Beaches Jazz Festival set to receive $75,000 Ontario Music Fund grant

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Beach Mirror

The Beaches International Jazz Festival received some good news late Wednesday afternoon as Ontarios Minister of Tourism Culture and Sport, Michael Chan, announced the local event is on tap to receive a $75,000 grant from the Ontario Music Fund (OMF).

The new three-year, $45 million OMF, administered by the Ontario Media Development Corporation, is aimed at strengthening and stimulating growth in the provinces music companies and supporting this growing sector.

As weve said all along, we value the contribution of the Beaches Jazz Festival and have been a proud partner in their success over the years by providing funding through our various programs, Chan wrote in an email to The Mirror.

In January, the Beaches Jazz Festival applied to the Ontario Music Fund and earlier this week was awarded a conditional grant of $75,000. This support will help the festival consolidate their performance stages and showcase a greater diversity of musicians and performers.

Chan said this latest funding infusion good news for the Beaches Jazz Festival as it will help attract tourists and support Ontarios Live Music Strategy.

He also said Ministry staff would continue to work with Beaches Jazz organizers to find ways to ensure the events continued success.

A formal announcement of all the successful Ontario Music Fund applicants is set to take place in the coming months.

Were pleased and grateful weve received a conditional grant from the OMF, said Lido Chilelli, the festivals executive director, Thursday afternoon .

Its coincidental that we got this $75,000 grant now.

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Beaches Jazz Festival set to receive $75,000 Ontario Music Fund grant

Province gives $75k to Beaches Jazz Festival

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Performers at the 2012 Beaches International Jazz Festival.

TORONTO TheOntario government has come up with $75,000 for the Beaches International Jazz Festival.

In January, the Beaches Jazz Festival applied to the Ontario Music Fund and earlier this week was awarded a conditional grant of $75,000, said Michael Chan, minister of tourism, culture and sport, in a statement released Wednesday.

Ministry staff continue to work with the festival organizers on ways to ensure the events continued success.

Global News was first to report on March 19 that the annual summer festival was denied a Celebrate Ontario grant this year, forcing organizers to scale back the event.

Executive directorLido Chilelli said he was shocked and warned of drastic changes to the event, which runs July 18 to 27.

Were going to have to scale down the festival to what it was about 10 years ago, he said.

BELOW: Watch Carey Marsden report on funding woes for the Beaches Jazz Festival

The festivalreceived $75,000 in each of the last six years. This year, it was seeking $120,000.

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Province gives $75k to Beaches Jazz Festival

City may change leash law for beaches

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The recommendation from the citys Ad Hoc Committee on Dogs could include designating Good Harbor and Wingaersheek beaches as off-leash areas for folks who want to frolic with their Fidos a little more freely.

Steve LeBlanc, the Ward 3 city councilor who chaired the ad hoc committee, said the current recommendation which he admitted could change before it is presented to the Ordinances and Administration subcommittee on April 14 and then to a public hearing on April 22 is designed to provide dog owners with a little more latitude when it comes to taking their dogs off the leash.

Right now, if your dogs are off the leash in the city of Gloucester outside of the dog park, youre breaking the law, LeBlanc said Wednesday. We were looking for specific areas of the city where we could ease restrictions and provide them with a little more leeway.

LeBlanc said the recommendation for off-leash access at the beaches will include prescribed hours in the mornings and evenings, as well as signage explaining the new laws that will include limits of dogs per owner, licensing, behavioral guidelines and enforcement of sanitary measures.

First time, youll get a warning, LeBlanc said. Were not going to go full-throttle right out of the gate.

He said the schedule will allow ward councilors to hold public meetings in their wards to generate citizen feedback on the possibility of leash-free areas at the two beaches and to incorporate that feedback into any revisions to the citys current dog-related ordinances.

I think the committee did a really good job to recognize those areas where we might be able to make changes to our dog ordinances, LeBlanc said. Now it will go back to O&A and from there to the council as a whole.

LeBlanc said the committee chose Good Harbor and Wingaersheek because of the relative expanse of both beaches and their setting away from busy roadways.

We looked at other beaches, such as Niles Beach, but for one reason or another, they didnt really work as well, he said.

LeBlanc said Public Works Superintendent Michael Hale will have to sign off on the inclusion of any off-leash areas and regulations. He also said the ad hoc committee plans to speak with police Chief Lenny Campanello about the realistic expectations for enforcement of the new rules.

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City may change leash law for beaches

Big Data Summit 2014: Astronomy pushing big data in "mind-blowing" ways

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Advanced areas of science such as astronomy are pushing the boundaries of big data in mind-blowing ways, thanks to the scale of the data being collected by astronomers and cosmologists.

That's what Robert Bath, vice president of engineering Europe for data centre solutions provider Digital Realty, told the audience at Computing's Big Data Summit 2014, as part of his talk on big data storage architecture.

"Astronomy is a very interesting area that's pushing the big data issue in a way that's quite mind-blowing," he said.

"A good example of that is the SKA telescope [the Square Kilometre Array] which is effectively a square kilometre radio telescope which is being deployed in Australia and South Africa," Bath told the audience, explaining how the amount of information which needs to be processed and collected is colossal compared with the vast majority of other big data projects.

"It effectively creates circa one exabyte of data per day and the challenge is how that's addressed in terms of the distributed dishes and the arrays. All of that is a uni-directional dataflow which travels back to supercomputer centres. Then it's about how it's distributed to a global network which is a very interesting part of the space."

Bath went on to describe the Square Kiometre Array as "a truly incredible proposition", adding "they're anticipating that the central computers - which will be situated in Cape Town and Perth - will effectively have the processing power of one hundred million PCs".

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Big Data Summit 2014: Astronomy pushing big data in "mind-blowing" ways

Star-gazing party in store

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MYTCHALL BRANSGROVE/Fairfax NZ

GREAT BALL OF FIRE: The sun seen through the naked eye is bright and yellow, but with the aid of a high-powered telescope and a special hydrogen alpha filter it turns red. Here Heather McTague demonstrates the correct way to use the telescope to view the sun.

Seeing a star 4.3 light years ago is almost like looking in the past, and astronomy fans can do that and more this April.

And you do not have to wait till after dark to appreciate astronomy.

Astronomy, a study of celestial objects, can now take place in the afternoon, and with April being global astronomy month, astronomy aficionados can get their fill in South Canterbury.

Global Astronomy Month (GAM), organised each April by Astronomers Without Borders, is the world's largest global celebration of astronomy.

GAM 2014 will bring new ideas and new opportunities, bringing enthusiasts together worldwide to celebrate Astronomers Without Borders' motto "One People, One Sky".

South Canterbury Astronomers Group will conduct two astronomy events in Timaru as part of Global Astronomy Month 2014.

On April 5, Astronomers Without Borders' New Zealand co-ordinator, Richard McTague, will use special telescopes to observe the sun from 11am at the Mitre 10 carpark in Bank St, Timaru.

With the aid of a coronado, solar max 11 - a specialised telescope for viewing the sun - people can view the burning ball of fire in all its glory, said Mr McTague.

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Star-gazing party in store

Artificial intelligent Pacman min-max algorithm & q-learning algorithm demonstration – Video

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Ashton Kutcher Invests $40 Million Into Artificial Intelligence System with Mark Zuckerberg – Video

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Ashton Kutcher Invests $40 Million Into Artificial Intelligence System with Mark Zuckerberg
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Two tech giants and a popular actor aim to translate computer that thinks like a person

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What connects the two tech giants and popular actor Demi Moores ex-husband together? According to the Wall Street Journal, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Ashton Kutcher joined the ranks to incest $40 million into Vicarious FPC, a secret artificial intelligence (AI) corporation.

Last month, Google invested $400 million in order to acquire the DeepMind company. Elon Musk (chief executive officer of Tesla Motors), Mark Zuckerberg (chief executive officer of Facebook) and Ashton Kutcher (actor) come to realize a similar movement, although minor, by joining a fundraiser in this area. The strange trio are investing into the second round of seed capital for Vicarious to further their goal to replicate the human neocortex with a positronic neural net.

Zuckerberg and Facebook have a history of work in artificial intelligence to enhance the capabilities of social network face recognition, although the report indicates that the investment was made in a personal capacity, not from Facebook accounts.

Good Ventures LLC, together with Facebook founders, PayPal, Napster previously put together a $15 million to fund Vicarious search for the key to AI.

AI with a human touch

The artificial intelligence similar to human is one of the major steps envisaged in the scientific and technological development of mankind and is one that could happen in our generation. Its relevance is that, a computer could be dedicated to solving complex problems such as curing diseases or designing energy sources.

Vicarious uses advanced computational principles to build and create software that has the human-like ability to think and learn. The objective is Vicarious is currently replicating the neocortex, the part of the brain that sees, controls the brain, understands the language and performs calculations. By translating the neocortex to the computer code you get a computer that thinks like a person, according to co-founder Scott Phoenix, Vicarious.

Imagine a machine that thinks like a human, but can be time savor and more productive because it does not need to eat or sleep, Phoenix said replicating computer body and brain functions. Vicarious FPC efforts are focused beyond simple image recognition and expressions, which are on top of it CAPTCHA system. The next step is the development of a computer that will shape the image and connect with specific textures. For example, a current computer can understand a chair, or ice, but Vicarious want to create a computer that can respond to a request such as show me a chair made of ice. The aim is to translate these complex mechanisms for code that will allow create a thinking machine.

Phoenix proposes that once his robots can understand not just shapes and objects, but the textures associated with them than there will be an explosion of robotic technology involving AI that will change our everyday life.

The technology that Vicarious is developing has the potential to improve all lives and revolutionize every industry. The creators of the company are hoping that their solutions through AI can cure disease, create cheap, renewable energy and solve other problems afflicting human civilization.

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Quasar Aerospace Industries, Inc. (QASP) Stock Chart Technical Analysis for 3/24/14 – Video

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Quasar Aerospace Industries, Inc. (QASP) Stock Chart Technical Analysis for 3/24/14
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