Monthly Archives: April 2013

South coast beaches fatality free in 'dramatic turnaround'

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Dramatic turnaround ... Surf life saver Andrew Edmunds said far south coast lifesavers made it through the 2012-13 season without any deaths. Photo: Lannon Harley

Volunteer surf lifesavers have ended their season without a single death recorded on Far South Coast Beaches.

Increased patrols and regular checks of dangerous swimming spots saw a dramatic turnaround on the 2011-2012 season when eight people died swimming in the region.

After the close of the season on Sunday, Surf Life Saving director Andrew Edmunds said the efforts of volunteers had saved lives during the summer months.

"This achievement is incredibly rare and I am very proud of the work our members have accomplished, he said.

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"We've been doing more patrols, and proactively checking on known black spots that aren't usually patrolled to improve response times to emergencies."

Far South Coast volunteers performed 141 rescues and recorded more than 1100 preventative actions, including helping swimmers, rock fishermen and users of boats and jet skis.

Surf conditions closed 38 beach since the season began in September, and surf lifesavers treated about 300 people with first aid.

"It's remarkable there were no lives lost, with some close calls including resuscitations and spinal injuries in our area, Mr Edmunds said.

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South coast beaches fatality free in 'dramatic turnaround'

800 volunteers collect 1,757kg of waste on eight beaches

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FROM the beaches of Penang and Selangor to Johor, about 800 people came together to clean up the coastlines in various locations under the AEON Pantai Ku Indah programme.

Held recently in conjunction with Earth Day, the clean-up was simultaneously held in eight different locations nationwide with approximately 1,757kg of rubbish collected.

Themed My Beautiful Coastal, it is an annual initiative by AEON Co (M) Bhd to educate and create awareness among the local community on the importance of preserving the environment for the future generation.

The educational and fun-filled day was led by AEONs top management and staff, and saw participants from all walks of life chipping in.

AEON has always supported environmental sustainability and green awareness. We hope with public awareness campaign such as this, we can pass down our values to our community and children, said AEON Co (M) Bhd corporate communication & branding senior manager Nor Laila Mohd Samin.

Kicking off for the first time last year, the event saw around 1,000 people participating.

Taking a step further this year, AEON aimed to engage the younger generation as well to be part of the nationwide coastal clean-up.

We are proud that around 500 children joined us this year, showing that the younger generation is now taking an interest in environmental issues, said Nor Laila.

The participating children were mostly from AEON Malaysia Cheers Club, which was established last year, to promote a sense of love for environment among the younger generations.

During the coastal clean-up session, the children were exposed to environment education and recycling processes.

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800 volunteers collect 1,757kg of waste on eight beaches

Cali Beaches with the Kids

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Yoga on the beach, Santa Monica.Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel

Getty Villa Family Forum.Elon Schoenholz

At the Getty Museum's Family Forum, kids can act out a scene from an ancient vase.Elon Schoenholz

Ready to show off?

If you've got any gymnastics moves, now is your chance to strut your stuff -- and it won't cost you a penny. Try the rings or climb the rope -- right on the beach in Santa Monica. Maybe you'd rather just swing or kick back in the sand while the kids show off.

On a sunny afternoon recently, kids as well as fit adults were doing that and more on Santa Monica beach's famous Muscle Beach.

"The idea of having a gymnasium right at the ocean is really cool -- the ropes and the swings and bars ... you don't have that at other beaches," said Elizabeth Gevorkian, 16, who lives nearby in Burbank.

"It is really cool to watch people who know what they are doing and then try it yourself," said a very happy 13 year old visiting with her brother from Canada.

There is even an area for the kids to climb mini ropes and other equipment. Adults -- and kids -- were doing yoga, inline-skating, riding bikes (you can rent both right here and bike along the beach on the South Bay Bicycle Trail that runs for 22 miles) and jumping in and out of the surf and squealing with laughter. They were playing beach volleyball on the many free courts and lining up for fresh lemonade and tacos, playing games in the arcade on the pier.

In case you're wondering, the original Muscle Beach -- a few miles away in Venice -- is plenty busy too and a great place to people-watch -- if you prefer characters. (I saw one guy skateboarding with a black cat on his shoulder.)

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Cali Beaches with the Kids

Faith helped steer astronomy professor who made planet discovery

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Javascript is currently disabled in your web browser. For full site functionality, it is necessary to enable Javascript. In order to enable it, please see these instructions. 7 hours ago by Erik Lacitis

It was a Friday afternoon, Aug. 31 of last year, that Eric Agol, a 42-year-old associate professor of astronomy at the University of Washington, looked at his computer screen and saw something astounding.

The algorithm Agol had put together and run had found an Earthlike planet 1,200 light-years away.

It was orbiting its own sun, in a "habitable zone," nicknamed the "Goldilocks zone," meaning its temperatures are suitable for liquid water. And possibly life.

You could say Agol's work puts him at the crossroads of some complex questions, which he answers with faith.

These days, astronomers don't really peer through giant telescopes.

They look at computer data.

This new planet - 40 percent bigger than Earth, with a 267-day year-showed up as a dip in a bunch of dots across the screen. The dip was from a shadow created as the planet crossed the star it was circling.

Agol's finding had been missed by the numerous other scientists studying the digital information from NASA's orbiting Kepler telescope, named for 17th century astronomer Johannes Kepler and launched in 2009 specifically to discover stars in our galaxy that are orbited by habitable, Earth-size planets.

Agol is a low-key guy, but he admits, "I definitely was excited."

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Faith helped steer astronomy professor who made planet discovery

TISHITU Artificial Intelligence Device Control through Speech Recognition with Embedded Systems – Video

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TISHITU Artificial Intelligence Device Control through Speech Recognition with Embedded Systems
Tishitu explains In computer science, speech recognition (SR) is the translation of spoken words into text. It is also known as "automatic speech recognition...

By: Tarun Shrivastava

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TISHITU Artificial Intelligence Device Control through Speech Recognition with Embedded Systems - Video

AirSupply – the joint Supply Chain Management platform for the European Aerospace Industry – Video

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AirSupply - the joint Supply Chain Management platform for the European Aerospace Industry
Perfectly suited to the needs of the aerospace and defense industry, SupplyOn #39;s solution AirSupply is designed as an efficient and high-performance collabora...

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AirSupply - the joint Supply Chain Management platform for the European Aerospace Industry - Video

China makes aerospace history by launching its first high-resolution satellite – Video

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China makes aerospace history by launching its first high-resolution satellite
China has made aerospace history by launching its first high-resolution satellite that can predict natural disasters. Report by Lisa Hartle. Like us on Faceb...

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China makes aerospace history by launching its first high-resolution satellite - Video

Consortia-mediated bioprocessing of cellulose to ethanol with a symbiotic Clostridium phytofermentans/yeast co-culture

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Background:
Lignocellulosic ethanol is a viable alternative to petroleum-based fuels with the added benefit of potentially lower greenhouse gas emissions. Consolidated bioprocessing (simultaneous enzyme production, hydrolysis and fermentation; CBP) is thought to be a low-cost processing scheme for lignocellulosic ethanol production. However, no single organism has been developed which is capable of high productivity, yield and titer ethanol production directly from lignocellulose. Consortia of cellulolytic and ethanologenic organisms could be an attractive alternate to the typical single organism approaches but implementation of consortia has a number of challenges (e.g., control, stability, productivity).
Results:
Ethanol is produced from alpha-cellulose using a consortium of C. phytofermentans and yeast that is maintained by controlled oxygen transport. Both Saccharomyces cerevisiae cdt-1 and Candida molischiana "protect" C. phytofermentans from introduced oxygen in return for soluble sugars released by C. phytofermentans hydrolysis. Only co-cultures were able to degrade filter paper when mono- and co-cultures were incubated at 30[degree sign]C under semi-aerobic conditions. Using controlled oxygen delivery by diffusion through neoprene tubing at a calculated rate of approximately 8 mumol/L hour, we demonstrate establishment of the symbiotic relationship between C. phytofermentans and S. cerevisiae cdt-1 and maintenance of populations of 105 to 106 CFU/mL for 50 days. Comparable symbiotic population dynamics were observed in scaled up 500 mL bioreactors as those in 50 mL shake cultures. The conversion of alpha-cellulose to ethanol was shown to improve with additional cellulase indicating a limitation in hydrolysis rate. A co-culture of C. phytofermentans and S. cerevisiae cdt-1 with added endoglucanase produced approximately 22 g/L ethanol from 100 g/L alpha-cellulose compared to C. phytofermentans and S. cerevisiae cdt-1 mono-cultures which produced approximately 6 and 9 g/L, respectively.
Conclusion:
This work represents a significant step toward developing consortia-based bioprocessing systems for lignocellulosic biofuels production which utilize scalable, environmentally-mediated symbiosis mechanisms to provide consortium stability.Source:
http://www.biotechnologyforbiofuels.com/content/6/1/59