08-10T00:00:00 | activistpost | FCC Decides NO CHANGE to Radiation Limits For 5G Despite Research Supporting Public Outcry Over Risks | The role of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is to regulate the Telecom Industry even though they are not a health or environmental agency. Current rules, safety limits and guidelines for RF radiation exposure were adopted in 1996 and don’t apply to how most people use or are exposed to RF emitting devices and infrastructure today. They even don’t apply to how current technology and products are manufactured and marketed. In fact, there is still no “safe” level of exposure that has been scientifically determined for children or pregnant women even though devices are marketed to everyone – including kids – to use in ways that aren’t safe. Research has also determined that kids are more vulnerable to exposure. It’s no big surprise that the FCC has been identified as a “Captured Agency.” For many years, their staff has included smarmy former Telecom employees who return to the industry as soon as they stop working for the government. Thanks to everyone who has already reported this and will continue to report this very disappointing decision. From Microwave News: After six years of study, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has decided not to revise its current safety limits for RF radiation. The rules, which were first adopted in 1996 and are the only ones governing cell phone exposures in the U.S., will continue to be based only on thermal effects. “After a thorough review of the record and consultation with [the FDA and other health] agencies, we find it appropriate to maintain the existing radiofrequency limits, which are among the most stringent in the world for cell phones,” said Julius Knapp, the chief of the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology. Some had wanted the FCC to harmonize its limits with those of ICNIRP, which are considerably more permissive for cell phone exposures. The ICNIRP standard is 2 W/Kg, averaged over 10 g of tissue, while the FCC limit is 1.6 W/Kg over 1 g. The larger averaging volume alone makes the ICNIRP standard less stringent by two- to threefold (see MWN, J/A00, p.8). In the FCC announcement, issued today, Chairman Ajit Pai cites the support of Jeffrey Shuren, the director of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health. “The available scientific evidence to date does not support adverse health effects in humans due to exposures at or under the current limits…” Shuren told the FCC, adding, “No changes to the current standards are warranted at this time.” FCC officials said at a press briefing that there’s “nothing special about 5G,” according to a report from CNET. They went on to argue that the scientific evidence to date indicates that, in terms of causing health effects, 5G is no different from any other cellular technology, including 4G or 3G. The higher-frequency signals (millimeter waves) used to deliver 5G also pose no health risk, they said, pointing out that the existing RF exposure guidelines apply to 5G. Profit outside the rigged system! Protect yourself from tyranny and economic collapse. Learn to live free and spread peace! - Trends & Strategies for Maximum Freedom The FCC first announced its plan to review the agency’s RF rules in March 2013 in a 200-page filing. For more on the FCC and RF safety, go here. The Telecom Industry gave congressional testimony in February that they have no scientific evidence that exposure to 5G is biologically or environmentally safe. Many doctors and scientists say it isn’t safe (see 1, 2, 3). The FCC continues to champion widespread 5G installation anyway – by any means necessary. This includes allowing companies to send satellites into space to blast us from there and trying to loosen regulations so homeowners can be paid to put 5G antennas on their roofs. Smarmy and scary indeed. | Activist Post | https://www.activistpost.com/2019/08/fcc-decides-no-change-to-radiation-limits-for-5g-despite-research-supporting-public-outcry-over-risks.html | 2019-08-10 15:29:38+00:00 | 1,565,465,378 | 1,567,534,435 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
5,376 | activistpost--2019-08-24--EHS ADA FCC and 5G Time for a Reboot | 2019-08-24T00:00:00 | activistpost | EHS, ADA, FCC and 5G — Time for a Reboot | “We’ve arranged a society on science and technology in which nobody understands anything about science and technology, and this combustible mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later is going to blow up in our faces. – Carl Sagan On August 15, Jessica Rosenworcel of the Federal Communications Commission spoke about accessibility and inclusion at a conference at Gallaudet University for the deaf and hard of hearing in Washington D.C. As Commissioner Rosenworcal noted, “the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) was signed into law 29 years ago by former president George H.W. Bush. Upon signing, he famously said: “Let the shameful walls of exclusion finally come tumbling down.” Exactly. Those words ring true today—just as they did in 1990. Because 29 years ago this law laid the foundation for the meaningful inclusion of 60 million Americans with disabilities in all aspects of modern life.” “Title IV of the Americans with Disabilities Act became part of the Communications Act. It tasked the FCC with making sure that telecommunication relay services are widely available…. Access for all was enshrined in the law. A few years later, in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the FCC was tasked by Congress with improving access to communications equipment, ensuring it is designed, developed, and accessible for those with disabilities. Once again, access for all was in the law.” “The way I see it is that there are three values at the heart of the Americans with Disabilities Act and its successors, like the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act.” “Second, under the Americans with Disabilities Act, functional equivalency has been the foundation of our telecommunications relay service policies… for millions of Americans with hearing and speech impairments, it means they have the right and ability to pick up the phone, reach out and connect, and participate more fully in the world.” “Third, inclusion. One area where the FCC has done significant work to promote inclusion involves closed captioning.” SOURCE: FCC: COMMENTS ON ADA REMARKS OF COMMISSIONER JESSICA ROSENWORCEL TWENTY-THIRD TDI BIENNIAL CONFERENCE “WITH ACCESS EVERYONE WINS” GALLAUDET UNIVERSITY WASHINGTON, DC AUGUST 15, 2019 https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-359099A1.pdf Regarding the ADA, The Federal Communications Commission is Negligent There is a flip side to the FCC’s promotion of its efforts regarding inclusion and protection of human rights. The FCC is perhaps the single most powerful force in denying growing evidence of illness and disability, by protecting corporations causing harm. The FCC is providing justification to those industries actively discriminating against and causing avoidable harm, pain, degeneration, and suffering to a portion of the population: those Americans Becoming Disabled by the FCC. In a November 18, 2013 joint filing to the FCC, the cities of Boston and Philadelphia accused the FCC and federal health agencies of negligence for failing to investigate whether electrosensitive persons are harmed by non-ionizing radiation. As noted in the joint filing, in 1999-2000 the FCC had already begun a pattern of systematically ignoring evidence of the need for protections of electro-sensitive individuals. Then, in March of 2013, the FCC’s office of Engineering and Technology opened Docket 13-84 Reassessment of Federal Communications Commission Radiofrequency Exposure Limits and Policies and ignored the preponderance of over 1,000 testimonies indicating that FCC limits are inadequate and that radio frequency exposure is linked to other adverse health effects, including cancer, infertility, DNA damage, and neurodegenerative conditions. The pattern of neglect has accelerated with current plans for the rollout of 5G fifth generation telecommunications infrastructure, using faster millimeter wave frequencies and requiring extensive antenna densification, especially near homes, and already being mounted on lampposts and utility poles across the country. Many of the expert submissions submitted to the FCC and ignored by the FCC indicating the need for new science-based exposure limits are indexed by Joel Moskowitz on the website Electromagnetic Radiation Safety. SOURCE: Part I: Why We Need Stronger Cell Phone Radiation Regulations–Key Testimony Submitted to the FCC https://www.saferemr.com/2014/08/part-i-why-we-need-stronger-cell-phone.html In her speech at Gallaudet, Commissioner Rosenworcel noted that hearing-impaired individuals now “have the right and ability to pick up the phone, reach out and connect, and participate more fully in the world.” Meanwhile, a marginalized population not only can’t participate in the world; these individuals do not have the right or ability to protect their health in their own homes. (And as the FCC eliminates copper landline phones individuals requiring corded landline access will not be able to pick up a phone anytime, anywhere.) Due to lack of federal response, health-vulnerable residents are placed in the position of having to beg for consideration from utility companies, public servants, telecommunications companies, communities, and neighbors. This has resulted in an environment where the protection of human rights and health is uneven at best, with most of the affected individuals usually being systematically bullied and ignored. For example, the forced installation of wireless gas, water, and electric meters has reportedly caused the acute onset of electromagnetic sensitivity in some individuals, while exacerbating health challenges and symptoms in others. (Lyme and MCS Multiple Chemical Sensitivity patients are among the populations that have been noted to be at risk of developing EHS and requiring protection, as well as those with compromised immunity.) No scientific research regarding environmental impacts or human health was conducted prior to the rollout of wireless smart meters and smart grid infrastructure. Subsequently, wireless electric meters have been demonstrated to alter the human heart rate in some individuals. In 2010, Magda Havas published peer-reviewed research demonstrating that DECT cordless phones cause heart rate alterations in some individuals. Nonetheless, in 2019 in Massachusetts, a resident of Plymouth County with a heart condition for which she was recently hospitalized provided a letter from her physician to her town water department. Her physician stated that she needed to receive an opt out from the wireless water meter. The town was notified of her low blood pressure challenges, and informed that lack of access to water would present a serious dehydration and health risk. In May of 2019, when she did not comply with an installation demand, the town shut off her water, causing both hygiene and dehydration risks during the peak heat summer months. The household remains without water despite reaching out to many agencies in the Commonwealth, including the disabilities board, attorney general, department of health, and elected officials. In California, “Plumas Sierra Rural Electric Co-Operative (PSREC) disconnected electricity to the family of Stop Smart Meters! Director Josh Hart in February 2014 for refusing to pay the extortionate ‘opt out fee.’ However, on July 2nd, 2015, 16 months later, the electricity was restored to the Harts, and opt out fees dropped after an appeal hearing in Superior Court. How and why are corporations practicing medicine without a license by overriding the health expertise of medical professionals, in favor of profit, and ignoring accommodation requests? Thanks to the FCC. With the federal regulator FCC firmly entrenched with the industry, where no state protection is in place, the accommodation decision is often left to the town, or the utility provider. Many towns including Southborough, MA threatened water shut-offs if customers did not accept a transmitting water meter. In Holyoke, Massachusetts, a yearlong effort was required by Kirstin Beatty of Last Tree Laws, who was diagnosed with electrosensitivity by three different doctors. She requested removal of wireless gas and electric utility meters. “Brian Beuregard, an employee, was kind enough to find me an alternative [non-transmitting electric and gas] meter and respond to numerous emails.” When the transmissions stopped, her health improved, white blood cells rose, and her nausea and headache decreased. Like many, Kirstin had to pay for her non-transmitting meter. Often a meter read fee is levied. The town of Acton, MA surcharges customers who desire an opt out meter a $25 fee per reading cycle (currently quarterly) and a fee to remove the wireless water meter. After years of contentious opposition at Town Meeting, Wayland, MA approved wireless water meters and intends to charge $20 per quarter to read the meter. Everett, MA also accommodated a resident request for accommodation, and charges $20 per quarter. Nearby Melrose charges $50 per quarter year for the water meter opt out reading. Given that many customers with environmental health challenges including MCS and EHS have difficulty finding work and are low income customers, the surcharge is especially punishing and discriminatory, especially if the meter’s 24/7/365 pulsed frequencies caused the environmental overload in the first place. There is no research indicating that the meters are not causing adverse symptoms. Health vulnerable homeowners with gas, water, and electric meters are faced with the prospect of having to pay protection money times three for access to essential services. Extra fees for meter reads are unnecessary and unjustified, as many jurisdictions offer the option to self-report via postcard. Were protections in place under the ADA, the punitive surcharges would be illegal. Most jurisdictions have relied on industry claims and FCC “protections.” Only in rare cases have towns been graciously accommodating. Concerned residents in Manchester, Massachusetts who contacted the town were immediately offered the option of disconnecting the wireless transmitter and self-reporting their water readings to the town at no fee. Massachusetts electric utility Eversource has provided no accommodation for residents seeking a non-transmitting meter, claiming that analogs are not available, despite the fact that Maine customers can pay a surcharge to retain an analog meter. Analogs are also available for purchase on the internet. Investor-owned utility National Grid petitioned the MA Dept. of Public Utilities in 2013 to surcharge customers seeking to opt out of gas and electric meters, securing a fee of $26 to remove each meter and $11 month for meter reads, even for months when the meter is not read. (MA DPU 13-83) Yet the opt-out meter does not address all of the health risk factors. Electronic meters introduce both wireless radio frequency exposures and high voltage transients that can ride on the household wiring and plumbing. Electrical engineer Bill Bathgate and others have explained that the design of modern wireless meters can pollute the electrical wiring in homes with other frequencies, leading to harmonics and transients. In his book Dirty Electricity Dr. Samuel Milham discusses how a clean 60-hertz wave can be disrupted, and how these disruptions are statistically linked to poor health. Modern wireless meters and many energy efficient devices use a switch mode power, which adds “dirty electricity” and disrupts power quality. This also reduces the lifetime of electronics. If no analog is offered, customers are being forced to pay a fee and then provided with a meter that only addresses part of their concerns. Mass Save recently provided an energy audit for the home of an EHS individual who has paid nearly $1,000 in surcharges to National Grid over the years for an opt out meter. Mass Save replaced her lights with “energy efficient” LED bulbs that polluted the power quality in the home. This caused the resident to experience a dramatic downturn in her health, until the lighting was removed. (The Building Biology Institute offers many tools for assisting individuals and buildings in healthy building design, including lighting.) Assessing Impacts of Wireless, We Need to Have Our Heads Examined When individuals have reported harm due to proximity to smart meters, smart infrastructure, solar inverters, variable speed motors, LED lighting, dimmer switches, and proximal telecommunications infrastructure including towers and antennas, the industry has responded by simply measuring the transmissions against outdated and inapplicable FCC limits. This is both inhumane and unscientific. The FCC tests cellphones by taking the temperature of a plastic head filled with the equivalent of Jell-O. Now it appears that the FDA has joined forces with the FCC to utilize manufactured tissue samples for “health research.” This is simply mad science. It is not only contributing to unrelenting suffering, but it is a massive waste of resources. Rather than addressing infrastructure repairs for issues like lead in the water and gas leaks, the nation was misguided into buying into a surveillance system masquerading as sustainability. It would be absurd to have a fire alarm send a message every 2,000th of a second that there is no fire, and to build massive data centers to analyze the data, and to pay technocrats to analyze and monetize the data. There is only a need for a transmission in the case of a fire. The wireless industry has been allowed to build a burgeoning demand for wireless infrastructure through frivolous use of technology. The massive collection of consumption and usage data is a wrong turn for humanity. We’re revisiting the point in history when all the doctors were smoking, and cigarettes were promoted for digestive issues or a sore throat. We are letting the wrong people ask the wrong questions, including the tobacco scientist shills now working for the wireless industry. This is no longer a question of whether or not or how to accommodate the canaries in the coalmine; it is whether or not we will rethink the entire belief system held by the consumer culture about the safety of wireless devices, as cities and towns are overloaded with transmitters. And, this is a basic question about human rights. Human experimentation went awry at other times in history. It is off the rails again. “In a herd of deer, we need some super-sensitive ones. They are the ones that will hear that teeniest little crack, or smell the one or two molecules of scent from the mountain lion that’s stalking them. Their job is to use their hyper-sensitivity to alert the whole group.” ~ Peter Levine If we do not address the charade at the FCC, we will burden future generations with unfathomable injury and incalculable harm. Albert Einstein is credited with the quote, “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” In the meantime, public servants and decision makers have the opportunity to do the right thing in their own communities, by challenging the incomplete and corrupted science, calling for independent research, dropping the surcharges, and turning the water and power back on. “Let the shameful (and idiotic) walls of exclusion finally come tumbling down.” Register Now for The 5G Crisis: Awareness & Accountability Summit. Online and FREE from August 26 – September 1, 2019. Patricia Burke works with activists across the country and internationally calling for new biologically-based microwave radio frequency exposure limits. She is based in Massachusetts and can be reached at [email protected]. Subscribe to Activist Post for truth, peace, and freedom news. Follow us on Minds, Twitter, Steemit, and SoMee. Become an Activist Post Patron for as little as $1 per month. Provide, Protect and Profit from what’s coming! Get a free issue of Counter Markets today. | Activist Post | https://www.activistpost.com/2019/08/ehs-ada-fcc-and-5g-time-for-a-reboot.html | 2019-08-24 16:15:34+00:00 | 1,566,677,734 | 1,567,533,471 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
6,272 | activistpost--2019-12-16--Day 5: The Fitting Of Technocracy And Transhumanism | 2019-12-16T00:00:00 | activistpost | Day 5: The Fitting Of Technocracy And Transhumanism | If society must be transformed into Technocracy, then the humans who live there must be transformed into Transhumans. In other words, a perfectly efficient, utopian society envisioned by Technocrats would be quickly soiled if it were inhabited by weak-minded and imperfect humans in their present form. This is exactly why we see many Technocrats who also identify as Transhumans as well. Some well-known names that come to mind include Elon Musk (Tesla), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Ray Kurzweil (Google) and Peter Thiel (PayPal). To grasp this larger picture, it is necessary to address three questions: • How is Scientism the glue that binds them together? It eschewed capitalism, free enterprise and any form of elected politician, and sought to create a resource-based economic system where they (scientists, engineers and technicians) would be the sole planners and controllers of society. Many Technocrats today have no idea of the deeper goals of Technocracy but nevertheless use their expertise to run portions of society without any regard for America’s traditional political processes. ‘Rule by experts’ is a rule, but it is only one subservient part of the overarching goal of replacing our current economic system with Sustainable Development, aka Technocracy, Green Economy, Green New Deal, etc. One modern champion of Transhumanism, Dr. Max More, wrote, Transhumans seek to apply advanced technology to the condition of man in order to take over the evolutionary process and literally create Humans 2.0. The holy grail of Transhumanism is to achieve immortality, but in the process they intend to weed out the more negative characteristics of Humans 1.0: warlike nature, argumentative, inconsistent, unreliable, etc. This is genetic cleansing on the largest possible scale. Scientism is the glue that binds them together Scientism is religious proposition that was first presented by the French philosopher Henri De Saint-Simon (1760-1825). He wrote, While true science explores the natural world using the time-tested scientific method of repeated experimentation and validation, Saint-Simon’s Scientism is a speculative, metaphysical worldview about the nature and reality of the universe and man’s relation to it. Saint-Simon proposed that the religious leadership of his day should literally be replaced by a priesthood of scientists and engineers, who would interpret the oracle of science in order to make declarations to society on necessary human action to lead mankind to Utopia. Thus, science would be elevated to a state of immutable godhood, worshiped by its followers who are led by its priests. Technocracy and Transhumanism are both based on Scientism. Both believe that advanced science, engineering and technology are the exclusive instruments of progress. Both are adept at promising benefits that are always just around the corner, but that never materialize. Both are expert at manipulating governments to supply taxpayer resources to fund their respective projects. Both believe they are hijacking evolutionary processes to create a future engineered by technologists. No Future Here, Go to Mars… Even more substantive is that the both see no future for the world as it exists today. Radical environmentalists like Greta Thunberg believe the world has only 12 years left before climate-apocalypse destroys us all. Elon Musk uses his billions to escape Earth by funding his SpaceX rocket company with the ultimate intent of colonizing Mars. Jeff Bezos privately funds his Blue Origin for the same purpose – to colonize Mars. They both have stated that the only future for mankind is in outer space, populating the cosmos because Earth is going to hit a dead end when the resources run out. In short, Technocracy and Transhumanism are both anti-human. Technocracy, channeled by the United Nations as Sustainable Development, believes that the earth can only support one billion or so humans. Further, all humans are considered as mere resources on a par with herd animals such as cattle. Transhumanism believes Humanity 1.0 is as good as dead and the only hope for the future of man is for Transhuman scientists to invent Humanity 2.0 and leave Earth altogether. In one sense, Technocracy’s strict allocation of resources and energy only mark a containment pattern while they build and test space travel technology. This is not new thinking. Winwood Reade wrote The Martyrdom of Man in 1872 and stated as clearly as any modern Transhumanist or Technocrat could: Disease will be extirpated; the causes of decay will be removed; immortality will be invented. And then, the earth being small, mankind will migrate into space, and will cross the airless Saharas which separate planet from planet, and sun from sun. The earth will become a Holy Land which will be visited by pilgrims from all the quarters of the universe. Finally, men will master the forces of Nature; they will become themselves architects of systems, manufacturers of worlds. These bodies which now we wear belong to the lower animals; our minds have already outgrown them; already we look upon them with contempt. A time will come when Science will transform them by means which we cannot conjecture, and which, even if explained to us, we could not now understand, just as the savage cannot understand electricity, magnetism, steam. (p. 179) The word ‘radical’ doesn’t even scratch the surface In light of the above, I hope you realize that you simply cannot look at Technocrats and Transhumanists and pin labels on them like Marxist, Socialist, Communist or Fascist. Transhumanists and Technocrats represent a new type of radicalness that the world has never seen before. It means nothing when people gather to discuss philosophical issues and new ways of doing things, unless they have the means to do what they claim. Jeff Bezos isn’t waiting for NASA to colonize Mars; he is building his own spaceship with his own money. Likewise, Elon Musk is self-funding his own space fleet. The late global financier, David Rockefeller, didn’t wait for governments to flesh out a new economic order, but rather used his own funds to create the Trilateral Commission with its own economic transformations. Thanks to the United Nations’ adoption of Technocracy as Sustainable Development, its Agenda 21 policies have been spread to every corner of the planet, including every town and county in America. In total ignorance of the trap being laid for them, people are now demanding more, not less. Global warming is being used as the battering ram to break down the current economic system, paving the way for the only alternative being offered: Sustainable Development, aka Technocracy. Lest you think that the scientific elite are benevolent purists simply working for the betterment of mankind, I would caution you to remember the late Jeffrey Epstein, who plumbed the depths of depravity, debauchery, sex trafficking and blackmail and who was also a member of the elitist Trilateral Commission for several years. Epstein was a Technocrat and a Transhumanist, hoping to achieve eternal life within his lifetime – alas, he failed. To use the word ‘radical’ to describe Technocracy and Transhumanism would be a gross understatement. They are both outside the bounds of objective reality and worse, they are dragging the rest of us along with them. You can read more from Patrick Wood at his site Technocracy News & Trends, where this article first appeared. Subscribe to Activist Post for truth, peace, and freedom news. Become an Activist Post Patron for as little as $1 per month at Patreon. Follow us on SoMee, Flote, Minds, Twitter, and Steemit. Provide, Protect and Profit from what’s coming! Get a free issue of Counter Markets today. | Activist Post | https://www.activistpost.com/2019/12/day-5-the-fitting-of-technocracy-and-transhumanism.html | Mon, 16 Dec 2019 20:02:38 +0000 | 1,576,544,558 | 1,576,541,190 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
16,305 | aljazeera--2019-10-07--Bangladesh student killing: Thousands protest demanding justice | 2019-10-07T00:00:00 | aljazeera | Bangladesh student killing: Thousands protest demanding justice | Dhaka, Bangladesh - Thousands of university students on Monday staged protests in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka and Rajshahi city after an undergraduate student was allegedly killed by activists of Chhatra League - the student wing of the ruling Awami League party. Abrar Fahad, 21 - a student at the prestigious Bangladesh University of Engineering Technology (BUET) - was allegedly killed over his Facebook post critical of Bangladesh's recent water-sharing agreement with India. On Saturday, Dhaka and New Delhi signed several agreements, including allowing India to withdraw 1.82 cusec (185,532 litres per hour) of water from Feni river during Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's visit to India. Dhaka and New Delhi have for decades struggled to ink a deal on sharing river waters. A controversial agreement on sharing water of Ganga river has long been seen in Bangladesh as a treaty which favours India. "He was killed because of some of his Facebook posts. That is insane," one of Abrar's classmates, who preferred to be unnamed, told Al Jazeera. "The goons of Chhatra League killed him. We want justice," he said. Barkat Ullah, 57, Fahad's father said: "My son was just an innocent student. He had his own strong opinions and he was killed for that." Fahad's cousin Abu Talha Rasel, 31, said it "was pretty evident who had killed Fahad". Several classmates of Fahad and the residential students of Sher-e-Bangla hall, who spoke to Al Jazeera, have pointed fingers of blame at Chhatra League activists for Fahad's killing. According to an autopsy report by doctors at Dhaka Medical College Hospital, Fahad died of "internal bleeding and excessive pain" as he was badly beaten up by blunt objects such as cricket stumps or bamboo sticks. Protests were also organised in Rajshahi city where students blocked major roads. Teachers are also believed to have joined some of the protests. At least nine BUET students have been detained, some of them belonging to the ruling party, in connection with the murder. Earlier, Additional Deputy Commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police Abdul Baten told reporters that they had taken students into custody after they were identified based on security camera footage. Police has not yet revealed the motive behind the murder that has caused public outrage. The Chhatra League activists interrogated Fahad over his alleged involvement with Chhatra Shibir - the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, the country's largest Islamist party - which has political ties with the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). Ashikul Islam Bitu, assistant secretary of the BUET unit of Chhatra League admitted that Fahad was picked up from his room by the ruling party activists on suspicion that he was a Shibir activist. BUET's residential physician Dr Mashuk Elahi told reporters that students of the Sher-e-Bangla hall called him at about 3am. "I went to the hall and saw the body near the stairs. By then he was dead. There were injury marks all over his body." Awami League party General Secretary Obaidul Quader said "the law would take its own course" in a damage control exercise. "Investigation is on. Legal action will be taken against those who will be found responsible in the investigation," he said replying to a query from reporters over the incident. The main opposition BNP condemned the murder and said the ruling party members have "stained their hands with blood". "It seems to me that we are living in a death valley," BNP Secretary-General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said in a statement. In recent months, Prime Minister Hasina, who is also the president of the Awami League, had cracked down on Chhatra League activities over allegations of corruption, violence and extortion. Last month, Rezwanul Haque Chowdhury Shovon and Golam Rabbani were sacked from their posts of Chhatra League president and general secretary respectively after allegations of extortion. Asif Nazrul, professor of law at Dhaka University said: "Who gave the right to Chhatra League to interrogate another fellow student for his involvement with Shibir or posting anti-government Facebook statuses?" "Chhatra League has gone out of control of the government. Their questionable activities have to be stopped," he told Al Jazeera. | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/10/191007174829064.html | Mon, 07 Oct 2019 18:16:14 GMT | 1,570,486,574 | 1,570,479,978 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
24,064 | bbc--2019-03-14--Emma Haruka Iwao smashes pi world record with Google help | 2019-03-14T00:00:00 | bbc | Emma Haruka Iwao smashes pi world record with Google help | The value of the number pi has been calculated to a new world record length of 31 trillion digits, far past the previous record of 22 trillion. Emma Haruka Iwao, a Google employee from Japan, found the new digits with the help of the company's cloud computing service. Pi is the number you get when you divide a circle's circumference by its diameter. The first digits, 3.14, are well known but the number is infinitely long. Extending the known sequence of digits in pi is very difficult because the number follows no set pattern. Pi is used in engineering, physics, supercomputing and space exploration - because its value can be used in calculations for waves, circles and cylinders. The pursuit of longer versions of pi is a long-standing pastime among mathematicians. And Ms Iwao said she had been fascinated by the number since she had been a child. The calculation required 170TB of data (for comparison, 200,000 music tracks take up 1TB) and took 25 virtual machines 121 days to complete. "I feel very surprised," Ms Iwao, who has worked at Google for the past three years, said of her achievement. "I am still trying to adjust to the reality. The world record has been really hard." But she still hopes to expand on her work. "There is no end with pi, I would love to try with more digits," she told BBC News. It would take 332,064 years to say the 31.4 trillion digit number. Google announced the news in a blog on Pi Day (14 March - "3.14" in American date notation). Nasa has previously published a list of some of the ways in which it uses pi. These include: "Pi is useful not only for measuring circles but it also appears in calculations for everything from the period of a pendulum to the buckling force of a beam," said mathematician Matt Parker. "Modern maths, physics, engineering and technology could not function without pi." In 2010, Nicholas Sze used Yahoo cloud computing to calculate that the two quadrillionth digit of Pi was zero - a calculation that would have taken 500 years on a standard computer at that time. However, he did not calculate all the digits in between. | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47524760 | 2019-03-14 08:37:17+00:00 | 1,552,567,037 | 1,567,546,262 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
38,952 | bbcuk--2019-04-10--New 150m Caledonian Sleeper trains are hotels on wheels | 2019-04-10T00:00:00 | bbcuk | New £150m Caledonian Sleeper trains 'are hotels on wheels' | The new £150m fleet of Caledonian Sleeper trains has been unveiled - with travellers being promised an overnight stay in "a hotel on wheels". The 75 new carriages will offer en-suite double rooms for the first time. There will be 484 rooms available, initially on the Lowlander route between London and Glasgow/Edinburgh. They will be followed by a Highlander route between London and Aberdeen, Inverness and Fort William. The fleet, which will be on the rails from the beginning of June, features: The Caledonian sleeper, which has been running in various forms since 1873, is now operated by Serco on behalf of Transport Scotland. Its new carriages are bespoke and designed for Caledonian Sleeper from scratch. Serco's Ryan Flaherty said the fleet would provide "a truly magical experience that will transform travel between London and Scotland". He added: "Safety is absolutely paramount for us. But, beyond that, this is a hospitality experience. "People now are very much looking for a decent experience - whether it is in a restaurant, a shop or indeed travelling on a train - and we have gone after that market. "So it's no longer a transactional, overnight thing where you're not going to get a great sleep or a great breakfast. We want to be the best at every single step of the journey." Another first for the Sleeper is the introduction of new engineering technology to stop things going "bump" in night. In the past, passengers have complained of being woken by a shunt when two sections of the train coupled together at Carstairs. But the operators say the addition of 150 Dellner couplers will be a "dream" development for snoozing guests. Serco's Ryan Flaherty said: "On the current train the coaches have to 'kick' together to make the contact, but going forward it's 'kissing'. "It's much more gentle and will be imperceptible to the guests who are asleep." | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-47887656 | 2019-04-10 23:51:25+00:00 | 1,554,954,685 | 1,567,543,359 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
117,085 | conservativehome--2019-01-15--James Palmer We need a Minister for East West Rail | 2019-01-15T00:00:00 | conservativehome | James Palmer: We need a Minister for East West Rail | James Palmer is the directly elected Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. When it comes to Government investment in infrastructure, there is much talk of the need to redress the north-south divide. There are many myths around this debate, but while much focus gets placed on Greater London versus the north, there is less attention on the central heart of this country, and transport connections east and west. So of course I welcome the development of East West Rail, which will connect Oxford, Milton Keynes and Cambridge, as well as the emerging plans for an expressway linking the two University cities. The economy of this central belt is flourishing, supporting pioneering enterprises which are at the world’s forefront. It is rightly labelled as the UK’s answer to Silicon Valley. This growth corridor hosts clusters of businesses in life sciences, digital and advanced engineering and technology, and competes internationally for research and development funding and other inward investment. The Cambridge to Oxford ‘Arc’ alone supports 1.8 million jobs and generates £90 billion in “gross value added” (GVA) for our economy. The National Infrastructure Commission estimates that with the right Government investment, that GVA could increase by a further £163 billion, with an additional 700,000 jobs created, by 2050 – double the economic growth that could be achieved if the Government does nothing. In short, this rail scheme will be vital for UK plc. So vital, in fact, that I think the Government needs to appoint a Minister for East West Rail. The good news is I understand it is the Government’s intention to do just this. To have a Minister pounding the corridors of Whitehall to drive this project forward will be hugely significant, and will improve on the already good levels of inter-governmental working there has been. Let’s have a Minister with a vision for a true East West Rail too. Why does it have to stop at Cambridge? The economy of the East will be hugely boosted if the route also connects centres like Bury St Edmunds, Stowmarket, Ipswich and the major port at Felixstowe. I know from the western side too, there is real appetite to extend the line to Bristol. What we would then get is a real East-West link that will deliver growth across a key central southern belt of this country. But we also need to be clearer on what the benefits are for local people. It’s about how this will grow the economy, create new jobs, and ease the pressure on housing through the delivery of a million much-needed new homes. It is also as much about better transport connections along the route, as it is connecting Cambridge and Oxford. People in Bedford and Sandy, for example, will suddenly have a fast route into Cambridge. East West Rail is a transformational project, but this isn’t yet cutting through to communities. Key to this will be improved local engagement. The last meeting I went to on East West Rail saw Government officials talking to a room about what they intended to do, with little dialogue. The approach needs to change. We now have the Cross Corridor Leaders Group, which encompasses the leaders and chief executives of the 28 relevant local authorities, and which is still in its early phases. We also have the strategic alliance England’s Economic Heartland which I believe should expand to include more authorities in the East. There is great potential for a Minister to work with these groups representing people and businesses, to ensure a clear strategy can be developed that satisfies as far as possible both the local and national priorities. The Government clearly needs support from local leaders too. Kit Malthouse wrote to me last year asking where we can accommodate our share of the million homes along the corridor. My response was: “first tell me where East West Rail is going”. We can’t plan for housing without certainty of the route of the rail line and the expressway, including how this will impact on local plans in some of the 28 local authorities. I know in the West there is uncertainty over where the expressway will go and here in the East we don’t know, for example, if the rail route will go through Sandy and southern Cambridgeshire, or follow the existing A428 corridor. Let me also sound a note of warning. East West Rail should not be seen as simply a boost to an already prosperous area. The 2018 Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Independent Economic Review report, led by economist Dame Kate Barker, stressed that to secure the continued growth of our unique economy, a range of challenges need to be overcome, with transport infrastructure and housing key among these. We have ageing transport networks and house prices which in Cambridge are 13 times average household earnings. It is not sustainable and we need solutions urgently. We need East West Rail to integrate with existing transport and housing plans, such as the emerging Cambridgeshire Metro, which will deliver a world-class mass transit system that can complement the new rail link. We also need to ensure East West Rail dovetails with our plans to build more homes, including through garden villages, which will be unlocked by the delivery of the Metro system and other infrastructure schemes we are developing. I know as Mayor, delivering even simple infrastructure upgrades is not easy and requires unrelenting focus. East West Rail is essential, but it will stagnate without drive from central Government and partnership working with local representatives. East West Rail is too important to the future of the UK economy to fail. We need a Minister in charge who will ensure that is not an option. | James Palmer | https://www.conservativehome.com/localgovernment/2019/01/james-palmer-we-need-a-minister-for-east-west-rail.html | 2019-01-15 06:10:43+00:00 | 1,547,550,643 | 1,567,552,367 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
128,963 | dailyheraldchicago--2019-09-10--Lisles Molex opens new lab at North Central College in Naperville | 2019-09-10T00:00:00 | dailyheraldchicago | Lisle's Molex opens new lab at North Central College in Naperville | A new feature of North Central College's 2-year-old science facility opened Tuesday through a partnership with the Lisle-based electronic connectors company Molex. The Molex Advanced Electronics Lab is a space for electrical and engineering-related courses for undergraduates inside the Dr. Myron Wentz Science Center on North Central's Naperville campus. Officials celebrated the lab during a ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday afternoon, with North Central President Troy Hammond in a news release calling it part of the college's "promise to provide dynamic and integrated educational experiences for our students." As the newest feature of a $60 million building that opened in 2017, the Molex Lab offers 28 workspaces and electronic test equipment that will allow students to learn about high-speed signaling, power management, high-performance automation systems and robotics. Molex CEO Joe Nelligan said in a news release he expects the company's support of the new lab will "give students opportunities for hands-on learning and exploration and help them pursue their passion in engineering and technology." The Wentz Science Center also is home to the Omron Design and Automation Lab, supported by an automation technology company based in Japan, as well as nearly 30 other labs for teaching and research, 15 seminar classrooms, a lecture hall and 53 faculty offices. Classes began in the new Molex Lab this semester, with students taking courses such as introduction to electrical engineering, digital logic, circuit analysis, microcontrollers and electronic controls. | null | http://www.dailyherald.com/news/20190910/lisles-molex-opens-new-lab-at-north-central-college-in-naperville | 2019-09-10 21:54:01+00:00 | 1,568,166,841 | 1,569,330,624 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
141,679 | drudgereport--2019-01-14--Chicago to get wooden skyscraper | 2019-01-14T00:00:00 | drudgereport | Chicago to get wooden skyscraper... | Building skyscrapers out of wood: It sounds bizarre, unsafe, maybe even a bit twee. But it could actually be the future of construction. "Each material has its different pros and cons, and there's no reason that timber shouldn't be part of that larger discussion," Todd Snapp, an architect with the global firm Perkins + Will, told The Week. "I can't say it's better than steel or concrete. I can say it should be just as relevant in the discussion of what material to use." Snapp is the design principal guiding the firm's River Beech Tower project, an 800-foot residential skyscraper that would be built almost entirely out of wood. The tower was designed in parallel with a master plan the firm was awarded to develop an area in Chicago's downtown, on the east shore of the river and just west of Grant Park. Cambridge University's Natural Material Innovation project then came to them with the notion of doing a wooden skyscraper. The idea was they would pick a real-world site and then develop the building from the ground up: As the architects fleshed out the project, that would give the Cambridge group specific structures, practices, and so forth to test out in the lab. "We wanted the research to be tied to some sense of what's immediately achievable," Snapp explained. "Ground it in reality. Let's have a real site." Granted, River Beech Tower remains purely conceptual — a collection of designs and models, with no actual plans yet to build it. But the point of the project was to prove the idea could work. Nor is it the only such effort. Similar plans are underway in London, Stockholm, and other cities. Eighteen-story buildings made of timber already exist in Vancouver and Minneapolis, while other structures have popped up in Norway and New Zealand. Perkins + Will actually got its start in Chicago back in 1935. In fact, the city's great fire of 1871 was one of several disasters that helped push modern architecture away from wood and towards the steel and concrete that dominate construction today. Part of that legacy is Chicago's architecturally iconic Wrigley Building, which houses the offices where Snapp and his colleagues did much of their work on the River Beech Tower project. It's one of many efforts around the world to take history full circle and return timber to a place of prominence in architecture. But why the effort in the first place? Well, several reasons. For one thing, wood is lighter and more flexible than steel or concrete. A wooden skyscraper will have more give in an earthquake, for instance. The lighter weight also opens up opportunities for cost saving throughout the construction process. Wood is an excellent insulator, which would save the building's owners and residents on heating and cooling costs. On the flip side, wood can sway too much, particularly in the wind — a major issue for taller buildings. For the River Beech Tower project, Snapp and his colleagues actually solved this problem by constructing the whole building out of triangle and diamond shapes. A triangle is a much more structurally sturdy form than a rectangle, so taking a more flexible material like wood and building triangles out of it created a structure that holds up well under forces coming at it from all sides. It also lent the project its interesting "honeycomb" aesthetic. Key connection points in the building would be reinforced with steel encased in concrete, and glass would be used in windows along with some other exterior materials. Beyond that, the skyscraper would be basically all wood. Solving the flexibility vs. rigidity tradeoff lead to other interesting breakthroughs. The initial design of the project that Perkins + Will modeled in its computers was your standard skyscraper tower. The engineers determined the entire bottom third of the building would have to be a solid wood block to give the structure enough stability. So they redesigned the building as essentially two skyscrapers conjoined by a central atrium. That allowed them to spread the base of the building wide enough to get the necessary structural stability. It also gave them a big open space going up the core of the building, which opened up all sorts of aesthetic and interior design possibilities. "We wanted the design to evolve out of the iterative process of what the material wants to be," as Snapp put it. Another interesting aspect of wood is that it's easier to work with than steel or concrete. Concrete has to be poured into a preset form, then allowed the time — sometimes days or weeks — to dry. Steel has to be melted and molded into the necessary shapes. Wood, however, can simply be cut. Computers and modern technology now allow for factory processes that can cut timber into all sorts of desired shapes quickly and in large quantities. That fact allowed the River Beech Tower team to get creative about the construction process as well as the design. They came up with a plan where the building would be constructed out of standardized modules, all prefabricated at a nearby factory, then shipped to the construction site. This modular approach is not unheard of in standard construction, but it's still relatively new, and the use of wood allowed the team to take full advantage of it. It's a strategy that can save you a lot of time. And building the modules under factory settings provides for more quality control than building the whole skyscraper on site from the ground up. How far this practice could spread depends on the circumstances of each building — having Lake Michigan right next to Chicago was a big help for shipping plans — but it certainly has possibilities. Of course, any talk of building skyscrapers out of wood is immediately going to raise concerns about fires. (Remember the aforementioned Great Chicago Fire of 1871?) But wooden beams can be covered with fire-proof coatings, just as steel beams are. More importantly, the wooden beams created with modern processes are so big and solid that it actually takes enormously high temperatures to set them on fire — below those temperatures, the surface of the beam simply chars, while the beam itself maintains its structural integrity. "Steel is actually less fire resistant in its pure form," Snapp said. "When steel hits a certain temperature it starts melting, the connections break." Finally, it's also worth mentioning that a world where we built a lot more skyscrapers out of wood would almost certainly be a more environmentally friendly place. Obviously, there are aspects of construction that will emit CO2 no matter what material you use. But steel and concrete also have carbon emissions intrinsic to that material: Sixty percent of concrete's emissions, for instance, come from the chemical reaction to make the concrete. Replacing a lot of steel and concrete construction with wood could save us a lot of CO2 output. On top of that, timber is a cash crop, just like corn or potatoes. If demand for it goes up, the economic incentive to plant more trees increases too. If wooden construction became common, you'd certainly need regulatory oversight to make sure the timber came from cash crop planting and not from cutting down pre-existing forests. But planting more trees is an excellent idea for fighting climate change. So what's standing between us and our timber skyscraper future? Mainly time, experience, and acceptance. Architects and engineers are only just beginning to realize the possibilities of bringing wood back into the equation, now that engineering technology has advanced. Governments and construction companies still need to get used to the idea. And building codes need to change: Right now the most widely used codes limit wooden construction to around 20 stories. But those codes are updated regularly, and projects like Perkins + Will's River Beech Tower feed into the process of reviewing and expanding what's allowed. The field of wooden skyscrapers is young. But like the trees it relies upon, it may yet grow into something remarkable. | null | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DrudgeReportFeed/~3/Y9pMNuaBOkI/how-build-skyscraper-wood | 2019-01-14 17:28:38+00:00 | 1,547,504,918 | 1,567,552,613 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
141,994 | drudgereport--2019-01-17--SCIENTISTS GROW PERFECT HUMAN BLOOD VESSELS | 2019-01-17T00:00:00 | drudgereport | SCIENTISTS GROW 'PERFECT' HUMAN BLOOD VESSELS... | Scientists have managed to grow perfect human blood vessels as organoids in a petri dish for the first time. The breakthrough engineering technology, outlined in a new study published today in Nature, dramatically advances research of vascular diseases like diabetes, identifying a key pathway to potentially prevent changes to blood vessels -- a major cause of death and morbidity among those with diabetes. An organoid is a three-dimensional structure grown from stem cells that mimics an organ and can be used to study aspects of that organ in a petri dish. "Being able to build human blood vessels as organoids from stem cells is a game changer," said the study's senior author Josef Penninger, the Canada 150 Research Chair in Functional Genetics, director of the Life Sciences Institute at UBC and founding director of the Institute for Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMBA). "Every single organ in our body is linked with the circulatory system. This could potentially allow researchers to unravel the causes and treatments for a variety of vascular diseases, from Alzheimer's disease, cardiovascular diseases, wound healing problems, stroke, cancer and, of course, diabetes." Diabetes affects an estimated 420 million people worldwide. Many diabetic symptoms are the result of changes in blood vessels that result in impaired blood circulation and oxygen supply of tissues. Despite its prevalence, very little is known about the vascular changes arising from diabetes. This limitation has slowed the development of much-needed treatment. To tackle this problem, Penninger and his colleagues developed a groundbreaking model: three-dimensional human blood vessel organoids grown in a petri dish. These so-called "vascular organoids" can be cultivated using stem cells in the lab, strikingly mimicking the structure and function of real human blood vessels. When researchers transplanted the blood vessel organoids into mice, they found that they developed into perfectly functional human blood vessels including arteries and capillaries. The discovery illustrates that it is possible to not only engineer blood vessel organoids from human stem cells in a dish, but also to grow a functional human vascular system in another species. "What is so exciting about our work is that we were successful in making real human blood vessels out of stem cells," said Reiner Wimmer, the study's first author and a postdoctoral research fellow at IMBA. "Our organoids resemble human capillaries to a great extent, even on a molecular level, and we can now use them to study blood vessel diseases directly on human tissue." One feature of diabetes is that blood vessels show an abnormal thickening of the basement membrane. As a result, the delivery of oxygen and nutrients to cells and tissues is strongly impaired, causing a multitude of health problems, such as kidney failure, heart attacks, strokes, blindness and peripheral artery disease, leading to amputations. The researchers then exposed the blood vessel organoids to a "diabetic" environment in a petri dish. "Surprisingly, we could observe a massive expansion of the basement membrane in the vascular organoids," said Wimmer. "This typical thickening of the basement membrane is strikingly similar to the vascular damage seen in diabetic patients." The researchers then searched for chemical compounds that could block thickening of the blood vessel walls. They found none of the current anti-diabetic medications had any positive effects on these blood vessel defects. However, they discovered that an inhibitor of ?-secretase, a type of enzyme in the body, prevented the thickening of the blood vessel walls, suggesting, at least in animal models, that blocking ?-secretase could be helpful in treating diabetes. The researchers say the findings could allow them to identify underlying causes of vascular disease, and to potentially develop and test new treatments for patients with diabetes. | null | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DrudgeReportFeed/~3/2bjDpTBvGPg/190116130820.htm | 2019-01-17 13:49:37+00:00 | 1,547,750,977 | 1,567,552,109 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
178,749 | eveningstandard--2019-07-01--Nearly half of Londoners aposthink City should stop investing in fossil fuel companiesapos | 2019-07-01T00:00:00 | eveningstandard | Nearly half of Londoners 'think City should stop investing in fossil fuel companies' | Almost half of Londoners think the City should stop investing in companies that make their money from fossil fuels such as oil, gas or coal, according to a new survey. Even more (54 per cent) think personal pension funds should give customers the option of investing their money in fossil fuel-free investments, it found. Around half also want major companies that fail to comply with the greenhouse gas reduction targets agreed at the Paris Climate Agreement to be thrown out of the Stock Market. The findings are the latest evidence that Londoners are taking a harder line with business and finance over their contribution to curbing disastrous climate change. The research was commissioned by the Climate Change Collaboration, made up of three trusts - the Mark Leonard, Ashden and JJ Charitable Trusts - for London Climate Action Week. It found that young Londoners are the most worried with 88 per cent of 18 to 24 year olds saying they are concerned about how damaging climate change will be for future generations. Alice Garton, head of climate for environmental law organisation ClientEarth, said: “These results show Londoners are calling for big, bold ideas. People understand the climate crisis and want decisive leadership from Whitehall and their local boroughs to fix it. “They also want corporations held to account, and their business models made to be in line with the Paris Agreement. Importantly, Londoners are demanding major investment in green jobs and industries to ensure that people enjoy prosperous and healthy lives in a city of the future, not the past.” It follows separate research from the Institution of Engineering and Technology which found that half of children are so concerned about the harm being wreaked to the earth’s environment they think humankind will have to find new planets to live on. | Jonathan Prynn | https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/nearly-half-of-londoners-think-city-should-stop-investing-in-fossil-fuel-companies-a4179766.html | 2019-07-01 14:38:00+00:00 | 1,562,006,280 | 1,567,537,328 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
186,339 | eveningstandard--2019-10-10--Dyson scraps electric car project saying it is 'not commercially viable' | 2019-10-10T00:00:00 | eveningstandard | Dyson scraps electric car project saying it is 'not commercially viable' | Sir James Dyson has announced a project to build electric cars has been scrapped. The inventor, best known for his vacuum cleaners, said engineers had developed a "fantastic electric car" but it was not commercially viable. In an email to workers, Sir James said the company had unsuccessfully tried to find a buyer for the project, launched in 2017. Sir James said the achievements of the engineering team had been "immense", given the enormity and complexity of the project. He added: "The Dyson Automotive team has developed a fantastic car; they have been ingenious in their approach while remaining faithful to our philosophies. "However, though we have tried very hard throughout the development process, we simply can no longer see a way to make it commercially viable. "We have been through a serious process to find a buyer for the project which has, unfortunately, been unsuccessful so far. "I wanted you to hear directly from me that the Dyson Board has therefore taken the very difficult decision to propose the closure of our automotive project." He said moves were under way to quickly find alternative roles within Dyson for as many of the hundreds of employees on the project as possible. There were enough vacancies to absorb most of the employees into Dyson's business, he said. "For those who cannot, or do not wish to, find alternative roles, we will support them fairly and with the respect deserved. "This is a challenging time for our colleagues and I appreciate your understanding and sensitivity as we consult with those who are affected. "Dyson will continue its £2.5 billion investment programme into new technology and grow the Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology." Sites including Malmesbury in Wiltshire, and Singapore will be expanded and the company will concentrate on the "formidable task" of manufacturing solid state batteries and other technologies. He added: "In summary, our investment appetite is undiminished and we will continue to deepen our roots in both the UK and Singapore." Around 520 people were in the Dyson Automotive team, mainly based in the UK. Development was taking place at Dyson's Hullavington campus in Wiltshire although the company has not publicised a prototype. New: Daily podcast from the Evening Standard Listen and subscribe to The Leader on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Acast or your chosen podcast provider. New episodes every weekday from 4pm. | Katy Clifton | https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/dyson-scraps-electric-car-project-saying-it-is-not-commercially-viable-a4258836.html | Thu, 10 Oct 2019 16:35:00 GMT | 1,570,739,700 | 1,570,752,741 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
188,355 | eveningstandard--2019-11-08--Boris Johnson promises fast track 'NHS visa' for overseas doctors and nurses | 2019-11-08T00:00:00 | eveningstandard | Boris Johnson promises fast track 'NHS visa' for overseas doctors and nurses | Boris Johnson has unveiled plans for a fast track "NHS visa" to make it easier for overseas doctors and nurses to work. Ministers said the scheme would enable the health service to continue to attract the finest medical staff after Britain has left the EU. Labour accused the Tories of "tying themselves in knots" with the promise, which comes ahead of the general election on December 12. The opposition said the Conservatives are using "dog whistle anti-immigrant rhetoric" while trying to bring in migrant workers to keep public services working. Labour was focusing its campaign effort on measures to support women in the workplace, including raising statutory maternity pay and better entitlement to flexible working. The Conservatives' new NHS visa will ultimately form part of the party's planned points-based immigration system to be introduced after Brexit. The move reflects concern within the health service that it will struggle to attract the staff it needs when Britain is outside the EU. Under the scheme, the cost of a visa for health professionals would be halved from £928 to £464, while applicants would be guaranteed a decision within two weeks. Applicants coming to work in the NHS would receive preferential treatment with extra points under the points-based system, and no cap on numbers entering through the NHS route. They would also be able to pay back the cost of the immigration health surcharge through their salary if the charge is not already covered by the NHS trust offering the job. The Tories have already announced a fast-track visa route to attract specialists in science, engineering and technology. Home Secretary Priti Patel said an Australian-style points-based system would allow Britain to control the numbers coming into the country while remaining open to essential professions such as nursing. "That means the best of both worlds - attracting talent from around the world so our NHS continues to provide brilliant service while ensuring that it isn't put under strain by opening Britain's borders to the entire world," she said. However shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said the Tories were "tying themselves in knots" over immigration. "They use dog whistle anti-migrant rhetoric but are forced to accept we need migrant workers for key sectors, not just the NHS, but many more besides," she said. Liberal Democrat home affairs spokeswoman Christine Jardine said the visa fees amounted to a "nurse tax" on staff from the EU who could currently come to Britain for free. "The Conservatives have effectively created a new nurse tax. It is an insult to the thousands of people who dedicate their lives coming to work for our health service from the EU," she said. Meanwhile Labour was focusing on its plans to bring about a "step change" in the way women are treated at work. Shadow women and equalities minister Dawn Butler said a Labour government would increase statutory maternity pay from nine to 12 months, improve entitlement to flexible working and take further steps to tackle sexual harassment. "Labour will deliver a workplace revolution to bring about a step-change in how women are treated at work," she said. But the Tories warned that the measures would simply result in lost jobs. After a tumultuous start to the campaign both the main parties saw further candidates forced to stand down over controversial past remarks. Ex-BBC Radio Norfolk presenter Nick Conrad quit as Tory candidate for Broadland after heavy criticism of comments he made in 2014 during a discussion about a high-profile rape case, saying women should "keep your knickers on". Labour's candidate for Aberdeen Kate Ramsden stood down over a social media post - highlighted by The Jewish Chronicle - likening Israel to "an abused child who becomes an abusive adult". She apologised unreservedly saying she could see that "many Jewish people had been hurt by my words". A Labour source said the party had taken "swift and robust action" after extra due diligence checks had uncovered material of concern. Labour's candidate for Edinburgh South, Frances Hoole, was also dropped after the party refused to endorse her following a social media attack on her SNP opponent, Joanna Cherry. | Sean Morrison | https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-promises-fast-track-nhs-visa-for-overseas-doctors-and-nurses-a4281811.html | Fri, 08 Nov 2019 03:09:00 GMT | 1,573,200,540 | 1,573,184,492 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
230,552 | globalresearch--2019-08-19--Offering Choice but Delivering Tyranny The Corporate Capture of Agriculture | 2019-08-19T00:00:00 | globalresearch | Offering Choice but Delivering Tyranny: The Corporate Capture of Agriculture | Many lobbyists talk a lot about critics of genetic engineering technology denying choice to farmers. They say that farmers should have access to a range of tools and technologies to maximise choice and options. At the same time, somewhat ironically, they decry organic agriculture and proven agroecological approaches, presumably because these practices have no need for the proprietary inputs of the global agrochemical/agritech corporations they are in bed with. And presumably because agroecology represents liberation from the tyranny of these profiteering, environment-damaging global conglomerates. It is fine to talk about ‘choice’ but we do not want to end up offering a false choice (rolling out technologies that have little value and only serve to benefit those who control the technology), to unleash an innovation that has an adverse impact on others or to manipulate a situation whereby only one option is available because other options have been deliberately removed. And we would certainly not wish to roll out a technology that traps farmers on a treadmill that they find difficult to get off. Surely, a responsible approach for rolling out important (potentially transformative) technologies would have to consider associated risks, including social, economic and health impacts. Take the impact of the Green Revolution in India, for instance. Sold on the promise that hybrid seeds and associated chemical inputs would enhance food security on the basis of higher productivity, agriculture was transformed, especially in Punjab. But to gain access to seeds and chemicals many farmers had to take out loans and debt became (and remains) a constant worry. Many became impoverished and social relations within rural communities were radically altered: previously, farmers would save and exchange seeds but now they became dependent on unscrupulous money lenders, banks and seed manufacturers and suppliers. Vandana Shiva in ‘The Violence of the Green Revolution‘ (1989) describes the social marginalisation and violence that accompanied the process. On a macro level, the Green Revolution conveniently became tied to an international (neo-colonial) system of trade based on chemical-dependent agro-export mono-cropping linked to loans, sovereign debt repayment and World Bank/IMF structural adjustment (privatisation/deregulation) directives. Many countries in the Global South were deliberately turned into food deficit regions, dependent on (US) agricultural imports and strings-attached aid. The process led to the massive displacement of the peasantry and, according to the academics Eric Holt-Giménez et al (Food rebellions: Crisis and the hunger for Justice, 2009), the consolidation of the global agri-food oligopolies and a shift in the global flow of food: developing countries produced a billion-dollar yearly surplus in the 1970s; they were importing $11 billion a year by 2004. And it’s not as though the Green Revolution delivered on its promises. In India, it merely led to more wheat in the diet, while food productivity per capita showed no increased or even actually decreased (see ‘New Histories of the Green Revolution‘ by Glenn Stone). And, as described by Bhaskar Save in his open letter (2006) to officials, it had dire consequences for diets, the environment, farming, health and rural communities. The ethics of the Green Revolution – at least it was rolled out with little consideration for these impacts – leave much to be desired. As the push to drive GM crops into India’s fields continues (the second coming of the green revolution – the gene revolution), we should therefore take heed. To date, the track record of GMOs is unimpressive, but the adverse effects on many smallholder farmers are already apparent (see ‘Hybrid Bt cotton: a stranglehold on subsistence farmers in India’ by A P Gutierrez). Aside from looking at the consequences of technology roll outs, we should, when discussing choice, also account for the procedures and decisions that were made which resulted in technologies coming to market in the first place. Steven Druker, in his book ‘Altered Genes, Twisted Truth’, argues that the decision to commercialise GM seeds and food in the US amounted to a subversion of processes put in place to serve the public interest. The result has been a technology roll out which could result (is resulting) in fundamental changes to the genetic core of the world’s food. This decision ultimately benefited Monsanto’s bottom line and helped the US gain further leverage over global agriculture. We must therefore put glib talk of the denial of technology by critics to one side if we are to engage in a proper discussion of choice. Any such discussion would account for the nature of the global food system and the dynamics and policies that shape it. This would include looking at how global corporations have captured the policy agenda for agriculture, including key national and international policy-making bodies, and the role of the WTO and World Bank. Choice is also about the options that could be made available, but which have been closed off or are not even considered. In Ethiopia, for example, agroecology has been scaled up across the entire Tigray region, partly due to enlightened political leaders and the commitment of key institutions. However, in places where global agribusiness/agritech corporations have leveraged themselves into strategic positions, their interests prevail. From the false narrative that industrial agriculture is necessary to feed the world to providing lavish research grants and the capture of important policy-making institutions, these firms have secured a thick legitimacy within policymakers’ mindsets and mainstream discourse. As a result, agroecological approaches are marginalised and receive scant attention and support. Monsanto had a leading role in drafting the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights to create seed monopolies. The global food processing industry wrote the WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures. Whether it involves Codex or the US-India Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture aimed at restructuring (destroying) Indian agriculture, the powerful agribusiness/food lobby has secured privileged access to policy makers and sets the policy agenda. From the World Bank’s ‘enabling the business of agriculture’ to the Gates Foundation’s role in opening up African agriculture to global food and agribusiness oligopolies, democratic procedures at sovereign state levels are being bypassed to impose seed monopolies and proprietary inputs on farmers and to incorporate them into a global supply chain dominated by powerful corporations. We have the destruction of indigenous farming in Africa as well as the ongoing dismantling of Indian agriculture and the deliberate impoverishment of Indian farmers at the behest of transnational agribusiness. Where is the democratic ‘choice’? It has been usurped by corporate-driven Word Bank bondage (India is its biggest debtor in the bank’s history) and by a trade deal with the US that sacrificed Indian farmers for the sake of developing its nuclear sector. Similarly, ‘aid’ packages for Ukraine – on the back of a US-supported coup – are contingent on Western corporations taking over strategic aspects of the economy. And agribusiness interests are at the forefront. Something which neoliberal apologists are silent on as they propagandise about choice, and democracy. Ukraine’s agriculture sector is being opened up to Monsanto/Bayer. Iraq’s seed laws were changed to facilitate the entry of Monsanto. India’s edible oils sector was undermined to facilitate the entry of Cargill. And Bayer’s hand is possibly behind the ongoing strategy to commercialise GM mustard in India. Whether on the back of militarism, secretive trade deals or strings-attached loans, global food and agribusiness conglomerates secure their interests and have scant regard for choice or democracy. The ongoing aim is to displace localised, indigenous methods of food production and allow transnational companies to take over, tying farmers and regions to a system of globalised production and supply chains dominated by large agribusiness and retail interests. Global corporations with the backing of their host states, are taking over food and agriculture nation by nation. Many government officials, the media and opinion leaders take this process as a given. They also accept that (corrupt) profit-driven transnational corporations have a legitimate claim to be owners and custodians of natural assets (the ‘commons’). There is the premise that water, seeds, food, soil and agriculture should be handed over to these conglomerates to milk for profit, under the pretence these entities are somehow serving the needs of humanity. Ripping land from peasants and displacing highly diverse and productive smallholder agriculture, rolling out very profitable but damaging technologies, externalising the huge social, environmental and health costs of the prevailing neoliberal food system and entire nations being subjected to the policies outlined above: how is any of it serving the needs of humanity? It is not. Food is becoming denutrified, unhealthy and poisoned with chemicals and diets are becoming less diverse. There is a loss of plant and insect diversity, which threatens food security, soils are being degraded, water tables polluted and depleted and millions of smallholder farmers, so vital to global food production, are being pushed into debt in places like India and squeezed off their land and out of farming. It is time to place natural assets under local ownership and to develop them in the public interest according to agroecological principles. This involves looking beyond the industrial yield-output paradigm and adopting a systems approach to food and agriculture that accounts for local food security and sovereignty, cropping patterns to ensure diverse nutrition production per acre, water table stability and good soil structure. It also involves pushing back against the large corporations that hold sway over the global food system and more generally challenging the leverage that private capital has over all our lives. That’s how you ensure liberation from tyranny and support genuine choice. Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc. Colin Todhunter is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. | Colin Todhunter | https://www.globalresearch.ca/offering-choice-delivering-tyranny-corporate-capture-agriculture/5686716 | 2019-08-19 17:07:57+00:00 | 1,566,248,877 | 1,567,534,007 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
231,264 | globalresearch--2019-10-05--The New Water Barons Wall Street Mega-Banks are Buying up the Worlds Water | 2019-10-05T00:00:00 | globalresearch | The New “Water Barons”: Wall Street Mega-Banks are Buying up the World’s Water | This article was first published on December 21, 2012 by Market Oracle and Global Research A disturbing trend in the water sector is accelerating worldwide. The new “water barons” — the Wall Street banks and elitist multibillionaires — are buying up water all over the world at unprecedented pace. Familiar mega-banks and investing powerhouses such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, UBS, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Macquarie Bank, Barclays Bank, the Blackstone Group, Allianz, and HSBC Bank, among others, are consolidating their control over water. Wealthy tycoons such as T. Boone Pickens, former President George H.W. Bush and his family, Hong Kong’s Li Ka-shing, Philippines’ Manuel V. Pangilinan and other Filipino billionaires, and others are also buying thousands of acres of land with aquifers, lakes, water rights, water utilities, and shares in water engineering and technology companies all over the world. The second disturbing trend is that while the new water barons are buying up water all over the world, governments are moving fast to limit citizens’ ability to become water self-sufficient (as evidenced by the well-publicized Gary Harrington’s case in Oregon, in which the state criminalized the collection of rainwater in three ponds located on his private land, by convicting him on nine counts and sentencing him for 30 days in jail). Let’s put this criminalization in perspective: Billionaire T. Boone Pickens owned more water rights than any other individuals in America, with rights over enough of the Ogallala Aquifer to drain approximately 200,000 acre-feet (or 65 billion gallons of water) a year. But ordinary citizen Gary Harrington cannot collect rainwater runoff on 170 acres of his private land. It’s a strange New World Order in which multibillionaires and elitist banks can own aquifers and lakes, but ordinary citizens cannot even collect rainwater and snow runoff in their own backyards and private lands. Now, in 2012, we are seeing this trend of global consolidation of water by elite banks and tycoons accelerating. In a JP Morgan equity research document, it states clearly that “Wall Street appears well aware of the investment opportunities in water supply infrastructure, wastewater treatment, and demand management technologies.” Indeed, Wall Street is preparing to cash in on the global water grab in the coming decades. For example, Goldman Sachs has amassed more than $10 billion since 2006 for infrastructure investments, which include water. A 2008 New York Times article mentioned Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, and the Carlyle Group, to have “amassed an estimated an estimated $250 billion war chest — must of it raised in the last two years — to finance a tidal wave of infrastructure projects in the United States and overseas.” By “water,” I mean that it includes water rights (i.e., the right to tap groundwater, aquifers, and rivers), land with bodies of water on it or under it (i.e., lakes, ponds, and natural springs on the surface, or groundwater underneath), desalination projects, water-purification and treatment technologies (e.g., desalination, treatment chemicals and equipment), irrigation and well-drilling technologies, water and sanitation services and utilities, water infrastructure maintenance and construction (from pipes and distribution to all scales of treatment plants for residential, commercial, industrial, and municipal uses), water engineering services (e.g., those involved in the design and construction of water-related facilities), and retail water sector (such as those involved in the production, operation, and sales of bottled water, water vending machines, bottled water subscription and delivery services, water trucks, and water tankers). Update of My 2008 Article: Mega-Banks See Water as a Critical Commodity Since 2008, many giant banks and super-investors are capturing more market share in the water sector and identifying water as a critical commodity, much hotter than petroleum. Goldman Sachs: Water Is Still the Next Petroleum In 2008, Goldman Sachs called water “the petroleum for the next century” and those investors who know how to play the infrastructure boom will reap huge rewards, during its annual “Top Five Risks” conference. Water is a U.S.$425 billion industry, and a calamitous water shortage could be a more serious threat to humanity in the 21st century than food and energy shortages, according to Goldman Sachs’s conference panel. Goldman Sachs has convened numerous conferences and also published lengthy, insightful analyses of water and other critical sectors (food, energy). Goldman Sachs is positioning itself to gobble up water utilities, water engineering companies, and water resources worldwide. Since 2006, Goldman Sachs has become one of the largest infrastructure investment fund managers and has amassed a $10 billion capital for infrastructure, including water. In March 2012, Goldman Sachs was eyeing Veolia’s UK water utility business, estimated at £1.2 billion, and in July it successfully bought Veolia Water, which serves 3.5 million people in southeastern England. Previously, in September 2003, Goldman Sachs partnered with one of the world’s largest private-equity firm Blackstone Group and Apollo Management to acquire Ondeo Nalco (a leading company in providing water-treatment and process chemicals and services, with more than 10,000 employees and operations in 130 countries) from French water corporation Suez S.A. for U.S.$4.2 billion. In October 2007, Goldman Sachs teamed up with Deutsche Bank and several partners to bid, unsuccessfully, for U.K.’s Southern Water. In November 2007, Goldman Sachs was also unsuccessful in bidding for U.K. water utility Kelda. But Goldman Sachs is still looking to buy other water utilities. In January 2008, Goldman Sachs led a team of funds (including Liberty Harbor Master Fund and the Pinnacle Fund) to buy U.S.$50 million of convertible notes in China Water and Drinks Inc., which supplies purified water to name-brand vendors like Coca-Cola and Taiwan’s top beverage company Uni-President. China Water and Drinks is also a leading producer and distributor of bottled water in China and also makes private-labeled bottled water (e.g., for Sands Casino, Macau). Since China has one of the worse water problems in Asia and a large emerging middle class, its bottled-water sector is the fastest-growing in the world and it’s seeing enormous profits. Additionally, China’s acute water shortages and serious pollution could “buoy demand for clean water for years to come, with China’s $14.2 billion water industry a long-term investment destination” (Reuters, January 28, 2008). The City of Reno, Nevada, was approached by Goldman Sachs for “a long-term asset leasing that could potentially generate significant cash for the three TMWA [Truckee Meadows Water Authority] entities. The program would allow TMWA to lease its assets for 50 years and receive an up-front cash payment” (Reno News & Review, August 28, 2008). Essentially, Goldman Sachs wants to privatize Reno’s water utility for 50 years. Given Reno’s revenue shortfall, this proposal was financially attractive. But the water board eventually rejected the proposal due to strong public opposition and outcry. Citigroup: The Water Market Will Soon Eclipse Oil, Agriculture, and Precious Metals Citigroup’s top economist Willem Buitler said in 2011 that the water market will soon be hotter the oil market (for example, see this and this): In its recent 2012 Water Investment Conference, Citigroup has identified top 10 trends in the water sector, as follows: 1. Desalination systems 2. Water reuse technologies 3. Produced water / water utilities 4. Membranes for filtration 5. Ultraviolet (UV) disinfection 6. Ballast-water treatment technologies 7. Forward osmosis used in desalination 8. Water-efficiency technologies and products 9. Point-of-use treatment systems 10. Chinese competitors in water Specifically, a lucrative opportunity in water is in hydraulic fracturing (or fracking), as it generates massive demand for water and water services. Each oil well developed requires 3 to 5 million gallons of water, and 80% of this water cannot be reused because it’s three to 10 times saltier than seawater. Citigroup recommends water-rights owners sell water to fracking companies instead of to farmers because water for fracking can be sold for as much as $3,000 per acre-foot instead of only $50 per acre/foot to farmers. The ballast-water treatment sector, currently at $1.35 billion annually, is estimated to reach $30 to $50 billion soon. The water-filtration market is expected to outgrow the water-equipment market: Dow estimates it to be a $5 billion market annually instead of only $1 billion now. Citigroup is aggressively raising funds for its war chest to participate in the coming tidal wave of infrastructure privatization: in 2007 it established a new unit called Citi Infrastructure Investors through its Citi Alternative Investments unit. According to Reuters, Citigroup “assembled some of the biggest names in the infrastructure business at the same time it is building a $3 billion fund, including $500 million of its own capital. The fund, according to a person familiar with the situation, will have only a handful of outside investors and will be focused on assets in developed markets” (May 16, 2007). Citigroup initially sought only U.S.$3 billion for its first infrastructure fund but was seeking U.S.$5 billion in April 2008 (Bloomberg, April 7, 2008). Citigroup partnered with HSBC Bank, Prudential, and other minor partners to acquire U.K.’s water utility Kelda (Yorkshire Water) in November 2007. This week, Citigroup signed a 99-year lease with the City of Chicago for Chicago’s Midway Airport (it partnered with John Hancock Life Insurance Company and a Canadian private airport operator). Insiders said that Citigroup is among those bidding for the state-owned company Letiste Praha which operates the Prague Airport in the Czech Republic (Bloomberg, February 7, 2008). As the five U.K. water utility deals illustrate, typically no one single investment bank or private-equity fund owns the entire infrastructure project — they partner with many others. The Citigroup is now entering India’s massive infrastructure market by partnering the Blackstone Group and two Indian private finance companies; they have launched a U.S.$5 billion fund in February 2007, with three entities (Citi, Blackstone, and IDFC) jointly investing U.S.$250 million. India requires about U.S.$320 billion in infrastructure investments in the next five years (The Financial Express, February 16, 2007). UBS: Water Scarcity Is the Defining Crisis of the 21st Century In 2006, UBS Investment Research, a division of Switzerland-based UBS AG, Europe’s largest bank by assets, entitled its 40-page research report, “Q-Series®:Water”—“Water scarcity: The defining crisis of the 21st century?” (October 10, 2006) In 2007, UBS, along with JP Morgan and Australia’s Challenger Fund, bought UK’s Southern Water for £4.2biillion. Credit Suisse: Water Is the “Paramount Megatrend of Our Time” Credit Suisse published its report about Credit Suisse Water Index (January 21, 2008) urged investors that “One way to take advantage of this trend is to invest in companies geared to water generation, preservation, infrastructure treatment and desalination. The Index enables investors to participate in the performance of the most attractive companies….” The trend in question, according to Credit Suisse, is the “depletion of freshwater reserves” attributable to “pollution, disappearance of glaciers (the main source of freshwater reserves), and population growth, water is likely to become a scarce resource.” Credit Suisse recognizes water to be the “paramount megatrend of our time” because of a water-supply crisis might cause “severe societal risk” in the next 10 years and that two-thirds of the world’s population are likely to live under water-stressed conditions by 2025. To address water shortages, it has identified desalination and wastewater treatment as the two most important technologies. Three sectors for good investments include the following: § Membranes for desalination and wastewater treatment § Water infrastructure — corrosion resistance, pipes, valves, and pumps § Chemicals for water treatment It also created the Credit Suisse Water Index which has the equally weighed index of 30 stocks out of 128 global water stocks. For investors, it offered “Credit Suisse PL100 World Water Trust (PL100 World Water),” launched in June 2007, with $112.9 million. Credit Suisse partnered with General Electric (GE Infrastructure) in May 2006 to establish a U.S.$1 billion joint venture to profit from privatization and investments in global infrastructure assets. Each partner will commit U.S.$500 million to target electricity generation and transmission, gas storage and pipelines, water facilities, airports, air traffic control, ports, railroads, and toll roads worldwide. This joint venture has estimated that the developed market’s infrastructure opportunities are at U.S.$500 billion, and emerging world’s infrastructure market is U.S.$1 trillion in the next five years (Credit Suisse’s press release, May 31, 2006). In October 2007, Credit Suisse partnered with Cleantech Group (a Michigan-based market-research, consulting, media, and executive-search firm that operates cleantech forums) and Consensus Business Group (a London-based equity firm owned by U.K. billionaire Vincent Tchenguiz) to invest in clean technologies worldwide. The technologies will also clean water technologies. During its Asian Investment Conference, it said that “Water is a focus for those in the know about global strategic commodities. As with oil, the supply is finite but demand is growing by leaps and unlike oil there is no alternative.” (Credit Suisse, February 4, 2008). Credit Suisse sees the global water market with U.S.$190 billion in revenue in 2005 and was expected to grow to U.S.$342 billion by 2010. It sees most significant growth opportunities in China. One of the world’s largest banks, JPMorgan Chase has aggressively pursued water and infrastructure worldwide. In October 2007, it beat out rivals Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to buy U.K.’s water utility Southern Water with partners Swiss-based UBS and Australia’s Challenger Infrastructure Fund. This banking empire is controlled by the Rockefeller family; the family patriarch David Rockefeller is a member of the elite and secretive Bilderberg Group, Council on Foreign Relations, and Trilateral Commission. JPMorgan sees infrastructure finance as a global phenomenon, and it is joined by its global peers in investment and banking institution in their rush to cash in on water and infrastructure. JPMorgan’s own analysts estimate that the emerging markets’ infrastructure is approximately U.S.$21.7 trillion over the next decade. JPMorgan created a U.S.$2 billion infrastructure fund to go after India’s infrastructure projects in October 2007. The targeted projects are transportation (roads, bridges, railroads) and utilities (gas, electricity, water). India’s finance minister has been estimated that India requires about U.S.$500 billion in infrastructure investments by 2012. In this regard, JPMorgan is joined by Citigroup, the Blackstone Group, 3i Group (Europe’s second-largest private-equity firm), and ICICI Bank (India’s second-largest bank) (International Herald Tribune, October 31, 2007). Its JPMorgan Asset Management has also established an Asian Infrastructure & Related Resources Opportunity Fund which held a first close on U.S.$500 million (€333 million) and will focus on China, India, and other Southern Asian countries, with the first two investments in China and India (Private Equity Online, August 11, 2008). The fund’s target is U.S.$1.5 billion. JPMorgan’s Global Equity Research division also published a 60-page report called “Watch water: A guide to evaluating corporate risks in a thirsty world” (April 1, 2008). In 2010, J.P. Morgan Asset Management and Water Asset Management led a $275 million buyout bid for SouthWest Water. Founded in 1890, Germany’s Allianz Group is one of the leading global services providers in insurance, banking, and asset management in about 70 countries. In April 2008, Allianz SE launched the Allianz RCM Global Water Fund which invests in equity securities of water-related companies worldwide, emphasizing long-term capital appreciation. Alliance launched its Global EcoTrends Fund in February 2007 (Business Wire, February 7, 2007). Allianz SE’s Dresdner Bank AG told its investors that “Investments in water offer opportunities: Rising oil prices obscure our view of an even more serious scarcity: water. The global water economy is faced with a multi-billion dollar need for capital expenditure and modernization. Dresdner Bank sees this as offering attractive opportunities for returns for investors with a long-term investment horizon.” (Frankfurt, August 14, 2008) Like Goldman Sachs, Allianz has the philosophy that water is underpriced. A co-manager of the Water Fund in Frankfurt, said, “A key issue of water is that the true value of water is not recognized. …Water tends to be undervalued around the world. …Perhaps that is one of the reasons why there are so many places with a lack of supply due to a lack of investment. With that in mind, it makes sense to invest in companies that are engaged in improving water quality and infrastructure.” Allianz sees two key investment drivers in water: (1) upgrading the aging infrastructure in the developed world; and (2) new urbanization and industrialization in developing countries such as China and India. Barclays PLC is a U.K.-based major global financial services provider operating in all over the world with roots in London since 1690; it operates through its subsidiary Barclays Bank PLC and its investment bank called Barclays Capital. Barclays Bank’s unit Barclays Global Investors manages an exchange-traded fund (ETF) called iShares S&P Global Water, which is listed on the London Stock Exchanges and can be purchased like any ordinary share through a broker. Touting the iShares S&P Global Water as offering “a broad based exposure to shares of the world’s largest water companies, including water utilities and water equipment stocks” of water companies around the world, this fund as of March 31, 2007 was valued at U.S.$33.8 million. Barclays also have a climate index fund: launched on January 16, 2008, SAM Indexes GmbH licensed its Dow Jones Sustainability Index to Barclays Capital for investors in Germany and Switzerland. Many other banks also have a climate index or sustainability index. In October 2007, Barclays Capital also partnered with Protected Distribution Limited (PDL) to launch a new water investment fund (with expected annual returns of 9% to 11%) called Protected Water Fund. This new fund, listed in the Isle of Man, requires a minimum of £10,000 and is structured as a 10-year investment with Barclays Bank providing 100% of capital protection until maturity on October 11, 2017. The Protected Water Fund will be invested in some of the world’s largest water companies; its investment decisions will be made based on an index created by Barclays Capital, the Barclays World Water Strategy, which charts the performance of some of the world’s largest water-related stocks (Investment Week and Reuters, October 11, 2007; Business Week, October 15, 2007). Deutsche Bank’s €2 Billion Investment in European Infrastructure: “Megatrend” in Water, Climate, Infrastructure, and Agribusiness Investments Deutsche Bank is one of the major players in the water sector worldwide. Its Deutsche Bank Advisors have identified water as a part of the climate investment strategies. In its presentation, “Global Warming: Implications for Investors,” they have identified the four following major areas for water investment: § Distribution and management: (1) Supply and recycling, (2) water distribution and sewage, (3) water management and engineering. § Water purification: (1) Sewage purification, (2) disinfection, (3) desalination, (4) monitoring. § Water efficiency (demand): (1) Home installation, (2) gray-water recycling, (3) water meters. § Water and nutrition: (1) Irrigation, (2) bottled water. In addition to water, the other two new resources identified were agribusiness (e.g., pesticides, genetically modified seeds, mineral fertilizers, agricultural machinery) and renewable energies (e.g., solar, wind, hydrothermal, biomass, hydroelectricity). The Deutsche Bank has established an investment fund of up to €2 billion in European infrastructure assets using its Structured Capital Markets Group (SCM), part of the bank’s Global Markets division. The bank already has several “highly attractive infrastructure assets,” including East Surrey Holdings, the owner of U.K.’s water utility Sutton & East Surrey Water (Deutsche Bank press release, September 22, 2006). Moreover, Deutsche Bank has channeled €6 billion (U.S.$8.55 billion) into climate change funds, which will target companies with products that cut greenhouse gases or help people adapt to a warmer world, in sectors from agriculture to power and construction (Reuters, October 18, 2007). In addition to SCM, Deutsche Bank also has the RREEF Infrastructure, part of RREEF Alternative Investments, headquartered in New York with main hubs in Sydney, Singapore, and London. RREEF Infrastructure has more than €6.7 billion in assets under management. One of its main targets is utilities, including electricity networks, water-treatment or distribution operations, and natural-gas networks. In October 2007, RREEF partnered with Goldman Sachs, GE, Prudential, and Babcok & Brown Ltd. to bid unsuccessfully for U.K.’s water utility Southern Water. § Crediting the boom in European infrastructure investment, the RREEF fund by August 2007 had raised €2 billion (U.S.$2.8 billion); Europe’s infrastructure market is valued at between U.S.$4 trillion to U.S.$6 trillion (DowJones Financial News Online, August 7, 2007). § Bulgaria — Deutsche Bank Bulgaria is planning to participate in large infrastructure projects, including public-private partnership projects in water and sewage worth up to €1 billion (Sofia Echo Media, February 26, 2008). § Middle East — Along with Ithmaar Bank B.S.C. (an private-equity investment bank in Bahrain), Deutsche Bank co-managed a U.S.$2 billion Shari’a-compliant Infrastructure and Growth Capital Fund and plans to target U.S.$630 billion in regional infrastructure. Deutsche Bank AG is co-owner of Aqueduct Capital (UK) Limited which in 2006 offered to buy U.K.’s sixth-largest water utility Sutton and East Surrey Water plc from British tycoon Guy Hand. According to an OFWAT consultation paper (May 2007), Deutsche Bank formed this new entity, Aqueduct Capital (short for ACUK), in October 2005, with two public pension funds in Canada, Singapore’s life insurance giant, and a Canadian province’s investment fund, among others. This case, again, is an illustration of the complex nature of ownership of water utilities today, with various types of institutions crossing national boundaries to partner with each other to hold a stake in the water sector. With its impressive war chest dedicated to water, food, and infrastructure, Deutsche Bank is expected to become a major player in the global water sector. Merrill Lynch (before being bought by Bank of America) issued a 24-page research report titled “Water scarcity; a bigger problem than assumed” (December 6, 2007). ML said that water scarcity is “not limited to arid climates.” Morgan Stanley in its publication, “Emerging Markets Infrastructure: Just Getting Started” (April 2008) recommends three areas of investment opportunities in water: water utilities, global operators (such as Veolia Environment), and technology companies (such as those that manufacture membranes and chemicals used in water treatment to the water industry). Mutual Funds and Hedge Funds Join the Action in Water Water investment funds are on the rise, such as these four well-known water-focused mutual funds: 1. Calvert Global Water Fund (CFWAX) — $42 million in assets as of 2010, which holds 30% of its assets in water utilities, 40% in infrastructure companies, and 30% in water technologies. Also between 65% to 70% of the water stocks derived more than 50% of their revenue from water-related activities. 2. Allianz RCM Global Water Fund (AWTAX) — $54 million assets as of 2010, most of it invested in water utilities. 3. PFW Water Fund (PFWAX) — $17 million in assets as of 2010, with a minimum investment of $2,500, with 80% invested in water-related companies…. 4. Kinetics Water Infrastructure Advantaged Fund (KWIAX) — $26 million in assets as of 2010, with a minimum investment of $2,500. This is a brief list of water-centered hedge funds: § Master Water Equity Fund — Summit Global AM (United States) § Water Partners Fund — Aqua Terra AM (United States) § The Water Fund — Terrapin AM (United States) § The Reservoir Fund — Water AM (United States) § The Oasis Fund — Perella Weinberg AM (United States) § Signina Water Fund — Signina Capital AG (Switzerland) § MFS Water Fund of Funds — MFS Aqua AM (Australia) § Triton Water Fund of Funds — FourWinds CM (United States) § Water Edge Fund of Funds — Parker Global Strategies LLC (United States) Other banks have launched water-targeted investment funds. Several well-known specialized water funds include Pictet Water Fund, SAM Sustainable Water Fund, Sarasin Sustainable Water Fund, Swisscanto Equity Fund Water, and Tareno Waterfund. Several structured water products offered by major investment banks include ABN Amro Water Stocks Index Certificate, BKB Water Basket, ZKB Sustainable Basket Water, Wagelin Water Shares Certificate, UBS Water Strategy Certificate, and Certificate on Vontobel Water Index. There are also several water indexes and index funds, as follows: The following is a small sample of other water funds and certificates (not exhaustive of the current range of diverse water products available): Allianz RCM Global EcoTrends Fund Allianz RCM Global Water Fund UBS Water Strategy Certificate—it has a managed basket of 25 international stocks Summit Water Equity Fund Maxxwater Global Water Fund Claymore S&P Global Water ETF (CGW) Barclays Global Investors’ iShares S&P Global Water Barclays and PDL’s Protected Water Fund based on Barclays World Water Strategy Invesco’s PowerShares Water Resources Portfolio ETF (PHO) Invesco’s PowerShares Global Water (PIO) Pictet Asset Management’s Pictet Water Fund and Pictet Water Opportunities Fund Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce’s Water Growth Deposit Notes Criterion Investments Limited’s Criterion Water Infrastructure Fund One often-heard reason for the investment banks’ rush to control of water is that “Utilities are viewed as relatively safe assets in an economic downturn so [they] are more isolated than most from the global credit crunch, initially sparked by concerns over U.S. subprime mortgages” (Reuters, October 9, 2007). A London-based analyst at HSBC Securities told Bloomberg News that water is a good investment because “You’re buying something that’s inflation proof and there’s no threat to earnings really. It’s very stable and you can sell it any time you want” (Bloomberg, October 8, 2007). Many pension funds have entered the water sector as a relatively safe sector for investment. For example, BT Pension Scheme (of British Telecom plc) has bought stakes in Thames Water in 2012, while Canadian pension funds CDPQ (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, which manages public pension funds in Québec) and CPPIB (Canada Pension Plan Investment Board) have acquired England’s South East Water and Anglian Water, respectively, as reported by Reuters this year. In January 2012, China Investment Corporation has bought 8.68% stakes in Thames Water, the largest water utility in England, which serves parts of the Greater London area, Thames Valley, and Surrey, among other areas. In November 2012, One of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), also purchased 9.9% stake in Thames Water. Billionaires Sucking up Water Globally: George H.W. Bush and Family, Li Ka-shing, the Filipino Billionaires, and Others Not only are the mega-banks investing heavily in water, the multibillionaire tycoons are also buying water. In summer 2011, the Hong Kong multibillionaire tycoon Li Ka-shing who owns Cheung Kong Infrastructure (CKI), bought Northumbrian Water, which serves 2.6 million people in northeastern England, for $3.9 billion (see this and this). CKI also sold Cambridge Water for £74 million to HSBC in 2011. Not satisfied with controlling the water sector, in 2010, CKI with a consortium bought EDF’s power networks in UK for £5.8 billion. Li is now also collaborating with Samsung on investing in water treatment. Through his Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet is the largest institutional investor of Nalco Holding Co. (NLC), a subsidiary of Ecolab, with 9 million shares. Nalco was named 2012 Water Technology Company of the Year. Nalco manufactures treatment chemicals and water treatment process technologies. But the company Nalco is not just a membrane manufacturer; it also produced the infamous toxic chemical dispersant Corexit which was used to disperse crude oil in the aftermath of BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Before being sold to Ecolab, Nalco’s parent company was Blackstone…… Former President George H.W. Bush’s Family Bought 300,000 Acres on South America’s and World’s Largest Aquifer, Acuifero Guaraní In my 2008 article, I overlooked the astonishingly large land purchases (298,840 acres, to be exact) by the Bush family in 2005 and 2006. In 2006, while on a trip to Paraguay for the United Nation’s children’s group UNICEF, Jenna Bush (daughter of former President George W. Bush and granddaughter of former President George H.W. Bush) reportedly bought 98,840 acres of land in Chaco, Paraguay, near the Triple Frontier (Bolivia, Brazil, and Paraguay). This land is said to be near the 200,000 acres purchased by her grandfather, George H.W. Bush, in 2005. The lands purchased by the Bush family sit over not only South America’s largest aquifer — but the world’s as well — Acuifero Guaraní, which runs beneath Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. This aquifer is larger than Texas and California combined. Online political magazine Counterpunch quoted Argentinean pacifist Adolfo Perez Esquivel, the winner of 1981 Nobel Peace Prize, who “warned that the real war will be fought not for oil, but for water, and recalled that Acuifero Guaraní is one of the largest underground water reserves in South America….” According to Wikipedia, this aquifer covers 1,200,000 km², with a volume of about 40,000 km³, a thickness of between 50 m and 800 m and a maximum depth of about 1,800 m. It is estimated to contain about 37,000 km³ of water (arguably the largest single body of groundwater in the world, although the overall volume of the constituent parts of the Great Artesian Basin is much larger), with a total recharge rate of about 166 km³/year from precipitation. It is said that this vast underground reservoir could supply fresh drinking water to the world for 200 years. Filipino Tycoon Manuel V. Pangilinan and Others Buy Water Services in Vietnam In October 2012, Filipino businessman Manuel V. Pangilinan went to Vietnam to scout for investment opportunities, particularly on toll road and water services. Mr. Pangilinan and other Filipino billionaires, such as the owners of the Ayala Corp. and subsidiary Manila Water Co. earlier announced a deal to buy a 10-per cent stake in Ho Chi Minh City Infrastructure Investment Joint Stock Co. (CII) and a 49-per cent stake in Kenh Dong Water Supply Joint Stock Co. (Kenh Dong). The Ayala group has also entered the Vietnamese market by buying significant minority interest in a leading infrastructure company and a bulk water supply company both based in Ho Chi Minh City. Unfortunately, the global water and infrastructure-privatization fever is unstoppable: many local and state governments are suffering from revenue shortfalls and are under financial and budgetary strains. These local and state governments can longer shoulder the responsibilities of maintaining and upgrading their own utilities. Facing offers of millions of cash from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, UBS, and other elite banks for their utilities and other infrastructure and municipal services, cities and states will find it extremely difficult to refuse these privatization offers. The elite multinational and Wall Street banks and investment banks have been preparing and waiting for this golden moment for years. Over the past few years, they have amassed war chests of infrastructure funds to privatize water, municipal services, and utilities all over the world. It will be extremely difficult to reverse this privatization trend in water. “Goldman Sachs eyes bid for Veolia Water,” by Anousha Sakoui and Daniel Schäfer, Financial Times, March 13, 2012. “Hong Kong tycoon to buy Northumbrian Water,” by Mark Wembridge, Financial Times, August 2, 2011. “Why Big Banks May Be Buying up Your Public Water System: In uncertain economic and environmental times, big banks and financial groups are buying up public water systems as safe investments,” by Jo-Shing Yang, AlterNet, October 31, 2008. “Paraguay in a spin about Bush’s alleged 100,000 acre hideaway,” by Tom Phillips, The Guardian, October 22, 2006. “Cities Debate Privatizing Public Infrastructure,” by Jenny Anderson, August 26, 2008, The New York Times. “Philippine tycoon eyes investments in Vietnam,” by Doris C. Dunlao in Manila, Philippine Daily Inquirer, October 18, 2012. | Jo-Shing Yang | https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-new-water-barons-wall-street-mega-banks-are-buying-up-the-worlds-water/5383274 | 2019-10-05 19:30:18+00:00 | 1,570,318,218 | 1,570,632,964 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
231,688 | globalresearch--2019-11-11--Agrarian Crisis and Malnutrition: GM Agriculture Is Not the Answer | 2019-11-11T00:00:00 | globalresearch | Agrarian Crisis and Malnutrition: GM Agriculture Is Not the Answer | M S Swaminathan is often referred to as the ‘father’ of India’s Green Revolution. In 2009, he said that no scientific evidence had emerged to justify concerns about genetically modified (GM) crops, often regarded as stage two of the Green Revolution. In a December 2018 paper in the journal Current Science, however, it was argued that Bt insecticidal cotton (India’s only officially approved commercial GM crop) is a failure and has not provided livelihood security for mainly resource-poor, small and marginal farmers. The paper attracted a good deal of attention because, along with scientist P C Kesavan, Swaminathan was the co-author. They concluded that globally both Bt crops and herbicide-tolerant crops are unsustainable and have not decreased the need for toxic chemical pesticides, the reason for these GM crops in the first place. Attention was also drawn to evidence that indicates Bt toxins are toxic to all organisms. Kesavan and Swaminathan mounted a general critique of the GM paradigm. They noted that glyphosate-based herbicides, used on most GM crops in the world, and their active ingredient glyphosate, are genotoxic, cause birth defects and are carcinogenic. They also asserted that GM crop yields are no better than that of non-GM crops. The authors concluded that genetic engineering technology is supplementary and must be need based. In more than 99% of cases, they said that time-honoured conventional breeding is sufficient. In fact, Kesavan and Swaminathan argued that a sustainable ‘Evergreen Revolution’ based on a ‘systems approach’ and ‘ecoagriculture’ would guarantee equitable food security by ensuring access of rural communities to food. Part of the pushback against Kevasan and Swaminathan has come from Dr Deepak Pental, developer and promoter of GM mustard at Delhi University. He responded to their piece with an article in September 2019, again in Current Science. He argued that Kesavan and Swaminathan have unequivocally aligned themselves with overzealous environmentalists and ideologues, who have mindlessly attacked the use of GM technology to improve crops required for meeting the food and nutritional needs of a global population that is predicted to peak out at 11.2 billion. Pental added that the two authors’ analysis of modern breeding technologies is a reflection of their ideological proclivities. By resorting to such statements, Pental was drawing on industry-inspired spin: criticisms of GM are driven by ideology not fact and GM is required to ‘feed the world’. Both assertions are baseless but are employed time and again across the globe by the pro-GM lobby in an attempt to discredit inconvenient scientific findings and campaigners who forward valid criticisms. In response to Pental, Andrew Paul Gutierrez, Peter E. Kenmore and Aruna Rodrigues hit back with a piece in a November 2019 edition of the same journal, ‘When biotechnologists lack objectivity’. In it, they argue: The authors indicate the adverse impacts on human health of GMOs and associated agrochemical inputs and the very real risk of gene flow and other ways by which non-GM crops and seeds can be contaminated by their GM counterparts: As alluded to in the above extract, India has a wealth of plant species that have evolved and been adapted over millennia. The country has good-quality traditional seeds which are ideally suited for local soils, climates and pests. And these seeds are less resource intensive. We must therefore question why Pental’s GM mustard is being pushed so hard when it does not out-yield certain mustard species that India has already. While touching on serious conflicts of interest within regulatory bodies, the authors also discuss Bt cotton and GM mustard, the commercialisation of which is currently held up due to a public litigation case with Aruna Rodrigues acting as lead petitioner. They provide data to highlight the myth of Bt cotton success in India. However, GM promoters continue to peddle the story of Bt cotton success and aim to drive the full-scale introduction of GM crops into Indian agriculture on the back of this false narrative. The authors explain that the current GM Bt cotton hybrids in India were indeed developed as a ‘value capture’ mechanism that enabled the seed industry to side-step intractable legal intellectual property rights: the interests of poor farmers were sacrificed for corporate commercial benefit. In the article, data is also presented for GM mustard and the authors argue that it shows no yield advantage and its testing and evaluation have involved protocol violations. In India, various high-level reports have advised against the adoption of GM crops. Appointed by the Supreme Court, the ‘Technical Expert Committee (TEC) Final Report’ (2013) was scathing about the prevailing regulatory system and highlighted its inadequacies and serious inherent conflicts of interest. The TEC recommended a 10-year moratorium on the commercial release of all GM crops. Kesavan and Swaminathan, in their piece. also criticised India’s GM regulating bodies due to a lack of competency and endemic conflicts of interest and a lack of expertise in GM risk assessment protocols, including food safety assessment and the assessment of environmental impacts. They also questioned regulators’ failure to carry out a socio-economic assessment of GM impacts on resource-poor small and marginal farmers and called for “able economists who are familiar with and will prioritize rural livelihoods, and the interests of resource-poor small and marginal farmers rather than serve corporate interests and their profits.” As we have seen with the push to get GM mustard commercialised, the problems described by the TEC persist. Through her numerous submissions to the Supreme Court, Rodrigues has asserted that GM mustard is being pushed for commercialisation based on flawed tests (or no tests) and a lack of public scrutiny. In effect, she argues, there has been unremitting scientific fraud and outright regulatory delinquency. It must also be noted that this crop is herbicide-tolerant (HT), which, as stated by the TEC, is wholly inappropriate for India with its small biodiverse, multi-cropping farms. Rodrigues has for a long time contended that GM ‘regulation’ in India occurs in a system dogged by serious conflicts of interest: funders, promoters and regulators are basically one and the same. She argues that agricultural institutions and numerous public sector scientists working within these bodies along with a powerful lobbying force are joined at the hip in pushing for GM. If the pro-GM lobby is genuinely concerned about ‘feeding the world’, it should really be questioning why the world already produces enough to feed 10 million people but over two billion are experiencing micronutrient deficiencies (of which over 800 million are classed as chronically undernourished); why we are seeing rising rates of obesity, diabetes and a range of other health-related conditions; and why, post-Green Revolution, the range of crops grown has narrowed and the nutrient content of food and diets has diminished. The answers lie with the practices, processes and toxic inputs that are integral to the prevailing model of chemical-intensive, industrial agriculture and the dynamics of the globalised capitalist food system. Throughout the world, this model has become tied to agro-export mono-cropping (often with non-food commodities taking up prime agricultural land), sovereign debt repayment and World Bank/IMF ‘structural adjustment’ directives, the outcomes of which have included a displacement of a food-producing peasantry, the consolidation of rapacious global agri-food oligopolies and the transformation of many countries into food deficit areas. Global food insecurity and malnutrition are therefore not the result of a lack of productivity. As for India, although it fares poorly in world hunger assessments, the country has more than enough food to feed its 1.3 billion-plus population and with appropriate policy support measures could draw on its own indigenous agroecological know-how to do so. Where farmers’ livelihoods are concerned, the pro-GM lobby says GM will boost productivity and help secure cultivators a better income. This too is misleading and again ignores crucial political and economic contexts. For instance, to gain brief insight into the nature of India’s agrarian crisis and why farmers are leaving the sector, let us turn to renowned journalist P Sainath who says: Little surprise, therefore, that even with bumper harvests, Indian farmers still find themselves in financial distress. India’s farmers are not experiencing financial hardship due to low productivity. They are reeling under the effects of neoliberal policies, years of neglect and a deliberate strategy to displace smallholder agriculture at the behest of the World Bank and global agri-food corporations. And people are not hungry in India because its farmers do not produce enough food. Hunger and malnutrition result from various factors, not least poor food distribution, lack of infrastructure, (gender) inequality and poverty. However, aside from putting a positive spin on the questionable performance of GM agriculture, the pro-GM lobby, both outside of India and within, has wasted no time in wrenching these issues from their political contexts to use the notions of ‘helping farmers’ and ‘feeding the world’ as lynchpins of its promotional strategy. Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc. Colin Todhunter is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. | Colin Todhunter | https://www.globalresearch.ca/agrarian-crisis-malnutrition-gm-agriculture-not-answer/5694530 | Mon, 11 Nov 2019 08:12:38 +0000 | 1,573,477,958 | 1,573,473,877 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
232,140 | globalresearch--2019-12-08--Power of Siberia: Putin and the ‘Biden Memorial Pipeline’ to China | 2019-12-08T00:00:00 | globalresearch | Power of Siberia: Putin and the ‘Biden Memorial Pipeline’ to China | In early 2014 Washington staged a blatant coup d’etat in Ukraine breaking the historic relationship with Russia and setting the stage for the subsequent NATO demonization of Russia. The one in charge for the Obama Administration of the Ukraine coup was then-Vice President Joe Biden. Today a bizarre Democrat impeachment attempt aimed at President Donald Trump has curiously enough put the spotlight on the dubious role that Joe Biden played in Ukraine affairs in 2014 and after. That Biden-steered coup had the unintended effect of causing a 180 degree geopolitical pivot of Moscow from West to East. The opening of a massive new gas pipeline now is only one of those unintended consequences. On December 2, Russian President Vladimir Putin participated in the official opening of the Power of Siberia natural gas pipeline to Asia, servicing the growing China gas market. It met the planned deadline punctually, to the month. This marked the first Russian pipeline gas deliveries to China. In a videolink with China President Xi Jinping, Putin remarked, The opening, a huge engineering feat, completes a pipeline through Russia’s Eastern Siberia north of Mongolia to the border with China, running more than 2,200 kilometers across Russia’s east territories. It is the largest gas pipeline project in the world to date. The pipeline is designed to deal with temperatures as low as 62 C minus, and withstand earthquakes along its route. It begins in the Chayanda gas field in Yakutia and completes the Russian section at Blagoveshchensk on the Russia–China border. There, via two underwater pipelines under the Amur River, it connects with a Chinese gas line going south to Shanghai, the 3,371-kilometer-long Heihe–Shanghai pipeline in China. The world’s largest market demand increase for gas fuel in recent years has been China. In May 2014, Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) signed a $400 billion 30-year agreement for gas to be supplied via the Power of Siberia gas pipeline. The Russian gas deliveries to China will be 38 billion cubic meters per year when it reaches peak in 2025. In 2018 China natural gas consumption was 280 bcm, so the Siberian contribution is significant. It will eventually supply some 10% of China’s total gas needs for electricity and heating, to China’s underdeveloped northeast regions and south as far as Shanghai. But the project is about much more than gas to China. Completion of the major Power of Siberia pipeline to China involves more than a pipeline running through 2,200 kilometers of remote Russia. It is also being used as a catalyst to develop major industry in the economically underdeveloped Russian Far East as well, a priority of the Russian government in recent years. A little discussed parallel development tied to the construction of the Power of Siberia pipeline is Gazprom’s decision to build Russia’s largest gas-processing chemical facility, the Amur Gas Processing Plant, or the Amur GPP. The Amur GPP is the largest construction project in Russia’s Far East, a $14 billion complex near Svobodny on the Zeya River in Amur Oblast, some 170 kilometers from the gas pipeline’s China connection point. The Amur GPP scale is enormous, the size of 1,100 football fields. The complex will use a portion of the huge gas reserves of the Power of Siberia fields in East Siberia to produce a mix of petrochemicals that will include ethane, propane, butane, pentane-hexane fraction and 60 million cubic meters of helium annually. These are all industrial chemical components in strong demand. Most important is the large production of helium, a byproduct of natural gas used in space industry, metallurgy, medicine and other areas. Amur GPP will be the largest helium production plant in the world. Ethane, propane, butane, pentane-hexane will be used to produce polymers, plastics, lubricants and other things including motor fuel. The Amur GPP project when complete in 2025 will be the largest gas processing plant complex in Russia and second largest in the world, bringing major new economic activity to the underdeveloped Far East region, a priority of the Russian government. In August 2017 Russian President Putin was present for the first pouring of the concrete foundation for the complex. In his remarks he noted that, The production from the Amur plant complex will be marketed for export to the Asian market as well as expanding the gas supply network for Yakutia and the Amur Region where until now commercial gas is almost non-existent. The strategic partner of Gazprom responsible for the processing equipment and other engineering technology is the German company, Linde, a world leader in such specialized technology. The Amur GPP complex will bring a major boost to Svobodny which like many towns in the remote Far East has been losing population following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The construction phase as noted is employing some 25,000 engineers and construction workers, most drawn from the region, adding a major economic boost. In addition Gazprom is building 42 new apartment buildings and 36 townhouses for some 5,000 people in Svobodny who will be permanently employed at the facility. There will also be a new school and kindergarten with a swimming pool, clinic, sports and cultural institutions. As well, Gazprom is cooperating with Amur State University and the Far Eastern Federal University, with new courses to train future specialists in chemical technology. The municipal government is already benefiting from tax payments from the presence of the project. Ironically, we can title this the ‘Biden Memorial Pipeline.’ Had the Obama Administration not launched their coup d’etat in 2013 at Maidan Square in Kiev, with the subsequent ouster of the elected president in February 2014 in favor of literal neo-nazi parties and corrupt oligarchs under a US puppet regime, the completion of the Power of Siberia pipeline to China would likely not exist today. Negotiations with Beijing for the pipeline had been dragging on for more than ten years when the Ukraine coup took place. After that coup a final agreement was secured by Moscow with Beijing in a matter of weeks as Putin engineered a geopolitical pivot to the East away from NATO. Vice President Joe Biden was named by Obama to oversee the Ukraine coup and its aftermath, which apparently included some corrupt sweetheart deals for Hunter Biden and possibly Joe Biden with Ukraine gas company Burisma. The coup, carried out by then CIA head John Brennan, using sniper mercenaries from neighboring Georgia, together with neocon US State Department official Victoria “F**k the EU” Nuland, was one of the more foolish geopolitical blunders of Washington in recent decades. The pro-NATO coup was initiated when Viktor Yanukovich’s government had decided to accept generous Russian terms to join her Eurasian Economic Union rather than a vague promise of possible EU membership candidate status. Today Ukraine is treated with outcast status by the EU, and its economy is a shambles as a result of the break with Russia. In May, 2014, just weeks after the CIA toppled the duly elected government of Viktor Yanukovich in what Stratfor founder George Friedman called, “…the most blatant coup in (US) history,” Moscow signed the agreement with Beijing for the Gas Pipeline Deal of the Century, the Power of Siberia. Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc. F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. F. William Engdahl is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) | F. William Engdahl | https://www.globalresearch.ca/putin-biden-memorial-pipeline-china/5697008 | Sun, 08 Dec 2019 17:21:36 +0000 | 1,575,843,696 | 1,575,849,847 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
327,371 | nationalinterest--2019-11-24--Iran Would Be Wasting Its Time Building an 'F-35' | 2019-11-24T00:00:00 | nationalinterest | Iran Would Be Wasting Its Time Building an 'F-35' | It would be asking for more trouble than it's worth. Key Point: Iran has reasons to want a stealth fighter, but it is a very expensive undertaking. There can be such a thing as posturing too hard. Iran’s aviation industry has accomplishments to boast about despite operating under heavy sanctions for nearly forty years. It has managed to keep once state-of-the-art U.S.-built F-4 Phantom and F-14 Tomcat fighters in operational condition for decades, including nine years of high-intensity aerial warfare with Iraq, despite being cut off from spare parts from the United States. It has refurbished the rusting hulks of old F-5 Freedom Fighters into twin-vertical stabilizer Saeqeh fighters, reverse-engineered their J85 turbojet engines, and created a variety of viable capable drones. All of these scrappy-underdog accomplishments fall far short of developing a working stealth fighter. Russia, which possesses a mature military aviation industry, has basically thrown the towel on its Su-57 stealth fighter program (at least on the short term) because the expenses and technical challenges have proven so prohibitive. Much wealthier countries ranging from France, Germany, India, Japan and the UK are only in the early stages of developing their own. But Tehran would have the world believe that it quietly developed its own stealth jet way back in February 2, 2013, when one was unveiled as part of the Ten-Day Dawn ceremonies attended by then-President Ahmadinejad. IAIO Qaher (“Conqueror”) 313 stood out as a diminutive franken-plane that would look cool in an action flick. It retained significant design characteristics of the F-5 Freedom Fighter, but sported canted vertical stabilizers like an F-22 Raptor, flouncy wings reminiscent of a 1950s-era MiG-17, drooping wingtips resembling Boeing’s discarded Bird of Prey concept, and bat-like canards—a second set of wings next to the cockpit. It didn’t, however, look like something that could actually fly—as pointed out by David Cenicotti of The Aviationist—in an epic takedown. Some of the key points: The Cockpit Was Too Small to Fit an Average-Height Human Being Unless that person was a dwarf. The pilot would have to tuck his knees up in front of him to fit. Likewise, the nose was too small to fit a radar. One of the pictures depicts a relatively low-tech instrument panel likely taken from a civilian light plane. One of the tells? An airspeed indicator maxing out at 260 knots, which is little over half the speed of a subsonic civilian airliner. Nozzles help a jet not melt itself when engaging afterburners. Furthermore, the jet intakes seem too small as well. Stealth jets generally carry weapons in internal bays to maintain a low-radar cross section. But such internal bays, or even provisions for external weapons or sensors, were visibly absent. Iran claimed the little Qaher could somehow carry two two-thousand-pound bombs and six air-to-air missiles—but the airframe simply did not have enough space to carry them all. It appeared to be made out of shiny plastic—without tell-tale rivets and screws. And the canopy appeared to be smudgy plexiglass and had no latch. Iranian state media released a video which supposedly depicted a Qaher in flight. But a glance at the footage made clear it was a less-than-full-scale remote-control replica. After the outcry, Iranian media clarified that these were in fact two different reduced-sized test drones. Another dramatic photo depicting a Qaher flying against a mountain backdrop appears to have been produced via the magic of Photoshop. Basically, the Qaher was a highly unconvincing plastic mockup designed for crude propaganda purposes—and international media called it out for being just that. The hypothetical stealth jet disappeared for several years only to resurface in a somewhat more convincing form in April 2017 when prototyped number “8” was paraded before President Rouhani and recorded taxiing on a runway. This time, Iranian media conceded that the jet had yet to undergo flight tests. The new jet now has a cockpit that can fit a full-sized pilot, two turbojet engines with exhaust nozzles so as not to melt itself, and an infrared-sensor turret under the nose which could be handy but would likely mess up its radar cross section. The turbojets are believed to be J85s, an American-built type from the 1950s which Iran successfully reverse-engineered. The Qaher has a wingspan of only 11 meters and is 16 meters long. However, the unconventional airframe still seems rife with aerodynamic flaws and radar reflective hot spots. Moreover, sharp-eyed analyst Galen Wright noticed that an Iranian mechanic had stenciled on the tire-pressure for the Qaher as 50 psi. For comparison, the tires on a lightweight F-16 ramp up to 300 psi. This suggests even the more realistic Qaher model is too light to be a real, functioning jet fighter. For that matter, the notion that even the mockup Qaher has a stealthy radar cross section is dubious as Iran likely lacks the prerequisite radar-absorbent material and precision-engineering technology. Notably, the Fars news agency described the new Qaher as a “logistic aircraft” (whatever that means—it’s clearly not a cargo plane) and a “light fighter jet for military and training purposes.” This hints that if Iran ever does build flying Qaher, it might not be intended for frontline service. Perhaps it could serve as a prototype, or a means to test detection of a quasi-low-observable airframe. Iranian sources, including a deputy defense minister, have also offered the eyebrow-raising claim that the Qaher is intended to shoot down helicopters, based on a chain of dubious premises. Supposedly, the threat posed by swarms of Iranian motorboats armed with anti-ship missiles is so great that the U.S. Navy will rely on attack helicopters to destroy them. These, however, could in turn be easily shot down by fighters—so long as those fighters are stealthy enough to evade the surface-to-air missiles of ships, so the reasoning goes. Iran may eventually design an actual flying jet plane resembling the mockups it passed off as the real thing—but even, such a plane would likely merely be a testbed and showpiece. By now, one can consult the experience of the United States, China and Russia to show what a real stealth fighter program would entail. By comparison, Iran’s effort does no seem credible. One should also bear in mind that back in 2003, Iran unveiled an earlier, more convincing fake subsonic stealth fighter called the Shafaq—revealed in 2014 to be a mock-up made of wood. Certainly, Iran has reasons to want a stealth fighter—it fears an attack by Israel or the United States, some of the most capable air arms on the planet. Furthermore, Iran is competing for regional dominance with multiple Arab states lavishly equipped with fourth and 4.5-generation F-15, F-16, Typhoon and Rafale jet fighters. However, attempting to develop a working stealth jet from scratch is probably the most expensive and least practical solution to address those challenges. Meanwhile, Tehran’s predilection for fabricating easily disproven evidence of its military capabilities testifies to the revolutionary state’s enduring sense of insecurity. Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring. This was first published in 2018 and is being republished due to reader's interest. | Sebastien Roblin | https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/iran-would-be-wasting-its-time-building-f-35-98272 | Sun, 24 Nov 2019 04:00 EST | 1,574,586,000 | 1,574,644,852 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
336,861 | naturalnews--2019-08-28--Barley flaxseed and rice bran Why theyre good sources of nutraceuticals | 2019-08-28T00:00:00 | naturalnews | Barley, flaxseed and rice bran: Why they're good sources of nutraceuticals | (Natural News) Nutraceuticals have long been the focus of scientific studies and the subject of debate. They are often considered to be more food than medicine. On the other hand, these naturally occurring substances have nutritional and medicinal properties that can help in the prevention and treatment of various diseases. Researchers from Sant Longowal Institute of Engineering and Technology in India believe that the addition of nutraceuticals to food products could lead to the development of safe functional foods that can promote overall health; hence, they isolated substances known to be beneficial to human health from crops and tested their safety as potential food additives. In their study published in in the Journal of Food Processing and Preservation, they characterized nutraceuticals extracted from barley flour, flaxseed, and rice bran oil to show that these plant components are safe to use as nutraceutical ingredients. For their study, the researchers used barley flour, flaxseed, and rice bran oil as sources. They isolated beta-glucan fibers from a six-rowed, hull-less barley variety, a lignan concentrate from flaxseed, and a gamma oryzanol concentrate from rice bran oil. These nutraceuticals can offer tremendous health and medicinal benefits. For instance, the soluble dietary fiber beta-glucan helps improve blood cholesterol levels and support heart health. Meanwhile, the lignans from flaxseed are converted by intestinal bacteria into chemicals that contribute to the prevention of hormone-related cancers, osteoporosis, and cardiovascular disease. Gamma oryzanol from rice bran oil is a mixture of natural antioxidants and is known to reduce high cholesterol levels and alleviate symptoms of menopause and aging. Using various analytical methods, the researchers reported that the variety of hull-less barley they chose contained high amounts of beta-glucan, while the lignan concentrate from flaxseed had a high secoisolariciresinol diglucoside (SDG) content and the gamma oryzanol concentrate had four major components, namely, cycloartenyl ferulate (CAF), 24?methylenecycloartanyl ferulate (24-MCF), campesteryl ferulate, and B?sitosteryl ferulate. According to studies, SDG metabolites can protect against heart disease and metabolic syndrome by decreasing blood cholesterol and glucose levels, lowering blood pressure, and reducing oxidative stress and inflammation. They can also reduce the risk of cancer by preventing angiogenesis and cancer metastasis. On the other hand, CAF has been shown to treat allergic inflammation; 24-MCF is known to have anti-cancer and cholesterol-lowering activities; campesteryl ferulate is toxic to cancer cells; B-sitosteryl ferulate has potent antioxidant activity. The researchers also confirmed through chromatographic and spectrometric analyses that the raw materials were not contaminated by any pesticide and that, of the three isolates, the gamma oryzanol concentrate had the lowest total plate count, yeast and mold count, and coliform count. Based on their findings, the researchers concluded that these nutraceuticals are safe to incorporate into food products in order to develop functional foods that can promote overall health. Rice bran oil is a vegetable oil extracted from the germ and husk of rice kernels. In terms of composition, rice bran oil is similar to peanut oil, which contains safe and balanced levels of diverse fatty acids. Because of this, rice bran oil is considered healthier than other cooking oils. Rice bran oil helps lower cholesterol, improves skin health, promotes weight loss, prevents certain types of cancer, and protects heart health. Flaxseeds are rich in micronutrients like healthy fats, vitamins, and minerals, and are good sources of dietary fiber which promote gut health. Flaxseeds come from flax, one of the oldest fiber crops on the planet, and are marketed today in the form of seeds, oil, capsules or tablets, and flour. Flaxseeds are known to prevent diabetes, high cholesterol, cancer, constipation, and other health problems. Barley (whole grain) is another excellent source of dietary fiber — both soluble and insoluble. Dietary fiber keeps the gut healthy by maintaining a balance between good and bad intestinal bacteria. Barley has a low glycemic index, which makes it effective in managing blood glucose levels. Consuming barley also helps with constipation, hypertension, arthritis, skin problems, anemia, obesity, asthma, heart disease, kidney problems, and diabetes. | Evangelyn Rodriguez | http://www.naturalnews.com/2019-08-28-barley-flaxseed-and-rice-bran-good-sources-of-nutraceuticals.html | 2019-08-28 18:27:08+00:00 | 1,567,031,228 | 1,567,543,623 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
337,822 | naturalnews--2019-12-04--The ten most dangerous threats to humanity that must be defeated for us to live as free, conscious b | 2019-12-04T00:00:00 | naturalnews | The ten most dangerous threats to humanity that must be defeated for us to live as free, conscious beings - part one | (Natural News) It is a natural tendency of human beings to focus on the emergencies at your feet today rather than the far more profound threats to existence that take time to materialize. Almost everything you might encounter in day-to-day media reports is talking about inconsequential matters compared to the big picture explained here. Trump or no Trump, human civilization is on a collision course with extermination from two vectors: Self-extermination and outside-of-our-control apocalyptic demise. Yet almost nothing is being done to halt humanities spiraling suicide march, even when the outcome is clearly disastrous. If humanity continues on its current path, we will give rise to phenomena that will decisively end us as the dominant, intelligent species on planet Earth. Yet there are almost no voices of dissent against these accelerating pursuits, as the fear of being left behind in the global race for technological “achievement” (or political power, or profits, etc.) overrides any sense of informed caution. In this two-part article series, I share ten of the most dangerous threats to humanity that must be defeated (or overcome) for us to live as free, conscious beings in a sustainable world. Our planet’s electrical grid can be taken out at any moment, without warning, from a sufficiently powerful solar flare. Such solar flares are produced by the sun at regular intervals and catapulted into the cosmos. Fortunately, very few of them strike planet Earth for the simple reason that Earth is a very tiny target from the point of view of the sun. (The solar system models you see in textbooks and TV documentaries universally distort scales to make it appear the Earth is much closer to the sun than is the case.) Sponsored: NEW Biostructured Silver First Aid Gel created by the Health Ranger combines three types of silver (ionic silver, colloidal silver, biostructured silver) with seven potent botanicals (rosemary, oregano, cinnamon and more) to create a breakthrough first aid silver gel. Over 50 ppm silver, verified via ICP-MS lab analysis. Made from 100% Texas rain water and 70% solar power. Zero chemical preservatives, fragrances or emulsifiers. See full details here. Asteroid impacts, although extremely rare, can be catastrophic when they occur. At least one mass extinction of planet Earth, according to mainstream scientists, occurred because our planet was struck by an asteroid roughly 65 million years ago, near the Yucatan Peninsula, wiping out the dinosaurs. Despite these risks, there is no serious effort to “ruggedize” Earth’s power grid infrastructure against the EMP effects of solar flares. There’s also no sufficient effort under way to monitor the skies for objects that may strike the Earth at high velocity. Our planet is swirling through a cosmic shooting gallery, and earthlings are flying blind, foolishly hoping nothing catastrophic will occur. That approach is incredibly shortsighted, if not suicidal. It is the cosmic equivalent of participating in a street parade that marches through a field laces with land mines. Sooner or later, your luck streak ends badly. The genetic engineering of humans produces self-replicating “genetic pollution” with unknown consequences, some of which may be catastrophic to the fertility or viability of the human species as a whole. Yet China, in particular, is aggressively pursuing genetic engineering of humans in the hopes of creating “super soldiers” — biological humanoid weapons that can fight for the interests of the communist party. This most likely means fighting against the interests of free humans, by the way. China’s genetic experiments have already gone horribly wrong. According to a report from The Guardian, a recent effort to genetically engineer human babies resulted in “unintended mutations.” These mutations can, of course, be passed on to future generations, contaminating the human gene pool with the pollution of failed mad science experiments. As The Guardian reports, “Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui ignored ethical and scientific norms in creating the twins Lula and Nana, whose birth in late 2018 sent shockwaves through the scientific world.” Even worse, the core philosophy of secrecy and dishonesty that now pervades the communist Chinese culture has already resulted in these researchers trying to hide the name and location of this genetically mutated baby. As The Guardian reports, “The authors also appeared to have taken steps to make it hard to find the family, like leaving the names of the fertility doctors off the paper, and including a false date of birth. He claimed November 2018 while multiple reports have indicated it was October 2018.” Even if the goal is merely to genetically engineer “organ farm” humanoids to serve as organ harvesting vessels for the lucrative transplant industry, the moral and ethical implications of engineering, cloning and growing fields of human organ harvesting farms populated by conscious beings should demand a global halt to this research. Remember, China is a nation where human beings imprison bears and siphon biological chemicals from their gall bladders on a daily basis in order to sell this lucrative “medicine” to willing buyers. In China, there is no moral boundary that prevents the mass torture of other living beings for personal profit. When a nation that has no moral grounding also pursues genetic engineering technology without limits, the result is sure to be horrific beyond imagination. Sadly, China is currently leading the world in genetic engineering research on humans. And this is a nation that places zero value on human beings. What could possibly go wrong? By its very nature, communism deprives conscious, self-aware human beings of the dignity and freedom that makes us human. The rise of communism (and socialism, which is “communism light”) threatens to unleash the fall of humanity, for communism rests on the idea that the power of the few must be protected and expanded at the expense of the many. Where it achieves its desired goal of absolute dominance over the minds of men (and women), communism unleashes the destruction of free will, the demise of freedom of thought, the suppression of the freedom to engage in contracts and commerce, the destruction of the freedom of religion and the eradication of logic and reason. This is all by design, since an individual’s ability to think for himself is incompatible with the authoritarian aims of communism which dictate to all subjects the things they must believe, how they must speak and what concepts must be erased from their consciousness (such as dissent against the state). The rise of China’s economy over the last three decades has misled many people into thinking that a hybrid model of communism and “free market” principles can achieve tremendous success in our world, yet those who fall for such beliefs are not yet aware of the three irreconcilable factors that will bring communist China to its knees. (By the way, China considers itself to be a socialist nation, not communist. This underscores the undeniable fact that socialism and communism are just two slightly different flavors of the same anti-human tyranny.) 1 – China has made a deal with the devil by trading production output for extreme, long-term domestic pollution consisting of heavy metals, extreme air pollution and the mass pollution of waterways and soils that feed their own people. The result will be seven generations of birth defects, mental retardation and neuropsychiatric illness that will ravage the nation for a century or more. 2 – Runaway debt, leveraged by greed – China is already bailing out banks nearly every week, and the debt-to-GDP ratio of the nation as a whole has reached alarming levels that threaten its entire economic foundation. Because communism operates from a command-and-control central economic authority, the deeply rooted resource allocation mistakes that lead to economic collapse have no chance of being rooted out or corrected through rational investment choices by a broad base of retail participants. Rather, critical fractures that threaten the viability of the entire economic system will be officially denied and covered up by the central authorities until the problem becomes so large that it can no longer be hidden from the masses… at which point it will be too late to solve. Remember: Capital markets cannot function efficiently without the free will of participants who are acting on transparent information. Once you take away free will and begin to dictate the demanded behavior of participants, you create catastrophic distortions that lead to eventual collapse. And part of the long-term viability of free market systems depends on “predator” investors feeding on bad resource allocation ideas by dismantling corporations which pursue bad ideas (and therefore misallocate resources). 3 – Connected people want to be free – The Hong Kong phenomenon demonstrates the fact that as technology gives rise to the instant connections among individuals who share common interests, those people sooner or later discover they’d rather be free than enslaved. It is a natural tendency of conscious, self-aware individuals to prefer autonomy over tyranny. Authoritarian societies can only remain sustainable when they isolate people from each other, which China is attempting to do through Google search manipulation technologies, censorship, facial recognition tracking, social scoring systems, etc., but despite all the layers of techno-fascism, a Chinese farmer innately seeks the same level of personal freedom as a Texas farmer. It is the natural desire of conscious beings to seek freedom and reject authoritarian limits on their ability to think, speak or act. The rise of the internet and its properties of rapid interconnections among individuals has created a vector for free-thinking people to connect and act in unison against the tyranny of the state. This is just as true in China as it is in Brazil, Venezuela, the United Kingdom or France, for that matter. In summary, humanity must declare war on communism and eliminate it from planet Earth, for if communism is allowed to rise, it will ultimately lead to the destruction of humanity itself. Communism embodies an anti-human agenda, simply put. A free society cannot function in a sustainable way if its participants are not allowed to express freedom of speech… which stems from the freedom to think. Yet today, we live under an unprecedented form of digital tyranny, where un-elected techno-fascists grant themselves the monopoly power to decide which concepts are allowed to be publicly expressed. Anything they don’t want to see debated or mentioned is simply labeled “hate speech” and removed from the web via dominant gatekeepers like Google, Facebook and Twitter. A new effort is under way to tighten the censorship grid by proclaiming that the internet shouldn’t be used to “divide” people. Only voices that “unite” people are to be allowed to use the internet under a new agreement authored by Tim Berners-Lee, who has launched what he calls a “Magna Carta for the web.” The description of this new agreement reveals the bizarre distortions that underpin its fascist tenants, however. As explained by The Guardian, this “Magna Carta for the web” will, “protect people’s rights online from threats such as fake news, prejudice and hate.” Hopefully, you already see the distortions in that very line. There is no such thing as a “right” to be protected from “hate,” for example, especially given that “hate” is defined as anything the Left doesn’t want to read or see. Yet it is through these perverse distortions that censorship is being re-packaged as freedom, and the crushing of dissenting voices is being marketed as “protection from hate.” As George Orwell once wrote, war is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. This has practically become the mantra of the digital tyrants as we approach 2020. Censorship is freedom. Silencing the opposition is diversity. Destroying freedom of expression is progress. We are now living under the Orwellian nightmare that was once mocked as impossible to imagine. Yet it is here, and it has a name: “Contract for the web.” Under this new “Contract for the web,” all voices of dissent will be silenced. Only voices which are obedient to the ever-changing whims of the tolerati will be allowed to engage in the “freedom” of expression. Censorship will be justified as a way to protect the freedom of speech by invoking the absurd idea that freedom excludes the ideas of those with dissenting views. For humanity to survive with anything resembling real freedom, the digital tyranny that now threatens human civilization must be defeated and dismantled. The internet must be set free to carry all voices, no matter how fringe, or offensive or non-conformist. The minority of the individual must be protected from the bullying of the online mob, and that means the proper role of government in regulating the tech giants is to restrict censorship of minority views and thereby initiate a new online civil rights movement that makes it a crime for corporations to silence people due to the color of their speech. #5) The mass chemical contamination of the food supply The mass chemical contamination of the human food supply has sharply increased since World War II, after which synthetic pesticides and herbicides were deployed on a truly alarming scale in order to achieve higher crop yield efficiencies. The obvious problem with these toxic synthetic chemicals such as organophosphates is two-fold: 1) Their chemical toxicity is not specific to the insects they target. These chemicals are also toxic to humans. 2) Once applied to food crops, the chemicals persist in both the environment and the resulting food products that are consumed by humans and ranch animals. The result is the bioaccumulation of toxic, synthetic chemicals, many of which have direct and severe neurological toxicity in nearly all life forms. In effect, we are eating ourselves to death because we are consuming foods which are laced with pesticides and herbicides (such as glyphosate and atrazine). The use of these agricultural chemicals continues to increase, to the point where the very existence of pollinators is now severely threatened by just one class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids. When the pollinators collapse, approximately one-third of the food supply consumed by humans ceases to exist (this includes almonds, by the way, which require pollinators to produce nuts). The continued consumption of these toxic chemicals results in transgenerational effects, meaning the toxicity continues to interfere with human biology (infertility, neurotoxicity, etc.) across multiple generations. Even if we were to halt all pesticide use today, the human race will be subject to the lingering effects of a toxic food supply for at least four generations. Since there is no economic penalty for farmers to add these toxic chemicals to their crops, their use has become so widespread that even many certified organic food products are now contaminated with glyphosate and other chemicals (I see this directly in the mass spec testing at my food science lab, where we routinely test foods for glyphosate and heavy metals). And because pesticides are invisible to the human eye, consumers have no practical way to choose pesticide-free foods at the grocery store, meaning there is no economic penalty for farmers to saturate their crops with these toxic chemicals. In fact, there is an economic incentive to do so, since killing the most pests by over-spraying crops with pesticides can, in many cases, product higher crop yields (although resulting in a more dangerous level of pesticides for consumers). This is why strawberries, for example, are so heavily sprayed with various pesticide chemicals that eating non-organic strawberries is a form of slow suicide. No mammals on the planet deliberately poison their own foods before feeding them to their children… except humans, of course. It is a slow suicide mission that can only end badly. If humanity does not figure out a way to stop poisoning its own foods — and feeding this poison to its children — we will witness the collapse of sustainable human health and fertility, followed by the collapse of human populations on a near-global scale. Perhaps that is the plan, come to think of it. This analysis continues in Part Two, posting tomorrow. (Link will be updated here once part two goes live.) How to get more analysis from this author: – Listen to my podcasts and watch my videos at the H.R. Report channel on Brighteon.com, the free speech alternative to YouTube. – Watch my once-a-week interviews with Alan Keyes at the IAMtv channel on Brighteon.com. – Subscribe to the Natural News email newsletter for daily updates of breaking stories and analysis. | Mike Adams | http://www.naturalnews.com/2019-12-04-the-ten-most-dangerous-threats-to-humanity-that-must-be-defeated-for-us-to-live-as-free-conscious-beings-part-one.html | Wed, 04 Dec 2019 12:01:38 +0000 | 1,575,478,898 | 1,575,504,864 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
386,033 | npr--2019-06-30--Former NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz Restores Mission Control in Houston | 2019-06-30T00:00:00 | npr | Former NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz Restores Mission Control in Houston | Gene Kranz may be the most famous flight director in NASA's history. He directed the actual landing portion of the first mission to put men on the moon, Apollo 11, and led Mission Control in saving the crew of Apollo 13 after an oxygen tank exploded on the way to the lunar surface. Now Kranz, 85, has completed another undertaking: the reopening of Mission Control at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The room where Kranz directed some of NASA's most historic missions, heralding U.S. exploration of space, was decommissioned in 1992. Since then, it had become a stop on guided tours of the space center, but fallen into disrepair. Kranz has led a $5 million dollar, multi-year effort to restore Mission Control in time for the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing on July 20. "I walked into that room last Monday for the first time when it was fully operational, and it was dynamite. I literally wept," Kranz said in an interview with NPR. "The emotional surge at that moment was incredible. I walked down on the floor, and when we did the ribbon cutting the last two days, believe it or not, I could hear the people talking in that room from 50 years ago. I could hear the controllers talking." The room also brought back memories for Kranz of a shared sense of purpose. "That group of people united in pursuit of a cause, and basically the result was greater than the sum of the parts. There was a chemistry that was formed," Kranz said. Sandra Tetley, Johnson Space Center's historic preservation officer, worked with contractors to meticulously recreate the room, interviewing former flight controllers and collecting old photos. They scoured websites like eBay to find items from the Apollo era — such as cups, ashtrays and a coffee pot to fill the room. "We even identified which was original paint, and which was not original paint, so we could make sure the original paint was left," Tetley said. "We hand-stamped all of the ceiling tiles so that the whole patterns would match." Kranz, who was played by the actor Ed Harris in the 1995 movie Apollo 13, said the room's significance extends beyond historical items and artifacts. "[The room] also has a meaning related to the American psyche, that what America will dare, America will do," he said. Kranz said he wants his early space missions to challenge America's youth to study science, engineering and technology, and for the restored room to provide inspiration for teachers and students. "There's an awful lot of future out there, and what you got to do, is you go to out and grab it, wrestle it to the ground, accept the challenges, and then decide," Kranz said. "You've got the skills. You've got the knowledge. You've got the love, and you're capable of moving forward and making a great life for yourself." Those were life lessons Kranz says he learned in Mission Control. | Shannon Van Sant | https://www.npr.org/2019/06/30/737327895/former-nasa-flight-director-gene-kranz-restores-mission-control-in-houston?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news | 2019-06-30 20:09:23+00:00 | 1,561,939,763 | 1,567,537,514 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
406,249 | pbs--2019-05-20--How Trump has already changed migrant worker programs | 2019-05-20T00:00:00 | pbs | How Trump has already changed migrant worker programs | President Donald Trump [called last week](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/whats-in-trumps-immigration- proposal) for prioritizing immigrants coming to the United States for skills- based reasons rather than family ties, a proposal that would shift the values anchoring the nation’s immigration policy and have significant economic ramifications. Congress seems unlikely to act on the president’s newest plan, which critics argue does not dramatically reshape the legal immigration landscape. But on its own the Trump administration has made a number of changes over the past two years to the nation’s guest worker program — changes that will resonate throughout the U.S. economy. Government officials are rejecting more high-skilled foreign workers applying for visas and cracking down on immigrants who [overstay their visas.](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/04/22/donald-trump- orders-crackdown-foreigners-overstay-visas/3544008002/) At the same time, federal agencies are granting more visas for low-skilled workers in the farming and hospitality sectors. Immigrants who use guest worker programs represent a relatively small share of the overall labor force, and that was the case even before the Trump administration began making changes to those programs. But guest workers can boost or slow economic growth depending on how many are allowed into the U.S., so the policies around these visas are a critical part of the broader economy. ## H-1B visas H-1B visas are given out to fill high-skilled, in-demand jobs in the U.S. Most of the jobs are in the science, engineering and technology sectors. Applicants must have highly specialized knowledge or a bachelor’s degree to qualify for the visas. The U.S. has a quota of 85,000 H-1B visas to be issued each year, but it also gives out tens of thousands of H-1B visas for workers at higher education institutions and government research organizations, which are exempt from the quota. H-1B visa holders account for a small share of all jobs in the U.S., but make up a larger share — by some estimates as much as 13 percent — of all tech jobs. During the Trump administration the denial rate for H-1B visas has more than doubled. The federal agency that oversees the process has also been cracking down on companies it perceives to be abusing the program. In 2017, 13 percent of H-1B petitions for new employment were denied. That number rose to 24 percent in 2018 and 32 percent in the first quarter of 2019, according to U.S. Customs and Immigration Services [data that was analyzed](https://nfap.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/H-1B-Denial-Rates-Past- and-Present.NFAP-Policy-Brief.April-2019.pdf) by the nonprofit National Foundation for American Policy.  Employees of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) work inside the company headquarters in Mumbai March 14, 2013. the Trump administration has cracked down on services firms like TCS that sponsor a large number of H-1B visas. Photo by Danish Siddiqui/Reuters Most of those denials were handed down to companies specializing in IT services that hire H-1B workers and contract them out to other companies. IT services firms have borne the brunt of the scrutiny over H-1B visas in recent years because they tend to pay lower wages, despite the federal requirement that companies [pay H-1B workers](https://www.apnews.com/afs:Content:873580003) the same salary as an American in the position. The government’s approval rate for H-1B visas for those companies dropped from 94 percent in 2016 to 58 percent last year. The rate dropped 6 percent in the same period for non-IT support companies as well, according to the Migration Policy Institute, which analyzed the data. “It appears the administration has been very smart and targeted about their increased scrutiny,” said Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst for the Migration Policy Institute. ### What that means for the economy Guest worker programs — and their effect on the economy — have long been controversial. Companies applying for visas must promise not to displace American workers, but there have been instances when businesses laid off workers and [replaced them](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/are-u-s-jobs- vulnerable-to-workers-with-h-1b-visas/) with H-1B visa holders. Opponents of H-1B visas also say they suppress wages for Americans workers. Proponents argue they help fill jobs that American workers won’t take and, in turn, boost the nation’s economy. Both could be true. Studies have shown companies sometimes pay H-1B visa holders less than American workers, even though the government prohibits it. At the same time, because H-1B visa holders often work in the tech and IT sectors, they are more likely to spur innovation, create more jobs, increase productivity and, in turn, [boost wages](http://giovanniperi.ucdavis.edu/uploads/5/6/8/2/56826033/stem- workers.pdf) over the long-term. “We know that high-skilled immigrants create jobs and are a net benefit to the economy,” said Hanna Siegel, the managing director for the research organization the New American Economy. Even though most of the scrutiny of H-1B visas has been on IT services firms, other companies are still getting caught in the crossfire. [Difficulty getting visas approved](https://apnews.com/af878855969c4b48bc8b083b91c67018) in what is already a highly competitive process could discourage small businesses, such as startups, to sponsor H-1B visa applicants. IT services firms, however, rely so heavily on H-1B visas that they are well-versed in the application process and are less likely to be discouraged by hurdles put in their way. As a result, economists warn IT firms could end up cornering even more of the market– exactly what the Trump administration appears trying to fight. If the process becomes too burdensome, it could also drive the highest-skilled workers to immigrate to other countries instead of the U.S. ## H-2A visas 2018 marked a new record for H-2A visas, which are used for seasonal farm workers. More than 240,000 H-2A visas were given out last year, representing a 21 percent increase from the year before and more than double [the number allotted](https://www.epi.org/blog/h-2a-farm-guestworker-program-expanding- rapidly/) just four years ago. The U.S. Department of Agriculture also recently launched a streamlined process for H-2A visas. ### What that means for the economy Farmers have been complaining for years of a labor shortage, and it’s expected to get worse. The work is temporary and is mostly manual labor, which deters some American workers and increases the need for foreign workers. Farmers have been complaining for years of a labor shortage, and it’s expected to get worse. In 2017, [91 percent of the visas](https://migration.ucdavis.edu/rmn/more.php?id=2063) were issued to Mexicans. But [a USDA report](https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub- details/?pubid=90831) released last fall found that, due to the growing urbanization of Mexico, there are also fewer laborers from rural Mexico who are willing to take these jobs. Meanwhile, the number of unauthorized immigrants already in the U.S., who used to take these kinds of jobs because they had few other options, has dropped in recent years, the report said. The report advocated for expanding the H-2A visa program but said expansion would not solve the shortage. Instead, it encouraged a move away from labor- intensive crops and emphasized the need for more investment in technology that could replace manual labor. ## H-2B visas This year Homeland Security is issuing 30,000 more H-2B visas, which go to low-skilled, seasonal or temporary workers outside of the agricultural industry. About 40 percent of H-2B jobs are in landscaping and groundskeeping. Others work in the forestry, hotel, construction, restaurant and seafood industries. Each year, Congress authorizes an additional number of H-2B visas beyond the 66,000 annual quota. Homeland Security can then decide how many extra visas to give out. Last year, it issued 15,000 more visas than the quota. This year, it has doubled that number to 30,000.  Mexican workers, on the U.S. H2B visa program for seasonal guest workers, process crabs at the A.E. Phillips and Son Inc. crab picking house on Hooper’s Island in Fishing Creek, Maryland, on August 26, 2015. Photo by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters It’s unclear why the administration has chosen to issue more of these visas, but some economists said it can likely be attributed to lobbying efforts and support from key lawmakers such as Senators Susan Collins and Angus King of Maine, a state that relies heavily on seasonal migrant workers for the seafood and summer tourism industries. Despite Trump’s broader policies aimed at limiting immigration, communities that rely on H-2A visas has managed to “get some wins,” Siegel said. ### What that means for the economy The increased number of H-2B visas could help companies avoid the crunch they saw last year. In Maryland, for example, the Washington Post reported that about a third of the state’s [crab picking jobs](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2018/08/17/feature/trump- changed-a-seasonal-worker-program-now-marylands-crab-houses-are-losing- business/?utm_term=.947cc4bc4745) were unfilled along the Eastern Shore last summer. As a result, crab companies could not meet customer demand and lost profit. Even though the visa caps are being expanded, the number of visas available are still relatively small compared to the demand for workers in the U.S. As the average household income in the U.S. rises, there will be more disposable income, and more demand for hotels, restaurants and construction — the kinds of services H-2B visa holders supply. That could create a “bottleneck” in the U.S. economy, UC Davis economist Giovanni Peri said, and cost a few percentage points in economic growth over several years. _Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify that the U.S. gives out additional H-1B visas beyond its quota to workers at higher education institutions and research organizations. It also incorrectly stated that H-1B visas accounted for about .05 percent of the labor market. In fact the share is larger, but estimates vary._ | Gretchen Frazee | https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/how-trump-has-already-changed-migrant-worker-programs | 2019-05-20 22:31:40+00:00 | 1,558,405,900 | 1,567,540,414 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
427,772 | prepareforchange--2019-12-06--NASA Accidentally Shows Evidence of Large-Scale Weather Manipulation In Satellite Photos | 2019-12-06T00:00:00 | prepareforchange | NASA Accidentally Shows Evidence of Large-Scale Weather Manipulation In Satellite Photos | Hurricane Matthew and its successor Irma have turned weather into a dominant theme in the forefront of the public’s mind. From extreme flooding to widespread debris damage, people have witnessed the incredible power of mother nature — but is there something else at work here? Long have rumors circulated that the U.S. government is engaged in a decades-long geoengineering effort — and why not? The ability to control the weather could be the ultimate tool for good—or for destruction. Whether its chemtrails or weather manipulators like HAARP, the link between covert government operations and the effects these can have on weather can’t just be discarded as conspiracy theory. And now, NASA’s own satellite images have revealed what’s being referred to as “shocking proof of climate engineering.” See for yourself: Near the East Coast of Australia The above image, along with those to follow, shows what Dane Wigington, writing for Wakeup-World, describes as “many variances of radio frequency cloud impacts”: “South of Spain in the Alboran Sea” According to Dane, Africa’s coastal regions are a hotbed for geoengineering efforts despite being referred to in the mainstream media as just the result of “dust” in the air. “Right now, much of the Gulf of Mexico and parts of the Caribbean have slightly warmer than normal ocean temperatures which would normally aid in tropical development. “But there is so much dust and dry air in the atmosphere that storms are getting choked off before they even get started.” Some have theorized that geoengineering technology can — and is already being used to — manipulate larger storm systems such as hurricanes. In fact, such allegations have already been directed at Hurricane Matthew, suggesting that the “ripples” in the photo of the storm below show “waves” consistent with powerful “radio frequency/microwave transmissions and atmospheric aerosols.” Even if this is all true, and even if it’s executed with good intentions, what are the unintended consequences of playing god with the weather? After over 65 years of climate “intervention”, very real damage has been done to the Earth’s life support systems (along with countless other forms of anthropogenic destruction to the biosphere). In this photo below, Dane describes how radio frequency transmissions can affect cloud formations “by the spraying of toxic electrically conductive heavy metals”: In this next photo, Dane points out that they formed near a HAARP Station, which generated the unique looking cloud patterns: Must-read: NASA Satellite Images Prove Hurricanes Are Man-Made, And More Are Coming | Derek Knauss | https://prepareforchange.net/2019/12/06/nasa-accidentally-shows-evidence-of-large-scale-weather-manipulation-in-satellite-photos/ | Fri, 06 Dec 2019 12:00:25 +0000 | 1,575,651,625 | 1,575,633,799 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
476,828 | rt--2019-10-20--US Army to test ‘mystery materials’ owned by Blink-182 frontman’s UFO group at government facilities | 2019-10-20T00:00:00 | rt | US Army to test ‘mystery materials’ owned by Blink-182 frontman’s UFO group at government facilities – report | New information on the deal between To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science (TTSA) and the US Army shows that the army wants to verify the UFO research group’s claims about unexplained alloys and “technology innovations.” The eye-catching partnership between the group, owned by former Blink-182 guitarist Tom DeLonge, and the army made headlines in recent days as many wondered what form the collaboration would take. The group has claimed to be in possession of a range of mysterious metal alloys that are said to be beyond current engineering technology. Now documents, relating to the Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), released by the War Zone website, reportedly show that the army wants to attempt to verify TTSA’s claims. “To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science is a company with material and technology innovations that offer capability advancements for army ground vehicles,” the documents reportedly read. “These technology innovations have been acquired, designed, and produced by the Collaborator [TTSA], leveraging advancements in metamaterials and quantum physics to push performance gains.” The agreement goes on to say that the government wants to “assess, test, and characterize” the material at government facilities to compare them with known commodities and to understand what would be required to reproduce the advancements. “If the government can verify material solutions claims by the collaborator, then significant advancements can be made in the capabilities of army ground vehicle platforms in terms of security, force protection and weight reduction," it adds. The documents also reveal that the agreement will run out in September, 2023, but whether the general public will get to hear how it works out was not divulged. Like this story? Share it with a friend! | RT | https://www.rt.com/usa/471363-us-army-ufo-groups-mystery-material/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS | Sun, 20 Oct 2019 14:04:00 +0000 | 1,571,594,640 | 1,572,533,859 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
484,207 | skynewspolitics--2019-11-19--Can the Greens achieve their radical goals on housing? | 2019-11-19T00:00:00 | skynewspolitics | Can the Greens achieve their radical goals on housing? | Can the Greens achieve their radical goals on housing? Can the Greens achieve their radical goals on housing? The Green Party has been decades ahead of its political rivals in warning of a climate crisis and in this election, the consensus appears to have caught up with them. The Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats share their analysis that there is a climate emergency and Theresa May committed the Conservatives to "leading the world in tackling climate change". But when it comes to tackling the problem the Greens remain decades ahead, two decades in fact. The party's election manifesto commits the UK to becoming carbon neutral by 2030, a full 20 years ahead of the current government target of 2050. Delivering such a fundamental change in a carbon-reliant economy in little more than a decade is hugely ambitious but the Greens maintain it is possible with public will and sufficient investment. They propose 10 key pieces of legislation to deliver a "Green New Deal" backed by £1trn over 10 years, covering areas including energy, transport, industry and so on. One key policy plank is housing and comes with specific targets to transform the energy efficiency of the nation's homes. It matters because heating and lighting for homes contributes 14% of the UK's carbon emissions. That's more than double the 6% arising from energy we use in our homes to cook, boil the kettle, recharge smartphones and so on. The Greens' proposal is to create 100,000 new council homes built to the highest standards of energy efficiency every year for a decade, at a cost of £10.6bn. They also plan to retrofit insulation and green energy into one million more existing homes and premises annually, at an estimated cost of £24.6m. Meeting these targets would require a vast increase in the quantity of council house building and domestic engineering. Annual council house construction has been in steep decline for nearly 30 years, falling from almost 60,000 in the mid-1990s to just 7,000 additional new or acquired council homes last year. Increasing that rate to 100,000 a year is a huge ask. And just 7,000 were built in England last year Upgrading existing housing to the highest energy efficiency standards may be an even bigger challenge, however. Britain's homes are hugely energy inefficient, in part because of their age. Judged against the energy performance register introduced as part of home information packs, less than one percent have the highest A or B rating. And the Greens are proposing new builds and retro-fits meet an even higher standard, known as a Passivhaus, of which there are just 1,000 in the UK in total. "To do this would be unprecedented," said Luke Murphy of the Institute for Public Policy Research, a think-tank. "The current government has committed to upgrading 2.5 million homes for those in fuel poverty just to energy rating C, which isn't the highest rating, and they're on schedule to deliver that by 2091 rather than 2030, so this is extremely challenging, it's very ambitious." Perhaps the major question is whether the construction industry has the skills or capacity to deliver, even if the money is there to pay for it. Rick Hartwig, built environment lead for the Institution of Engineering and Technology, says the figures are realistic, but it could take a decade for the industry be ready to build at such a rate, about the same time the Green's carbon neutral target is due to be delivered. "£24.6bn is more than enough to kick-start the industry to deliver deep retrofit. "Current spending on energy measures is £640m per year on low performance single measures such as replacing the boiler or fitting new and improved windows and doors. "We have called for the adoption of deep retrofit to reduce carbon generation of buildings to zero. "This would be achieved by adding insulation to walls and roofs, adding PV panels, new windows and improved ventilation system. "But it is difficult to see how the industry could move to high-performance net-zero measures at £24.6bn a year. "That might take 10 years in itself to achieve." Campaign Check scrutinises election claims made by political parties, examining if they are true or false, and the context. Sky News is working with Full Fact - the leading independent fact-checking charity. The Brexit Election on Sky News - the fastest results and in-depth analysis on mobile, TV and radio. • See the exit poll at 10pm • Find out what happens next in All Out Politics special from 9am with Adam Boulton | null | http://news.sky.com/story/can-the-greens-achieve-their-radical-goals-on-housing-11865060 | Tue, 19 Nov 2019 17:31:00 +0000 | 1,574,202,660 | 1,574,209,536 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
510,488 | sottnet--2019-12-29--First chip-to-chip quantum teleportation achieved could lead to breakthroughs in super computing | 2019-12-29T00:00:00 | sottnet | First chip-to-chip quantum teleportation achieved could lead to breakthroughs in super computing | The development of technologies which can process information based on the laws of quantum physics are predicted to have profound impacts on modern society.For example, quantum computers may hold the key to solving problems that are too complex for today's most powerful supercomputers, and a quantum internet could ultimately protect the worlds information from malicious attacks.However,Scientists from the University of Bristol, in collaboration with the Technical University of Denmark (DTU),These chips. This demonstration could enable a significant boost in the ability to produce more complex quantum circuits that are required in quantum computing and communications.Their work, published in the journal Nature Physics, hosts a range of quantum demonstrations.In one of the breakthrough experiments, researchers at the University of Bristol's Quantum Engineering Technology Labs (QET Labs) Quantum teleportation offers quantum state transfer of a quantum particle from one place to another by utilising entanglement. Teleportation is not only useful for quantum communication but is a fundamental building-block of optical quantum computing. Establishing an entangled communication link between two chips in the lab however has proven to be highly challenging.Bristol Co-author Dan Llewellyn said:."Another co-author, Dr Imad Faruque , also from Bristol, added: "Based on our previous result of on-chip high quality single-photon sources, we have built an even more complex circuit containing four sources.The results showed extremely high-fidelity quantum teleportation of 91 percent. In addition, the researchers were able to demonstrate some other important functionality of their designs, such as entanglement swapping (required for quantum repeaters and quantum networks) and four-photon GHZ states (required in quantum computing and the quantum internet).According to co-author Dr Yunhong Ding, from DTU, low loss, high stability, and excellent controllability are extremely important for integrated quantum photonics. He said: "This experiment wasbased on high-quality fabrication at the DTU."Lead author, Dr Jianwei Wang, now at Peking University, said: "In the future, a single Si-chip integration of quantum photonic devices and classical electronic controls will open the door for fully chip-based CMOS-compatible quantum communication and information processing networks." | null | https://www.sott.net/article/426497-First-chip-to-chip-quantum-teleportation-achieved-could-lead-to-breakthroughs-in-super-computing | Sun, 29 Dec 2019 15:58:26 +0000 | 1,577,653,106 | 1,577,666,074 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
527,770 | sputnik--2019-03-13--Prof China Investors Welcomed as Long as They Dont Run Counter to Italian Govt | 2019-03-13T00:00:00 | sputnik | Prof: China Investors Welcomed as Long as They Don’t Run Counter to Italian Govt | Italian-Chinese economic relations are continuing to develop. In recent days, Costa Venezia, which is the first Italian ship created specifically for the Chinese market, has been launched. Italy is ready to sign a memorandum to join the Silk Road and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s next visit to the country, scheduled for late March, could mark a turning point in relations between the two countries. However, the United States isn’t happy about this; they consider the Belt and Road Initiative to be a threat to American world hegemony. Renzo Cavalieri: Economic relations mean many things: first of all, in the strict sense, economic relations mean to sell and buy. For Italy, China is a major trading partner and an outlet market for a whole series of products, not just those related to fashion and design, but also those in the fields of engineering and technology. China is also an important market where many Italian companies can purchase goods. Then there’re some other economic relations between the two countries, such as reciprocal investments. Italian companies investing in China have an interest in participating in the economic growth of the Asian country. For Chinese companies, our country is a strategic outlet that has access to some other European markets. Sputnik: We know that the Chinese invest a lot in Italy, but there are risks and dangers to it. What do you think about this? Renzo Cavalieri: The positive aspect of Chinese investments in Italy is that they are long-term investments; that is, a Chinese investor is not trying to acquire new technologies to be able to take home, but is investing in Italy for a long-term presence in Europe. Renzo Cavalieri: Italy is an open country with an open market, and this is its advantage. So investors, as long as they respect the rules and don’t run counter to the interests of the Italian government, don’t pose any risk to the country’s economy. But it’s a different story when we speak of very specific industries. Let’s say the country’s strategic interests, which can be military, energy, communications and so on: in this case, I believe it is not necessary to ban the investment, but there should be some minimal level that cannot be exceeded. This concerns not only Chinese investments, but any other investment as well. Sputnik: Is there any risk that by buying Italian companies and signing important contracts with Italy, China can appropriate Italian know-how? Renzo Cavalieri: It’s not a risk, it’s a certainty! Once China buys an Italian company that has certain technologies, these technologies are acquired by the Chinese. It’s necessary to understand that such a development is not absolutely negative; maybe this way some Italian entrepreneur will be able to collect money and develop new technology. Sputnik: Why, in your opinion, is the United States against Italy’s participation in the Belt and Road project? Renzo Cavalieri: There is undoubtedly a competition between the United States and China with regard to zones of influence. The United States is afraid that Italy is the weakest link in the European system and in particular the G7. The Americans are concerned that Italy could become a Chinese Trojan horse allowing them to enter the system. I believe that Italy could benefit from that. Italy is already part of the Belt and Road Initiative, for example the Silk Road Fund, which is set up specifically for investments along the New Silk Road, is already investing in Italy. It’s also true that the stronger the ties with China are, then the stronger is the need for China to follow global rules. Chinese companies, banks, and the government all operate in a unitary way; while in Italy there is separation of powers where some very small companies often have no contact with the government. This is what could be dangerous for Italy, because we are talking here about a very large and unified system against a small and divided one. So, obviously, there are risks here. Sputnik: What role could Italy play in the Belt and Road Project? Analyst on Huawei Case: US Seems to Realize that China is Getting Ahead of Game Renzo Cavalieri: Italy can now play a dual role. On the one hand, it can appear as a founding country of the European Union with certain traditions and values; but on the other hand, it can show that it is open to a new world that is more multipolar, and where China plays a fundamental role. The danger is that Europe doesn’t have a unified attitude on these issues. Having joined in this project, Italy would be able to move in the right direction — but on its own, that is, without its allies, namely France and Germany, which aren’t ready for such steps. But the fact that Italy is open for cooperation with such countries, like China, is, certainly, a positive thing. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of Renzo Cavalieri and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik. | null | https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201903131073183080-italy-china-asia-cooperation-risks-investments/ | 2019-03-13 03:46:00+00:00 | 1,552,463,160 | 1,567,546,482 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
550,960 | sputnik--2019-11-26--Russian Scientists Create New Types of Cold-Resistant Steel | 2019-11-26T00:00:00 | sputnik | Russian Scientists Create New Types of Cold-Resistant Steel | The development of the new technology started in the spring of 2019; it was successfully tested this fall. The work has been carried out by the Russian State Scientific Center – Central Research and Development Institute for Mechanical Engineering Technology (Tsniitmash), which is part of the Atomenergomash holding, and the Russian Ural Steel company. The creation of domestic technologies for the production, storage, and transport of LNG is one of the priority goals set by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Cold-resistant nickel alloy steels are widely used across the world for the manufacture of various equipment, tanks, and containers for LNG projects. | null | https://sputniknews.com/russia/201911261077401791-russian-scientists-create-new-types-of-cold-resistant-steel/ | Tue, 26 Nov 2019 04:21:10 +0300 | 1,574,760,070 | 1,574,772,438 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
626,679 | thedailymirror--2019-02-25--15 weird and wonderful bursaries that could get you into university for free | 2019-02-25T00:00:00 | thedailymirror | 15 weird and wonderful bursaries that could get you into university for free | Tuition fees aren't cheap - and coupled with rising living costs, many young people today are graduating more than £30,000 in debt. And while you don't have to repay a penny until you're earning £25,000, when you do, you'll also be battling bills, rent, transport costs and the fight to get on the property ladder. But there might be a way out. Dozens of universities are offering scholarships and bursaries to help those desperate to study - for a reduced rate or even free. According to The Scholarship Hub, UK students are potentially missing out on over £150 million in unclaimed scholarships each year. These schemes vary from teaching to engineering degrees, but cast the net wider, and you've much more to play with. "The number of scholarships, grants and bursaries are rising each year, yet the vast majority of students aren't even aware of them," explains The Scholarship Hub founder Karen Kennard. "Around 60% of students don’t even apply for scholarships, believing that they aren't eligible, yet we know that organisations are often struggling to find applicants. "There are many different scholarships available, that offer mentoring and work placements as well as cash, and they're not just for disadvantaged students or linked to particular universities and subjects. Students should be checking what they might be eligible for so they don’t miss out." We've highlighted 17 scholarships and bursaries you could apply for below. If you've an exceptional circumstance, are below the age of 26 and are a vegetarian (or vegan), you may qualify for a one off award of up to £500. It's provided for by the Vegetarian Charity and aimed at all vegetarians in need of financial support. The grant is designed for those in hardship - not those anticipating it. This means you can apply at any point during your course. Cyber security scholarships worth £4,000 a year are offered to aspiring students each year by GCHQ. It's open to students with three A-levels at grade B or above and have an offer to study, or are currently in their first year of a STEM (Sciences, Technology, Engineering or Maths) degree, at a UK university. The course also offers paid cyber security work experience to kick start your career. You can find out more about it, online, here. Budding singers could be eligible for up to £3,620 a year if they study at Exeter University (or plan to), thanks to the Exeter Cathedral Choral Scholarship Programme. There are 6-8 choral scholars in the church's choir, with a similar number of Lay Vicars and 20 boy or girl choristers. If you fit the bill, you may be able to get money off your course fees. The scholarships are normally tenable for three years, though it may be extended for an extra year in certain circumstances or for postgraduates. Over three years it works out at as much as £10,860. The Royal Television Society (RTS) is offering 20 bursaries to students studying Television Production and Broadcast Journalism, plus an additional five technology bursaries to help encourage people to consider careers in this field. The bursaries are aimed at students in less affluent circumstances with the goal of helping to widen participation and skills in media and its related industries. Bursary recipients will receive £1,000 a year, as well as affiliate membership of the Hospital Club and full membership of the RTS. They will also receive mentoring opportunities from RTS partners including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky. You can apply online, here. The Leverhulme Trade Charities Trust offers bursaries of up to £3,000 a year to UK students who are the children, spouse, widow or widower of a Commercial Traveller, chemist or grocer and are in need of financial support. The most that you can apply for is £3,000 a year. You can use the grant for any costs connected with going to university, including tuition fees, accommodation, living expenses, and equipment to help you study. Applicants can apply for a new bursary for each year at university (max 3 years). Application deadlines are 1 March and 1 November. To be considered, it must be your first undergraduate degree. The Talented Athlete Scholarship Scheme (TASS) is a Sport England funded partnership between talented athletes, education institutions and national governing bodies of sport. TASS helps athletes in education – aged 16-plus – to get the very best from their sporting and academic careers without having to choose between the two. It currently supports around 600 athletes in 32 Sport England sports. These promising athletes have been identified as performing at the top of the Sport England Talent Pathway. It operates during the academic year from September 1st – August 31st - find out more, here. If you're a top golfer with an impressive guideline handicap of +1 (for men) and +3 (for women), or have recently been offered a place in a national squad, you may be able to claim a Royal & Ancient Golf Scholarship of up to £5,000 at one of 17 universities. This includes Birmingham, Durham, Exeter, Bournemouth, Hartpury, Northumbria, St Andrews, Ulster, Loughborough, NUI Maynooth, Stirling, Central Lancashire, strathclyde and University of the Highlands and Islands. Countries abroad include the University of Malaga in Spain and Halmstaad in Sweden. To apply, you'll have to send your application form off between 20 August and 12 October. If you're a musician looking to further your skills at university, you may be able to apply for the Drake Calleja Trust scholarship worth up to £9,000. Lucky applicants will have their fees, instrument purchases, masterclasses, recordings, concerts and other related activities all paid for. It covers those studying at music college or conservatoires in the UK at undergraduate, postgraduate or research level (musical theatre and jazz students are not eligible). Applicants must be of an outstanding standard and be able to clearly demonstrate that they are in need of funding. Students studying subjects through the medium of Welsh can apply for up to £1,500 through The Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol Scholarship - which, if successful, will be paid out at £500 a year. The Coleg award 150 undergraduate scholarships each year - find out more here. If you're from a Black Asian or Minority Ethnic Background, are aged between 14 and 21, are attending school or university full time in the UK and are academically gifted, you could apply for the Miranda Brawn Diversity Leadership Scholarship. Winners will receive a one-off £1,000 plus mentoring and work experience. Recipients of the Scholarship will be chosen annually based on their exemplary academic performance and demonstrable interest in diversity. Find out more, here. A more traditional approach, outstanding students with a minimum of three grade As at A2 level or equivalent (144 UCAS points from three units) could be eligible for a Vice Chancellor's Scholarship at Liverpool John Moores University for up to £10,000 a year. It's a life changing sum of money but to be considered for it, your first university choice must be Liverpool John Moores. You must also be able to demonstrate going the extra mile, through citizenship, sport, performing arts or similar. The deadline for applications is 28 June. Liverpool John Moores also offers a free Sports Scholarship Scheme for talented sportsmen and sportswomen. The university prides itself as one of the leading initiatives in this field, and says those successful will get first rate support to help them fulfil both their sporting and their academic potential. In the past, the university has helped Olympic and Commonwealth champions with all students being given a mentor for the duration of their study. Considered applicants may be competing in a recognised BUSA, World University Games, Commonwealth games or Olympic Games sport. Junior or Senior International standard athletes from all sports are also encouraged to apply, as are athletes competing at elite club level. All applications must be received before 12 May in the year in which you intend to start your degree. Each year, the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) offers new students the chance to apply for a £1,000-a-year scholarship to see them through a three year degree. It's for those who are about to embark on an IET accredited degree programme. Winners will also receive professional development support and networking opportunities while on the course. Find out more, here. The University of Portsmouth, in partnership with the Unite Foundation, offers a number of accommodation scholarships to care leavers and young people who are estranged from their parents. Students can apply for a UNITE scholarship once they have confirmed the University of Portsmouth as their first choice institution on their UCAS application. These scholarships are offered in addition to the Care Leavers' and Standalone bursaries. The scholarship offers a free place in halls of residence for three years of study. To qualify you must be under 25, have a household income of less than £25,000, be a care leaver or estranged from your parents and about to commence your first undergraduate course. You can find out more on this scholarship here. These bursaries worth £6,000 are offered to students studying a foreign language degree who apply for and are accepted as an Intelligence Analyst (Linguists). You will have the promise of a job on graduation plus a bursary for two years while you study. As an RAF Intelligence Analyst (Linguist), you will interpret foreign language transmissions using state-of-the-art surveillance systems, providing vital intelligence to support military forces deployed around the world. Find out more here. | Emma Munbodh | https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/free-degree-courses-apply-online-12344061 | 2019-02-25 15:44:00+00:00 | 1,551,127,440 | 1,567,547,413 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
702,488 | theguardianuk--2019-06-19--Female academics are too scarce So were banning job applications from men Frank Baaijens | 2019-06-19T00:00:00 | theguardianuk | Female academics are too scarce. So we’re banning job applications from men | Frank Baaijens | Engineering has a huge impact on society. To responsibly advance science and technology, a university should be a balanced reflection of society. As a top engineering university we believe that diversity and inclusiveness is crucial for the quality of our teaching and research. More than that, we believe we can turn a fully representative academic workforce into a unique strength. This is why, from 1 July, all our job vacancies will be exclusively open to female candidates for the first six months after they are advertised. This is certainly a radical step, as the international [headlines about our move](https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/jun/18/top-engineering- university-to-open-jobs-exclusively-to-women) attest. But we felt it was a necessary step as the more subtle measures we tried over the past 10 years were to no avail. The targets we set for female recruitment and the missionary work of our chief diversity officers were certainly useful in making our staff and community aware of [inequalities](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/13/workplace-gender- discrimination-remains-rife-survey-finds) and their own biases. As a result, at least two women are now on every selection panel. And yet, the gender imbalance persists with only 16% of our full professors being female – one of the lowest percentages in the Netherlands, and indeed in Europe. What has become clear is that during the recruitment and selection processes, all of us – males and females alike – have an [unconscious bias](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/dec/02/unconscious-bias-what- is-it-and-can-it-be-eliminated) that means we gravitate towards male candidates. This makes it harder for women to start and develop their academic careers. To address this unfair situation, we had to take affirmative action, even at the risk of upsetting some male candidates for jobs. The aim currently is to raise female representation to at least 20% by 2020 and eventually to over 30% in the next decade. As a university devoted to engineering and technology we thrive on innovation to create the unimaginable, such as [3D-printed housing](https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/jun/06/netherlands-to- build-worlds-first-habitable-3d-printed-houses) and living heart valves, and this means it is essential to embrace diverse teams. There is overwhelming evidence that they are more creative and productive. Including different perspectives leads to better solutions. We simply need to tap the intellectual power of all genders. A university that is fully representative of society calls for an inclusive academic community. But the change we are embarking on will also have a favourable impact on the quality of our teaching and the varied perspectives that our students encounter. In recent years we have successfully attracted more female students, but now we need a culture change to enhance this further. More female staff will attract even more female students. More female professors will serve as role models and epitomise the values of the university. Again, this is not only a matter of fairness. In the Netherlands, as in many other European countries, there is a shortage of [engineers](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat- news/-/EDN-20190211-1). We simply can’t afford to exclude half the intellectual potential of our populations. Besides, engineering is a discipline that is all about brainpower, regardless of gender. The laws of the European Union allow us to favour women, given suitable competences, if they are seriously underrepresented. Smaller initiatives at universities in Delft and Groningen, which have been challenged in court, have shown that this is possible. Diversity, of course, goes beyond gender. As a leading university we seek to recruit academic staff worldwide and have been more successful in doing so than in overcoming the gender gap. Some 40% of our young academic staff come from overseas. Having tried many different ways of attracting female staff and failing, it is time for tough measures. May many other universities follow our lead. • Frank Baaijens is rector of Eindhoven University of Technology, the [Netherlands](https://www.theguardian.com/world/netherlands) | Frank Baaijens | https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/19/female-academics-job-applications-men-engineers | 2019-06-19 16:48:01+00:00 | 1,560,977,281 | 1,567,538,756 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
717,082 | theguardianuk--2019-12-08--UN climate talks failing to address urgency of crisis, says top scientist | 2019-12-08T00:00:00 | theguardianuk | UN climate talks failing to address urgency of crisis, says top scientist | Urgent UN talks on tackling the climate emergency are still not addressing the true scale of the crisis, one of the world’s leading climate scientists has warned, as high-ranking ministers from governments around the world began to arrive in Madrid for the final days of negotiations. Talks are focusing on some of the rules for implementing the 2015 Paris agreement, but the overriding issue of how fast the world needs to cut greenhouse gas emissions has received little official attention. “We are at risk of getting so bogged down in incremental technicalities at these negotiations that we forget to see the forest for the trees,” said Johan Rockström, joint director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “There is a risk of disappointment in the UN process because of the inability to recognise that there is an emergency.” In the next few days, environment and finance ministers from more than 190 governments will begin the “high-level segment” of the UN talks, which began on 2 December, and will finish on Friday. Over the weekend, negotiators produced the latest draft of a key text on carbon markets, which still does not have the consensus needed to pass. The stately pace of negotiations was in stark contrast with the scenes outside the conference in Madrid, where on Friday evening more than 500,000 people marched through the Spanish capital led by the Swedish school striker Greta Thunberg. Protests continued through the weekend, with Extinction Rebellion and groups from across the world. On Monday, Thunberg and other youth activists will hold meetings with officials inside the conference. Rockström said the UN conference must grapple urgently with reversing emissions of greenhouse gases, which are still on the rise despite repeated scientific warnings over three decades and multiple resolutions by governments to tackle the problem. “We must bend the curve next year,” he told the Guardian, citing stark warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Next year is the year of truth. The year when we must move decisively to an economy that really starts to reduce investments in fossil fuels.” Even the coal-fired power plants currently planned or in construction are enough to produce double the amount of carbon that can safely be put in the atmosphere for the next century, Rockström said. The situation was so dire that governments should be starting to consider geoengineering technology, he said. Such projects could use a combination of natural and artificial means, from seeding clouds to erecting reflectors in space. “Geoengineering has to be assessed, maybe even piloted already in case we need to deploy it,” he said. “It makes me very nervous. That is really playing with biological processes that might kick back in very unexpected ways. But I don’t think we should rule anything out – an emergency is an emergency.” As the UN conference enters its final stages, the role of the UK is likely to come under much greater scrutiny. Britain will play host to next year’s conference at which world leaders must pledge much greater cuts in emissions than have yet been made, if the 2015 Paris accord is to succeed. Claire O’Neill, the former Tory climate minister designated to lead next year’s conference, is in Madrid but cannot make official announcements because of the “purdah” rules surrounding political announcements in the run-up to the general election. However, the UK’s plans were rated as “insufficient” in a key independent analysis called the Climate Action Tracker. Despite the government’s eye-catching commitment last summer to cut carbon emissions to net zero by 2050 – one of the first major economies to make such a pledge – few measures are in place to keep pace with the target. “There has been a dearth of new significant climate policies in recent years which, if left unaddressed, will leave the UK missing its medium and long-term targets,” concluded the analysis of global emissions-cutting plans. That would damage the host nation’s credibility at next year’s crucial talks in Glasgow, campaigners said. Dr Bill Hare, a climate scientist and the chief executive of Climate Analytics, which carried out the study, said it was clear which of the two biggest parties had the better plans on the issue before this week’s general election. “While both major political parties have proposed further climate action, the Conservatives have not put sufficient proposals on the table to close this gap, whereas [our analysis shows] the Labour’s £250bn could easily close that gap and push on towards a 1.5C pathway,” Hare said. | Fiona Harvey in Madrid | https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/08/un-climate-talks-are-failing-to-see-urgency-of-crisis-says-scientist | Sun, 08 Dec 2019 18:21:36 GMT | 1,575,847,296 | 1,575,850,980 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
747,452 | theindependent--2019-02-14--What is turbulence and can it cause your plane to crash | 2019-02-14T00:00:00 | theindependent | What is turbulence and can it cause your plane to crash? | After a Delta Air Lines flight nosedived twice due to extreme turbulence, we look at what causes it – and whether it can ever bring down an aircraft. Turbulence is caused by eddies of “rough air” – a bit like waves becoming choppy at sea. There are three main reasons they occur: thermal (warm air rises through cooler air); mechanical (a mountain or manmade structure disrupts air flow); and shear (on the border of two pockets of air moving in different directions). This makes the aircraft rise and fall and rock from side to side. It’s completely normal. And although it can feel scary, modern aircraft are designed to withstand a huge amount of turbulence. Pilots often know when they’re going to hit turbulence from weather and radar reports. They radio air traffic control and pilots flying a similar route when they come across choppy air, and respond by alerting passengers and slowing the plane down to “turbulence penetration speed”, which reduces the chance of damage to the aircraft and gives a smoother ride. Yes – but there are far fewer turbulence related incidents than you might think. According to data from America’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the number of injuries has averaged 33 per year over the last 16 years – in 2017 there were just 17. Considering 2.6 million passengers fly in and out of US airports every day – 959 million a year – the odds of being injured by turbulence are pretty low. Do as pilots do – always wear your seat belt. Whenever you return from the toilet and sit back in your seat, strap in. Turbulence injuries are often caused because people aren’t wearing their belt. The FAA offers the following tips for staying safe: “The short answer is yes,” senior aviation consultant Adrian Young tells The Independent – but it’s unlikely. Weather at high altitude (storms and clear air turbulence), microbursts at ground level and wake turbulence caused by other aircraft can all be included under the term “turbulance” according to Young. “The first is rare as the cause of a crash in transport aircraft. There are a couple of examples from the 1960s,” he says. “Microbursts cause fewer accidents now than they did in the 1990s. See the American accident at Little Rock in 1999 (an MD-82, flight AA1420). Better extreme weather detection systems exist and flight techniques have been improved. “Wake turbulence affects smaller aeroplanes more than large ones. One accident comes to mind; American 587 at New York in 2001.” Modern-day engineering and technology reduce the risk dramatically – satellites and advanced meteorology technologies give pilots extremely accurate forecasts of areas of expected turbulence. Utimately, “it’s rare and the industry has worked over the years to reduce the risk,” says Young. | Helen Coffey | http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/turbulence-dangers-facts-plane-crash-flight-aircraft-delta-nosedive-video-a8779201.html | 2019-02-14 13:38:54+00:00 | 1,550,169,534 | 1,567,548,523 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
780,240 | theindependent--2019-12-20--Car review: Skoda Superb – a whole lot of car for your cash | 2019-12-20T00:00:00 | theindependent | Car review: Skoda Superb – a whole lot of car for your cash | So my friend remarked as they settled into the vast rear compartment of Skoda’s flagship saloon/near-limousine. Not a new story that, for those who follow the car trade. Yet, but even now, even after a quarter of a century or so since Volkswagen Group took on the task of rebuilding this venerable Czech marque, people still seem a bit surprised to get into a Skoda and find that it isn’t some sort of Soviet-era gulag. Which it certainly is not. The Superb – not by any means an ironic name, and I mean that in a non-ironic way – has actually been around since 2001, and quickly garnered a reputation for being solid, reliable and comfortable transportation. it often finds a role as a minicab, which says something about its usefulness, but the Superb deserves better. It looked like a scaled-up Octavia, and shared some underpinnings with the well-respected VW Passat. Its successor followed much the same approach, and was favourably compared with the Bentley Continental Flying Spur, an aristocratic cousin of the Skoda in the VW Group family tree. The secret of its success, as my friend discovered, is the high quality of the interior materials – leather, soft plastics, matt plastics – and the elongated rear section, which endows the model with ample legroom and more than ample luggage space. As an unconventionally big five-foot hatch it is also eminently practical; we used to have lots of cars in this configuration such as the SD1 Rover, Saab 900, Renault 25 and Audi Avant, but they’ve long since faded away in favour of the old “exec saloon” school three-box shape. With this, the third generation Superb – now with some cosmetic tweaks and extra kit to freshen up its appeal – is once again the recipe as before. If you’re a proper car spotter you’ll notice the revised styling for the front, and the new style for the badging on the boot – the name S K O D A spread out across the back, each letter no doubt lovingly applied by an artisan in the factory in Kvasiny, Czech Republic. It’s a thing that car makers do when they’d like to give their model a bit of a “premium” feel – you’ll see it on contemporary Volvos and Fords too. In the Superb’s case, the effort is mostly justified. I could only find one small fault, which is that one edge of the nice big digital screen didn’t quite fit flush with the rest of the dash, a quite noticeable gap (and plainly not meant to be there as it was all nicely lined up on the other side). Erm, but that was about it for obvious flaws. They’ve fitted the latest with an adaptive cruise control system, so it will brake if you get too close to the car in front when cruising, and speed up again automatically; but the controls are still in one of those little pods behind the steering wheel, which are a bit fiddly to get at. I appreciated the car’s softly sprung suspension. It gives it a lolling sort of ride as it tackles poor British roads, and at times it feels a bit like you’re piloting a boat. It’s not made for chucking around, but it’s a perfectly stable and secure handler, and the diesel engine (petrols also available) and modern DSG gearbox (which can pre-select the next gear you’re likely to choose) make for a good pairing. Most of all, the Superb is still excellent value for money, and Skoda have not got too far ahead of themselves in their pricing strategy. The Superb’s only real rival, I would say, is the rarely glimpsed but also excellent Kia Stinger, an even more stylish machine, and, in a slightly different bracket, the Volvo S60 saloon. As one boss of Audi (another arm of the VW empire) unwisely remarked a while back, you get almost everything you get in an Audi – especially the underlying engineering and technology – but at a hefty discount. This is basically a budget Bentley, and will give you 40mpg in diesel form: Quite the offer, that. | Sean O'Grady | https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/motoring/car-review-skoda-superb-hatch-vw-group-a9253306.html | Fri, 20 Dec 2019 10:49:12 GMT | 1,576,856,952 | 1,576,888,531 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
782,546 | theintercept--2019-10-19--Bill McKibben on How Climate Crises and New Technologies Will Change What It Means to Be Human | 2019-10-19T00:00:00 | theintercept | Bill McKibben on How Climate Crises and New Technologies Will Change What It Means to Be Human | race approaching its demise? The question itself may sound hyperbolic — or like a throwback to the rapture and apocalypse. Yet there is reason to believe that such fears are no longer so overblown. The threat of climate change is forcing millions around the world to realistically confront a future in which their lives, at a minimum, look radically worse than they are today. At the same time, emerging technologies of genetic engineering and artificial intelligence are giving a small, technocratic elite the power to radically alter homo sapiens to the point where the species no longer resembles itself. Whether through ecological collapse or technological change, human beings are fast approaching a dangerous precipice. McKibben spoke to The Intercept about the book. The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Can you explain what you mean by the “human game”? I was looking for a phrase to describe the totality of everything that we do as human beings. You could also term it as human civilization, or the human project. But “game” seems like a more appropriate term. Not because it’s trivial, but because, like any other game, it doesn’t really have a goal outside of itself. The only goal is to continue to play, and hopefully play well. Playing the human game well might be described as living with dignity and ensuring that others can live with dignity as well. There are very serious threats now facing the human game. Basic questions of human survival and identity are being realistically called into question. It’s become clear that climate change is dramatically shrinking the size of the board on which the game is played. At the same time, some emerging technologies threaten the idea that human beings as a species will even be around to play in the future. Could you briefly run down the implications of climate change for the future of human civilization, as we presently understand it? Climate change is by far the biggest thing that humans have ever managed to do on this planet. It has altered the chemistry of the atmosphere in fundamental ways, raised the temperature of the planet over 1 degree Celsius, melted half the summer ice in the Arctic, and made the oceans 30 percent more acidic. We are seeing uncontrollable forest fires around the world, along with record levels of drought and flooding. In some places, average daily temperatures are already becoming too hot for human beings to even work during the daylight. People are making plans to leave major cities and low-lying coastal areas, where their ancestors have lived for thousands of years. Even in rich countries like the United States, critical infrastructure is being strained. We saw this recently with the shutdown of electrical power in much of California due to wildfire risk. This is what we’ve done at merely 1 degree Celsius of warming above pre-industrial levels. It is already becoming difficult to live in large parts of the planet. On our current trajectory, we are headed for 3 or 4 degrees of warming. At that level, we simply won’t have a civilization like we do now. Since the major culprit in climate change remains the fossil fuel industry, what practical steps can be taken to get their activities under control? And given that they also share a planet with everyone else, what exactly is their plan for a future of climate dystopia? We have already made efforts at divestment and halting the construction of pipelines, but the next crucial area is finance: focusing on the banks and asset managers that give them the money to do what they do. It has become very clear that the only goal of the fossil fuel industry is to protect their business model at all costs, even at the cost of the planet. Major oil companies like Exxon knew about the connection between carbon emissions and climate change in the 1980s. They knew and believed in what was coming. Instead of rationally adjusting their behavior to avoid it, they invested millions in lobbying and disinformation to ensure that the world wouldn’t do anything to make them change or stop their activities. To the extent that any fossil fuel company thinks about the long run at all — and it’s not clear that any still do — they know that their days are numbered. Renewable energy costs are plummeting, and what the industry is fighting for now is to just keep themselves going for a few more decades. Their goal is to ensure that we’re still burning a lot of oil and gas in 10 or 20 years, rather than trying to get off the stuff as fast as possible. The other major threat that you identify is posed by technologies like genetic engineering. Can you explain the threat that they pose to human identity and purpose? Just as we had long taken for granted the stability of the planet, we have likewise taken for granted the stability of the human species. There are technologies now emerging that call into question very fundamental assumption about what it means to be a human being. Take, for example, genetic engineering technologies like CRISPR. These are already now coming into effect, as we saw recently in China, where a pair of twins were reportedly born after having their genes modified in embryo. I don’t see any problem with using gene editing to help existing people with existing diseases. That is very different, however, from genetically engineering embryos with specialized modifications. Let’s say for example that an expectant couple decides to engineer their new child to have a certain hormonal balance aimed at improving their mood. That child may reach adolescence one day and find themselves feeling very happy without any particular explanation why. Are they falling in love? Or is it just their genetic engineering specs kicking in? Human beings could soon be designed with a whole range of new specs that modifies their thoughts, feelings, and abilities. I think that such a prospect — not far-fetched at all today — will be a devastating attack on the most vital things about being human. It will call into question basic ideas of who we are and how we think about ourselves. There is also the implication of accelerating technological change in genetic engineering technology. After modifying their first child, those same parents may come back five years later to the clinic to make changes to their second child. In the meantime, the technology has marched on, and you can now get a whole new series of upgrades and tweaks. What does that mean for the first child? It makes them the iPhone 6: obsolete. That’s a very new idea for human beings. One of the standard features of technology is obsolescence. A situation where you are rapidly making people themselves obsolete seems wrongheaded to me. There also seems to be a question of economic inequality here, in the sense that people with more resources will be the ones with the access to these genetic enhancements. As things stand, these technologies will take the economic inequality presently in existence and encode it in our genes. This is so obviously going to happen if we continue down this path that no one bothers to argue otherwise. Lee Silver, a professor at Princeton University who is one of the leading proponents of genetic modification, has already said that in the future we will have two unequal classes of human beings: “GenRich” and “naturals.” He and many others have already begun taking such a future as granted. Do you think that artificial intelligence poses a similar threat to human beings? Many of the first generation of people who studied AI came away deeply afraid of its potential implications. There is a fear that smart robots and programming codes may get out of hand and end up posing a threat to human beings. Those fears may or may not be real. At the end of the day, they worry me less than the more fundamental assault on human meaning and purpose posed by these technologies. They can easily eliminate most of the choices and activities that have given us our basic sense of identity as human beings. What should be the priority of social movements seeking to defend “the human game” at the moment? And do we have cause for optimism? Climate change is such an immediate and overpowering issue that it should be the focus of our attention right now, because it could make everything else moot. I’ve gotten to watch the rise of the climate movement over many years and it gives me cause for some optimism. We’ve recently seen massive climate strikes around the world. The Democratic Party in the United States is becoming energized on this issue. These are good signs. Whether they come in time or not, we don’t know. But the advent of human genetic engineering is not getting the attention it deserves at the present. The profound implications of CRISPR and other rapidly evolving technologies are things that we should give much more attention. From a strategic perspective, it would be good to get a resistance going sooner than later. As we have seen with fossil fuels, once there is a huge, powerful industry behind something, it becomes much more difficult to control. It seems like at core there is an ideological issue underlying all of these threats that are presently facing human beings. It’s instructive that a lot of the fantasies underlying the most extreme manifestations of genetic engineering and AI come from people in Silicon Valley who share a libertarian mindset. They are essentially hip versions of the Koch brothers. They share an ethos with the fossil fuel industry that says no one should ever question decisions made by the powerful and that no one should ever get in the way of business and technological innovation. Meanwhile, the public is being told — and has been told for a long time — that they’re nothing but individuals and nothing but consumers. That goes against everything we know about human nature. Human beings are happy when they’re part of working communities, not when they’re out on their own as individuals trying to take over the universe. That’s what all these battles are in some sense about: building human solidarity against a hyper-individualist elite. We need to find out once again how to make decisions as a society, rather than have a small group of super-wealthy people privately making them for us. | Murtaza Hussain | https://theintercept.com/2019/10/19/bill-mckibben-falter-book-human-game/ | Sat, 19 Oct 2019 10:00:07 +0000 | 1,571,493,607 | 1,571,493,836 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
784,323 | theirishtimes--2019-02-11--Irelands pay gap between men and women in RD highest in Europe | 2019-02-11T00:00:00 | theirishtimes | Ireland’s pay gap between men and women in R&D highest in Europe | The pay gap between women and men working in scientific research and development positions in Ireland is the largest in the European Union, with women earning on average 30 per cent less than men, research has found. The European Commission on Monday released She Figures 2018, which presents key indicators on progress made towards gender equality in research and innovation, to mark the 20th anniversary of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. The research found that in 2014, Ireland topped the list as the EU country with the largest pay gap between men and women in scientific R&D positions, falling only behind Turkey, which was included in the research as a candidate country for the EU with a gap of more than 35 per cent. The EU average pay gap between women and men in these positions in 2014 was 17 per cent. While the number of women at European universities now outnumbers men, the She Figures 2018 report shows women are still a minority in top academic positions. It reveals less than 24 per cent of senior scientific posts were held by women in 2016, a slight increase on the 22 per cent of senior positions held by women in 2013. Only one in five heads of higher education institutions across Europe are women. The average number of female PhD graduates across the EU is now 47.9 per cent, almost on par with the number of male graduates, with the number of women PhD graduates is increasing by an average of 2.3 per cent per year compared to an increase of 1.4 per cent among men. In Ireland, 21 per cent of women hold senior academic jobs while 36 per cent of scientific research positions are held by women. However, internationally the number of women who hold research positions has barely risen since 2012, with female researchers making up a third of the entire cohort. The report cautions that while gender balance exists among research positions in the humanities and the arts, the number of women researching the fields of engineering and technology is significantly lower. Women are overrepresented in the fields of research in medical and health sciences, it notes. The report warns of an “extremely low” number of women among patent inventors and that for each inventorship made by a woman in the EU, there are 10 inventorships made by men. These figures have not changed much since 2010 and while signs of progress can be seen, the pace remains slow, says the report. Arguments have been made that this low number of patents by female applicants is because most applications come from scientific fields where men predominate, it adds. Commenting on the report’s findings, Carlos Moedas, European commissioner for research, science and innovation, warned that if the pace of change continues at the current speed, women working in science would have to wait until 2149 before the gender pay gap is closed. Mr Moedas underlined the need for a “serious discussion” around the use of quotas in universities and institutes while calling for an end to the practice of considering career breaks as “career breakers”. He also called for unconscious bias towards women in science to be brought out into the open. | null | https://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/ireland-s-pay-gap-between-men-and-women-in-r-d-highest-in-europe-1.3788854 | 2019-02-11 01:00:00+00:00 | 1,549,864,800 | 1,567,548,928 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
785,346 | theirishtimes--2019-03-18--School subjects strongly influence whether girls study Stem at college | 2019-03-18T00:00:00 | theirishtimes | School subjects strongly influence whether girls study Stem at college | Fewer girls than boys are choosing to study Stem subjects in college due to the choices they make at Leaving Cert level, new research has shown. The Understanding Gender Differences in STEM study, published by the UCD centre for economic research, reveals that the subjects female students choose to study during the Leaving Cert cycle strongly influence whether or not they will go on to study courses in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem) at third level. Even two years before college entry, students are making decisions that impact whether or not they go on to study Stem, said the authors of the report. They are calling on the Government to intervene at an earlier stage in encouraging women to pursue careers in engineering and technology. The research was carried out using data from the Central Admissions Office (CAO) and included all students aged 16-20 who did their Leaving Cert and applied for degree courses between 2015 and 207. At Leaving Cert level, boys were found to be three times more likely to study physics and applied maths, while girls were more likely to study chemistry and biology. Less than 5 per cent of girls studied more practical subjects such as engineering, building construction, design graphics and technology. These divides also existed across mixed-gender schools, suggesting that the availability of certain subjects does not play a strong role in whether or not students study Stem at college. The study warns of a significant gender difference in CAO applications for Stem courses at third level, with more than 40 per cent of boys applying for Stem courses compared to about 19 per cent of girls. This large gap appears to be driven by boys opting for engineering and technology, with girls slightly more likely to choose science and mathematics. While there was no gap found in science, the report notes a “substantial” gender gap in engineering and technology courses at third level. It found that students’ overall academic achievement at Leaving Cert played a “negligible role” in whether or not they go on to study Stem subjects. Gender gaps were found to be smaller among high-achieving students and for students who go to school in more affluent areas. The report notes that while subject choices explain most of the gender gap in engineering, they do not explain the gender gap in technology, “suggesting different policies may be required to tackle the gender gap in technology than in engineering”. The gender gap becomes much smaller once nursing is included as one of the Stem subjects. Women were more than twice as likely than men to list courses in education on their CAO forms, and more than four times as likely to list health/welfare courses. In order to reduce the Stem gender gap at third level, the study recommends that interventions are made when students are choosing their Leaving Cert subjects rather than two years later when they are deciding what to study at college. A spokeswoman for the Department of Education said the promotion of increased participation of all students, with a particular focus on female students, in Stem subjects was a “key priority”. She underlined that the number of female third-level entrants studying engineering, manufacturing and construction rose by 4 per cent between 2016-2018. A recent report from the department also found the gender gap at third level was “heavily influenced” by subject choices, and as a result a review of career guidance will shortly be submitted. “The purpose of the review is to ensure that we are providing high quality, relevant career guidance information to students from post-primary level up to further and higher education,” said the spokeswoman. She said the department was also “scoping out potential means” of improving the range of Stem subjects offered by post-primary schools and planning to undertake research on the key influencers on subject and career choice. | null | https://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/school-subjects-strongly-influence-whether-girls-study-stem-at-college-1.3829645 | 2019-03-18 00:36:17+00:00 | 1,552,883,777 | 1,567,545,811 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
19,307 | anonnews--2019-03-13--Jeff Goldblum Has Epic Response to Scientists Plan to Recreate Dinosaurs | 2019-03-13T00:00:00 | anonnews | Jeff Goldblum Has Epic Response to Scientists Plan to Recreate Dinosaurs | Many experts predict that we are just a few years away from being able to recreate dinosaur species in a lab. Similar experiments are already being conducted, it is just a matter of scaling up the processes and technology at this point. Researchers at Harvard and Yale have been working to inject the genes of a woolly mammoth into elephants in order to recreate a living breathing wooly mammoth, which has been extinct for centuries. The scientists used CRISPR technology to recreate the genes of the extinct animal. George Church, one of the researchers on the team, told the Sunday Times that they can now successfully complete the procedure and transfer the DNA> “We prioritized genes associated with cold resistance including hairiness, ear size, subcutaneous fat and, especially, hemoglobin (the protein that carries oxygen around the body). We now have functioning elephant cells with mammoth DNA in them,” he said. In a 2016 interview, Paleontologist Dr. Jack Horner predicted that scientists would have the ability to genetically engineer living dinosaurs within five years. Horner was actually the real-life inspiration for the Jurassic Park series who advised Stephen Spielberg during the filming of the movies. Horner said that dinosaurs could be created by genetically engineering animals that are alive on earth today, meaning that actual dinosaur DNA would not be required for the project. “Of course, birds are dinosaurs, so we just need to fix them, so they look a little more like a dinosaur. Dinosaurs had long tails, arms, and hands – and through evolution, they’ve lost their tails, and their arms and hands have turned into wings. Additionally, their whole snout has changed from the velociraptor-look to the bird-like beak morphology,” Horner said in an interview with People. Horner explained how genetic engineering could be used to create a dinosaur. “Basically, what we do is we go into an embryo that’s just beginning to form, and use some genetic markers to sort of identify when certain genes turn on and when they turn off, and by determining when certain genes turn on, we can sort of figure out how a tail begins to develop. And we want to fix that gene, so it doesn’t stop the tail from growing. We can make a bird with teeth, and we can change its mouth. And actually, the wings and hands are not as difficult. We’re pretty sure we can do that soon,” Horner said. It is unclear how much progress has been made in the past few years, but if Horner’s predictions are correct, a real-life Jurassic Park could be just around the corner. This week, Jurassic Park star Jeff Goldblum has responded to the premise of recreating dinosaurs by quoting himself from the movie. Goldblum’s Tweet has now received over 308,000 likes, 87,000 retweets and 4,600 comments, and has obviously resonated with people. Goldblum’s character from Jurassic Park, Ian Malcolm is skeptical of the scientists who are in his eyes attempting to play God, and it seems like he feels the same way in real life. Goldblum has a good point, both in the movie and in real life. Recreating dinosaurs is not something that will just be harmful or dangerous for humans, but it will also have a massive impact on the ecosystem and wildlife everywhere. Introducing massive predators to the environment could massively disrupt the food chain in a way that can’t be predicted. Dinosaurs evolved for their own time, and they fit in there, they did not evolve for this time, and they would not fit in here. Human beings have gained such incredible capabilities with technology, but they have not yet learned when it is actually appropriate to wield the power that comes along with this technology. This is exactly what Goldblum’s character meant when he said, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” This question can be asked not just for recreating scientists, but with most of the weapons of war of and environmental destruction that are created by the world’s militaries and corporations. This is especially true with genetically modified organisms, food, insect and animal. Until humans learn to responsibly use their technological power, they will continue to make messes for ourselves and the other creatures on the planet. | Adam Goldberg | https://www.anonews.co/jeff-goldblum-has-epic-response-to-scientists-plan-to-recreate-dinosaurs/ | 2019-03-13 14:35:25+00:00 | 1,552,502,125 | 1,567,546,383 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
956,793 | thesun--2019-04-21--Incredible 2MILLION electric hypercar faster than a F-16 fighter with a top speed of 217mph unvei | 2019-04-21T00:00:00 | thesun | Incredible £2MILLION electric hypercar ‘faster than a F-16 fighter’ with a top speed of 217mph unveiled | A £2 million all-electric hypercar “faster than a F-16 fighter” that can reach 217mph with no emissions has been unveiled in New York. The Pininfarina Battista can reach 60mph quicker than a F1 car and can hit an astounding 180mph quicker than a F-16 fighter jet. A prototype of the hypercar was showcased last month but it was unveiled at an event in the Jarvis Centre for the New York International Auto Show. Battista, who created the car, said it would be “the world’s first luxury electric hyper GT.” They also dubbed it “the most powerful road-legal car ever designed and built in Italy.” But the luxury car maker will only make 150 cars with 50 heading to the US and another 50 heading to Europe and Asia. Battista expect motorists to get their hands on the car as early as 2020. They said: “Faster than a current Formula 1 race car in its 0-to-62mph sub-two second sprint, and with 1,900hp to hand, Battista will combine extreme engineering and technology in a zero emissions package. “The Battista will be the most powerful car ever designed and built in Italy when it arrives in 2020 and will deliver a level of performance that is unachievable today in any road-legal sports car featuring internal combustion engine technology. We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at [email protected] or call 0207 782 4368 . You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours. | Danny De Vaal | https://www.thesun.co.uk/motors/8910137/electric-hypercar-fast-unveiled/ | 2019-04-21 17:48:12+00:00 | 1,555,883,292 | 1,567,542,244 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
967,053 | thesun--2019-06-20--Women mustnt fear a career as an engineer you can really make it in a thriving industry | 2019-06-20T00:00:00 | thesun | Women mustn’t fear a career as an engineer – you can really make it in a thriving industry | SUNDAY is International Women in Engineering Day, aiming to encourage more girls to enter the profession. Despite an average starting salary of £27,000 and one in ten engineers on a six-figure salary, just 12 per cent of UK engineers are female. The sector is vital to the UK economy, contributing 26 per cent of GDP. But figures from the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) show an annual shortfall of 59,000 engineers. Girls now outperform boys in all STEM A-levels — science, technology, engineering and maths — except chemistry. Companies are 15 per cent more likely to perform better if they are gender diverse, so the annual event is aimed at plugging this skill gap. Dawn Childs, president of the Women’s Engineering Society, says: “There are still far too few women who even understand what engineering is let alone choose to become an engineer. “We want to transform the future by encouraging women to start a career in engineering, or by supporting them to thrive in their current engineering career. “But we will also be transforming the future of much more with the engineering they do”. WHEN it comes to looking after staff, small does not always mean beautiful. A study reveals 82 per cent of small and medium businesses do not have a health and wellbeing strategy in place. Two-thirds of staff at smaller firms experience stress or anxiety related to their job, with nearly half saying they continue to “power through” even when ill. But half of employees reckon they would feel less stressed – and two-fifths say they would see an improvement in productivity – if a wellbeing strategy was introduced. The study was commissioned by AXA PPP healthcare. CEO Tracy Garrad said: “The reality is small businesses make up more than half the UK’s workforce and their employees are crying out for greater support.” NUCLEAR engineering firm Assystem needs to fill up to 400 jobs in the UK. The Lancashire-based outfit is seeking staff for jobs at EDF Energy’s Hinkley Point C power plant in Somerset. Tom Jones, Vice President International Business Development, says: “An increasing need for electricity from consumers, combined with a move further towards decarbonisation, means that nuclear power forms an integral part of the UK’s energy strategy and will be increasingly important in the coming years.” A FEW years ago, you’d be considered barking if you asked to take your dog to work, but now many firms encourage it. Today is Bring Your Dog To Work Day so we’ve teamed up with Mark Ross, of Vets Now, to take the lead on how dogs in the office can help staff. Mark said: “I’d encourage any company considering a dog-friendly office to give it a go.” And here’s why . . . | Stephanie Chase | https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/9342383/women-career-in-engineering-industry/ | 2019-06-20 23:58:24+00:00 | 1,561,089,504 | 1,567,538,580 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
1,036,796 | theverge--2019-12-17--D-Fly Group’s Dragonfly ‘hyperscooter’ can hit a top speed of 38 mph | 2019-12-17T00:00:00 | theverge | D-Fly Group’s Dragonfly ‘hyperscooter’ can hit a top speed of 38 mph | “Hypercar” is a term often used to describe cars with specs and price tags so extreme, so outside the realm of what’s on display at your average dealership that calling it a “supercar” — already a totally fine description that gets its point across without too much hyperbole — somehow falls short. So what does it mean when the prefix “hyper-” is applied to a vehicle of more modest standing, like an electric scooter? For D-Fly Group, a London-based transportation company, it means “bringing ‘automotive grade’ manufacturing, advanced materials, cutting-edge engineering and technology to the micromobility sector.” The company claims to have done that with its new e-scooter, the Dragonfly. No hyperscooter™ would be complete without a ridiculous price tag What makes it a hyperscooter™? Apparently, it’s premium materials, like carbon fiber, 7000 series aerospace-grade aluminum, and paulownia wood. It’s a powertrain with dual motors and a top speed of 38 mph, traction control to give each wheel 1,800 watts, and a generous amount of torque. It’s the option to upgrade to a long-range battery pack for up to 28.5 miles of range. And a patent-pending “Full-Tilt” steering technology, inspired by F1 racing, that uses three-dimensional tilt and twist controls on a central pillar. The scooter’s 4.5-inch display is ultra-high-definition 4K (of course), and it allows customers to access various apps and view their speed or turn-by-turn GPS directions after pairing to a smartphone via Bluetooth. Speaking of Bluetooth, the Dragonfly also sports a “high quality” sound system because what good is a hyperscooter™ if you can’t blast beats while zipping along at 38 mph. Here’s a photo of the hyperscooter™ chilling in a cafe. But no hyperscooter™ would be complete without a ridiculous price tag, and the Dragonfly has that covered. The base model, three-wheeled version starts at $5,000, with the four-wheeled version creeping up to $6,000. Throw in a few options, and you can see how this starts to get absurd. D-Fly says it will release full pricing closer to the launch date in the mid-2020s. For comparison, the Segway ES2 will run you about $479 on Amazon. I’ve even seen a few scooters crack $3,000, but never anything like this. A word of warning before you plunk down (refundable) $100 for a preorder: the electric scooter market is incredibly volatile right now. Many of the e-scooters for sale today are Chinese-made models that are being rebadged and sold to Western consumers at a markup. That’s not terrible by itself, but it has created something of an uneven market for startups. Some companies flop before they even ship a single scooter, leaving customers to scramble to get their money back. D-Fly was started by Jez Williman, a British entrepreneur who led one of the world’s largest crowd control and queue management companies. (Think: the retractable barriers you walk through for the airport security line or to buy tickets at the movie theater. There’s a good chance those barriers were made by the Tensator Group.) Williman sold the company in 2008 to a private equity group, and now he’s pivoting to scooters. | Andrew J. Hawkins | https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/17/21026134/dragonfly-electric-scooter-hyperscooter-dfly-price-specs | 2019-12-17T13:39:23-05:00 | 1,576,607,963 | 1,576,629,608 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
1,085,580 | usnews--2019-12-29--Indiana State Taking High-Tech Approach to Product Packaging | 2019-12-29T00:00:00 | usnews | Indiana State Taking High-Tech Approach to Product Packaging | TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — Most shoppers are familiar with at least some of the technology involved in getting packages from Point A to Point B. Amazon has played a big part in bringing that to the fore. But fewer know about the technology that goes into designing and developing the packaging itself. And with more products bought online and shipped, the packaging of those goods is becoming increasingly important. Indiana State University is at the forefront of the increasingly complicated and important world of packaging. It’s one of seven colleges in the U.S. to offer a four-year degree in package engineering technology. There are essentially two levels of packaging—and both have quite a bit of design and development behind them. First, there’s the packaging you see on store shelves and in online store photos. Then there’s the outer packaging that offers further protection as the package travels by plane, train and automobile to the consumer or retailer. “For years, this industry focused mostly on the packaging on the shelf, and how to use that packaging as a marketing tool to induce sales,” James said. “The rise of companies like Amazon has changed all that. Now we’re focused much more on the structural side of design.” One key factor for delivery is having boxes that are designed to protect a product but take up as little space as possible and can be easily stacked with other packages. “The delivery trucks you see on the roads—the ones that seem like they’re everywhere during the holidays—they have a fairly limited capacity,” James said. “It’s important for these logistics businesses to be able to carry as much cargo as possible to ensure timely delivery. How the boxes nest together is extremely important these days.” “A lot of suppliers really want us to focus on the overall reduction of materials used. But you still have to protect the product in shipping,” James said. “They also want us to focus on designing packages that can be used to ship a variety of different goods. This brings their costs down.” The design and production of packaging materials has gone from a manual to a primarily digital process in the last five to 10 years, and ISU has been on the leading edge of those technological advancements, James said. The design of packaging has to conform to a bevy of national and international standards. And ISU students design packaging and test it on machines that take their creations and jostle, drop and compress them. The Indiana Packaging Research and Development Center at ISU also uses virtual reality technology to design packaging that will be effective in the marketplace. Virtual reality technology allows designers to make sure a package performs the way it’s designed to without the cost of making a real prototype, James explained. “The new press allows much more complex design with many more elements on the packaging,” James explained. “And the precision is greatly enhanced which is critical these days. “The packaging industry may seem very basic,” James added, “but it’s becoming a lot more complex and technical as the business world’s demands for packaging material changes and expands. It’s simply not enough these days for a box to merely carry goods. The packaging industry has become a leading force for change.” | Associated Press | https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/indiana/articles/2019-12-29/indiana-state-taking-high-tech-approach-to-product-packaging | Sun, 29 Dec 2019 05:01:09 GMT | 1,577,613,669 | 1,577,624,594 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
772 | 21stcenturywire--2019-12-23--Bill Gates, MIT Develop New ‘Tattoo ID’ to Check For Vaccinations | 2019-12-23T00:00:00 | 21stcenturywire | Bill Gates, MIT Develop New ‘Tattoo ID’ to Check For Vaccinations | As tattoos continue to become more mainstreamed among certain demographics within society, it should come as little surprise that big pharma is keen to roll out this latest “wearable tech” solution. To make sure that you’ve had all of your required doses of government mandated vaccines, scientists at MIT have created a new ink which can be embedded in the skin which can be read using a special infra-red smart phone camera app. “The invisible “tattoo” accompanying the vaccine is a pattern made up of minuscule quantum dots — tiny semiconducting crystals that reflect light — that glows under infrared light. The pattern — and vaccine — gets delivered into the skin using hi-tech dissolvable microneedles made of a mixture of polymers and sugar.” The research groups findings were published this week in the journal Science Translational Medicine. “In other words, they’ve found a covert way to embed the record of a vaccination directly in a patient’s skin rather than documenting it electronically or on paper — and their low-risk tracking system could greatly simplify the process of maintaining accurate vaccine records, especially on a larger scale.” “In areas where paper vaccination cards are often lost or do not exist at all, and electronic databases are unheard of, this technology could enable the rapid and anonymous detection of patient vaccination history to ensure that every child is vaccinated,” said MIT researcher Kevin McHugh. More interesting though is how useful this new technology will be from a corporate point of view, downstream tech such as this will make production and distribution more efficient upstream, as vaccine manufactures can more efficiently identify who needs which product. Essentially, this is new tech which can allow public administrators, law enforcement and corporate employers, to check within seconds to make sure that you are “safe” to be around,” and do not pose ‘a danger to the rest of the community.’ Interestingly, the funding for this new vaccine tattoo technology has come from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded the team’s research. “According to a Scientific American story, the project came about following a direct request from Microsoft founder Bill Gates himself, who has been personally involved in efforts to eradicate polio and measles through vaccinations.” Using tattoos for the administration of vaccine products is not new however, and most likely MIT and the Gates family were inspired by a program started more than 10 years ago, in which a group of German scientists began work using tattoos on mice as means to deliver a new generation of experimental DNA vaccines, specifically with the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine. It should be noted that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have come under heavy criticism for an aggressive HPV vaccination “health project” in India, which according to local reports, has resulted in many young girls falling ill, including some deaths. In 2009, several schools for tribal children in Khammam district in Telangana — then a part of undivided Andhra Pradesh — became sites for observation studies for a cervical cancer vaccine that was administered to thousands of girls aged between nine and 15. The girls were administered the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine in three rounds that year under the supervision of state health department officials. The vaccine used was Gardasil, manufactured by Merck. It was administered to around 16,000 girls in the district, many of whom stayed in state government-run hostels meant for tribal students. Months later, many girls started falling ill and by 2010 five of them died. Two more deaths were reported from Vadodara, Gujarat, where an estimated 14,000 children studying in schools meant for tribal children were also vaccinated with another brand of HPV vaccine, Cervarix, manufactured by GSK. Earlier in the week, the Associated Press reported that scores of teenaged girls were hospitalised in a small town in northern Colombia with symptoms that parents suspect could be an adverse reaction to Gardasil. Although large in scale, this tragic incident is just one of many documented events involving Gardasil, including numerous lawsuits (for example, see here and here) which were found in favor of the victims. Could this technology be utilized by governments as an exclusionary tool, or as a mechanism for social engineering? Certainly he potential is there to streamline these two methods of ‘people management.’ Currently the US government is quietly implementing the REAL ID Act which now requires Americans to hold a biometric ID in order to travel on airplanes. US lawmakers have been pushing for this from the 1980s, when former Attorney General William French Smith had proposed to implement a ‘perfectly harmless national ID system’ for which another cabinet minister at the time also proposed to ‘tattoo a number on each American’s forearm.’ To some, this may seem like the stuff of science fiction, and yet it’s been openly discussed by government for decades. Not surprisingly, the establishment press, funded by the transnational corporations like pharmaceutical firms Merck and GSK, along with government officials and departments, are actively campaigning to shut down any questions or queries into the safety of vaccines. Any dissent or skeptics are being labeled by media and government with the pejorative term, “anti-vaxers”. Mainstream publication Quartz gives the establishment’s argument against “anti-vaxers” here: This connection is rejected by mainstream scientists. Andrew Wakefield, the source of this conspiracy theory, was struck off by the UK’s General Medical Council for acting dishonestly and irresponsibly, and his published research was retracted by The Lancet. Earlier this year, a study of over 650,000 children in Denmark concluded that there was no evidence of a connection between MMR and autism—even among children who were seen to be of heightened risk, such as those with autistic siblings. Still, Wakefield’s ideas continue to have enormous influence. A survey of 2,600 parents published in January by the Royal Society for Public Health shows that 21% of parents in the UK think MMR causes unwanted side effects and almost 10% of parents chose not to give their child the MMR vaccine, mainly because of fears about side effects. Interestingly, to bolster there claim, they supply polling data derived from the pharmaceutical industrial complex itself: In June, The Wellcome Trust published the results of a survey of over 140,000 people. Only 73% in Northern Europe (which includes the UK), 59% in Western Europe, and 40% in Eastern Europe agreed with the statement that vaccines are safe. The figure was 72% for the US. The WHO listed vaccine hesitancy as a top ten global health threat for 2019 and one that “threatens to reverse progress made in tackling vaccine-preventable diseases.” However, there are numerous sources of independent research and data which is now available that indicates how the over prescription of vaccines can pose a serious health risk. One recent study by Neil Z. Miller entitled, Combining Childhood Vaccines at One Visit Is Not Safe, outlines a clear pattern of risk, particularly with regards to the over-administering of vaccines to young children. Numerous other studies have been published which delineate the risks involved with over-vaccination, some of their findings are summarized here. Watch this trailer for the independent film Vaxxed II: | 21wire | https://21stcenturywire.com/2019/12/23/bill-gates-develops-new-id-tattoo-to-check-for-vaccinations/ | Mon, 23 Dec 2019 11:41:16 +0000 | 1,577,119,276 | 1,577,102,653 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
3,749 | activistpost--2019-01-14--Chemtrails Exposed The Deep State And The New Manhattan Project | 2019-01-14T00:00:00 | activistpost | Chemtrails Exposed: The Deep State And The New Manhattan Project | Who is behind putting hundreds, perhaps thousands of large jet aircraft in the sky that routinely dump megatons of toxic waste over us and our biosphere? We know it is happening. Emissions from jet aircraft that visibly stretch from horizon-to-horizon and spread out as they persist for hours obviously consist of particulate matter. We see these things regularly in all the industrialized countries of the world. Many rainwater sample test results routinely show highly anomalous levels of many different toxins including aluminum, barium, and strontium. The California Air Resources Board has found alarmingly high levels of aluminum and barium in the air that we breathe. Career scientists from the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Forest Service, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture as well as a retired U.S. Air Force Major General have all blown the whistle. A world-famous PhD scientist, in many published, peer-reviewed journal articles, has confirmed that the substance being sprayed is coal fly ash; a toxic waste. None of this hard scientific evidence can be disproven. Motives are plenty. Control of the weather is God-like power and has many military and financial market applications. Your author has for many years now been exposing huge swaths of this secret global weather modification project he appropriately calls the New Manhattan Project. For a good exploration of the currently known evidence, hard or otherwise, please refer to the author’s book Chemtrails Exposed: A New Manhattan Project. As far as the day-to-day dirty work is concerned, the most probable culprits are: the Air Force, the Navy, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Mitre Corporation, Raytheon, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Lawrence Livermore National Labs, the Department of Energy, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and others. But who is the power behind the throne? This Project requires only the most effective and comprehensive global support network. And although this Project has only been fully operational domestically for a little over 20 years, it has been in development since the mid-1940s. So for all this time, who and what has coddled and nurtured and executively organized this Project from behind the scenes? There has been a recent addition to the view afforded by our current Overton Window: the deep state. We have been hearing about it a lot in the New and Old Medias lately and a recent poll by Monmouth University finds that a large bipartisan majority feels that National policy is being manipulated or directed by it. Sponsored by the global corporate superstate, the deep state is now being recognized for what it is: a cancerous growth that has infested itself into our otherwise legitimate democratic republic and metastasized to become like a 38 lb. tumor around our collective necks. The deep state consists of groups of individuals working together to secretly misuse the force of our government for their own selfish purposes. Just like the New Manhattan Project, it’s big, it’s highly organized, and it’s bad. Although chemtrails and the New Manhattan Project have yet to enter the view currently afforded by today’s conventional wisdom, there is lots of evidence indicating that these things have been brought to us by the deep state and this article explores that evidence. This article is the product of a lengthy investigation into the American government’s seedy underbelly and its contributions to the biggest scientific effort in history. The names uncovered here read like a who’s who of the establishment. Here the reader will see the evidence indicating that deep state players such as: the Central Intelligence Agency, the Nazis, the Council on Foreign Relations, General Electric, Bush, Rockefeller, and others are the most probable culprits. They’ve left their fingerprints all over it! Let us begin. There is no shortage of evidence indicating that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is the overall, day-to-day manager and coordinator of today’s New Manhattan Project (NMP). Created just after WWII with the National Security Act of 1947 and later enhanced by the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949, the CIA is a creature of the global corporate superstate and it uses the resources of our government, most notably our military, to accomplish its ends. We’ve known for a long time now that the New Manhattan Project is of a military nature, so that makes nothing but sense. And the other thing… oh yeah, corporations run the world. In his book Chemtrails Exposed and in many articles, your author has presented lots of evidence linking the CIA to the NMP. From these sources, we already know that the CIA has historically owned and operated large fleets of covertly operating aircraft. The CIA has worked extensively on lots of high-technology applicable to the New Manhattan Project. The CIA has a huge influence over our media which can be used to cover-up and tell lies about the NMP. In fact, in the course of their doings, the CIA has participated in the publication of many documents with direct relevance to the NMP. Many key players in the NMP’s development have had direct connections to the CIA. One apparently very important player, William F. Raborn was briefly the director of the CIA. More recently, the author has uncovered yet more evidence linking the CIA to the NMP. As our story unfolds, this new evidence will be presented here. It all goes back to the beginning. The origins of the CIA are very telling and they are germane not only to the rest of this section, but they also provide a background for the rest of this article. It all started in the final years of World War Two. As it was beginning to dawn upon the Germans that they were going to lose this thing, upper management decided to make deals with one Allen Welsh Dulles who, in theory was representing the United States Government but, in practice was working for the global corporate superstate; also known as the deep state. Allen Dulles (1893-1969), stationed in Bern, Switzerland at the time and working for the CIA’s predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), was among the most influential people in laying the groundwork for the later formation of the CIA. Although there is no officially recognized founder of the CIA, a strong argument can be made for Dulles being that person. He and a handful of others went on to fill the CIA’s nascent ranks with Nazis. This process began before the conclusion of WWII with a secret mission called Operation Sunrise. Among the few Germans most instrumental in beginning this process were Nazi Generals Reinhard Gehlen (1902-1979) and Karl Wolff (1900-1984). After WWII, the bulk of the former Nazis came to America as part of something called Operation Paperclip. Allen Dulles ended up being one of the earliest directors of the Agency and to this day he is the longest serving director of the CIA. He ran the CIA for 8 years with virtually no congressional oversight and the impact of his legacy continues today. For these reasons, Allen Dulles and his more famous brother Secretary of State John Foster Dulles are persons of interest here and are referred to throughout. Journalist Linda Hunt writes in her groundbreaking and thorough 1991 book Secret Agenda, “At least sixteen hundred scientific and research specialists and thousands of their dependents were brought to the U.S. under Operation Paperclip. Hundreds of others arrived under two other Paperclip-related projects [Project National Interest and Project 63] and went to work for universities, defense contractors, and CIA fronts.” The CIA was instrumental throughout this entire process. Many of the former Nazis who became CIA agents were drawn from something called Amt VI (Department 6) of the SS RHSA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt or Reich Main Security Office). This was Nazi Germany’s equivalent of the CIA. During the war, the German intelligence experts working for Amt VI of the SS RHSA were commonly involved in hunting down and exterminating Communists and Jews. Most of the other portions of the CIA’s early ranks were filled with Americans; mostly Ivy League and Wall Street types; many from Yale University in particular, the home of the notorious Skull and Bones secret society. One may wonder how this happened. Wasn’t Nazi Germany horrendously evil? Why were they not completely destroyed? Didn’t the Nazis systematically exterminate millions of innocent men, women, and children? They did. But, they were also supported by the Western deep state. And in that case, the rules of the game are very different. Even though Hitler was an outrageous anti-Semite and infinitely aggressive war-monger from the beginning and through to the end, the Nazis enjoyed tremendous early business and moral support amongst many of the most rich and powerful people in the Western World. In fact, the deep state built the Nazi war machine. Many of the biggest American and European corporations did tremendous business with the Nazis after World War One; during the building and maintenance of the Nazi WWII war machine. Many executives from the German subsidiaries of General Electric, Standard Oil, and other large American corporations were part of an inner circle of Heinrich Himmler’s friends doing business in Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. Of course, later, when it became socially unacceptable to support or to have anything to do with the Nazis, and as they were losing the war, the public sieg-heilling amongst the Western elites came to an end. The evidence now shows that it simply went underground. But the facts remain. International Business Machines (IBM) custom built early punch card computers specifically to manage the Holocaust which they then leased and regularly maintained. Henry Ford was famously an acolyte of Hitler whose company did lots of very serious business with the Nazis. We will soon explore the roles of General Electric and Rockefeller’s Standard Oil in all of this. Allen Dulles himself was a big wheel at a Wall Street law firm by the name of Sullivan and Cromwell where his brother John Foster Dulles was a partner. John Foster Dulles was an international attorney for dozens of Nazi enterprises. Sullivan and Cromwell financed the German arms manufacturer Krupp AG and managed the finances of I.G. Farben, the German chemical company that was the Nazi war effort and manufactured almost all of the Zyklon B gas used to exterminate millions of Communists and Jews. From his landmark book Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, ivy league academic Antony Sutton provides further illustration here as he chimes in right on time, “It is important to note as we develop our story that General Motors, Ford, General Electric, DuPont and the handful of U.S. companies intimately involved with the development of Nazi Germany were – except for the Ford Motor Company – controlled by the Wall Street elite – the J.P. Morgan firm, the Rockefeller Chase Bank and to a lesser extent the Warburg Manhattan bank.” Most, if not all of these firms also donated (through their German subsidiaries) significant funds to the Nazi party’s political campaigns. Sutton’s work is based on documents which surfaced during the post-war Nuremberg Trials. Information refuting Sutton’s assertions pertaining to these matters is based on hearsay. We are linking the Nazis and their fellow travelers to the New Manhattan Project here because: they share an intertwined history with the CIA, they had cutting edge technology such as that which is employed in the New Manhattan Project, they were very militaristic and the NMP is a military project, and many of them (especially at the top) had little to no regard for the sanctity of life, such as that which is exhibited by the people omniciding Humanity and the Earth with chemtrail spray today as part of the NMP. For these reasons it is logical to assert that the Third Reich and its documented continuing legacy play an important role in the New Manhattan Project. It is for these reasons also that this paper now expounds upon Operation Paperclip’s indiscretions and, more importantly, the possible roles of former Nazi scientists in the production of the New Manhattan Project. It is also for these reasons that, a little later, we will examine in this paper the role of many rich and powerful people and organizations that share compelling connections to both the Nazi regime’s rise and fall and the New Manhattan Project. The main reason given for importing Nazi scientists into America was that we needed to deny the Soviets attaining these individuals. But the man running Operation Paperclip, U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel William Henry Whalen was later convicted of being a Soviet spy. There is evidence that the dreaded Soviets had penetrated Operation Paperclip almost from the beginning. In reality, Operation Paperclip was carried out in order to maintain and grow the deep state and the New Manhattan Project. Our good friend and founder of the New Manhattan Project Vannevar Bush advocated strongly on behalf of Operation Paperclip Nazi scientists. Sputnik in 1957 greatly accelerated their importation. German Paperclip scientists were inserted into just about every major organization associated with the development and production of the New Manhattan Project including (but not limited to): Radio Corporation of America, CBS Laboratories, the Naval Ordnance Testing Station at China Lake, the Desert Research Institute, Pennsylvania State University, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and General Electric. Another reason given by the CIA for secretly importing former Nazis is the high quality of German science. The German scientist in particular was good at what he did because Germany is the birthplace of modern science. Let us refer to eminent historian John Cornwell and his excellent book Hitler’s Scientists: Although most of the Operation Paperclip scientists and researchers were not the worst offenders here, a great number of the Operation Paperclip Nazis were guilty of horrific war crimes. American intelligence officials regularly covered these facts up by illegally expunging evidence of much of this from the records of hundreds of Operation Paperclip Nazis. Because of this, we don’t know all of what the Operation Paperclip Nazis did over the course of the war. They probably expunged the worst stuff. What we do know is not good. Some of the more infamous benefactors of Operation Paperclip’s amnesty were: Karl Wolff, Otto von Bolschwing, Robert Verbelen, Klaus Barbie, Alois Brunner, Eugen Dollmann, Herbert Wagner, Georg Rickhey, and Otto Ambros. We will now take a brief look at a few of these Operation Paperclip Nazis. The aforementioned General Karl Wolff was third in command of the entire SS and responsible for arranging the transportation of people to the concentration camps. A German court would later find Wolff complicit in the murder of three hundred thousand men, women, and children. During the war, Otto von Bolschwing (1909-1982) instigated a massacre of innocent civilians in Bucharest and was a senior aide to the ‘Architect of the Holocaust’ Adolf Eichmann. Bolschwing later worked for the CIA. Robert Verbelen (1911-1990) was sentenced to death in absentia for war crimes including the torture of two U.S. Air Force pilots. He also worked as a contract spy for the U.S. Army, which knew about his background. Klaus Barbie (1913-1991), also known as ’The Butcher of Lyons,’ was the head of the Nazi Gestapo. During the war, working out of occupied Lyons, France, Barbie deported Jews to death camps, tortured and murdered French resistance fighters, and served as the local political police. Barbie went on to work for U.S. intelligence in Germany. Barbie also went on in 1971 to recruit a mercenary army of neofascist terrorists which conducted a three-day coup in order to install a narco-friendly regime in Bolivia. The resulting large increase in coca production benefited his shipping firm Transmaritania. Otto Ambros (1901-1990) was a director of I.G. Farben who took part in the decision to use Zyklon B gas to murder millions of people. Hunt explains that he, “personally selected Auschwitz as the site of an I.G. Farben factory, which he later managed, because Auschwitz concentration camp prisoners could be used as slaves in the factory.” At this factory the slave laborers were worked to death and often murdered. Hunt tells us that, “Ambros was found guilty of slavery and mass murder at Nuremberg, but he was sentenced to a mere eight years’ imprisonment.” Even during his time in jail, the U.S. government kept Ambros listed as available for employment. At the order of the High Commissioner of Germany, John McCloy, Ambros was released from prison in 1951. He immediately went to work as a consultant to W.R. Grace, Dow Chemical, other American companies, and the U.S. Army Chemical Corps operating out of Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland. At the Edgewood Arsenal, Ambrose conducted poison gas experiments upon over 7,000 American soldiers. Now do you think that the people running this show would hesitate to spray our civilian population with coal fly ash as is done today? More pertinently, some of the benefactors of Operation Paperclip’s amnesty are also known to have gone on to do work in the atmospheric sciences and other areas relevant to the New Manhattan Project. These men include: Wernher von Braun, Walter Dornberger, Martin Schilling, Kurt Debus, Arthur Rudolph, Ernst Czerlinsky, Hans Joachim Naake, Albert Pfeiffer, and Hans Dolezalek. We will now take a look at each. Wernher von Braun (1912-1977) was an SS officer who developed rockets with his mentor and fellow Operation Paperclip benefactor Nazi General Walter Dornberger at the hellish Peenemünde slave labor camp. Von Braun applied to join the Nazi SS in 1933, was a Nazi party member since 1937, and later joined the SS at the personal behest of SS chief Himmler in 1940. Von Braun’s story is told in the most detail here because he was the de facto political leader of the Operation Paperclip Nazis. In fact, von Braun hand-picked about 120 researchers for the Operation. Many former Nazis worked under and around him. Von Braun’s story is the story of many of his fellow Operation Paperclip Nazi scientists. Von Braun’s early work in America involved the further development of missiles based on the German V-2 rocket which the Nazis had used to terrorize Britain during the war. This work was conducted at the U.S. Army’s Fort Bliss in Texas, at the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico, and at the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. Von Braun and many of his fellow Operation Paperclip Nazi scientists later worked for NASA. Let us refer again to historian John Cornwell: At the White Sands Proving Ground, von Braun and his fellow former Nazi scientists lived in barracks alongside men working for General Electric. Before GE became involved, the army was working on its budding missile programs with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico is also the location where the world’s first atomic bomb blast known as Trinity occurred. On the 16th of April, 1947 the combined German-GE team launched their first rocket. The move to Huntsville began in April of 1950. Michael Neufeld writes, “Moving several hundred personnel, plus shops and test equipment, out of Fort Bliss and setting them up in converted buildings at Redstone Arsenal was a job that took six months.” Neufeld continues, “For Wernher and Maria von Braun, and for almost all the other Germans who came with them, Huntsville quickly became home. For the first time they could live outside of a fenced-in base and integrate themselves into American daily life.” At the Redstone Arsenal, von Braun’s initial title was project director of the Ordnance Guided Missile Center. As a result of a big order from the auto manufacturer Chrysler, von Braun expanded his operations. Neufeld tells us that, “The construction of this in-house industrial capacity, along with cumulative army decisions to build substantial laboratories for guidance, computers, and other fields, gradually rebuilt von Braun’s empire to dimensions not seen since Peenemünde. In mid-1952 he and the other Paperclip Germans were converted to regular civil service status; in January 1953 he became the civilian head of a division for the first time: the Guided Missile Development Division of the renamed Ordnance Missile Laboratories, now commanded by Holger Toftoy. As part of a decentralization of authority in Ordnance, Toftoy had been promoted to brigadier general and sent down from Washington, displacing, much to von Braun’s relief, Hamill and his ‘regime of junior officers.’ By September 1954 von Braun had 950 employees; four years later that number had quadrupled to 3,925. Once again he proved to be a virtuoso in building and managing huge, complex, technically demanding programs.” In 1955 von Braun and 102 other Germans were sworn in as American citizens in Huntsville. Von Braun and his fellow Operation Paperclip Nazi scientists were officially transferred to NASA on July 1, 1960. As the first director of NASA’s sprawling Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, von Braun worked with his fellow former Nazis producing the rocket that would launch America’s first satellite and, separately, the gigantic Saturn rockets designed to take Americans to the moon. But more important to this discussion are his contributions to the field of atmospheric science. At NASA von Braun helped develop modified versions of the German V-2 rocket for use in atmospheric soundings; a way to map and therefore gain a better understanding of Earth’s atmosphere. As part of his work in the atmospheric sciences, von Braun also participated in operations Argus and Hardtack which involved detonating nuclear bombs in the high atmosphere (lower-ionosphere). These operations allowed our scientists to better map the auroral electrojet; a major aspect of our planet’s space weather, which has a direct effect on the weather we experience daily down here in the troposphere. It is interesting to note that operations Argus, Hardtack, and other similar operations were funded and coordinated by the newly formed Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). ARPA was founded in 1958 with the help of von Braun’s boss at the Redstone Arsenal, Major General John Bruce Medaris. ARPA’s first director was GE Vice President Roy Johnson. We will look into GE’s pervasive connections to the New Manhattan Project shortly. Because weather satellites play an important role in the NMP, it is also very interesting to understand that von Braun apparently had something to do with the production of the first line of dedicated American weather satellites. Eminent historian Michael J. Neufeld writes, “When the Defense Department made it clear in early 1958 that space reconnaissance was an air force mission, a typically inventive von Braun told an RCA engineer: ‘Let’s look at clouds!’ The army/RCA proposal evolved into a weather satellite project that later went to NASA as Tiros.” Tiros was the first line of American weather satellites dedicated to weather observation. In his later years, von Braun became the vice president for engineering and development at an American aerospace firm called Fairchild Industries. It was during his time with Fairchild in September of 1974 that von Braun travelled to the North Slope of Alaska to visit the Prudhoe Bay Oil Field; not a very popular destination. This is of note to our discussion because the world’s largest and most versatile electromagnetic energy generator known to be able to control the weather in the fashion of the New Manhattan Project (HAARP) is powered by the natural gas coming out of the ground at Prudhoe Bay. Now let us take a look at the other Operation Paperclip Nazi scientists who did work in the atmospheric sciences and other areas relevant to the New Manhattan Project. Von Braun’s mentor Walter Dornberger (1895-1980) was the head of V-2 rocket development at the Peenemünde slave labor camp. Later in the war, Dornberger also convinced Hitler to build the Nordhausen rocket factory where at least 20,000 prisoners from the nearby Dora concentration camp were worked to death. After the war, he was initially interned in British POW camps, but in 1947, immediately after his release, he went to work on a classified rocketry program at the then Wright Field near Dayton, Ohio. Today this installation is known as Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and it is the most probable location used to develop the proprietary aircraft of today’s chemtrail fleet. Dornberger went on to become a senior Vice President of the Bell Aerosystems Division of the Textron Corporation. He was never officially questioned about his role at the Peenemünde death camp. Martin Schilling (1911-2000) was a developer of the German V2 rocket during WWII as well. In 1958 he went to work for Raytheon where he went on to attain the rank of vice president for research and engineering. Evidence suggests that Raytheon manages much if not all of the directed electromagnetic energy portions of today’s New Manhattan Project. Kurt Debus (1908-1983) was a member of the SS, the SA Brownshirts, and two other Nazi groups. He was also the V-2 flight test director at the Peenemünde slave labor camp. Debus went on to become the first director of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Over the course of his work in America, Dr. Debus launched more than 150 missiles and space vehicles including the USA’s first earth satellite Explorer I. NASA has produced many technologies pertinent to the New Manhattan Project. The U.S. Army gave him its highest civilian decoration, the Exceptional Civilian Service Medal in 1959. Arthur Rudolph (1906-1996) was the director of NASA’s Saturn V rocket program designed to send Americans to the moon and the former head of production at the Mittelwerk slave labor death camp. Ernst Czerlinsky, a former member of the SS, went to work at the Air Force Cambridge Research Center. The Air Force Cambridge Research Center did work on technologies later used in the New Manhattan Project such as advanced air traffic control systems and ionospheric heaters. Hans Joachim Naake was a radar specialist. Radar, and specifically over-the-horizon radar, plays an important role in the development of the New Manhattan Project as these things are the predecessors of the ionospheric heaters which modify the weather as part of today’s NMP. Being that Naake was a radar specialist, he was probably working on over-the-horizon radar because that was the most cutting edge radar technology of the time. At the U.S. Army’s Edgewood Arsenal, Albert Pfeiffer, a high-ranking Nazi scientist during the war, worked on new ways to disseminate airborne chemical warfare agents. Does that sound familiar? Lastly, Hans Dolezalek is a distinguished German meteorologist who worked for the Wehrmacht Weather Service during WWII. He was also an early member of the Nazi SA Brownshirts. Even though Nazi scientists were not supposed to be brought in after 1948, an exception was made. Dolezalek visited America in 1958 in order to attend a major meteorological conference and subsequently accepted a job with AVCO (Aviation Corporation) in Wilmington, Massachusetts. In 1985, AVCO was acquired by the aforementioned Textron for $2.9B. With this acquisition, Textron nearly doubled in size. Initially the acquired AVCO became a division of Textron known as Textron Defense Systems. Textron Defense Systems evolved into today’s Textron Systems Weapons & Sensor Systems; a leader in intelligence-gathering capabilities and ‘advanced protection systems.’ This is the same Textron Corporation that employed von Braun’s mentor Walter Dornberger. Dolezalek has worked extensively in the vein of the New Manhattan Project. He has done lots of work in the area of atmospheric electricity and artificial ionization. He has also done work for the Office of Naval Research; an organization with strong implications for the development of the NMP. In 1989 the Department of Defense announced that they were filling exempted positions under the ‘program for utilization of alien scientists.’ This program was being run by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s Research and Engineering Enterprise. This is the group that took over Operation Paperclip after it was disbanded in 1962. Thirteen of the new recruits were to work at NASA. The new hires included an unnamed ‘world-renowned climatologist.’ These NASA scientists worked at: the Langley Research Center (near the CIA’s headquarters), Ames Research Center at Moffet Field, and Goddard Space Flight Center. Operation Paperclip had the official support of the United States and its military. That means that many high-ranking US military officers were fully aware of the situation and what was going on. Some were enthusiastic about it. Among those enjoying secretly bringing in the former Nazis was Army Air Corps Colonel Donald L. Putt. Colonel Donald Putt was among those who initially reviewed captured Nazi aircraft at the Hermann Göering Aeronautical Research Institute in Brunswick, Germany. According to Linda Hunt, after seeing the facilities, swept-back wing aircraft, and other inventions there, “Putt gathered the Germans together and, without approval from higher authorities in the War Department, promised them jobs at Wright Field if they would go with him to a holding center for captured personnel in Bad Kissingen. He also promised to send their families to the United States, then instructed the scientists to sell all of their belongings and to travel light.” By the Fall of 1946, there were 140 former Nazi scientists working under Colonel Putt at Wright Field. They included: Theodor Zobel, Adolf Busemann, General Herhudt von Rohden, and Rudolf Hermann. Although many of Putt’s Nazis were known to have committed heinous acts of violence during the war, Putt coddled, protected, and covered for his subordinates every step of the way. Putt went on to be promoted to the rank of lieutenant general and to become the military director of the Scientific Advisory Board to the Air Force Chief of Staff. A top ranking CIA man named Frank Wisner handled the CIA investigations of all Operation Paperclip Germans and helped obtain visas for Paperclip scientists. Wisner was the officer who formally accepted the aforementioned Nazi General Reinhard Gehlen’s surrender. Later, as director of the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination, Wisner was also instrumental in the founding and later purchase of Civil Air Transport (CAT). CAT is one of the logical predecessors of today’s dedicated chemtrail fleet and, as we will see near the end of this piece, CAT ran the opium out of Southeast Asia. Wisner is most famous for being the CIA man who ended up going crazy and subsequently blowing his own brains out with his son’s shotgun. Frank Wisner’s son Frank Wisner, Jr. went on to serve as a U.S. ambassador to: Zambia, Egypt, the Philippines, and India. He has also served as the U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and the Under Secretary of State for International Security Affairs. Most curiously though, Jr. was serving as the acting Secretary of State in 1996 when the large-scale domestic spraying operations began. The CIA is on record as having sponsored domestic aerial spraying of biological agents. A researcher by the name of Frank Olson and another by the name of Norman Cournoyer conducted CIA sponsored research out of Camp Detrick, Maryland. David Talbot in The Devil’s Chessboard writes: Nazi biological warfare research, led by Dr. Kurt Blome (1894-1969), included experimentations on prisoners in concentration camps. Blome was later hired by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps to conduct new biological weapons research. Frank Olson was the guy who, one week after being covertly dosed with Central Intelligence Agency LSD, died when he leapt (or was pushed) from a tenth floor window of the Statler Hotel in midtown Manhattan. So, in short, yes it’s most probably the CIA and there are apparently former Nazis and their families and friends and probably their offspring working with them. This type of stuff has been going on for a long time now. A most probable place for the New Manhattan Project to reside inside of the CIA is in their Directorate of Science and Technology (DS&T). This Directorate has been at the cutting edge of two areas of technology relevant to the New Manhattan Project: satellite reconnaissance and over-the-horizon radar. Satellites can monitor atmospheric conditions and track atmospheric particles while over-the-horizon (OTH) radar is the direct predecessor of today’s ionospheric heaters which can modify the weather in the fashion of the New Manhattan Project. Largely funded by the air force, the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology was created in 1963 by CIA chief John McCone. With the exception of a few, more esoteric systems, the technologies perfected by the Directorate are commonly turned over to the Defense Department. Shortly after the Directorate’s formation, Robert McNamara and the Pentagon led an effort to put the military in control of all technical collection which eventually became one of the reasons that Director McCone resigned. William Raborn’s directorship followed. Richard Bissell as the head of Clandestine Services, was a driving force behind the development of space satellites for intelligence purposes. The Directorate ran OTH radar facilities in Pakistan and later in Taiwan under the project names EARTHLING and CHECKWROTE respectively. The Directorate enjoys a very cozy relationship with academia. The authors of The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence write that, “The Directorate of Science and Technology employed individual professors, and at times entire university departments or research institutes, for its research and development projects.” Marchetti and Marks continue, “in many cases, the CIA’s research involvement on the campuses went much deeper than simply serving as the patron of scholarly work.” The authors go on to note that, “the Clandestine Services had their own research links with universities, for the purpose of developing better espionage tools (listening devices, advanced weapons, invisible inks, etc.).” The authors then go on to note that, “The Clandestine Services at times have used a university to provide cover or even assist in a covert operation overseas.” The first director of the Directorate, Albert ‘Bud’ Wheelon worked extensively on satellites. He left the DS&T in 1966 and went to Hughes Aircraft where he eventually became CEO and chairman of the board. During his time at Hughes, they became the world’s preeminent supplier of communications satellites. These facts are significant because satellites are an integral part of the New Manhattan Project and Hughes Aircraft has many connections to the NMP as well. Another most notable head of the CIA’s Directorate for Science and Technology is one Donald Kerr. He served in that position from 2001-2005. Before that he worked for the Department of Energy as the Deputy Assistant Secretary and Acting Assistant Secretary for Defense Programs and later for Energy Technology. He has published many papers on ionospheric research. He currently serves on the advisory board of MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. He graduated from MIT. He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, a master’s degree in microwave electronics, and a doctorate in plasma physics and microwave electronics. He is currently the Vice Chairman of the Mitre Corporation; the NMP’s most probable executor of all of the NMP’s scientific aspects. It is also very interesting to note that, along with Samuel Goudsmit of Operation Alsos (a forerunner of Operation Paperclip), Kerr worked with Luis Alvarez and Alfred Lee Loomis on early air traffic control systems and he worked on early over-the-horizon radar research that eventually resulted in today’s ionospheric heaters which employ electromagnetic energy to control our weather. These experiments were carried out under the auspices of MIT’s wartime Radiation Laboratory. In short, over the years, Donald Kerr has worked with many of the key players, in many of the key areas, on many of the key projects, and for many of the key organizations involved in the production of technologies germane to the New Manhattan Project. Along with the Operation Paperclip Nazis, another group inextricably intertwined with the most probable managers of today’s New Manhattan Project (the CIA) is the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). They’ve been going on endlessly about the need to spray us with massive amounts of material from aircraft. We are also interested in the CFR because in 2016, the former director of the CIA John ‘Stratospheric Aerosol Injection’ Brennan famously advocated for geoengineering at their headquarters in Manhattan known as Pratt House. Immediately after this section, we will have more about the enigmatic Mr. Brennan, but in the meantime we will take a look at the CFR and their role in the New Manhattan Project. The Council on Foreign Relations serves two purposes. It is at once a globalist think-tank and an establishment mouthpiece. Most other high-profile think-tanks are not nearly as vocal. The CFR enjoys an extremely cozy relationship not only with our U.S. State Department, but also with the CIA. With alarming frequency, the ideas emanating from the CFR become official United States Government policy. The CFR is the public face of the deep state lobby upon our government. The CFR was formed in order to influence public opinion. James Perloff, in his book The Shadows of Power recounts the story: Once again, Allen Dulles and his more famous brother John Foster Dulles show up. The brothers Dulles were among a small group of influential and wealthy individuals who founded the CFR. John Foster Dulles was a founding member of the CFR and regularly contributed articles to their most widely-read publication called Foreign Affairs beginning with the first issue. In 1926 Allen Dulles joined the CFR and in 1927 he was elected as the first president of the Council on Foreign Relations. From his soundproof room at Pratt House, Allen Dulles wielded tremendous power. David Talbot, author of The Devil’s Chessboard writes: Talbot continues, “If CFR was the power elite’s brain, the CIA was its black-gloved fist.” Many members of the CFR have documented connections to the New Manhattan Project. Those members include: Glenn Seaborg, Alfred Lee Loomis, James Killian, Harlan Cleveland, James Conant, Lauchlin Currie, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Jerome Wiesner, Marina von Neumann Whitman, John Deutch, and Frank Wisner. Boeing, Raytheon and General Electric are (or have been) corporate members of the Council. Five of GE’s directors and three of Boeing’s have been CFR directors. These are all companies connected to the NMP. Beginning in 1990, the Council started organizing study and discussion groups devoted to the topic of climate change and they have since gone on to issue many publications about Solar Radiation Management (SRM) which involves spraying substances out of aircraft in order to stop the CIA’s dreaded global warming. In 2004, CFR member M. Granger Morgan teamed up with top geoengineer Ken Caldeira and six other authors to produce a paper titled “A Portfolio of Carbon Management Options.” In it, they advocate for geoengineering Earth’s climate with stratospheric aerosols. In 2008 CFR member David G. Victor published a piece titled “On the Regulation of Geoengineering” in which he advocates for the establishment of an international framework of laws pertaining to geoengineering. Also in 2008, the CFR released a report titled “Confronting Climate Change: A Strategy for U.S. Foreign Policy: Report of an Independent Task Force.” In it, they discuss, “injecting reflective aerosols into the atmosphere.” 2008 was a big year for geoengineering at the Council. In addition to the two documents noted above, in 2008 the CFR issued a paper titled “Unilateral Geoengineering: Non-technical Briefing Notes for a Workshop at the Council on Foreign Relations.” In this document, the authors propose spraying aluminum oxide dust into the stratosphere. Among many other subsequent articles about global warming and climate change, CFR members David G. Victor, M. Granger Morgan, Jay Apt, John Steinbruner (1942-2015), and Katharine Ricke wrote a piece published in 2009 by the title of “The Geoengineering Option.” As one might guess, in this article the authors fear monger about climate change then suggest that we should ‘launch reflective particles into the atmosphere’ in order to save us from it. The authors are quite insistent, writing, “Governments should immediately begin to undertake serious research on geoengineering and help create international norms governing its use.” Rare in such propaganda, the authors also note that geoengineering is not a new idea and hearken back to the 1965 presidential document “Restoring the Quality of Our Environment” among other early developments. The piece, of course, then goes back to fear mongering, then on to ridiculing the opposition, then, lastly to reiterating its psychotic thesis. Also in March of 2009, Foreign Affairs published an article called “Q&A With David Victor About Climate Change: What governments, scientists, and big business can do about global warming.” A woman named Lucy Berman interviewed the aforementioned David Victor and they chatted about spraying us with megatons of toxic chemicals. What a lovely topic of discussion! Later in December of 2009, CFR member Granger Morgan wrote an article for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s MIT Technology Review advocating for SRM geoengineering research. It was titled “Why Geoengineering?” In January of 2010, the most prestigious journal Nature published an opinion piece by CFR member Granger Morgan and two other authors including top geoengineer David Keith. They called their piece “Research on Global Sun Block Needed Now.” In it they advocate for SRM geoengineering research. In July of 2010, CFR members Katherine Ricke and Granger Morgan had an article published in the prestigious journal Nature Geoscience titled “Regional Climate Response to Solar Radiation Management.” In it they found that spraying stuff out of planes might ‘stabilize’ our climate. CFR members Granger Morgan and John Steinbruner held a panel discussion at Pratt House in 2010 titled “Developing an International Framework for Geoengineering.” During the discussion, Morgan stressed the urgency of the geoengineering situation as he raised the specter of a ‘black program’ currently conducting SRM geoengineering which everybody finds out about later. He said, “I think it would be truly disastrous if, you know, we discovered a few years from now that there was a black program that some government had stood up to sort of learn on the quiet how to do this.” Yes, we’ve found out about it already, Mr. Morgan and we plan to make this as disastrous as possible for your PR effort. CFR member Granger Morgan contributed to the report resulting from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2011 Expert Meeting on Geoengineering held in Lima, Peru. He suggests, “Adding small reflecting particles in the stratosphere.” CFR member Katharine Ricke (sounds like ‘reich’) published a doctoral thesis in August of 2011 titled “Characterizing Impacts and Implications of Proposals for Solar Radiation Management, a Form of Climate Engineering” in which she suggests that Solar Radiation Management geoengineering might be a good idea. CFR members Frank Loy, Granger Morgan, and David G. Victor all contributed to the big 2011 report by the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Task Force on Climate Remediation Research titled “Geoengineering: A National Strategic Plan for Research on the Potential Effectiveness, Feasibility, and Consequences of Climate Remediation Technologies.” The authors note that, “it may be desirable or even necessary to enlist international fleets of aircraft, satellites, and hardware as well as international sources of funding and management capabilities.” A CFR member by the name of Jay Apt wrote a 2012 paper with top geoengineer David Keith titled “Cost Analysis of Stratospheric Albedo Modification Delivery Systems” in which the authors write about spraying 1-5 million metric tons of materials from airplanes at an altitude of 18-30km up in the sky every year. Their top choice for the job was the Boeing ‘747-400.’ The Boeing 747 is a close relative of the Boeing KC-135 which the author has identified as the most probable make and model of the most prevalent type of dedicated chemtrail fleet aircraft. In the Spring of 2013, CFR member Granger Morgan and two co-authors published an article in Issues in Science and Technology titled “Needed: Research Guidelines for Solar Radiation Management.” In it, they advocate for geoengineering research, call for help from the federal government, and write that, “a small fleet of specially designed aircraft could deliver enough mass to the stratosphere in the form of small reflecting particles to offset all of the warming anticipated by the end of this century for a cost of less than $10 billion per year.” Another article published by CFR members Morgan, Apt, et al. in March of 2013 was titled “The Truth About Geoengineering: Science Fiction and Science Fact.” In it, they speculate that, “Flying a fleet of high-altitude aircraft that spray particles into the upper atmosphere would cost perhaps ten billion dollars per year -“ The authors also warn that, “Small-scale field trials in the upper atmosphere to test components of an SRM [Solar Radiation Management] system are particularly urgent.” In February of 2015, geoengineer Jane C.S. Long and CFR members Granger Morgan and Frank Loy had an article published in the prestigious journal Nature titled “Start Research on Climate Engineering.” In it they advocate for small-scale SRM geoengineering experimentation. On November 3 of 2015, CFR member and member of the Carnegie Institution Department of Global Ecology, Katharine Ricke published a paper, along with two other authors, titled “Climate Engineering Economics.” In this paper the authors write, “The most likely approach to implementation is high-flying aircraft outfitted with aerosol precursor dispensing systems (McClellan et al. ,2012)” As have many other authors, Ricke et al. found that using aircraft to achieve SRM is the cheapest way. In conclusion the authors urge, “Finally, we need to begin to explore specific mechanisms to ensure an efficient and equitable implementation of climate engineering technologies. While some early steps have been taken in this direction, we need to understand, from an economic perspective, how to create institutions that can accommodate these novel climate risk reduction strategies.” Now let us take a look at some of the individual CFR members behind this duly noted body of documentary evidence. M. Granger Morgan appears to be in charge of this effort at the CFR. His Carnegie Mellon biography tells us that he is the co-director of the Center for Climate and Energy Decision Making, the co-director of the Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center, a member of the board for the International Risk Governance Council Foundation, a member of the Advisory Board for the E.ON Energy Research Center, a member of the Department of Energy’s Electricity Advisory Committee, and a member of the Energy Advisory Committee of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. In the past, he served as Chair of the Science Advisory Board of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and as Chair of the Advisory Council of the Electric Power Research Institute. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the Society for Risk Analysis. He holds a BA from Harvard College (1963) where he concentrated in physics and an MS in astronomy and space science from Cornell (1965). All of these organizations either have or potentially have connections to the NMP. His Carnegie Mellon biography says that, “His research addresses problems in science, technology, and public policy with a particular focus on energy, electric power, environmental systems, climate change, the adoption of new technologies, and risk analysis.” According to her Carnegie Institution for Science, Department of Global Ecology bio, Katherine L. Reich Ricke started in 2001 as an undergraduate research assistant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She went on to earn a degree in earth, atmospheric and planetary science from MIT 2004. Between 2004 and 2007 she worked for something called ABT Associates in support of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency programs. In 2008 she was a visiting researcher at the Climate Dynamics Group of the University of Oxford’s Department of Physics. Between 2007 and 2011, Ricke’s time as a graduate research assistant at the Center for Climate and Energy Decision Making produced her Ph.D. dissertation titled “Characterizing Impacts and Implications of Proposals for Solar Radiation Management, a Form of Climate Engineering.” Advising her on this dissertation was M. Granger Morgan and top geoengineer David Keith. She then went on to become a postdoctoral researcher at the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University under top geoengineer Ken Caldeira. Shortly thereafter she became a fellow of the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Department of Global Ecology. She is currently a research associate at Cornell University’s Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. According to his 1997 NASA biography, Jay Apt earned a doctorate in physics from MIT in 1976. Also in 1976, Dr. Apt was a post-doctoral fellow in laser spectroscopy at MIT. From 1976 to 1980 he was a staff member of the Center for Earth & Planetary Physics, Harvard University, supporting NASA’s Pioneer Venus Mission. Dr. Apt served as the Assistant Director of Harvard’s Division of Applied Sciences from 1978 to 1980. In 1980 Dr. Apt joined the Earth and Space Sciences Division of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. From 1982 through 1985, he was a flight controller responsible for Shuttle payload operations at NASA’s aforementioned Johnson Space Center. He is currently a member of: the American Astronomical Society’s Division of Planetary Science, the American Geophysical Union, the American Physical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. According to an online biography, Frank E. Loy was Under Secretary for Global Affairs during the Clinton administration. He worked in the areas of the environment and climate change. He was the lead U.S. climate negotiator for three years. Since 2003, he has personally funded the Frank Loy Award for Environmental Diplomacy; an award given to State Department officers working in the area of climate or the environment. He is a member of the board of directors at: the Environmental Defense Fund, the Environmental Defense Action Fund, the Nature Conservancy, Population Services International, the Round Table of Environmental Health, Sciences, Research and Medicine of the National Academy of Medicine, the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, and ecoAmerica. According to David Victor’s Brookings Institution and UC San Diego biographies he, “is a professor of international relations at the School of Global Policy and Strategy and director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation (ILAR). Victor co-founded the ILAR which works in the area of climate change regulation. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of California, San Diego, Victor was a professor at Stanford Law School where he taught energy and environmental law.” It continues, “His research focuses on regulated industries and how regulation affects the operation of major energy markets. He has a dual understanding of the science behind climate change and how international and domestic public policy work.” He is also a co-director of the Deep Decarbonization Initiative at the University of California, San Diego, an adjunct professor of Climate, Atmospheric Science, and Physical Oceanography at the The Scripps Institution of Oceanography of the University of California, San Diego, a co-chair of the Cross-Brookings Initiative on Energy and Climate at the The Brookings Institution, and a leading contributor to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Victor is a member of the advisory council for Nature’s journal dedicated to the study of global warming titled Nature Climate Change and a board member of the journal Climatic Change. Victor is also the author of a 2011 book titled ‘Global Warming Gridlock’ which suggests geoengineering as a solution to the supposed problem of man-made global warming. Victor got his doctorate from MIT in 1997 and his BA from Harvard in 1987. He then went on to become a research scholar of the Project on Environmentally Compatible Energy Strategies of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. Between 1998 and 2009, Victor was the Robert W. Johnson, Jr. Senior Fellow for Science and Technology of the Council on Foreign Relations. He then became the director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at Stanford. As mentioned earlier, John ‘stratospheric aerosol injection’ Brennan is the former director of the CIA who in 2016 famously spoke about SRM geoengineering at the headquarters of the CFR. John Brennan may also have a very interesting indirect connection to the New Manhattan Project. John Brennan’s potential indirect connection to the New Manhattan Project is a bit complicated. In short, our John O. Brennan may be related to a man named James J. Brennan who worked extensively for the aforementioned Civil Air Transport and as an assistant to a U.S. congressman from New Mexico named John J. Dempsey. The full explanation follows. The American corporation that enabled the Flying Tigers of the early 1940s held office space at Rockefeller Center. As readers of this work now know, the Flying Tigers were most probably the beginnings of today’s chemtrail fleet. After the United States officially entered WWII on the side of the Chinese against the Empire of Japan, Nelson Rockefeller did tremendous business with his in-house founders of the Flying Tigers by working with them to export pharmaceutical drugs to WWII China through something called the Sydney Ross Company; a subsidiary of Sterling Drugs. The name of the corporation that enabled the Flying Tigers was China Defense Supplies. As the assistant to New Mexico Representative John J. Dempsey, James Brennan served as the Congressional liaison to China Defense Supplies. In 1932, Congressman Dempsey was appointed a member and later President of the Board of Regents of the University of New Mexico. After WWII in New Mexico, and specifically with the assistance the University of New Mexico, a lot of important early weather modification experiments were conducted by those pioneers of the scientific era of weather modification: Langmuir, Schaefer, and Vonnegut. As mentioned earlier, New Mexico is also home to the White Sands Proving Ground where the world’s first nuclear bomb blast occurred; a product of the original Manhattan Project. James J. Brennan played an active role in Civil Air Transport (CAT) from the start and, as the executive vice president, attempted to save the airline in the late 1940s by making severe spending cuts. James Brennan was a 8.5% owner of the company. Was James J. Brennan any relation to our John O. Brennan, the former Director of the CIA? Brennan says he is from in and around New York, NY. The Rockefellers are too. We will soon see their many possibilities here. We have a lot of evidence showing General Electric’s hand in all of this. We’ve known for some time about how three General Electric scientists (Langmuir, Schaefer, & Vonnegut) working with the navy began the modern era of weather modification way back in 1946 and how Vonnegut went on to do work in the vein of the New Manhattan Project. We also know that General Electric (GE) has also gone on to produce lots of electronic equipment which could be used as part of a global weather modification project like the one outlined here. Amongst a lot of other evidence linking GE to the New Manhattan Project, in 1958 a General Electric vice president by the name of Roy Johnson was named the first director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA/DARPA); an organization which appears to provide upper level scientific management to today’s NMP. GE’s Space Sciences Laboratory has supported atmospheric research in Alaska applicable to the NMP. Not only all that, but making them even more interesting here is the fact that GE also has a big Nazi past. In fact, as mentioned earlier, General Electric men worked alongside Wernher von Braun and the other Operation Paperclip scientists at White Sands, New Mexico. But it all goes much deeper than that. General Electric’s story here goes back to Weimar Republic Germany and earlier. It really goes back to Tesla vs. Edison, but we’ll get into that at another time. For the purpose of this discussion, we note that General Electric was among the core of a small group of American and German banks and industrial companies that enabled Hitler’s rise to power. As explained earlier, most of Hitler’s funding ultimately came from American investors. Big, monopolistic companies like General Electric were the vehicles that made the Nazi war machine happen. In the case of GE particularly, it behooves us to look at exactly how that whole situation came about. Shall we? Not long after World War One, way back in the days of Weimar Republic Germany, General Electric and the Rockefellers were funding German science. As noted earlier, Germany is the birthplace of modern science. Cornwell illuminates us again: This was all very convenient for GE as in 1928 a man by the name of Owen Young (1874-1962) was the chief U.S. delegate to the Young Plan reparations meetings. The Young Plan reparations meetings produced the agreements for the reparations leveled against Germany after their loss in World War One. Young co-authored the Plan with J.P. Morgan and others. The resulting Young Plan enabled General Electric and a group of their cronies to do tremendous monopolistic business during Germany’s reconstruction, resulting in the eventual production of the WWII Nazi war machine. In 1930, after overseeing the production of his eponymous Young Plan, Owen Young became chairman of General Electric’s board of directors. If that’s not some deep state action, then this author doesn’t know what is. Young was also chairman of the Executive Committee of Radio Corporation of America (RCA), another company implicated in the New Manhattan Project. John Foster Dulles was an executive at North American Edison. GE is a Premium corporate member of the Council on Foreign Relations and about one third of GE’s board of directors are CFR members. One GE board member, Ann Fudge is also a CFR director. Speaking of Nazis, the Bush family political dynasty is up to their eyeballs in this thing. Yes, the family we all love to hate has apparently been at it again. We all know how cool these guys look on TV in their $10,000 suits and how Bush Senior has been canonized by the lamestream media, but here are the facts. The Bush family bank, Brown Brothers Harriman funded the Nazis from their anti-Semitic, hate-filled, war-mongering beginnings to LONG AFTER they invaded Poland. The Bushes have no excuses and we shouldn’t give them any. It doesn’t end there. On Oct. 20, 1942, 10 months after the U.S. had entered the war, under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the U.S. government took over the Union Banking Corporation of which Prescott Bush was a director. Three of the shareholders who had their shares seized were Nazis. Two other businesses associated with the Union Banking Corporation were also seized. The following month, the Nazi interests invested in the Silesian-American Corporation, a company long managed by Prescott Bush, were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act as well. It gets darker. Roger Stone, in his book Jeb! And the Bush Crime Family suggests that old Prescott Bush was getting his hands very dirty in Nazi Germany. Stone writes, “According to a Dutch intelligence agent, Prescott Bush managed a portion of the slave labor force from Auschwitz.” The Bush family has all sorts of other connections to the Nazis involving people and organizations such as: William Stamps Farish, William Stamps Farish III, Fritz Thyssen, William H. Draper, Jr., William H. Draper III, the Rockefellers, I.G. Farben, Standard Oil, Hermann Schmitz, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Discussion of all these instances is slightly beyond the scope of this paper. The Bush family also has ties to the original Manhattan Project. Senator Prescott Bush (Bush Senior’s daddy) sat on the board of directors of something called the Vanadium Corporation which supplied unrefined uranium to the Manhattan Project. Prescott Bush also sat on the board of directors of a company called Dresser Industries which produced special pumps used in the production of the refined uranium needed for the world’s first atomic bombs. Now that’s called playing both sides and that’s how the old boy network does it. Dresser Industries was a company that worked frequently with the CIA. Prescott Bush was a member of the Dresser Industries board of directors for 22 years until 1952 when he entered the Senate. Once there, Senator Prescott Bush became Allen Dulles’ day-to-day CIA contact man. Dresser Industries is an extremely interesting player in all of this, but it takes a little bit of explaining. Please bear with. As we already know, the New Manhattan Project involves the electromagnetic manipulation of atmospheric particles. The manipulation of atmospheric particles in the fashion of the New Manhattan Project is a field of scientific study all unto itself and Dresser Industries has been at the forefront of this field for a very long time. Without going into the history of it all too much, it suffices to say that Dresser Industries has historically brought this field of study forward with its production of equipment designed to move and collect vaporized substances which would otherwise be lost to industrial processes. Dresser’s signature products are the massive electrostatic precipitators attached to many coal-fired electrical power plants all around the world. These electrostatic precipitators use electrostatic energy to collect the coal fly ash (smoke from burning coal) that would otherwise be pumped out into the surrounding atmosphere. Coal fly ash has been scientifically determined to be the exact substance with which we are being sprayed. It is reasonable to assume that Dresser not only builds these coal fly ash electrostatic precipitators, but that they also install and service them. Servicing them would most probably involve removing and carting away megatons of fresh coal fly ash. Way back in 1928 the Bush family bank (Brown Brothers Harriman) bought Dresser and it is reasonable to assume that Bush family members are invested in the company to this day. Is Dresser Industries providing the coal fly ash needed for today’s New Manhattan Project? If the reader wants to look into it further, the author has recently written a separate article about all of this. For further reading, please enjoy the author’s Dec. 2018 article “Chemtrails Exposed: Dresser Industries and the New Manhattan Project.” Another company called Ling Temco Vought shares interesting connections to Dresser Industries and another Bush family business known as the Carlyle Group. Again, it’s a little complicated. Like Bob Marley said, “They build their world in great confusion to force on us the devil’s illusion.” So let’s clarify. We first became interested in Ling Temco Vought (LTV) years ago when we learned about an early 1970s spin-off from LTV called LTV Electrosystems. LTV Electrosystems for a long time had a key player in the development of the New Manhattan Project on its board of directors; the aforementioned William Raborn. Raborn is well known to readers of this work. LTV Electrosystems went | Activist Post | https://www.activistpost.com/2019/01/chemtrails-exposed-the-deep-state-and-the-new-manhattan-project.html | 2019-01-14 18:40:00+00:00 | 1,547,509,200 | 1,567,552,475 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
3,816 | activistpost--2019-01-21--AI and AV Big Tech Cameras or Eyes Passengers or Pedestrians Profits or People Insight Hindsigh | 2019-01-21T00:00:00 | activistpost | AI and AV Big Tech; Cameras or Eyes? Passengers or Pedestrians? Profits or People? Insight, Hindsight or No-Sight? | On January 15, the BBC reported that following the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, a photographer discovered that his camera had been damaged. A man who took a photograph of a driverless car on display at the CES tech fair says his camera was damaged as a result. Jit Ray Chowdhury noticed purple spots on all his photographs after taking a photo of a lidar laser scanning system displayed by San Francisco firm AEye. He says the $1,198 (£930) Sony camera was one month old and the firm has offered to buy him a replacement. AEye said its system is not harmful to human eyes. AEye did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment but in a statement to Ars Technica, chief executive Luis Dussan said: “Cameras are up to 1,000 times more sensitive to lasers than eyeballs… Occasionally, this can cause thermal damage to a camera’s focal-plane array.” Mr. Chowdhury said he was happy with the firm’s response but he thought a warning should have been issued at the stand. “I have personally tested many lidar systems and taken pictures up close and [they] did not harm my camera,” he said. “Lidar companies should test how camera-safe they are.” Lidar works in a similar way to radar and sonar, using lasers rather than radio or soundwaves, explained Zeina Nazer, a postgraduate researcher at the University of Southampton specialising in driverless car technology. “Powerful lasers can damage cameras,” she said. “Camera sensors are, in general, more susceptible to damage than the human eye from lasers. Consumers are usually warned never to point a camera directly at laser emitters during a laser show.” CES-goer says his camera was killed by a self-driving car’s LIDAR LIDAR systems need to comply with rigorous safety rules to ensure that they don’t blind human eyes, but camera eyes are much more sensitive (this is the basis for IR-reflective materials that confuse CCTVs). Self-driving cars use both conventional cameras and LIDAR to guide themselves so any camera-blinding potential in LIDAR systems on autonomous vehicles could wreak havoc with other nearby cars. AEye uses 1550nm lasers. And unfortunately for Chowdhury, cameras are not filled with fluid like human eyes are. That means that high-power 1550nm lasers can easily cause damage to camera sensors even if they don’t pose a threat to human eyes. AEye is known for claiming that its lidar units have much longer range than those of competitors. While most lidar makers say their high-end lidars can see 200 or 300 meters, AEye says that its lidar has a range of 1,000 meters. When I talked to AEye CEO Luis Dussan about this claim last month, he said that one factor in AEye’s long range is the use of a powerful fiber laser. “One of the most important things about fiber lasers is that they can be amplified,” Dassan said. “Very short pulse, huge amount of signal.” There are a few takeaways that are concerning about all of this. The kind of math that puts all cameras and all LIDAR into a claim that cameras are 1,000 more sensitive that eyesight makes for good ad copy, but there are many cameras and there are many variables in eyes. There are bumblebee eyes, eyes of one-month old infants, eyes in individuals with cataracts, eyes in people with metal or plastic glasses in close proximity to their eyes. The National Academies of Sciences reported in 2008 that exposure to wireless radio frequencies has not been adequately researched in 20 different categories ranging from effects on children to effects on pregnant women. The claim that all eyes are protected by current safety assumptions as new radar technologies are deployed is questionable. Like the debate concerning wireless smart utility meters, unsubstantiated mathematical claims were made comparing cellphones and smart meters by industry. The source of the widely promoted smart meter-cellphone comparison quote is a mercenary tobacco scientist playing for both sides. He testifies on behalf of the utilities denying harm from coal dust exposure, and yet he convinces environmentalists seeking to reduce fossil fuel consumption that wireless utility meters are safe, based on his expert opinion, and the prevailing 30-year-old outdated guidelines that cater to industry. 3 – We Are Using the Wrong Adverse Health Indicator Boing Boing’s report said, “[U]nfortunately for Chowdhury, cameras are not filled with fluid like human eyes are. That means that high-power 1550nm lasers can easily cause damage to camera sensors even if they don’t pose a threat to human eyes.” This claim contradicts the recognition that both the testes and the eyes are more susceptible to heating damage from radiation than other tissue because they are closed systems and cannot thermo-regulate. Hence nature’s ingenious design of male anatomy … and the widely accepted recommendation that men with reproductive concerns pay attention to heat exposures, as shown here: Hot tubs, laptops, and fevers are among the risks identified for “the boys,” but this is still based on the idea that it is the temperature that is the critical issue, while ignoring other mechanisms of harm As a layperson, I don’t claim expertise in how the safety guidelines have been established, nor do I know much about cameras. I am not a medical care professional, and I don’t portray myself as one. But I do know 3 things. 1 – It is Hard to See Where We Are Going I, like many drivers, have difficulty at night due to the glare of a juxtaposition of different headlights, in different shades of colors, at different heights or angles due to the height of the vehicles, and mixed with environmental factors like precipitation. Many high-intensity LED lights continue to be installed in the name of energy efficiency while ignoring the issues raised by the American Medical Society: The rapid deployment of new technologies is being justified by an outdated theory that only temperature matters. The disruption of melatonin levels and circadian clocks do not cause the person to develop a temperature (thermal effect) when exposed to high intensity LED lights, yet they cause harm. As society examines the potential of altering the technologies underlying transportation, we should look closely at where we are headed and why. As reported by Smart Cities Dive, transportation experts are also raising the alarm on autonomous vehicles for other reasons. A report, “Critical Issues in Transportation 2019,” by the Transportation Research Board (TRB), a program within the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM), said while the growth of autonomous vehicles (AVs), electrification and connectivity presents great economic opportunities, growth must be managed effectively. If not, congestion and vehicle miles traveled (VMT) could increase tremendously. “There’s a very good likelihood that as these vehicles get automated they will continue to be individually owned and not part of a pooling service or a mobility service,” Dan Sperling, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California at Davis, told reporters at a press conference. “If that happens, we really have a transportation disaster, because you will have automated vehicles and people will be in those vehicles a lot more. Our VMT will double.” “Cities have been involved in AV tests and have been adding infrastructure to enhance connectivity, but much of the advancement is in the hands of automakers and startups who are pioneering the technology.” 2 – There is Nothing Perfect About a Perfect Storm That is Ignored Sometimes, while driving, I am momentarily blinded by the sunset bouncing off of my rear view mirror, or when driving east into a sunrise. This is akin to an issue where concave EnergyStar windows caused another homeowner’s aluminum siding to melt, described as a perfect storm. If we keep testing technologies like the new 5G telecommunications infrastructure or wireless utility meters in an artificial environment devoid of tree cover, bees, and babies, and base our studies on limited variables and only one exposure at a time, we can’t apply what we observe to real world situations. This error is compounded when we ignore reports of harm. This is where we are now in history, as portrayed in the many examples of Late Lessons from Early Warnings. 3 – Elaine Hertzberg Died Because We are Experimenting For me, one of the most compelling reasons to rein in the unbridled experimentation with LIDAR-driven cars is the case of Elaine Herzberg. She is the pedestrian who was killed by a self-driving car in Arizona in 2018. The report says that the Uber vehicle, a modified Volvo XC90 SUV, had been in autonomous mode for 19 minutes and was driving at about 40 mph when it hit 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg as she was walking her bike across the street. The car’s radar and lidar sensors detected Herzberg about six seconds before the crash—first identifying her as an unknown object, then as a vehicle, and then as a bicycle, each time adjusting its expectations for her path of travel. About a second before impact, the report says “the self-driving system determined that an emergency braking maneuver was needed to mitigate a collision.” Uber, however, does not allow its system to make emergency braking maneuvers on its own. Rather than risk “erratic vehicle behavior”—like slamming on the brakes or swerving to avoid a plastic bag—Uber relies on its human operator to watch the road and take control when trouble arises. These details of the fatal crash point to at least two serious flaws in Uber’s self-driving system: software that’s not yet ready to replace humans, and humans that are ill-equipped to keep their would-be replacements from doing harm. We can’t ask Elaine if the car’s LIDAR interfered with her vision before the accident, because she died in the accident. But we have citizens reporting harm to their eyes and skin from encounters with the invisible rays invading their neighborhoods. If the last thing that Elaine saw was a vehicle barreling towards her that was not smart or intelligent enough to stop, created by a humanity that is not intelligent enough to stop and heed the early warnings, then we are all the Elaine Herzbergs. After WWII, human experimentation without knowledge or consent was prohibited by international law, for good reason. It is time to rein in the ambition fueling big tech’s involuntary testbeds, including smart meters, 5G telecommunications, and autonomous vehicles, in favor of precaution and informed consent. We’ve arranged a society on science and technology in which nobody understands anything about science and technology, and this combustible mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later is going to blow up in our faces. I mean, who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don’t know anything about it. Patricia Burke works with activists across the country and internationally calling for new biologically-based microwave radio frequency exposure limits. She is based in Massachusetts and can be reached at [email protected]. | Activist Post | https://www.activistpost.com/2019/01/ai-and-av-big-tech-cameras-or-eyes-passengers-or-pedestrians-profits-or-people-insight-hindsight-or-no-sight.html | 2019-01-21 16:50:53+00:00 | 1,548,107,453 | 1,567,551,451 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
4,182 | activistpost--2019-02-28--Total Data Domination 5G IoT AI Surveillance And The Smart City | 2019-02-28T00:00:00 | activistpost | Total Data Domination: 5G, IoT, AI Surveillance And The Smart City | In 1932, Aldous Huxley foresaw a Scientific Dictatorship in his book, Brave New World. In 2019, Huxley’s dystopian future is appearing right before our eyes, but few recognize it. ⁃ TN Editor People who have a modern smartphone normally think of 5G as nothing more than a progression from 3G and 4G. Offering fewer dropped calls, faster data transfer, and more convenience. 5G is the fifth generation of wireless technology. This thinking barely scratches the surface. There must be a greater reason why CEOs of major cellular carriers are breaking their necks to railroad the fastest implementation in history of a new communication standard. This reason has little to do with your personal cellphone and everything to do with the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) where all electronic devices will be connected together in real-time. Collectively, the IoT is the core technology used to implement Smart City makeovers. “Real time” is a magical tech term. 5G is at least one order of magnitude faster than anything before it. It is comparable to everything being connected directly by fiber-optic cable where as soon as you touch the send key, your data transmission is received at the other end, faster than a blink of your eye. Let’s do some math. 4G can transfer data at 100,000,000 bits per second (which is 10 megabits per second). That’s really fast! However, 5G blows out the same data at 10,000,000,000 bits per second, or 10 Gbps (Gigabits per second). This is 100 times faster than 4G. Secondly, 4G has a typical “ping” factor between 10ms and 50ms (milliseconds) that measures the time needed in order to send a single packet of information. 5G drops that time to 1ms. In spite of the cutthroat American race between wireless providers like AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, China has declared that it intends to emerge as the global leader on 5G rollout to its own 1.4 billion citizens. China is also mass-producing the technology to sell to the rest of the world. In the U.S., 5G is being heavily promoted by the Trump Administration. The Federal Communications Commission issued a ruling in September that blocks cities from charging higher fees for installing 5G infrastructure. Loud protests have been registered from the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National Association of Counties, the National Governors Association and the Nation Conference of State Legislatures. Why? Because the FCC’s actions are unconstitutional and cities are being stripped of the little sovereignty they have left. Thus far, the FCC is undeterred in its position. Smart City technology is brought to us exclusively by Big Tech corporations in the name of Technocracy and Sustainable Development. With the advent of sophisticated Artificial Intelligence (AI) programs, massive amounts of data collected from sensors of all types can be analyzed in real-time, displaying the results in a multi-dimensional model. What are sensors? Cameras, microphones, self-driving vehicles, license-plate readers, cell phones, Bluetooth devices, Smart Meters and all connected devices in Smart Homes. Thanks to real-time connections between autonomous vehicles, road censors and central computers equipped with AI, they will be able to navigate any and all roadways with authority and impunity. They will also inform on you every inch of the way. In China, where all of this massive surveillance is weaponized against civilians, Technocrats have implemented a Social Credit Score assigned by algorithm, to all 1.4 billion inhabitants. By 2020, China intends to have 600 million facial recognition cameras installed, or about one camera for every 4 citizens. All of them will transmit their images in real-time to central computers running sophisticated AI programs. Each person in the big-data database will have their personal data pulled from every conceivable location in the nation. By the time that they know who you are, what you are, what you do, what you think and what you intend to do, their AI algorithms will calculate and assign to you a Social Credit Score that will limit or expand whatever privileges you will have from that time on. The Social Credit Score system is coming to America as well, unless we somehow convince our own officials that this is a horrible idea that will utterly destroy the American dream. Nothing has changed in the 85 years since Technocracy, Inc. defined its original mission in 1938: Technocracy is the science of social engineering, the scientific operation of the entire social mechanism to produce and distribute goods and services to the entire population. Scoffers may argue that history does not mean anything and there is no relevance to modern times. If they understood history, they would not say such a thing. For instance, consider ‘ride-sharing’ schemes where nobody owns a vehicle and everyone shares a common pool of community owned autos. This idea is not new. Technocrats had it in their sights as early as 1934: The Automotive Branch of Transportation would provide a network of garages at convenient places all over the country from which automobiles could be had at any hour of the night or day. No automobiles would be privately owned. When one wished to use an automobile he would merely call the garage, present his driver’s license, and a car of the type needed would be assigned to him. ‘When he was through with the car, he would return it either to the same garage or to any other garage that happened to be convenient, and surrender his Energy Certificates in payment for the cost incurred while he was using it. I will suggest that the modern world cannot be even remotely understood except in terms of Technocracy and its inevitable outcome: Scientific Dictatorship. Every major meme in global geopolitics, economics and globalization, devolution of national sovereignty, etc., is dancing to the Technocrat drumbeat. As to today, 5G is about to deliver the ultimate tool for total control over Americans, and it has nothing to do with your cell phones getting a speed upgrade. You can read more from Patrick Wood at his site Technocracy News, where this article first appeared. | Activist Post | https://www.activistpost.com/2019/02/total-data-domination-5g-iot-ai-surveillance-and-the-smart-city.html | 2019-02-28 16:11:09+00:00 | 1,551,388,269 | 1,567,546,947 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
4,573 | activistpost--2019-04-30--To Prevent a Robot Apocalypse We Must Study Machine Behavior | 2019-04-30T00:00:00 | activistpost | To Prevent a Robot Apocalypse, We Must Study “Machine Behavior” | Experts have been warning us about potential dangers associated with artificial intelligence for quite some time. But is it too late to do anything about the impending rise of the machines? Once the stuff of far-fetched dystopian science fiction, the idea of robot overlords taking over the world at some point now seems inevitable. The late Dr. Stephen Hawking issued some harsh and terrifying words of caution back in 2014: Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, warned that we could see some terrifying issues within the next few years: The risk of something seriously dangerous happening is in the five year timeframe. 10 years at most. Please note that I am normally super pro technology and have never raised this issue until recent months. This is not a case of crying wolf about something I don’t understand. The pace of progress in artificial intelligence (I’m not referring to narrow AI) is incredibly fast. Unless you have direct exposure to groups like Deepmind, you have no idea how fast — it is growing at a pace close to exponential. I am not alone in thinking we should be worried. The leading AI companies have taken great steps to ensure safety. They recognize the danger, but believe that they can shape and control the digital superintelligences and prevent bad ones from escaping into the Internet. That remains to be seen… (source) Last week, a team of researchers made a case for a wide-ranging scientific research agenda aimed at understanding the behavior of artificial intelligence systems. The group, led by researchers at the MIT Media Lab, published a paper in Nature in which they called for a new field of research called “machine behavior.” The new field would take the study of artificial intelligence “well beyond computer science and engineering into biology, economics, psychology, and other behavioral and social sciences,” according to an MIT Media Lab press release. Scientists have studied human behavior for decades, and now it is time to apply that kind of research to intelligent machines, the group explained. Because artificial intelligence is doing more collective ‘thinking,’ the same interdisciplinary approach needs to be applied to understanding machine behavior, the authors say. “We need more open, trustworthy, reliable investigation into the impact intelligent machines are having on society, and so research needs to incorporate expertise and knowledge from beyond the fields that have traditionally studied it,” said Iyad Rahwan, who leads the Scalable Cooperation group at the Media Lab. This is particularly concerning, especially considering we already know that AI can hate without human input and that robots have no sense of humor and might kill us over a joke. “We’re seeing an emergence of machines as agents in human society; these are social machines that are making decisions that have real value implications in society,” says David Lazer, who is one of the authors of the paper, as well as University Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Computer and Information Sciences at Northeastern. We interact numerous times each day with thinking machines, as the press release explains: We may ask Siri to find the dry cleaner nearest to our home, tell Alexa to order dish soap, or get a medical diagnosis generated by an algorithm. Many such tools that make life easier are in fact “thinking” on their own, acquiring knowledge and building on it and even communicating with other thinking machines to make ever more complex judgments and decisions—and in ways that not even the programmers who wrote their code can fully explain. Imagine, for instance, a news feed run by a deep neural net recommends an article to you from a gardening magazine, even though you’re not a gardener. “If I asked the engineer who designed the algorithm, that engineer would not be able to state in a comprehensive and causal way why that algorithm decided to recommend that article to you,” said Nick Obradovich, a research scientist in the Scalable Cooperation group and one of the lead authors of the Nature paper. Parents often think of their children’s interaction with the family personal assistant as charming or funny. But what happens when the assistant, rich with cutting-edge AI, responds to a child’s fourth or fifth question about T. Rex by suggesting, “Wouldn’t it be nice if you had this dinosaur as a toy?” “What’s driving that recommendation?” Rahwan said. “Is the device trying to do something to enrich the child’s experience—or to enrich the company selling the toy dinosaur? It’s very hard to answer that question.” (source) What hasn’t been examined as closely is how these algorithms work. How do they evolve with use? How do machines develop a specific behavior? How do algorithms function within a specific social or cultural environment? These issues need to be studied, the group says. There is a significant barrier to the type of research the group is proposing, however: But even if big tech companies decided to share information about their algorithms and otherwise allow researchers more access to them, there is an even bigger barrier to research and investigation, which is that AI agents can acquire novel behaviors as they interact with the world around them and with other agents. The behaviors learned from such interactions are virtually impossible to predict, and even when solutions can be described mathematically, they can be “so lengthy and complex as to be indecipherable,” according to the paper. (source) And, there are ethical concerns surrounding how AI makes decisions: Say, for instance, a hypothetical self-driving car is sold as being the safest on the market. One of the factors that makes it safer is that it “knows” when a big truck pulls up along its left side and automatically moves itself three inches to the right while still remaining in its own lane. But what if a cyclist or motorcycle happens to be pulling up on the right at the same time and is thus killed because of this safety feature? “If you were able to look at the statistics and look at the behavior of the car in the aggregate, it might be killing three times the number of cyclists over a million rides than another model,” Rahwan said. “As a computer scientist, how are you going to program the choice between the safety of the occupants of the car and the safety of those outside the car? You can’t just engineer the car to be ‘safe’—safe for whom?” (source) The researchers explain that it will take experts from a host of scientific disciplines to study the way machines behave in the real world, as a press release from Northeastern University states. “The process of understanding how online dating algorithms are changing the societal institution of marriage, or determining whether our interaction with artificial intelligence affects our human development, will require more than just the mathematicians and engineers who built those algorithms.” What do you think? Do you think artificial intelligence will eventually make humans obsolete? What do you think that will be like? How and when will it happen? Please share your thoughts in the comments. Dagny Taggart is the pseudonym of an experienced journalist who needs to maintain anonymity to keep her job in the public eye. Dagny is non-partisan and aims to expose the half-truths, misrepresentations, and blatant lies of the MSM. This article was sourced from The Organic Prepper. Provide, protect and profit from what is coming! Get a free issue of Counter Markets today. | Activist Post | https://www.activistpost.com/2019/04/to-prevent-a-robot-apocalypse-we-must-study-machine-behavior.html | 2019-04-30 15:16:13+00:00 | 1,556,651,773 | 1,567,541,582 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
7,293 | ageofautism--2019-09-09--Transplanting Human Autism Microbiome In Mice Causes Autism | 2019-09-09T00:00:00 | ageofautism | Transplanting Human Autism Microbiome In Mice Causes Autism | All of those studies you see above, have families and researchers hopeful and motivated to continue more studies, with the ultimate goal of treatments, medications and cures, to help so many ill people. Yet, AUTISM, the youngest hit group affected by microbiome dysfunction, with all of its subsequent medical and behavioral issues, constantly has to deal with controversy. Now, it’s about this study above, and Spectrum , a site funded by the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) , where it appears that the focus is solely on genetics , had this to say: “ Study of microbiome’s importance in autism triggers swift backlash ” : The impressive list of researchers is outstanding . Many have researched autism and all of them seem to be well acquainted with the microbiome. Their expertise in Biology, Biological Engineering, Microbiology, Environmental Biotechnology, Neurology, Biomedical Science, Genome Sciences, Neurobehavioral Genetics, and Microbiome Innovation shows the encompassing knowledge that powered this research. What is more astounding is that this study can now be added into the increasing list diagnoses. If you transplant gut microbiota from human donors with or TD controls into germ-free mice that colonization with microbiota is sufficient to induce. That list thus far: Some were not happy with that conclusion. It may be that as we find more concrete evidence that it is the microbiome and NOT genes as the epicenter of autism, ---money, causation, and reputations--- may be challenged. Because my daughter has been so affected, my perseveration of the microbiome for these many years has indeed, been the right path. Searching for answers to improve the health and well-being of increasing numbers of children on the spectrum, is a huge motivator for many of us. Let’s take a look at what this all means. “We transplanted gut microbiota from human donors with ASD or TD controls into germ-free mice and reveal that colonization with ASD microbiota is sufficient to induce hallmark autistic behaviors.” By Teresa Conrick In late Spring, this study came out, Human Gut Microbiota from Autism Spectrum Disorder Promote Behavioral Symptoms in Mice . The importance of the results should jolt even the most skeptic: Many scientists have pointed out possible errors of analysis and interpretation in a high-profile study that suggested microbes can ease autism-like behaviors in mice….Minutes after the study was published, independent experts began raising concerns on Twitter about three graphs included in the paper. Given the very high number of variables being probed, it's not surprising some differences are found. No replication samples are tested, so my prior expectation would be that these are spurious, until proven otherwise Wiring the Brain is all about -- “how the brain wires itself up during development, how the end result can vary in different people and what happens when it goes wrong “ -- and there are 0 articles on the microbiome and the focus on autism is pretty much about genes. Other examples: “The data didn’t pass what I call the eyeball test,” one of the tweeters, Kevin Mitchell, associate professor of genetics at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, told Spectrum…….“ and a tweet from another genes-only lab, “The Sebat laboratory is interested in understanding the molecular basis of neuropsychiatric disorders including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and autism. We are interested in the role of copy number variants (CNVs) in disease…... Don't even get me started on the N of 3 controls and 5 cases that were used for most analyses. The variability between donors was huge. The researchers stand by their original results: “As we sit here today, we’ve found no errors with the statistics we’ve done,” Mazmanian, professor of microbiology at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, told Spectrum. This additionally significant part of their study could be seen as another nail in the coffin of those doing exclusive gene research as the cause of autism: The brains of mice colonized with ASD microbiota display alternative splicing of ASD-relevant genes. Microbiome and metabolome profiles of mice harboring human microbiota predict that specific bacterial taxa and their metabolites modulate ASD behaviors. Indeed, treatment of an ASD mouse model with candidate microbial metabolites improves behavioral abnormalities and modulates neuronal excitability in the brain. We propose that the gut microbiota regulates behaviors in mice via production of neuroactive metabolites, suggesting that gut-brain connections contribute to the pathophysiology of ASD. This is not the first study about autism to be attacked. Funding for autism research started with psychiatry back in the 1930’s until the study of genetics became more popular. Millions of dollars have been spent and wasted on searching for autism genes, with absolutely no benefit to society or more importantly, the affected individuals and their families. Moving autism into it’s more appropriate medical domain, a gut-brain disease for many, with a spectrum of immune dysfunction and behavioral symptoms, has been no easy feat and again, I applaud those researchers who are doing it. There are many fans of these gut-brain studies, including me. Smithsonian had this recent, well-done article, discussing the details of this pertinent, research and hopeful treatments: How the Gut Microbiome Could Provide a New Tool to Treat Autism The microbiome—a collection of organisms including bacteria, archaea, fungi and viruses that live in the human gut—has been shown to play a significant role in brain function. ……."There is a very high correlation between [gastrointestinal] severity and autism severity—for language, for social interaction, for behavior, all of the core symptoms of autism,” says Jim Adams, a professor and autism researcher at Arizona State University….. Mazmanian and a team of researchers demonstrated this gut-brain connection in a mouse model of autism in 2013. Three years later, the team did the same for Parkinson's disease. And recently they showed that transplanting feces from a person with autism into germ-free mice would produce many symptoms of ASD in the animals. The article really accentuates their work and shows the benefits of the research for individuals. It will take time and multiple studies to answer these questions, but Adams is optimistic that a licensed microbial treatment for ASD will become available in a few years...If medical researchers like the ASU team can continue to make progress developing a microbiome treatment for ASD, many more kids could benefit from the multifold value of a healthy gut. Megan is 26, and grateful is the word that always comes to my mind when I read these studies and see the huge impact it has on the future of autism for so many. We have been waiting too long. Teresa Conrick is Science Editor for Age of Autism. | Age of Autism | https://www.ageofautism.com/2019/09/transplanting-human-autism-microbiome-in-mice-causes-autism.html | 2019-09-09 10:01:00+00:00 | 1,568,037,660 | 1,569,330,696 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
7,726 | aljazeera--2019-01-07--Criticism after claims ancient Hindus invented stem cell research | 2019-01-07T00:00:00 | aljazeera | Criticism after claims ancient Hindus invented stem cell research | The organisers of a major Indian science conference have distanced themselves from speakers who made some unusual claims during the five-day event held in the northern city of Jalandhar. The speakers, one of whom was the vice chancellor of a South Indian university, claimed Hindus invented stem cell research thousands of years ago and said Einstein's general theory of relativity was wrong. "We had 100 Kauravas from one mother because of stem cell and test tube technology," Andhra University Vice Chancellor G Nageshwar Rao said, referring to a story from the Hindu epic Mahabharata. Rao also told the group of schoolchildren and scientists he was addressing that a demon king from another centuries-old Hindu epic had two dozen aircraft and a network of landing strips in modern-day Sri Lanka. "Hindu Lord Vishnu used guided missiles known as 'Vishnu Chakra' and chased moving targets," Rao, a professor of inorganic chemistry, told the crowd. Rao was not the only scientist who made outlandish remarks. A scientist from a university in southern Tamil Nadu state questioned both the general theory of relativity by Albert Einstein and the theory of gravity by Isaac Newton. Following the comments, the organisers of the event, the Indian Scientific Congress Association, expressed "serious concern" and distanced themselves from the speakers. "We don't subscribe to their views and distance ourselves from their comments. This is unfortunate," General Secretary of the Indian Scientific Congress Association Premendu P Mathur, told AFP news agency. "There is a serious concern about such kind of utterances by responsible people." It is not the first time controversial remarks have been made during the annual congress. In 2015, a paper was presented which said Hindus discovered the Pythagorean theorem but that Greek scientist Pythagoras had taken the credit for it. A speaker at that year's event also said aircraft were invented by Hindus in ancient times and that they had discovered the technology behind interplanetary travel. A year earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that Hindus in ancient times already possessed the capabilities of genetic engineering and cosmetic surgery. "We all read about Karna in the Mahabharata," Modi said. "If we think a little more, we realise that the Mahabharata says Karna was not born from his mother's womb. This means that genetic science was present at that time," he had said. "That is why Karna could be born outside his mother's womb." Modi also said cosmetic surgery must have been possible, as shown by the Hindu deity Ganesha. "We worship Lord Ganesha. There must have been some plastic surgeon at that time who got an elephant’s head on the body of a human being and began the practice of plastic surgery." In 2016, former chief minister of the state of Uttarakhand and member of parliament Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank called "astrology the biggest science" and that it "should be promoted". Nishank also said Hindus in ancient times had knowledge of nuclear science. "We speak about nuclear science today. But Sage Kanad conducted nuclear test one lakh (100,000) years ago," Nishank said during an interview with local media. Those comments were all heavily criticised by scientists. In 2017, thousands of scientists and their supporters marched across India to promote their work and demand that the government invest more in the field. Not only did those marching call for more funding, but they also called for the end to "propagation of unscientific, obscurantist ideas and religious intolerance", as well as better adherence to Article 51A of the Constitution, which states that it is the duty of every citizen to "develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform". | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/01/criticism-claims-ancient-hindus-invented-stem-cell-research-190107165340500.html | 2019-01-07 19:56:43+00:00 | 1,546,909,003 | 1,567,553,634 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
15,321 | aljazeera--2019-08-23--Russia launches floating nuclear power plant Akademik Lomonosov | 2019-08-23T00:00:00 | aljazeera | Russia launches floating nuclear power plant Akademik Lomonosov | A huge vessel, the world's only floating nuclear power plant, has left its dock in the Russian port of Murmansk and is on its way to the arctic town of Pevek despite opposition from environmental groups. The 144 metres long and 30 metres wide vessel, named the Akademik Lomonosov after the 18th-century Russian scientist, houses two nuclear reactors. It will be towed 6,000 kilometres to the remote Siberian region of Chukotka, about 86 kilometres from the US state of Alaska, after leaving the port on Friday. Once docked, the 21,000-tonne barge will replace a coal-burning power plant and an ageing land-based nuclear plant and will supply 50,000 people in the area with electricity, according to Russia's state nuclear corporation Rosatom. The floating vessel will be the northernmost nuclear plant in the world, and will also power the extraction of natural resources in the region when it starts operations next year. Russia's state corporation has described the vessel as a "pilot project", with plans for widespread development and use of similar designs. Russia, the United States and several other countries have long used nuclear reactors to power sea vessels, including ice breakers and submarines, but the Russian vessel is set to be the only floating nuclear power plant of its kind when it begins operations next year. Scientists in China and researchers at the US-based Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are also working on sea-based nuclear power plants, and France has explored the possibility. The environmental group Greenpeace has called the plan "Chernobyl on Ice", referring to the 1986 nuclear power plant meltdown, which released large levels of radiation into the atmosphere, forced thousands to flee their homes and sparked long-term fears of health and environmental repercussions. An explosion on August 8 in Archangelsk has further heightened concerns of Russian nuclear negligence, with the government initially denying, and then admitting that radioactive material had been involved in the blast, which killed five scientists and caused radiation levels to spike in a nearby town. The launch is part of a wider ambition of Russian President Vladimir Putin to develop the Northern Arctic region. That desire has become more realistic in recent years with global warming and melting ice caps making some areas more accessible. Rosatom said the Akademik Lomonosov is part of a larger plan to provide energy to remote regions in Russia and around the world. It said that floating nuclear units could be particularly beneficial to island nations and can be used to power desalination plants for countries with a shortage of fresh water. The company has also said that, because many remote areas rely on coal-burning plants, the portable nuclear plants will help to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. On board the Akademik Lomonosov are two KLT-40C reactor systems, each with a capacity of 35 megawatts. It has an overall "life cycle" of 40 years, which may be extended to 50 years, according to Rosatom. The corporation's Director General Alexei Likhachev, in May, described the vessel as an "unparalleled piece of engineering". Rostom is currently working on a smaller, more powerful version of the floating plant, which it plans to roll out as part of the initiative's second generation. Greenpeace has continually criticised the decade-long project, accusing the Russian corporation of not being transparent and saying that any problem with the reactor in the remote region would be difficult to properly contain before it turned catastrophic. Rosatom has said the risks will be minimised, with spent fuel taken to special storage facilities in mainland Russia. In 2017, Greenpeace protested at the St Petersburg Baltic shipyard, where the Akademik Lomonosov was being constructed and where tests were meant to take place. Those tests were moved to the smaller city of Murmansk in May, where the floating plant was loaded with nuclear fuel before its final departure. In May, Jan Haverkamp, the nuclear expert with Greenpeace Central and Eastern Europe, said in a statement that installing the floating power plant in "the harsh environment of the Russian Arctic will pose a constant threat to people of the North and the pristine Arctic nature". That month, Greenpeace, along with two Russian environmental organisations, sent a letter to Rosatom and other authorities that called for a peer-review of the vessel by nuclear regulators from other Arctic countries, as well as an Arctic Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). In June, the Russian regulator Rostechnadzor issued a 10-year licence for the Akademik Lomonosov. Critics have pointed to past incidents involving nuclear sea vessels, including the sinking of the gargantuan Kursk Submarine in 2000 and the leaking of radiation by a Russian icebreaker off the coast of Siberia in 2011. Several fires onboard nuclear-powered vessels in recent years, including one in July that killed 14 crew members on the Losharik deep-sea vessel, have also stoked concerns. "The incident-ridden history of Russian nuclear icebreakers and submarines shows the need for strict, independent oversight with international peer review. This must start now, before the reactors are loaded, and span the plant's entire risky operation - including transport, decommissioning and waste management," said Haverkamp. Michael Golay, a professor in the Nuclear Science and Engineering Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), told Al Jazeera there is a great potential for innovation when it comes to nuclear plants based on water. In some instances, the right designs could make these power plants safer than those on land, he said, noting that recent nuclear catastrophes had been caused not by the nuclear chain reaction, but by failures in cooling the nuclear reactor afterwards. "What we've seen is, we can control the chain reaction pretty reliably," Golay said. "But the problem of reactor cooling has been important in the Fukushima accident and the Three Mile Island accident." An innovative design that uses gravity and ocean water could make that cooling more foolproof, he added. Golay said that the Akademik Lomonosov appears to use technology more akin to that used in land-based nuclear plants or nuclear-powered sea vessels. This means its safety will rely more on the hardware, culture, training and execution by the crew. The plant is also very small relative to commercial land-based nuclear plants. It would have to be scaled up to seriously affect the way nuclear power is delivered around the world. "The [Akademik Lomonosov] is the first step in a long journey," Golay said. "But if it goes successfully, it could open the way to other possibilities." | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/08/russia-launches-floating-nuclear-power-plant-akademik-lomonosov-190822145809353.html | 2019-08-23 11:33:18+00:00 | 1,566,574,398 | 1,567,533,615 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
21,215 | bbc--2019-01-18--Elon Musks Tesla to cut about 3000 jobs as cars too expensive | 2019-01-18T00:00:00 | bbc | Elon Musk's Tesla to cut about 3,000 jobs as cars 'too expensive' | Electric carmaker Tesla has said it will cut its workforce by 7% after the "most challenging" year in its history. In an email to staff on the firm's website, founder Elon Musk said that growth had been strong. But he added it was difficult to make Teslas with their new and developing technology as cheaply as conventional cars, and the firm's cars were still "too expensive for most people". Tesla employs more than 45,000 people, indicating it will cut about 3,000. Shares in the car manufacturer opened more than 6% lower as trading began in the US on Friday. Mr Musk said 2018 was Tesla's "most successful" yet, in which it delivered almost as many cars as it had in all the previous years of its existence combined. However, while it ramped up production of its mid-market Model 3 car, Mr Musk said its products were too pricey for the average driver and its profits too low. "This quarter will hopefully allow us, with great difficulty, effort and some luck, to target a tiny profit," he wrote. "However, starting around May, we will need to deliver at least the mid-range Model 3 variant in all markets, as we need to reach more customers who can afford our vehicles. "Moreover, we need to continue making progress towards lower priced variants of Model 3." He said Tesla had "no choice" but to reduce full-time employee headcount and retain "only the most critical temps and contractors". He added the firm would need to make these cuts while "increasing the Model 3 production rate" and making many "manufacturing engineering improvements in the coming months". It's been a tough few years for the electric carmaker and its high-profile founder. The firm has repeatedly failed to meet its own production targets, leading many investors to bet against it. Tesla is in a race against time. It's already well established as a niche producer of upmarket electric vehicles. But that isn't where the company sees its future. Electric cars at the moment are in many ways a lifestyle choice. But in future, ever tighter emissions regulations and restrictions on "regular" cars are expected to drive them into the mainstream. It's potentially a huge market - and Tesla is targeting a significant share. That's the rationale behind its brand new Model 3, billed as an "affordable" electric car. But the Model 3 isn't actually that affordable yet - the cheapest versions have yet to go on sale. And it needs to make a lot more of them, in order to benefit from economies of scale. Meanwhile established manufacturers will soon be flooding the market with brand new EVs of their own. Last year the priority for Tesla was simply to boost production as quickly as possible, to meet ambitious targets. It took on a lot of new employees to make that happen. Now, it needs to make even more cars, more cheaply - and it will have to do so with fewer staff. That certainly won't be easy, but according to Elon Musk, "there isn't any other way". Mr Musk was also caught up in a number of scandals, including being sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission after tweeting that he planned to take Tesla private. Some analysts have speculated that Tesla will turn the ship around this year, but earlier this month it fell short on quarterly deliveries of the Model 3. It also had to cut prices in the US to offset lower green tax credits. In his email, Mr Musk noted the firm was cutting the jobs after expanding its headcount by almost a third in 2018. "Tesla has only been producing cars for about a decade and we're up against massive, entrenched competitors," he said. "The net effect is that Tesla must work much harder than other manufacturers to survive while building affordable, sustainable products." | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46919489 | 2019-01-18 15:41:17+00:00 | 1,547,844,077 | 1,567,551,876 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
23,262 | bbc--2019-02-20--Samsung unveils foldable smartphone | 2019-02-20T00:00:00 | bbc | Samsung unveils foldable smartphone | Samsung has unveiled a foldable smartphone - the Galaxy Fold - alongside a 5G Galaxy S10 handset and three other Galaxy S10 mobiles. The Fold will go on sale in just over two months time, earlier than many expected. The Galaxy S10 5G features the firm's biggest-ever non-folding phone display and promises faster data speeds when networks become available. The S10 line-up also includes the introduction of a lower-cost model. Samsung had previously acknowledged that the cost of its S9 range had contributed to "lower-than-expected sales". Samsung said the Galaxy Fold would open up to create a 7.3in (18.5cm) tablet-like display and would be able to run up to three apps at once. A demo showed off "app continuity" features by which the device transferred from one mode to another much more smoothly than had been the case with an earlier foldable phone - Royole's FlexPai. One example involved a Google Maps screen appearing on the Fold's smaller front display and then expanding to a larger view when the handset was opened following a one-second pause. Samsung added that Whatsapp, Facebook, YouTube and Microsoft Office would also be optimised to suit the new form-factor. It said that it had designed a new type of hidden hinge system that would withstand hundreds of thousands of folds and unfolds, and contained a battery on each side to extend its runtime. In addition, the South Korean firm said the phone contained six cameras - three on the back, two on the inside and one on the front - to ensure it could take photos however it is held. A 4G version of the Galaxy Fold is set to go on sale on April 26 and will start at $1,980 (£1,515). A more expensive 5G edition was also promised. Samsung described it as being a "luxury" item. "Fold is an experience that gives people who want a phone but also a larger screen with no compromise on the phone experience," commented Carolina Milanesi from the consultancy Creative Strategies. "There's a lot of tech packed in there. And it makes sense to have kept it under $2,000 even if only for the psychological effect that has." But another market watcher still had doubts. "In theory, foldables are hugely attractive: they pack a giant screen into a small design," commented Neil Mawston from the research firm Strategy Analytics. "But in reality, consumers don't know exactly how they will work, and the applications for them are still fairly immature. "You can look back at history at the dual-screen folder phones that ZTE and NEC and others release. They haven't sold particularly well mostly due to price and lack of distribution. "So, there's good potential, but still a lot of uncertainty." In the short demonstration we saw today, Samsung's use case of watching entertainment, playing games and app multi-tasking will make a lot of sense for a lot of people. This is a tremendously creative feat of engineering. Folding screens seem like a good idea. What won't work, however, is the price. I've been at many launch events like this, and normally the worst case scenario for the firms putting on the show is a lack of applause when the price is announced. Today we saw something worse - loud grumbles, even some laughter. $1,980? Simply too much. Also, I wonder about some other aspects of this phone we can't judge yet as we haven't had a chance to hold it. When Samsung's head of mobile placed it into his suit pocket on stage, it landed with all the grace of a cartoon anvil. So: possibly heavy, with two likely-hot batteries, and a huge price tag. Creative, sure? Practical? For me, Samsung has fallen short - but the effort should excite gadget fans who have been longing for something different for so long. I suspect this device will have people flocking to stores to see it up close, if not to actually purchase it. The S10 series is likely to remain Samsung's focus when it comes to sales for the foreseeable future. The S10 and S10+ will cost more than the phones they supersede - beginning at £799 and £899 respectively when they go on sale on 8 March. But the S10e means the Galaxy S range now starts at a lower price-point - £669 - albeit with lower specifications to match. The S10 5G is yet to be priced and only has a vague "summer" release planned. "Having a 5G variant is strategically important for Samsung as it gives them the jump on Apple and helps maintain the firm's brand strength and perceived technology leadership," commented Ben Wood, from the CCS Insight consultancy. "It also gives the operators a tier-one brand for their 5G launches. "But as far as consumers are concerned, unless you have a very good reason to buy a 5G phone this summer, one of the other three S10 handsets is probably a better investment, and will be viable for use for many years." The launch comes days before Mobile World Congress in Barcelona - a trade event where Samsung's rivals will unveil new handsets of their own. The overall smartphone market shrank in 2018, but Samsung's sales saw a particularly pronounced drop-off as Huawei and other Chinese manufacturers wooed away customers. All four versions of the S10 are distinguished from last year's models by embedding the front cameras within their displays. Samsung refers to this as being the Infinity O design, but it is more commonly referred to as the "hole punch". The move allows the phones to feature a thinner top bezel without having the kind of "notch" found on many rivals. It has, however, caused the firm to ditch the eye iris-scanner introduced in the S8. Samsung says a new ultrasonic fingerprint sensor placed under the screens of the three higher-end phones offers close to the same level of security, and is more convenient to use than a scanner formerly placed on phone backs. It is based on a technology unveiled by Qualcomm in 2015. All versions of the handset feature wireless charging and introduce the ability to wirelessly charge other compatible devices in turn. This mirrors a feature first offered by Huawei's Mate 20. Samsung demoed the facility at a dual London and San Francisco launch as a way to recharge a new pair of Bluetooth headphones without having to use a separate cable or power mat. All four devices now feature a 10 megapixel selfie camera and introduce a 16MP "ultra-wide" rear version, which offers a slightly larger field-of-view than our eyes. The S10+ also has a second selfie camera to help it take depth readings. In addition, the S10+ and S10 5G now offer up to one terabyte of internal storage, which the firm says could appeal to those shooting lots of 4K video or storing many game files. "What's positive is that Samsung has moved away from software that nobody wants - like AR emojis and Samsung Cloud - and has gone back to its roots to deliver market-leading hardware," commented Ben Stanton, from market analysis firm Canalys. "So for the premium part of the market, these are good phones. "But my concern is that [they are still] not innovative enough to stop people from looking down to lower-price bands and being drawn into mid-range products from Chinese companies that are super-competitive." The introduction of a lower price tier may help address this. But trade-offs for picking the S10e include: By contrast, the S10 5G benefits from several exclusive features: "The phone had to be larger to feature a bigger battery because 5G [data transfers] will drain it much faster," commented Mr Stanton. "But it was also smart to offer a large screen. "The use cases for 5G aren't yet defined, but one potential is to stream 4K video rather than HD. And having a bigger screen makes that more compelling." The original S-series handset was released days ahead of Apple's iPhone 4, and had a bigger 4in screen and microSD card slot in its favour. At that point, its main Android rival was the HTC Desire, and although Samsung's device was lighter, thinner, and had a more powerful graphics processor, some reviewers said it felt less "premium" in the hand than its competitor. The second-generation device saw its display grow to 4.3in, its rear camera increase in resolution to 8MP, and its processor move over to a dual-core design. It was praised for allowing owners to unlock it by pressing the home key, rather than having to press a button on top as before. And although some griped that it still felt plasticky, it sold in its millions - helping Samsung overtake Nokia as the world's bestselling mobile phone-maker. The third-generation model established a trend of including a bigger display but compensating for the growth by shrinking the size of the bezels. Its innovations included the ability to detect when the screen was being looked at, so as to avoid dimming the image. And it introduced S Voice, allowing users to command music to play and photos to be taken by speaking to it. Samsung added further touchless controls to the S4, letting owners scroll through text by making eye movements, and accept calls with a hand wave. A dual-camera feature also created photos that blended together the views from the front and rear lenses. Some critics found this all to be a bit gimmicky, and although the handset was a hit, there were reports that its sales fell short of Samsung's expectations. The S5 added a fingerprint scanner, which could be used to authenticate purchases via PayPal. It also introduced a black-and-white mode to help save battery life. But predictions that the firm would ditch Android for its in-house operating system Tizen proved to be inaccurate. The S-series split in two in 2015 with a premium-priced Edge version offering a screen that curved round one of its sides. A metal frame and glass back gave the handsets a more luxury feel, but they ditched water resistance and a microSD slot to make this possible. The seventh-generation phones looked pretty similar to their predecessors, but restored the ability to dunk them in water and slot in extra storage. Other improvements centred on the camera with better low-light and autofocus capabilities. The S8 and larger S8+ ditched the home button, took Samsung's logo off the front and added the virtual assistant Bixby. They also gained an iris scanner, which was billed as "one of the safest ways" to keep data private. After scandals involving exploding Note 7s and the arrest of the firm's vice-chairman, the launch helped return the firm to surer footing. The S9 and S9+ gained new camera features including a super-slow-motion video mode and a variable aperture - allowing owners to control how much light reached the sensor. AR emojis also allowed users to create animated cartoon characters that looked like them. But sales were lacklustre, and several months after it was unveiled Samsung acknowledged there had been "resistance" to its price. Cameras that poke out of the screen and four distinct models mark out the latest generation. But there are signs Samsung's smartphone dominance is slipping... | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47277324 | 2019-02-20 20:13:58+00:00 | 1,550,711,638 | 1,567,547,894 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
24,222 | bbc--2019-03-16--How swarming drones will change warfare | 2019-03-16T00:00:00 | bbc | How swarming drones will change warfare | The swarm robots are coming and they could change the way wars are fought. In February, the defence secretary said "swarm squadrons" will be deployed by the British armed forces in the coming years. The US has also been testing interconnected, co-operative drones that are capable of working together to overwhelm adversaries. Low-cost, intelligent and inspired by swarms of insects, these new machines could revolutionise future conflicts. From swarming enemy sensors with a deluge of targets, to spreading out over large areas for search-and-rescue missions, they could have a range of uses on and off the battlefield. But just how different is "swarm" technology from the drones that are currently used by militaries across the globe? The key is self-organisation. "If you imagine a football match, a coach isn't going to tell the players from the sidelines exactly where to run and what to do," says Paul Scharre from the Center for a New American Security think tank. "Players are going to figure that out on their own. Similarly, the robot agents need to coordinate among each other what actions to take." Instead of being individually directed by a human controller, the basic idea of a drone swarm is that its machines are able to make decisions among themselves. So far the technology has been at an experimental stage, but it is edging closer to becoming a reality. Swarms come in different shapes and sizes. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), for example, has been working on a programme dubbed Gremlins; micro-drones the size and shape of missiles, designed to be dropped from planes and perform reconnaissance over vast areas. On the other side of the spectrum is the larger XQ-58 Valkyrie drone, measuring almost 9m in length. It has been called a 'loyal wingman' for a human pilot - able to carry precision-guided bombs and surveillance equipment. It recently completed its first successful test flight, although the eventual aim is for it to work in a group alongside a manned fighter jet. In either case, the biggest advantage of a 'swarm' is the ability of machines to work together in numbers. And when it comes to the battlefield, numbers matter. "Swarming allows you to build large numbers of low-cost expendable agents that can be used to overwhelm an adversary," says Mr Scharre. "This reverses the long trend of rising aircraft costs and reducing quantities. "And unlike having a large number of soldiers, robotic agents can coordinate on a scale that would be impossible for humans." Flinging a barrage at a defence system is one thing, but that could be done with a sack of rocks. The key to the swarm is that it's smart enough to coordinate its own behaviour. It's not only the military that's interested in this problem. Dr Justin Werfel is a senior research scientist at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. "In a natural swarm of birds or bees, all individuals are doing their own thing. Each one has its own brain, knows what it can see for itself," he says. "You don't have an explicit hive mind. The queen bee is not giving instructions to everyone. "The challenge is how you build the individuals so that the collective does what you want." One robotic construction project run at Harvard, for example, takes inspiration from termite colonies and how they build enormous, elaborate structures without central control. They do this using a mechanism known as "stigmergy", which boils down to one animal leaving signals in an environment for others to react to. "The idea is that by leaving information in the environment where it's most relevant, individuals can communicate," says Dr Werfel. "Ants do this by leaving chemical trails, termites do a similar thing about where soil has been put down in a mound." Flocks of birds are another inspiration for researchers in this area. Watch a murmuration of starlings and it seems to move with a collective intelligence, but the animals are actually each responding to subtle changes in speed and direction. Information ripples across the flock in a split second, and this decentralised behaviour is exactly what drone researchers want to replicate. But applying these ideas to a battlefield presents issues, namely that a combat zone is a lot more chaotic than a construction site or a quiet patch of sky. For a robotic swarm to work effectively, it has to respond not only to missiles whizzing around but electronic attacks on its communications and GPS. At the tail end of last year DARPA announced it had done exactly that, using its Collaborative Operations in Denied Environment (CODE) project to equip a squad of drones with the ability to "adapt and respond to unexpected threats" high above the Arizona desert, even after human communication was knocked out. But if a flock of drones is able to "accomplish mission objectives without live human direction", as DARPA says, does that make it an autonomous weapon? There have been calls to ban artificial intelligence systems that are capable of killing without any human intervention. Where do the lines around control lie, when you have a swarm that can make its own tactical decisions? There may be some time needed to find the answers to these questions. Mr Scharre says it will be "a while before we see this come to fruition in a really dramatic way." In the short term, the experiments continue. This month a swarming drone "hackathon" will take place, organised by the UK's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) and the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). It is not aimed at developing attack swarms, however, but new ways to help emergency services deal with wildfires. "A drone swarm should reduce the operator burden, who could task it to, for example, find lost members of the public or perhaps provide a real-time map of a large advancing fire on several fronts, similar to California in 2018," says Shirley Swain, senior external communications adviser for the DSTL. Could these systems also be considered for wider military applications? "We will of course seek to exploit any means of reducing the risk of harm to our emergency services and forces alike," says Ms Swain. Whether or not the results of the hackathon one day wind up on a battlefield, it seems the use of swarm military technology is inevitable. Mr Scharre compares it to the development of precision-guided weapons, tested and refined through the 1970s and 1980s, but only coming into their own during the first Gulf War of the early 1990s. That war in many ways set the template for conflicts in the following decades. Self-organising swarms of autonomous machines could well do the same for wars to come. | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47555588 | 2019-03-16 00:41:03+00:00 | 1,552,711,263 | 1,567,545,993 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
25,190 | bbc--2019-04-03--Climate change Magic bullet carbon solution takes big step | 2019-04-03T00:00:00 | bbc | Climate change: 'Magic bullet' carbon solution takes big step | A technology that removes carbon dioxide from the air has received significant backing from major fossil fuel companies. British Columbia-based Carbon Engineering has shown that it can extract CO2 in a cost-effective way. It has now been boosted by $68m in new investment from Chevron, Occidental and coal giant BHP. But climate campaigners are worried that the technology will be used to extract even more oil. The quest for technology for carbon dioxide removal (CDR) from the air received significant scientific endorsement last year with the publication of the IPCC report on keeping the rise in global temperatures to 1.5C this century. In their "summary for policymakers", the scientists stated that: "All pathways that limit global warming to 1.5C with limited or no overshoot project the use of CDR ...over the 21st century." Around the world, a number of companies are racing to develop the technology that can draw down carbon. Swiss company Climeworks is already capturing CO2 and using it to boost vegetable production. Carbon Engineering says that its direct air capture (DAC) process is now able to capture the gas for under $100 a tonne. With its new funding, the company plans to build its first commercial facilities. These industrial-scale DAC plants could capture up to one million tonnes of CO2 from the air each year. CO2 is a powerful warming gas but there's not a lot of it in the atmosphere - for every million molecules of air, there are 410 of CO2. While the CO2 is helping to drive temperatures up around the world, the comparatively low concentrations make it difficult to design efficient machines to remove the gas. Carbon Engineering's process is all about sucking in air and exposing it to a chemical solution that concentrates the CO2. Further refinements mean the gas can be purified into a form that can be stored or utilised as a liquid fuel. Carbon Engineering's barn-sized installation has a large fan in the middle of the roof which draws in air from the atmosphere. It then comes into contact with a hydroxide-based chemical solution. Certain hydroxides react with carbon dioxide, reversibly binding to the CO2 molecule. When the CO2 in the air reacts with the liquid, it forms a carbonate mixture. That is then treated with a slurry of calcium hydroxide to change it into solid form; the slurry helps form tiny pellets of calcium carbonate. The chalky calcium carbonate pellets are then treated at a high temperature of about 900C, with the pellets decomposing into a CO2 stream and calcium oxide. That stream of pure CO2 is cleaned up to remove water impurities. "The key to this process is about concentrating the CO2," said Carbon Engineering's Dr Jenny McCahill. "We can then put it underground as in sequestration, or we can combine it with hydrogen to form hydrocarbons or methanol. There's a number of things you can do." Yes. It's complicated but it can be done. The captured CO2 is mixed with hydrogen that's made from water and green electricity. It's then passed over a catalyst at 900C to form carbon monoxide. Adding in more hydrogen to the carbon monoxide turns it into what's called synthesis gas. Finally a Fischer-Tropsch process turns this gas into a synthetic crude oil. Carbon Engineering says the liquid can be used in a variety of engines without modification. "The fuel that we make has no sulphur in it, it has these nice linear chains which means it burns cleaner than traditional fuel," said Dr McCahill. "It's nice and clear and ready to be used in a truck, car or jet." CO2 can also be used to flush out the last remaining deposits of oil in wells that are past their prime. The oil industry in the US has been using the gas in this way for decades. It's estimated that using CO2 can deliver an extra 30% of crude from oilfields with the added benefit that the gas is then sequestered permanently in the ground. "Carbon Engineering's direct air capture technology has the unique capability to capture and provide large volumes of atmospheric CO2," said Occidental Petroleum's Senior Vice President, Richard Jackson, in a statement. "This capability complements Occidental's enhanced oil recovery business and provides further synergies by enabling large-scale CO2 utilisation and sequestration." One of the other investors in Carbon Engineering is BHP, best known for its coal mining interests. "The reality is that fossil fuels will be around for several decades whether in industrial processes or in transportation," said Dr Fiona Wild, BHP's head of sustainability and climate change. "What we need to do is invest in those low-emission technologies that can significantly reduce the emissions from these processes, and that's why we are focusing on carbon capture and storage." Some climate campaigners are positive about the development of direct air capture technology, but others are worried that it will be used to prolong the fossil fuel era. "We need to be working together to figure out how we move away completely from fossil fuel - that's our moral and economic challenge but these technologies provide a false hope that we can continue to depend on fossil fuels and produce and burn them, and technology will fix it - we are way past that point!" Others are concerned that the development of direct air capture devices may just encourage some people to think that they don't have to personally reduce their carbon footprint. "I think there's a real danger that people will see this technology as a magic bullet and not cut back their carbon," said Shakti Ramkumar, a student at the University of British Columbia (UBC), who is active in climate change protests. "We have a moral responsibility to reduce our consumption on a large scale. We need to reflect deeply on how we live our lives and whether everyone can have access to the things we have, and fairness, so we can all live a good life." It's impossible to say if Carbon Engineering's idea will emerge as the type of device that makes a major difference in the battle against climate change. Certainly, the company believes that its machines could become as common as water treatment plants - providing a valuable service, yet hardly noticed by the general public. Right now, it has secured enough money to build a commercial facility and can draw down carbon for less than $100 a tonne. But there is a big worry that with large investments from the fossil fuel industry, the focus of its efforts could be turned to producing more oil, not just tackling climate change. Carbon Engineering says that if governments want to invest in its process they are very welcome to do so. If they're not ready to stump up the cash, the company is happy to take funding from the energy industry as time is so short, and the need for the technology is so great. "Is it the silver bullet?" asked CEO Steve Oldham. "I would never say to anybody that you want to put all your eggs in one basket - the future of the planet is very important for us all. "But having the technology built, available, ready to go, with no harmful chemical side-effects, less land-usage, having those available - that's a good thing. "If or when we need them, and if you read the science that's today - it's available, it's ready." Sign up for a weekly chat about climate change on Facebook Messenger | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47638586 | 2019-04-03 11:20:30+00:00 | 1,554,304,830 | 1,567,544,176 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
26,600 | bbc--2019-05-02--Life-saving kidney delivered by drone | 2019-05-02T00:00:00 | bbc | Life-saving kidney delivered by drone | A donor kidney has been delivered to surgeons at a US hospital via drone, in the first flight of its kind. Many see huge potential for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) delivering medical products, with some drones already doing so in Africa. The US flight required a specially-designed drone which was able to maintain and monitor the organ. It is hoped that it can pave the way for longer flights and address safety issue with current transport methods. The recipient, a 44-year-old from Baltimore, had waited eight years for the transplant. She said of the unusual delivery method: "This whole thing is amazing. Years ago, this was not something that you would think about." According to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which manages organ transplants in the US, in 2018 there were nearly 114,000 people on waiting lists, with 1.5% of organs not making it to the destination and nearly 4% being delayed by two hours or more. "Delivering an organ from a donor to a patient is a sacred duty with many moving parts. It is critical that we find ways of doing this better," said Joseph Scalea, assistant professor of surgery at University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM), and one of the surgeons who performed the transplant. "As a result of the outstanding collaboration among surgeons, engineers, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), organ procurement specialists, pilots, nurses, and, ultimately, the patient, we were able to make a pioneering breakthrough in transplantation." The three-mile journey required a lot of new technology, including a custom-made drone capable of carrying the additional weight of an organ, which also needed on-board cameras and organ tracking, and communications and safety systems for a flight over an urban, densely-populated area. It also had a parachute recovery system in case the aircraft failed. "There's a tremendous amount of pressure knowing there's a person waiting for that organ, but it's also a special privilege to be a part of this critical mission," said Matthew Scassero, part of the engineering team based at the University of Maryland. Charlie Alexander, chief executive of The Living Legacy Foundation of Maryland, a charity working to increase organ donation, said: "If we can prove that this works, then we can look at much greater distances of unmanned organ transport. "This would minimise the need for multiple pilots and flight time and address safety issues we have in our field." | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-48132595 | 2019-05-02 15:06:58+00:00 | 1,556,824,018 | 1,567,541,393 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
27,110 | bbc--2019-05-21--Female-voice AI reinforces bias says UN report | 2019-05-21T00:00:00 | bbc | Female-voice AI reinforces bias, says UN report | AI-powered voice assistants with female voices are perpetuating harmful gender biases, according to a UN study. These female helpers are portrayed as "obliging and eager to please", reinforcing the idea that women are "subservient", it finds. Particularly worrying, it says, is how they often give "deflecting, lacklustre or apologetic responses" to insults. The report calls for technology firms to stop making voice assistants female by default. The study from Unesco (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) is entitled, I'd blush if I could, which is borrowed from a response from Siri to being called a sexually provocative term. "Companies like Apple and Amazon, staffed by overwhelmingly male engineering teams, have built AI systems that cause their feminised digital assistants to greet verbal abuse with catch-me-if-you-can flirtation," the report says. "Because the speech of most voice assistants is female, it sends a signal that women are... docile helpers, available at the touch of a button or with a blunt voice command like 'hey' or 'OK'. The assistant holds no power of agency beyond what the commander asks of it. It honours commands and responds to queries regardless of their tone or hostility," the report says. "In many communities, this reinforces commonly held gender biases that women are subservient and tolerant of poor treatment." Research firm Canalys estimates that approximately 100 million smart speakers - the hardware that allows users to interact with voice assistants - were sold globally in 2018. And, according to research firm Gartner, by 2020 some people will have more conversations with voice assistants than with their spouses. Voice assistants now manage an estimated one billion tasks per month, according to the report, and the vast majority - including those designed by Chinese tech giants - have obviously female voices. Microsoft's Cortana was named after a synthetic intelligence in the video game Halo that projects itself as a sensuous unclothed woman, while Apple's Siri means "beautiful woman who leads you to victory" in Norse. While Google Assistant has a gender-neutral name, its default voice is female. The report calls on developers to create a neutral machine gender for voice assistants, to programme them to discourage gender-based insults and to announce the technology as non-human at the outset of interactions with human users. A group of linguists, technologists and sound designers are experimenting with a genderless digital voice, made from real voices and called Q. The report also highlights the digital skills gender gap, from lack of internet use among girls and women in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South Asia, to the decline of ICT studies being taken up by girls in Europe. According to the report, women make up just 12% of AI researchers. | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-48349102 | 2019-05-21 15:08:38+00:00 | 1,558,465,718 | 1,567,540,286 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
27,911 | bbc--2019-06-20--Why the age of electric flight is finally upon us | 2019-06-20T00:00:00 | bbc | Why the age of electric flight is finally upon us | Aerospace firms are joining forces to tackle their industry's growing contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, with electric engines seen as one solution. But will this be enough to offset the growing demand for air travel? This week's Paris Airshow saw the launch of the world's first commercial all-electric passenger aircraft - albeit in prototype form. Israeli firm Eviation says the craft - called Alice - will carry nine passengers for up to 650 miles (1,040km) at 10,000ft (3,000m) at 276mph (440km/h). It is expected to enter service in 2022. Alice is an unconventional-looking craft: powered by three rear-facing pusher-propellers, one in the tail and two counter-rotating props at the wingtips to counter the effects of drag. It also has a flat lower fuselage to aid lift. "This plane looks like this not because we wanted to build a cool plane, but because it is electric," says Eviation's chief executive Omer Bar-Yohay. "You build a craft around your propulsion system. Electric means we can have lightweight motors; it allows us to open up the design space." Eviation has already received its first orders. US regional airline Cape Air, which operates a fleet of 90 aircraft, has agreed to buy a "double-digit" number of the aircraft. The firm is using Siemens and magniX to provide the electric motors, and magniX chief executive Roei Ganzarski says that with two billion air tickets sold each year for flights of under 500 miles, the business potential for small electric passenger aircraft is clear. Crucially, electricity is much cheaper than conventional fuel. A small aircraft, like a turbo-prop Cessna Caravan, will use $400 on conventional fuel for a 100-mile flight, says Mr Ganzarski. But with electricity "it'll be between $8-$12, which means much lower costs per flight-hour". "We're not an environmentalist company, the reason we're doing this is because it makes business sense." MagniX is now working with seaplane operator, Vancouver-based Harbour Air, to start converting their existing fleet to electric. The future also looks reasonably bright when it comes to medium-range flight - a range of up to about 1,500km. Unlike Alice, aircraft targeting this range would use a mix of conventional and electric power, enabling them to cut CO2 emissions significantly by switching on the electrical component of their propulsion at the key points in a flight - take-off and landing. Several demonstration projects are now nearing fruition. For example, Rolls-Royce, Airbus and Siemens are working on the E-Fan X programme, which will have a two megawatt (2MW) electric motor mounted on a BAE 146 jet. It is set to fly in 2021. "There are huge amounts of energy involved here, the engineering is absolutely leading-edge - and our investment in electrification is ramping up rapidly," says Rolls-Royce's chief technology officer Paul Stein. United Technologies, which includes engine-maker Pratt & Whitney in its portfolio, is working on its Project 804, a hybrid electric demonstrator designed to test a 1MW motor and the sub-systems and components required. The firm says it should provide fuel savings of at least 30%. It should fly in 2022 and is forecast to be ready for regional airliners by the mid-2020s. Zunum Aero, backed by Boeing, is using a engine turbine from France's Safran to power an electric motor for a hybrid craft. And low-cost airline EasyJet is working with Wright Electric, saying it will start using electric aircraft in its regular services by 2027. This is likely to be on short-haul flights, such as London to Amsterdam - Europe's second busiest route. "Electric flying is becoming a reality and we can now foresee a future that is not exclusively dependent on jet fuel," says EasyJet chief executive Johan Lundgren. It's a statement underscored by a report from investment bank UBS which predicts the aviation sector will quickly switch to hybrid and electric aircraft for regional travel, with an eventual demand for 550 hybrid airliners each year between 2028 and 2040. But the prospects for electric long-haul flights are not so rosy. While electrical motors, generators, power distribution and controls have advanced very rapidly, battery technology hasn't. Even assuming huge advances in battery technology, with batteries that are 30 times more efficient and "energy-dense" than they are today, it would only be possible to fly an A320 airliner for a fifth of its range with just half of its payload, says Airbus's chief technology officer Grazia Vittadini. "Unless there is some radical, yet-to-be invented paradigm shift in energy storage, we are going to rely on hydrocarbon fuels for the foreseeable future," says Paul Eremenko, United Technologies chief technology officer. The big problem with this is that 80% of the aviation industry's emissions come from passenger flights longer than 1,500km - a distance no electric airliner could yet fly. Yet the UK has become the first G7 country to accept the goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2050 - a huge challenge for the air travel business with 4.3 billion of us flying this year and eight billion expected to do so by 2037. Regulators are also piling on the pressure. In Europe, the European Aviation Safety Agency says it will start categorizing aircraft based on their CO2 emissions, while Norway and Sweden are aiming to make short-haul flights in their airspace electric by 2040. So logically, is the only answer is to ditch long-haul flights? This obviously isn't an appealing prospect for the industry. Rolls-Royce's Paul Stein says starkly that the world would be in a "dark place" if we stopped travelling. He argues that in a global economy "where peaceful co-existence comes about from travelling and understanding each other, if we move away from that I am very concerned it's not the direction mankind should be going in". | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48630656 | 2019-06-20 23:02:03+00:00 | 1,561,086,123 | 1,567,538,563 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
28,810 | bbc--2019-07-06--Will Facebooks digital money Libra be good for Africa | 2019-07-06T00:00:00 | bbc | Will Facebook's digital money Libra be good for Africa? | In our series of letters from African journalists, technology writer Andile Masuku looks at what the launch of Facebook's digital money could mean for Africa. From early next year, Facebook intends to let its two billion-odd users - more than 139 million of whom are in Africa - make digital payments through its apps and popular messaging service WhatsApp using a new crypto-currency called Libra. It could have profound implications for a continent which receives a huge amount of remittances - and is one of the least-banked regions of the world, something that has allowed for other innovations like mobile cash payments to take hold in Africa. As a Zimbabwean living in South Africa, I have become numb to the daylight robbery that ensues whenever I receive money from abroad or send cash to my family back home. As such, like many other cautious pragmatists, I relish the prospect of a network like Libra permanently disrupting the lucrative cash remittance businesses of large banks and money transfer services like Western Union and MoneyGram. According to a World Bank report published last year, the cost of sending cash in sub-Saharan Africa was at least 20% higher than any other region in the world. The report revealed that sending $200 to and from the region in the first quarter of 2018 cost a whopping $19. But we must not be naive to the myriad factors responsible for maintaining market inefficiencies and actively engineering economic complexities which corporations like Western Union exploit to great effect. The fact is, many governments in Africa have enabled the remittance industry status quo and have come to rely on lining their coffers with remittance-related revenue. African governments are also deeply suspicious of crypto-currencies, like Bitcoin. The long list of countries which have, in some way or another, prohibited the use of crypto-currencies includes Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia and even my native Zimbabwe, which is well on its way to being a cashless society thanks to the growing adoption of mobile money services. It abandoned its own currency for 10 years because of hyperinflation, and it is currently in the throes of trying to reassure a sceptical nation that the newly introduced Zimbabwean dollar has value. Policy makers in Zimbabwe have argued that the idealised notion of a crypto-currency does not adequately take into account some of the very real limitations and security risks. Think challenges in levying taxes, the risk of unwittingly enabling illicit activity and money-laundering, and of course the potential susceptibility to crypto-hackers. Why Facebook wants to be money's future And these are things that African leaders need to address with Facebook up front. In the US, lawmakers have already proposed a moratorium on the Libra rollout until Facebook assures Congress that Libra will not exacerbate money-laundering and the funding of terror groups among other issues. Facebook's Libra white paper, which outlines the tech giant's plans to re-imagine global finance, does show that unlike completely decentralised digital currencies such as Bitcoin, which operate outside the oversight of central authorities or banks, Libra is set to be backed by a reserve of actual currencies and assets. Facebook is using this difference to convince policy-makers that Libra is a bankable bet. It has the high-powered backing of the likes of Visa, MasterCard, Uber, Spotify and even South Africa's PayU. As Facebook representatives push back against concerns regarding the extent of the company's self-interest in the Libra project, we would do well not to forget how it formerly served the world poverty-porn laden rhetoric to justify the global roll-out of Free Basics offering several years ago. Back then, the tech firm audaciously sold Free Basics, which lets people in some countries access Facebook and other websites without charge, as mankind's most significant development towards promoting "internet as a right" for all. Dubbed by detractors as the "Internet According to Facebook", many African countries lapped it up. India, quite famously, did not, arguing that it undermined the principle of net neutrality - the idea that all internet traffic should be treated equally - and that it was improper to allow Facebook to deliver a dumbed-down version of the internet to hundreds of millions of people. With the help of the pan-African mobile telephone operator Airtel Africa, Facebook rolled out Free Basics in no less than 17 African countries. It is hard to argue that offering poor, disconnected Africans limited web access to services like health, education, jobs, communication and local content at no cost to them is anything but beneficial. Yet Facebook's now infamous business model of monetising user data makes it impossible to ignore the potential adverse long-term impact of allowing such a firm to profit from curating the only version of the internet millions of Africans may ever come to know. Given the company's high-profile shortcomings, there is good reason to distrust Facebook and many die-hard crypto-currency proponents think of the Libra concept as the perfect prop for a hopelessly broken global finance industry. Critics also point to the ease with which African governments can cut off the internet and messaging apps, meaning if it suited them they could effectively cut off their citizens from accessing digital cash. Would it be wise for us to become too dependent on Libra? The recent network issues on Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram experienced in South Africa this past week have also served as a sober reminder of how economically disruptive relying on Facebook's Libra could prove to be should a similar outage occur again. I am encouraged by how key personalities within Africa's innovative digital money community are leading impressively nuanced debate about the potential pros and pitfalls of Libra. Social media posts and impassioned blog posts by Nigeria's Seyi Taylor, who thinks if it proves cheap and convenient, uptake could be rapid, and Kenya's Michael Kimani, who flags how it targets the poor, have so far prompted robust discussion online that one can only hope will filter into the hallowed halls of policy-making across the continent. With that all said, if on a future Sunday I could send my folks $100 to pay for some cattle vaccines via a WhatsApp message, and they could immediately go to their local agri-mart and make a purchase using Libra - that would be rather nifty. Follow us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-48882301 | 2019-07-06 23:35:56+00:00 | 1,562,470,556 | 1,567,536,648 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
29,786 | bbc--2019-08-13--The poetry of concrete and the tragedy of a broken bridge | 2019-08-13T00:00:00 | bbc | The 'poetry of concrete' and the tragedy of a broken bridge | It's one year since part of a motorway bridge outside Genoa collapsed, as cars and lorries sped across it. Dozens fell off the edge, tumbling 45m to the ground below, resulting in 43 deaths. Here, seven of those closely affected tell their stories. On 13 August 2018, Emmanuel Diaz and his brother Henry drove across the Morandi bridge. Emmanuel was flying to Colombia to study psychology and Henry gave him a lift to the airport. "When we said goodbye I hugged him very hard, I told him: 'Henry, I love you very much, I am so proud of you.' I felt weird, because I didn't want to let him go, so much so that the last words he told me were: 'Emmanuel, I really have to go.' Now it feels as though his destiny was already written and life allowed us to say goodbye, because that last hug was perhaps the most intense of our lives. I wanted to hug him forever." By the following morning, Emmanuel had reached Bogotá and was waiting for his connection to Medellín when he saw on the news that, back home in Genoa, the bridge had collapsed. "I immediately felt something was wrong. There's a special connection that exists between brothers. I looked at a picture of my brother Henry and I thought, 'Why do I feel like you are so far away?' I felt he was no longer with me. "When I got to Medellín, I tried calling him, calling our friends, our mother in Italy, but I felt powerless. I was almost 14,000km away. So I started looking at the news online, looking for updates. We had a yellow car, very distinctive. I started watching a Facebook livestream and I saw the moment they pulled our yellow car out of the rubble. In that moment I understood my brother was dead. I looked at the image of the car and I thought, 'Nobody can have survived in that car, it's not possible.' I fell to the ground, I lost the strength in my legs, I collapsed." Deputy Prosecutor Paolo d'Ovidio had just come back from his summer holidays and had left his mobile phone at home. He rang his wife to let her know and she told him to switch on the news. "She said, 'Look, something's happened to the Morandi bridge.' I went online and saw the first pictures. I hurried home to get my phone, then went with the police to the site. We arrived within an hour of the collapse. There were firefighters, police, paramedics and reporters. It was raining. "I saw so much desperation. I can't pretend it wasn't upsetting. There were people shouting, crying out; dogs searching for bodies, dogs searching for those still living. And there were whole pieces of bridge, whole pieces of road that had fallen on other roads. There were warehouses destroyed by the 50m-60m of road that had fallen. There was a lorry hanging 50m above the ground with the driver trapped inside. "Straight away it was clear that, as well as rescuing the survivors, there was an immediate need to understand what had happened, and so the investigation began from there." One of the first eyewitnesses was Davide Capello, who was driving his Volkswagen Tiguan over the bridge. He was half-way across when he heard a dull metallic sound. "It wasn't a bang, it wasn't an explosion. It seemed like something made of steel had broken. A crack - as if something had split open. For a few seconds I was stunned. I couldn't work out where the sound was coming from. Then I saw that everything ahead of me was starting to collapse. I saw the cars in front of me disappearing and pieces of road falling. "I hit the brakes - trying to stop the car before I ran out of road. But I didn't manage to. I felt the road beneath me vanish and my car nosedived into the void. I let go of the steering wheel and put my hands behind my head. I was shouting, 'I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead.' It was a very strange feeling - it happened so fast, I didn't have time to be frightened. All I felt was a sense of powerlessness. Waiting for everything to end. "I was lucky enough to land on a pile of debris. I remember hitting it with the back of the car. There was a loud crash all around me. It was all sound and dust, as if a missile had hit the bridge. I was in the car for around 20 minutes because I was scared to get out, I was stuck. When I finally got out, I looked around me and all I saw was debris, crushed cars, people inside the cars. There was an unreal silence, an unnatural silence. It was like a war scene." Thirty metres below the bridge, Mimma Certo was in her family's third-floor flat when she too heard a strange metallic sound. "I was in the shower. I heard this sound like thunder that seemed to go on forever. Like something colliding with iron. And I couldn't work out if it was a lorry that had fallen on the railway. Then I started to hear people rushing into the street and voices shouting. "I opened the window and I saw all these cars in the river with their headlights still on, and I looked up and saw the stump of the bridge. That's when I froze. I grabbed my bags and shoes and ran. I rang my sister, and I took a photo because it was impossible to explain what had happened. No-one would believe it." Mimma's sister, Anna Rita, was at work. Now in their 60s, the sisters were children when the bridge was built over the top of their apartment block, back in the 1960s. "We watched it growing. We played underneath it. When the president came to open it, we felt like we were living under an architectural masterpiece. It was a sign that Italy was growing. "When I saw the photo of the collapse, I felt like I had been betrayed. Because the bridge was a presence since my childhood. It was like discovering that your best friend is a killer." Structural engineer Prof Carmelo Gentile was on holiday more than 1,000 miles away in Greece when he received a text from his brother saying the bridge had collapsed. "My wife told me that I sat in complete silence for 20 minutes after I read that text message. It's hard to describe what was going through my mind," he says. The autumn before, Gentile and his team at Milan Polytechnic had tested the bridge in preparation for a €26m project to reinforce the pylon that eventually failed. The reinforcement work had been due to start just a month after the bridge collapsed. "We use sensors, and from the vibrations we measure variations are detected which give information on the rigidity and health of the bridge. What emerged was that the part of the bridge that later collapsed had very clear anomalies. "If an engineer sees something out of the ordinary - in this case a waveform that was very strange and outside the usual measurements - you need to run more in-depth tests to open up the structure and go and see what's going on inside. You need to do that as soon as possible." Autostrade, the private company that managed the bridge, says it was constantly monitored and subject to frequent routine inspections, and that none of the different types of monitoring ever indicated there was a need for "immediate or urgent intervention." Gentile sent his report to SPEA engineering, which is a subsidiary of Autostrade's parent company and carries out work for Autostrade. "If they had asked me to carry out further tests, I would probably have spotted that there was a problem," Gentile says. "Probably as soon as I had fitted the monitoring system, I would have realised the situation had deteriorated since the last tests. In that case, I could have written to a judge and, armed with objective data, requested the closure of the bridge on safety grounds." Or download the Documentary podcast from BBC World Service Deputy Prosecutor Paolo d'Ovidio and his team have gathered evidence which they're presenting to a judge in pre-trial hearings. They're investigating about 80 people, from senior managers to engineers and technicians. D'Ovidio doesn't go so far as to say Autostrade knew the bridge might collapse, but he does think it's possible there was a "criminal undervaluation of the risk", if not more. "Our evidence is both the state of the debris and the documents we've seized," he says. Autostrade says that the bridge was subject to continuous maintenance, as a result of the monitoring that was conducted, and that this work cost €9m in the three years before the bridge collapsed. But d'Ovidio and his team want to know why the privatised Autostrade waited so long to reinforce the pylon that collapsed. The other two pylons were reinforced in the early 1990s, when Autostrade was still owned by the Italian state. Back then Prof Carmelo Gentile was one of those working on the project and he witnessed some disturbing evidence of decay. "At a certain point they did an inspection of the bridge and a piece of concrete came away and revealed a hole. Inside you could see the steel falling to pieces. In fact, we found an area where there was no concrete at all. If there is an air pocket inside water gets in and corrodes the metal, making it rusty. "Riccardo Morandi [the bridge's designer] loved the poetry of concrete so he wanted to make a bridge where concrete was all you saw - the metal was encased in concrete. This design contains a huge number of problems. If everything is done perfectly, you protect the steel inside. But if the manufacturing process is not perfect, you can no longer inspect the steel stay, so you cannot see if there is corrosion or if it has become unsafe. And it was very hard with the technology of the time not to have any air pockets or bubbles in the concrete." Deputy Prosecutor Paolo d'Ovidio says expert analysis of the debris has shown that, in the section of the bridge that collapsed, much of the metal inside the concrete was also badly corroded. His team are investigating possible manufacturing defects as well as the maintenance and safety checks carried out on the bridge. "The condition of the bridge was very poor. It was a miracle that it hadn't happened the year before. It could have happened three, five, even 10 years before," he says. Autostrade has engaged its own experts who dispute that there was evidence of structural fatigue or that the corrosion was sufficient to compromise the load-bearing capacity of the bridge. "Who's to blame? It's the fault of those who should have got their hands dirty and intervened in the bridge's condition but didn't, those who should have spent the money, but didn't, those who should have checked it, but didn't," d'Ovidio says. The prosecutors are working towards charging suspects with aggravated or vehicular manslaughter, but it may take years before a court delivers its verdict. Emmanuel Diaz has put his studies in Colombia on hold so he can fight for justice for his brother, Henry. So far, he's attended every session of the pre-trial hearings. "That's my job now. That's my life. Thankfully fate kept one of us here on Earth to fight for the other and to take care of our mother. "Henry and I lived a complicated life. We grew up in Colombia in a world of violence - my father was murdered because he was involved with narco-traffickers. "When we moved to Italy, Henry and I worked hard to clean up the family name. He was 30 when he died - just a few months away from finishing his degree in engineering. He used to organise charity events to raise money for children in Colombia because so many of his school friends had got lost in the world of narcotics. He always carried a smile with him, because he loved life, he defended it, he glorified it. He said it was a wonderful gift. "I know there are people who are responsible, I know there are people who must be punished, and I am very confident we will get justice - because that's what Italy wants. What do you do when you are dead? You rise again. Italy will send a message to the world, because Italy wants to return to being the great power it used to be. I know there will be justice for this tragedy." You may also be interested in: This is the story of one flat on the 14th floor of Grenfell Tower - flat 113 - and the eight people who sheltered there on the night of the fire. The strengths and weaknesses of the London Fire Brigade's response to the huge challenge of Grenfell may help explain why four of the eight survived, writes the BBC's Kate Lamble - and why four of them died. | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-49332175 | 2019-08-13 23:27:35+00:00 | 1,565,753,255 | 1,567,534,279 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
30,122 | bbc--2019-08-25--Port Talbot steelworks waste gases could power flights | 2019-08-25T00:00:00 | bbc | Port Talbot steelworks' waste gases could power flights | Passengers could soon be flying on planes fuelled by waste gases from steelworks. The plan involves using the gases from Tata's Port Talbot plant, which developers believe could be used for thousands of flights a year. Tata, along with Neath Port Talbot council and American bioengineering firm LanzaTech are working on the plan. Virgin Atlantic worked with LanzaTech last year to fly from Orlando to London powered by recycled carbon jet fuel. Waste gases are an unavoidable part of the industrial production of steel and it is thought it could generate 30 million gallons of biofuel for the aviation industry every year. "We certainly have an ambitious agenda with this strategy and heavy industry has to be a part of that," said Neath Port Talbot council's deputy leader Anthony Taylor. "We accept Tata is one of the main carbon emitters across the whole of Wales. We don't want to endanger the economic side of things, but we have to tackle the environmental issues from this as well. "But also economically taking something that has previously been regarded as waste in the industrial process and actually harness it and give Tata Steel the opportunity to make some money from the waste it produces." LanzaTech's gas fermentation process uses carbon-rich industrial gases from the manufacturing of steel, and turns them into ethanol. It can then be transformed into chemical products and fuel. Carl Wolf, vice-president of the firm's European arm, said it was like a traditional fermentation process where waste carbon pollution and microbes are used instead of sugar and yeast. He added: "It's a bit like retrofitting a brewery onto a steel mill. We can use a variety of waste carbon, from industrial off-gases to gasified solid wastes like agricultural residues and unsorted, unrecyclable household waste. "We have also developed a technology that converts alcohols, such as ethanol, into jet fuel. This is increasingly important as the aviation sector needs to meet its self-imposed carbon reduction targets." Mr Wolf said the product performs "as well or better than its fossil-based counterparts". A Tata Steel spokesman said: "Developing any technology to transform CO2 from our steelmaking processes into valuable resources for other industries is of huge importance. "LanzaTech has the technology to transform waste CO2 from the steelmaking process into ethanol and is now seeking permission to develop a plant at our site in Port Talbot to convert that into jet fuel." | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-49449566 | 2019-08-25 23:54:10+00:00 | 1,566,791,650 | 1,567,533,433 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
31,276 | bbc--2019-10-01--Why are so few women inventors named on patents | 2019-10-01T00:00:00 | bbc | Why are so few women inventors named on patents? | It's easy to list some of the many everyday items invented and patented by women - the dishwasher, windscreen wipers, the board game Monopoly, to name but a few - but the world is still failing to take full advantage of women's innovative ideas, a report suggests. Women inventors account for just under 13% of patent applications globally, according to the study, by the UK's Intellectual Property Office (IPO). That's one female inventor for every seven male ones. And although the proportion among patent applications is increasing, at the current rate it won't reach gender parity until 2070. So, why are there so few women in the world of inventing? Researchers attribute the gap to a lack of women working in science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem). According to Penny Gilbert, partner at intellectual property law firm Powell & Gilbert, it's simply a pipeline issue. "If we want to see more women filing patents, then we need to see more women taking up Stem subjects at university and going on to careers in research," she says. Currently only about a quarter of the UK workforce in Stem industries is female and fewer girls and women study these subjects at secondary school and university, despite efforts to diagnose and solve this imbalance. Patents are granted to the owner of an invention, allowing the creator and subsequent owners to prevent others from using their invention. In order to qualify as an "invention" patent, the filing must contain a new, useful idea - that would not be obvious to a skilled person in that field. They can be filed individually, or by teams of inventors. The gender disparity among inventors grows even starker when you take into account most female inventorship takes the form of a lone female on a male-dominated team. More than two-thirds of all patents come from all-male teams or individual male inventors - and just 6% from individual female inventors. All-female teams are nearly non-existent, making up just 0.3% of applications, according to the IPO. Even when they apply for patents, women may be less likely to receive them, according to a study of US patent applications, by Yale University researchers. They found applicants with an obviously female name were less likely to have their patent approved. And of course, not everyone involved in an invention is credited with a patent. All in all, female scientists are less than half as likely to obtain a patent for their research, according to a previous World Intellectual Property Organisation study, suggesting women may be less likely than men to think about commercialising their inventions. In 1991, Ann Tsukamoto developed a way to isolate stem cells. Her innovation led to great advancements in understanding the blood systems of cancer patients and could lead to a cure for the disease. Dr Tsukamoto, who is currently conducting further research into stem cell growth, is also the co-patentee on more than seven other inventions. Biotechnology, the use of living organisms to produce useful products such as medicine and food, is the sector with the highest proportion of female inventors. Some 53% of biotechnology-related patents have at least one female inventor. In second place, 52% of pharmaceutical-related patents have at least one female inventor. Electrical engineering was at the bottom of the list, with fewer than one in 10 applications having at least one female inventor. The proportion of women inventors has doubled in the past 20 years, according to the IPO, from just 6.8% in 1998 to 12.7% in 2017, the latest year for which full data is available. During the same period, the proportion of applications naming at least one woman among the inventors rose from 12% to 21%. Dr Gilbert says stereotypes around women's educational and career choices need to be tackled - by encouraging women to choose Stem areas, introducing mentoring schemes, and celebrating female role models. "We should applaud the fact that some of the greatest scientists and inventors throughout history have been women - from Marie Curie and Rosalind Franklin to Grace Hopper, [a computer programming pioneer], and Stephanie Kwolek, the inventor of Kevlar," she says. "We should tell their stories." Although female inventorship in the UK has increased, from 8% in 1998 to 11% in 2017, other countries are well ahead. With 17% of patent applications including at least one woman over the past 20 years, Russia had the highest proportion of female inventors, out of the 10 countries with the most patent applications, followed by France. At the other end of the scale, in Japan and South Korea fewer than one in 20 patent applications included a female inventor during the time period. The gender of inventors is usually not included in patent applications, so the IPO inferred gender based on inventors' first names, using data from the European Patent Office Worldwide Patent Statistical Database (PATSTAT). Inventors' names were matched to a gender using birth data from the UK's Office for National Statistics and the US Social Security Administration, which lists the names of all babies born, and the number of male and female entries, as well as by crawling Facebook profiles to create a larger list of names and their likely gender. Only names for which at least 95% of entries were male or female were included, so gender-neutral names such as "Robin" have been excluded. A total of 75% of inventors' names were matched to a gender, although this success rate varies country by country. The name lists used were biased towards Western names, so the UK has the highest "success rate", while countries in East Asia, including South Korea and China, have a lower rate. BBC 100 Women names 100 influential and inspirational women around the world every year and shares their stories. Find us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and use #100Women. | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49843990 | 2019-10-01 23:06:23+00:00 | 1,569,985,583 | 1,570,221,844 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
31,400 | bbc--2019-10-08--Could blacklisting China's AI champions backfire? | 2019-10-08T00:00:00 | bbc | Could blacklisting China's AI champions backfire? | Just over two years ago, China announced an audacious plan to overtake the US and lead the "world in AI [artificial intelligence] technology and applications by 2030". It is already widely regarded to have overtaken the EU in many aspects. But now its plans may be knocked off course by the US restricting certain Chinese companies from buying technologies developed or manufactured in the States. Washington's justification is that the organisations involved have made products used to commit human rights abuses against China's Muslim ethnic minorities. But it is notable that those on its blacklist include many of China's official "national AI champions", among them: • Megvii - an image recognition software developer sometimes referred to as being the world's most valuable AI start-up • Hikvision - one of the world's biggest CCTV systems manufacturers • SenseTime - a start-up that makes AI services for use in smart city, transport and education applications Like the telecoms firm Huawei before them, they now face major disruption as a consequence of the Trump administration's intervention. That is, in part, because they are reliant on US-based know-how. SenseTime, for example, formed an alliance with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) last year to jointly fund research projects. And Yitu recently worked with researchers at the University of California San Diego to develop algorithms to diagnose illnesses in children. The move also threatens to jeopardise the companies' ability to attract foreign investment. The Bloomberg news agency has already suggested that a planned $1bn flotation by Megvii could be derailed as a consequence. But perhaps most crucially, the blacklisting threatens to cut off the supply of computer chips and other components that Hikvision requires to build its surveillance cameras, and the others need to train their algorithms. The US is the undisputed leader in semiconductors. Whether its CPUs (central processing unit) and GPUs (graphics processing units) from tech giants including Intel and Nvdia, or chips that specialise in AI-related tasks from lesser-known firms such as Ambarella and ON Semiconductor - American firms provide the tech that underpins the Chinese tech firms' progress. This dependence has not gone unnoticed. At present only 16% of the semiconductors used within China are made in the country, and only half of those by local companies - according to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But the study notes that Beijing aims to boost that figure to 40% by the end of next year, and raise it to 70% by 2025. "For decades, building indigenous Chinese chips has been an aspiration of the government," Matt Sheehan, author of The Transpacific Experiment - a book about China and the US's tech ties - told the BBC. "Moves like the entity lists have turned that aspiration into an imperative for the government, but also potentially a matter of life or death for private Chinese companies. "That doesn't mean they'll succeed at it any time soon. This is one of the most complex engineering tasks out there, one that often requires decades of accumulated in-house knowledge and experience. "But it does seem that China's own AI chip start-ups will not be short of cash or new orders any time soon." Over recent weeks, first Huawei and then Alibaba unveiled computer server chips specially designed to carry out machine learning tasks at high speed. Xiaomi has also said it is working on a similar product. Meanwhile, smaller start-ups have secured hundreds of millions of dollars worth of funds for other types of AI processors, such as chips for self-driving cars or processors for "intelligent robots". American firms are not standing still, but one Washington-based think tank warns the US should not consider its lead to be unassailable. "US firms are also developing specialised AI chips," the Center for Data Innovation said in a report. "Nonetheless, China's development of well-funded AI chip start-ups and advancements in chip design indicate it may be able to close at least some of the gap." It added that the EU was a "laggard" in this field by comparison. All this matters because AI-driven technologies have the potential to make companies more productive, citizens better-educated and healthier - and also armies better equipped to wage wars. "China's success in commercial AI and semiconductor markets has direct relevance to China's geopolitical power," noted Gregory Allen for the Center for a New American Security. "It reduces the ability of the United States government to put diplomatic and economic pressure on China and... it increases the technological capabilities available to China's military and intelligence community. "Regarding the latter, essentially all major technology firms in China co-operate extensively with China's military and state security services and are legally required to do so." Putting the brakes on China's AI champions may serve the US's own national security and foreign policy interest in the short term. But ultimately, it could spur on the Chinese Communist Party's determination to make its tech industry less dependent on foreign partners, with all the financial and geopolitical consequences that entails. | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49971897 | Tue, 08 Oct 2019 12:36:00 GMT | 1,570,552,560 | 1,570,542,620 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
31,921 | bbc--2019-10-17--Snowy 2.0: Australia's divisive plan for a vast underground 'battery' | 2019-10-17T00:00:00 | bbc | Snowy 2.0: Australia's divisive plan for a vast underground 'battery' | Far beneath a national park in one of the coldest parts of Australia is where the government wants to build a hugely ambitious project: a power station capable of generating 10% of the nation's energy. It is part of a bold - and expensive - hydro electricity scheme in the Kosciuszko National Park in south-east New South Wales. The Snowy 2.0 project has ambitions to carve tunnels through 27km (17 miles) of rock to make a huge pipeline linking two reservoirs. The difference in elevation of 700m (2296ft) is what gives the plan its extraordinary might. It is simple enough in concept, but elaborate in design, and challenging in practice. Scheme 'in league of its own' When there is cheap, excess electricity in the grid and demand is low, usually at night, water from the lower reservoir, Talbingo, is pumped up to its lofty cousin Tantangara that sits on a high, open plateau. When demand for energy rises, the water is released, and is sent tumbling down the main waterway tunnel. Electricity is generated in a powerhouse buried 800m below the surface by turbines, which are also used as pumps to heave water back up from the lower reservoir to Tantangara. Conventional hydro plants are pictures of spray and mist when captured water is set free. The Kosciuszko plan, however, would see energy generated underwater and the water reused, while the entire operation would be almost completely hidden beneath the national park. "What Snowy 2.0 is proposing is in a league of its own," Prof Michael Braer, director of the Melbourne Energy Institute at the University of Melbourne, tells the BBC. "It is essentially an extremely large and extremely powerful battery. At full power output it would be roughly 10% of Australia's electricity production." • How Australia is changing - in 11 charts • The freak storm that took out a state Exploratory work has started on a venture that has echoes of the original Snowy Mountains hydro and irrigation scheme in Australia's Great Dividing Range mountains, which was the largest engineering project ever seen in Australia. The reservoirs that will power Snowy 2.0 were constructed as part of that fabled nation-building enterprise which began in October 1949 and took more than 25 years to complete. The technological wonder included seven power stations, 16 major dams, 145km of inter-connected tunnels and 80km of aqueducts. The first Snowy scheme was as much about people as it was power. Over 100,000 men and women from more than 30 countries laboured for years. A third of the workforce was Australian, and they, along with migrant muscle, built a symbol of national ingenuity and diversity. "The spirit of the original Snowy is absolutely flowing and you get it as soon as you turn up to the town of Cooma because the heritage is everywhere," says Dave Evans, director of engineering at Snowy 2.0. This time around Australia has again sought help from overseas, consulting experts from Iceland, Switzerland, Italy and beyond. "Usually you have to go around Asia or Africa to work on anything like this, and they are usually a bit smaller. So to have one in your backyard is exciting," Mr Evans says. Initial works will determine if Snowy 2.0 is both feasible and financially viable. The government hopes it will drive down power prices and give the electricity sector greater reliability. "There is no question this is a big engineering challenge. Ultimately, you don't know exactly what the rocks look like between the two reservoirs," says Dr Matthew Stocks, a research fellow at the Australian National University. Australia is one of the sunniest continents, and wind energy is currently the cheapest source of large-scale renewables. Add to the mix hydro technology and Australia has the potential to become a clean energy superpower as more of its coal-fired stations shut down. "Australia is on an amazing trajectory in terms of installations of wind and PV (photovoltaic solar cells used in rooftop panels). We are currently installing on a per capita basis wind and solar faster than anywhere else in the world," says Dr Stocks. "In the mid-2020s we are going to have to start significantly changing how our electricity system operates to cope with the variability of wind and PV. You need to spread the resources widely, so you are sampling different weather at different times. You need a certain amount of storage, and pumped hydro is by far the cheapest way to store energy." For the exploratory excavations alone, 600,000 cubic metres of rock will be gouged from the land. Snowy Hydro has disputed assertions from environmentalists that up to 100 sq km of national park, including native alpine bushland and streams, would be damaged by the dumping of excavated rock. Yet not everyone is convinced that such a monumental project is worth the effort. "It is probably around a A$6-7bn ($4.2-4.9bn; £3.3-3.9bn) project, and you can build a lot of other storage and renewables schemes for that kind of money," says Andrew Stock, an energy expert at Australia's independent Climate Council. "By world standards it is a mega project and the track record for mega hydro projects delivering them on schedule and on budget is very poor globally, so it is a very risky project." Costs have blown out since former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced in 2017 that it would be built for an estimated A$2bn. This week, he vigorously defended the project as "the key to making renewables reliable". It's unclear if power bills - a constant irritant for many Australians - will fall when the giant storage unit is working. Others question the political motive: was it a way for a centre-right government that is an enthusiastic supporter of the fossil fuel industry to promote its environmental credentials? The director of the Victorian Energy Policy Centre, Bruce Mountain, thinks so. "Snowy Hydro 2.0 was a political get-out-of-jail card, played at the public's expense," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. "This is a project that we can confidently forecast will be a drain on the public purse and whose service in the transition to a cleaner energy future can be met far more cheaply from other sources." The boss of Snowy Hydro, Paul Broad, is, though, convinced the project is critical as Australia moves away from a reliance on coal, which generates most of its electricity. "There's a massive amount of renewals coming into the market - you can't have it without some kind of storage," Mr Broad explained to broadcaster's 7.30 programme. The engineers working on the project appear unfazed by the controversies and expect that Snowy 2.0 will be pumping out electricity by late 2024, or early the following year. "It is not far away," according to Mr Evans, the scheme's engineering boss. "It is coming quickly." | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-49202175 | Thu, 17 Oct 2019 16:06:52 GMT | 1,571,342,812 | 1,571,412,905 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
32,221 | bbc--2019-11-05--Behind the wheel of a hydrogen-powered car | 2019-11-05T00:00:00 | bbc | Behind the wheel of a hydrogen-powered car | It's a question I couldn't avoid as I drove across central England in a borrowed car powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. The Hyundai ix35 was fast, eerily quiet - they've installed a little electronic jingle so you can tell when you've switched it on - and there was a reassuring 230 miles (370 km) left on the clock. And best of all, I drove with the smug knowledge that when a vehicle is powered by hydrogen, the only exhaust product is water. Quite a difference from my own 13-year-old, one-litre petrol engine: noisy, slow and undeniably dirty. So why, I wondered, is this clean, green technology lagging far behind the hybrid and all-electric sectors? The relatively small hydrogen market is dominated by the Asian giants: Toyota, Honda and Hyundai. In early October in Tokyo amid great razzmatazz, Toyota unveiled its latest fuel cell Mirai saloon, which it hopes to launch in late 2020. European brands including BMW and Audi are also fine-tuning their own hydrogen vehicles. But this is a sector in which the upstart start-up can claim a modest place too. Outside Llandrindod Wells, a small market town in central Wales, Riversimple aims to lease, not sell, its futuristic hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to a strictly local market. They have just two cars on the road so far, with Numbers 3 and 4 under construction in Riversimple's meticulously clean production facility. "The car's called the Rasa - as in tabula rasa, or clean slate," says the company's founder and chief executive, Hugo Spowers. "We're using fuel cells off the shelf: ours was made for fork-lifts for Walmart warehouses." The Rasa will do a tidy 60mph (100km/h) and has a range of around 300 miles (480km) on a single 1.5 kg hydrogen tank. "In purely calorific terms," Spowers concludes, "our car is doing the equivalent of 250 miles to the gallon." That sounds impressive - so how do hydrogen powered cars work? At the heart of the car is a fuel cell, where hydrogen and oxygen are combined to generate an electric current, and the only by-product is water. There are no moving parts in the fuel cell, so they are more efficient and reliable than a conventional combustion engine. While the cars themselves do not generate any gases that contribute to global warming, the process of making hydrogen requires energy - often from fossil fuel sources. So hydrogen's green credentials are under question. And then there is the question of safety. Hydrogen is a notoriously explosive gas. That's why manufacturers disclose plenty of reassuring detail on their websites. The Toyota Mirai, for example, boasts triple-layer hydrogen tanks capable, the company says, of absorbing five times as much crash energy as a steel petrol tank. The twin hydrogen tanks in the Honda Clarity are similarly robust featuring layers of aluminium and carbon fibre and designed to resist both extreme pressure and extreme heat. Still, not everyone is convinced. EuroTunnel does not allow "vehicles powered by any flammable gasses", including hydrogen, to use the link between the UK and France. The Riversimple business model - a three-year fixed price lease aimed at short-distance local drivers - is designed to negate the biggest problem affecting hydrogen cars: range anxiety. With just 17 pumps across Britain, refuelling is a challenge, so the industry is stuck. The public won't commit if they can't guarantee a refill wherever they need to drive, but hydrogen production companies are reluctant to install expensive pumps unless there's likely to be a consistent take-up. • On the inside of a hacking catastrophe • Why passwords don't work and what will replace them • Wheels of fortune: The new electric motors • Ghost nets: Tackling the silent killer of the seas According to Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, secretary-general of the pro-hydrogen group H2Europe, a country like Germany has around 75 hydrogen fuelling stations - but there aren't enough drivers. He blames car markers for being slow to produce hydrogen-powered cars. He points out that BMW isn't launching one until 2022 and Audi in 2025. "This is definitely quite late," he says. Mr Chatzimarkakis wants to prioritise a pan-European network of 20 to 30 pumps aligned along a "north-south corridor" to enable hydrogen-powered vehicles - especially larger freight-bearing lorries - to travel freely where business needs dictate. The Hydrogen4ClimateAction conference in Brussels in mid-October led to investment pledges by European governments of more than €50bn (£43bn; $56bn) in hydrogen research and infrastructure. "We at H2Europe are match-makers because this is a co-operative job - it cannot be done by industry alone; it cannot be done by politics alone," Mr Chatzimarkakis says. That collaboration is evident in California, which is experiencing the flip-side of the car/pump imbalance: there are queues at filling stations. If you visit the website of the Alternative Fuels Data Center, part of the US Department of Energy, and click on "fuelling station locations", you'll get 42 results - all in California. "We are laser-focused on building out an infrastructure to refill zero-emission vehicles," says Patricia Monahan, science and engineering specialist on the California Energy Commission (CEC). As importantly, California is committed to incentives for both producers and consumers in the fuel cell sector, she says. Anyone buying a new hydrogen car will get an incentive of $2,500, with similar subsidies from both the CEC and the state's Air Resources Board aimed at persuading heavy-duty vehicle companies to look into zero-emission alternatives. "We are really testing out for the world," Ms Monahan says, "how to develop an infrastructure to refuel these vehicles, and policies to incentivise their production." In fact, even California may be behind the curve. According to Andy Walker, technical marketing director at Johnson Matthey Fuel Cell in the UK - itself a sector pioneer since 2003 - several Asian nations are making dramatic commitments to hydrogen. "The Chinese government has a target of more than a million fuel cell vehicles on Chinese roads by 2020, serviced by over a thousand hydrogen refuelling stations," he says. To that end, Beijing has reduced subsidies to the battery sector and, in 2018 alone, invested $12.5bn on fuel cell technology and related subsidies. South Korea aims to go even further, with a target of 1.5 million fuel cell vehicles. And while Japan's commitment is relatively modest - a mere 800,000 new hydrogen vehicles - we can expect to see a big showcase of hydrogen technology at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. If these ambitions are even half-way realised, the rest of the world will be playing catch-up. You can listen to Fergus Nicoll's report on hydrogen-powered cars on World Business Report here. | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50212037 | Tue, 05 Nov 2019 00:54:47 GMT | 1,572,933,287 | 1,572,959,215 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
32,626 | bbc--2019-11-13--Electric car future may depend on deep sea mining | 2019-11-13T00:00:00 | bbc | Electric car future may depend on deep sea mining | The future of electric cars may depend on mining critically important metals on the ocean floor. That's the view of the engineer leading a major European investigation into new sources of key elements. Demand is soaring for the metal cobalt - an essential ingredient in batteries and abundant in rocks on the seabed. Laurens de Jonge, who's running the EU project, says the transition to electric cars means "we need those resources". He was speaking during a unique set of underwater experiments designed to assess the impact of extracting rocks from the ocean floor. In calm waters 15km off the coast of Malaga in southern Spain, a prototype mining machine was lowered to the seabed and 'driven' by remote control. Cameras attached to the Apollo II machine recorded its progress and, crucially, monitored how the aluminium tracks stirred up clouds of sand and silt as they advanced. An array of instruments was positioned nearby to measure how far these clouds were carried on the currents - the risk of seabed mining smothering marine life over a wide area is one of the biggest concerns. It's hard to visualise, but imagine opencast mining taking place at the bottom of the ocean, where huge remote-controlled machines would excavate rocks from the seabed and pump them up to the surface. The concept has been talked about for decades, but until now it's been thought too difficult to operate in the high-pressure, pitch-black conditions as much as 5km deep. Now the technology is advancing to the point where dozens of government and private ventures are weighing up the potential for mines on the ocean floor. Why would anyone bother? The short answer: demand. The rocks of the seabed are far richer in valuable metals than those on land and there's a growing clamour to get at them. Billions of potato-sized rocks known as "nodules" litter the abyssal plains of the Pacific and other oceans and many are brimming with cobalt, suddenly highly sought after as the boom in the production of batteries gathers pace. At the moment, most of the world's cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo where for years there've been allegations of child labour, environmental damage and widespread corruption. Expanding production there is not straightforward which is leading mining companies to weigh the potential advantages of cobalt on the seabed. Laurens de Jonge, who's in charge of the EU project, known as Blue Nodules, said: "It's not difficult to access - you don't have to go deep into tropical forests or deep into mines. "It's readily available on the seafloor, it's almost like potato harvesting only 5km deep in the ocean." And he says society faces a choice: there may in future be alternative ways of making batteries for electric cars - and some manufacturers are exploring them - but current technology requires cobalt. "If you want to make a fast change, you need cobalt quick and you need a lot of it - if you want to make a lot of batteries you need the resources to do that." His view is backed by a group of leading scientists at London's Natural History Museum and other institutions. They recently calculated that meeting the UK's targets for electric cars by 2050 would require nearly twice the world's current output of cobalt. So what are the risks? No one can be entirely sure, which makes the research off Spain highly relevant. It's widely accepted that whatever is in the path of the mining machines will be destroyed - there's no argument about that. But what's uncertain is how far the damage will reach, in particular the size of the plumes of silt and sand churned up and the distance they will travel, potentially endangering marine life far beyond the mining site. The chief scientist on board, Henko de Stigter of the Dutch marine research institute NIOZ, points out that life in the deep Pacific - where mining is likely to start first - has adapted to the usually "crystal clear conditions". So for any organisms feeding by filter, waters that are suddenly filled with stirred-up sediment would be threatening. "Many species are unknown or not described, and let alone do we know how they will respond to this activity - we can only estimate." And Dr de Stigter warned of the danger of doing to the oceans what humanity has done to the land. "With every new human activity it's often difficult to foresee all the consequences of that in the long term. "What is new here is that we are entering an environment that is almost completely untouched." Could deep sea mining be made less damaging? Ralf Langeler thinks so. He's the engineer in charge of the Apollo II mining machine and he believes the design will minimise any impacts. Like Laurens de Jonge, he works for the Dutch marine engineering giant Royal IHC and he says his technology can help reduce the environmental effects. The machine is meant to cut a very shallow slice into the top 6-10cm of the seabed, lifting the nodules. Its tracks are made with lightweight aluminium to avoid sinking too far into the surface. Silt and sand stirred up by the extraction process should then be channelled into special vents at the rear of the machine and released in a narrow stream, to try to avoid the plume spreading too far. "We'll always change the environment, that's for sure," Ralf says, "but that's the same with onshore mining and our purpose is to minimise the impact." I ask him if deep sea mining is now a realistic prospect. "One day it's going to happen, especially with the rising demand for special metals - and they're there on the sea floor." Who decides if it goes ahead? Mining in territorial waters can be approved by an individual government. That happened a decade ago when Papua New Guinea gave the go-ahead to a Canadian company, Nautilus Minerals, to mine gold and copper from hydrothermal vents in the Bismarck Sea. Since then the project has been repeatedly delayed as the company ran short of funds and the prime minister of PNG called for a 10-year moratorium on deep sea mining. A Nautilus Minerals representative has told me that the company is being restructured and that they remain hopeful of starting to mine. Meanwhile, nearly 30 other ventures are eyeing areas of ocean floor beyond national waters, and these are regulated by a UN body, the International Seabed Authority (ISA). It has issued licences for exploration and is due next year to publish the rules that would govern future mining. The EU's Blue Nodules project involves a host of different institutions and countries. The vessel used for the underwater research off Spain, the Sarmiento de Gamboa, is operated by CSIC, the Spanish National Research Council. | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49759626 | Wed, 13 Nov 2019 12:02:00 GMT | 1,573,664,520 | 1,573,690,172 | science and technology | technology and engineering |
40,377 | bbcuk--2019-05-30--Special educational needs children and parents hold protest | 2019-05-30T00:00:00 | bbcuk | Special educational needs children and parents hold protest | Children with special educational needs and their parents have held protests across the country to highlight what they say is a funding 'crisis'. A petition was handed in at Downing Street by Send National Crisis campaigners, while marches were held in 28 towns and cities. Ministers say they are increasing the cash available, providing an extra £250m up to 2020 to help manage the costs. | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-48468431 | 2019-05-30 19:00:17+00:00 | 1,559,257,217 | 1,567,539,743 | education | parent organisation |
409,340 | pinknewsuk--2019-04-09--Education Secretary Damian Hinds says parents cannot veto LGBT lessons | 2019-04-09T00:00:00 | pinknewsuk | Education Secretary Damian Hinds says parents cannot veto LGBT lessons | Signup to receive a daily roundup of the top LGBT+ news stories from around the world Education Secretary Damian Hinds has said that parents should not be allowed to veto LGBT+ lessons in schools. Hinds made the comments in a letter to Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, following protests at Parkfield Community School in Birmingham. In the letter, Hinds said that consulting with parents was an important process for schools—but said: “I want to reassure you and the members you represent that consultation does not provide a parental veto on curriculum content. “We want schools to consult parents, listen to their views, and make reasonable decisions about how to proceed (including through consideration of their wider duties)—and we will support them in this. “We trust school leaders and teachers to make the right professional choices and act reasonably when considering consultation feedback, and are clear that dedicated public servants faithfully discharging their duty have an absolute right to feel confident and safe.” Elsewhere in the letter, Hinds said he wanted to see all young people made to feel “included” and said they should “grow up understanding the value and importance of kindness and respect for others and themselves.” Hinds’ support for schools and teachers teaching children about LGBT+ identities and issues comes after protests at Parkfield Community School in Birmingham caused a media frenzy in the UK. The school suspended its No Outsiders programme after a number of parents withdrew their children from the school and protested outside last month. Approximately 600 children, from mostly Muslim backgrounds, were reported to be kept at home for the day. Ofsted has ruled that there is “no evidence” to support criticism of the programme. Hinds had previously rowed in behind teachers and schools last month, and said “we expect all pupils to have been taught” about LGBT+ issues in an interview with Schools Week. “I’ve always been clear that I support headteachers to make decisions and we believe in school autonomy, that school leaders are best-placed to make decisions.” Meanwhile, a survey released yesterday to TES found that parents and teachers overwhelmingly support LGBT+ lessons for children. 94 percent of those surveyed said they thought it was important that children learn about LGBT+ identities in school. The same number of people said schools have a responsibility to promote LGBT+ inclusion. 88 percent of those surveyed said parents should not have the right to withdraw children from lessons about LGBT+ people. The same number said that schools who taught children about LGBT+ issues were not promoting a sexual orientation or gender identity. However, support for teaching younger children about LGBT+ issues was slightly lower. 76 percent said schools should teach children about different types of relationships from the age of 4. | Patrick Kelleher | https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/04/09/damian-hinds-parents-lgbt-lessons/ | 2019-04-09 17:09:30+00:00 | 1,554,844,170 | 1,567,543,425 | education | parent organisation |
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