Three of a kind

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Island cuteness: beach at Ile de Re. Photo: Alamy

With their blend of beaches, cycling and quirky history, the Ile de Re and her island neighbours are great family holiday spots off western France, writes Fred Mawer.

With its long and undeveloped beaches, picture-perfect villages, mouthwatering markets and miles of cycle lanes, the Ile de Re is indisputably one of France's loveliest seaside spots, but also worth considering for a summer break are other nearby islands off the Atlantic coast.

Though very much on the radar of French holidaymakers, they are far less well known to outsiders, even though they share some of the same enticements.

St Martin de Re town. Photo: Alamy

The Ile d'Oleron has memorable beaches great cycling and seafood, but its down-to-earth atmosphere is completely different from fashionable Ile de Re. There's also tiny Ile d'Aix, with more good beaches and cycling, and an intriguing Napoleonic history.

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So, which to choose? Here are thumbnail sketches of the three Charente-Maritime islands, for a family holiday.

Most visitors to the islands tend to camp, so we focus chiefly on campsites.

The Vail Valley.

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Three of a kind

New state testing plan could mean fewer closed Island beaches

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The Massachusetts Public Health Council unanimously approvedless stringent water quality testing procedures for beaches on Wednesday. The rule change could result in fewer Marthas Vineyard beaches being closed for fewer days than in recent summers. Under the new rules, with some exceptions,beaches would be closed to swimming only if the water fails to meet the states single sample water quality standards on two consecutive days, as opposed to the past standard of one day.

Over the past several summers, local board of health officials were required to close several popular Island beaches as a result of only one failed sample. The water quality samples have puzzled and frustrated local town officials and health agents, who have had to post no swimming signs, sometimes on the hottest days of the year.

For example, on July 7, 2011 West Tisbury closed four heavily used beaches to swimming Lamberts Cove Beach on Vineyard Sound, Uncle Seths Pond off Lamberts Cove Road, Long Cove Pond, and Tisbury Great Pond beach, part of The Trustees of Reservations Long Point property on the south shore. The beaches were reopened the next day.

There has been a lot of concern raised, not just here in Massachusetts, about the lack of an adequate test that provides timely results, said Suzanne Condon, director of the Bureau of Environmental Health (BEH). Weve been looking at the data, and listening to concerns, and wanted to figure out if there was a different way we could approach this to insure we are protecting public health.

Ms. Condon said the data collected over the past 13 years showed that most water quality test results that failed state standards were attributed to short-term environmental events, like heavy rainfall. She said that only .02 percent of all the beaches tested ever failed two days in a row.

By the time we learned a beach had a problem, by the time we got that test result, beaches were kept closed when in fact, they should have been open, she said. Based on the data we have evaluated, we have a very good picture of which beaches present a public health problem.

Out with the old

Local health agents routinely test 40 selected sites on Marthas Vineyard.The agents collect the samples, according to precise guidelines issued by BEH. The guidelines cover the depth, distance from shore, ocean current, and sterile equipment. The guidelines also control the time and temperature of the samples as the bottles are transported to a lab.

The samples are tested for enterococci bacteria. While not usually harmful, enterococci signal the presence of other bacteria that are harmful, and the test is considered the most reliable indicator that the water poses a public health threat, usually from untreated sewage that gets into the water.

Under the old process, it took about 24 hours for the bacteria to grow in a controlled test, before a lab technician can count the bacteria colonies and report any problems to local health agents. If there is an exceedance in the single sample water quality standard, local authorities were required to post no swimming signs on the beach. Usually, if there was an exceedance, health agents collected another sample as soon as possible, so that it could be tested. The beaches had to stay closed until a new test showed that the single sample fell below the standard of 104 colony-forming units of enterococci per 100 milliliters (cfu/100ml). The water also had to meet a geometric mean standard before the beaches could reopen. The geometric mean measurement is based on the five most recent test results, and it computes trends in water quality over time. The state requires that beaches be closed to swimming if the geometric mean rises above 35 cfu/100 ml.

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New state testing plan could mean fewer closed Island beaches

Astronomy: The Big Bang (19 of 30) The Hadron Era (time = 1s After The Creation of the Universe) – Video

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Astronomy: The Big Bang (19 of 30) The Hadron Era (time = 1s After The Creation of the Universe)
Visit http://ilectureonline.com for more math and science lectures! In this video I will explain the Hadron Era (1 second after the creation of the universe)...

By: Michel van Biezen

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Astronomy: The Big Bang (19 of 30) The Hadron Era (time = 1s After The Creation of the Universe) - Video

Local educator to fly on telescope

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HIGH BRIDGE - Four local teachers are among 24 educators selected to fly on NASAs Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), the worlds largest flying telescope in 2014.

Theresa Roelofsen Moody, a High Bridge resident who works at the New Jersey Astronomy Center at Raritan Valley Community College, will join Margaret Holzer, Michael Maccarone and Elizabeth Rosenberger to fly on board SOFIA during the week of May 11.

The observatory flies from its home base in Palmdale, Calif., and the educators will work side-by-side with astronomer teams witnessing all stages of scientific research, from preparations to observations to data analysis and publication. They will normally fly aboard the observatory twice, and then implement classroom lessons and public outreach programs based on their experiences.

SOFIAs Airborne Astronomy Ambassadors program began in 2010 and has flown 26 educators from 14 states and eight from Germany on science flights in 2010-2012.

SOFIA is an extensively modified Boeing 747SP jetliner equipped with a 100-inch diameter telescope.

The observatory enables the analysis of infrared light to study the formation of stars and planets; chemistry of interstellar gases; composition of comets, asteroids and planets; and supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies.

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Local educator to fly on telescope

Crowdsourcing Insights into Problem Structure for Scientific Discovery – Bart Selman – Video

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Crowdsourcing Insights into Problem Structure for Scientific Discovery - Bart Selman
In recent years, there has been tremendous progress in solving large-scale reasoning and optimization problems. Central to this progress has been the ability to automatically uncover hidden...

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Baidu nabs ex-Google AI chief

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Google, the U.S. web-search leader, has deemed AI research one of its own top priorities and spent $400 million in January to acquire a major British AI firm.

A former Stanford University computer science professor, Ng co-founded Coursera, an online learning start-up, after he left Google.

Read MoreArtificial intelligence could end mankind: Hawking

On Friday Baidu Chief Executive Robin Li hailed Ng as the "ideal individual to lead our research efforts as we enter an era where AI plays an increasingly pronounced role."

Baidu is just one of several Chinese Internet companies that have ramped up their hiring and acquisitions in Silicon Valley to compete toe-to-toe with the U.S. technology leaders.

Ng's project at Google attracted international attention in 2012 when its "neural network" of 16,000 computers, nicknamed the Google Brain, taught itself how to spot a cat after processing thousands of images of cats. Ng said his algorithms were based on theories of how the human brain learns.

By Reuters

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Baidu nabs ex-Google AI chief

Man Behind 'Google Brain' To Head Up Baidu's US Artificial Intelligence Center

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May 17, 2014

Image Credit: Andrew Ng

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports Your Universe Online

Baidu, the most popular Chinese-language online search provider, has announced plans to open up a new artificial intelligence center in the heart of Silicon Valley, and has tapped Google Brain founder and Stanford University AI Lab director Andrew Ng to lead the division.

According to Paul Mozur and Rolfe Winkler of the Wall Street Journal, Ng the man who helped Google set-up its program to replicate the human brain using computer hardware and software will be in charge of nearly 200 employees working at the $300 million Sunnyvale, California research and development facility.

While at Google, Ng managed to get 16,000 computers to train themselves to recognize images of cats simply by reviewing YouTube footage of felines, said Liz Gannes of re/code. He had been working in the field of deep learning as a professor at Stanford, but was on a leave of absence to launch the online education firm Coursera.

Ng, who recently stepped down as CEO of Coursera but remains the companys chairman, was named to Time magazines list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2013. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, as well as a masters degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

We are delighted to welcome Andrew to our team. As a true visionary and key contributor in the field of Artificial Intelligence, Andrew is the ideal individual to lead our research efforts as we enter an era where AI plays an increasingly pronounced role, Baidu co-founder, chairman and CEO Robin Li said in a statement.

Baidu is a company with long term vision and deep commitment. I am excited to help Baidu advance fundamental technologies in AI and other areas that can truly change the world, said Ng. In a Coursera blog entry, he added that, while he would remain deeply involved in company strategy at the massive open online course (MOOC) company, he was planning to dedicate more of my time toward AI (Artificial Intelligence) and machine learning.

He is being joined at the Sunnyvale center by graduate student and long-time collaborator Adam Coates, Gannes said. The California facility will be Baidus second deep-learning lab, as the search engine also operates one in Beijing that has assisted in the development of its translation app and ad-targeting technology, the latter of which has reportedly resulted in a significant increase in click-through rate, explained Technology Reviews Tom Simonite.

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Man Behind 'Google Brain' To Head Up Baidu's US Artificial Intelligence Center

Investment: catalyst for industrialisation? Panel at Global Aerospace Summit 2014 – Video

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Investment: catalyst for industrialisation? Panel at Global Aerospace Summit 2014
John Kasarda moderates the #39;Investment as a catalyst for industrialisation #39; panel session at Global Aerospace Summit 2014 in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Panelists includ...

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Investment: catalyst for industrialisation? Panel at Global Aerospace Summit 2014 - Video

STAR CITIZEN PODCAST THE WOLF PACK || ANVIL AEROSPACE OVERVIEW,BOMBERS, THE NEXT GREAT STARSHIP FAVS – Video

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STAR CITIZEN PODCAST THE WOLF PACK || ANVIL AEROSPACE OVERVIEW,BOMBERS, THE NEXT GREAT STARSHIP FAVS - Video