All Gold Coast beaches closed as large swells hit

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GOLD Coast City Council lifeguards weekend supervisor Anthony Lunney said large swells had forced the closure of beaches across the Coast, with only a couple of swimming spots considered safe.

We have a pretty big swell hitting the Coast at the moment and it is unfortunate that it has hit on a pretty hot and muggy day when everybody wants to come to the beach and go for a swim, he said.

Currumbin Creek and Tallebudgera Creek are the best places and the roads are really busy heading south.

We cant force people out of the water, we can only advised them that the beaches are closed and that they are swimming at their own risk.

Swells are reaching 1.8 metres at most beaches on the Coast, but Mr Lunney said little damage had been done.

The swell is supposed to peak today before dropping a bit tomorrow and should hopefully be back to normal by Tuesday, he said.

The beaches have held up pretty well.

Rough conditions at Kirra caused organisers to relocate the Queensland Nipper Titles to Currumbin Creek this morning.

Organisers will monitor conditions throughout the day, as high seas are predicted.

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All Gold Coast beaches closed as large swells hit

Front and Center: John Whitmer, SFCC astronomy instructor – Sun, 16 Mar 2014 PST

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Some visitors who attend John Whitmers popular Friday night stargazing sessions expect insights based on the position of celestial bodies, as in when the moon is in the SeventhHouse.

But the director of Spokane Falls Community Colleges planetarium is an astronomer, not an astrologer. Hes more interested in the age of planets than the Age ofAquarius.

Whitmer has taught at SFCC since 1998, and spearheaded the effort to include a planetarium in the colleges new science building, completed in2011.

When planetariums were conceived a century ago, heres how one scientist described public

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Astronomer John Whitmer, pictured in SFCCs planetarium, has been with the college since1998. (Full-size photo)

Year SFCC planetarium opened: 2011

Seating capacity: 52

Public shows: Fridays at 7 p.m. during school year; Thursday afternoons insummer

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Front and Center: John Whitmer, SFCC astronomy instructor - Sun, 16 Mar 2014 PST

Educator Teams Fly on NASA's SOFIA Airborne Observatory

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NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) is shown with its telescope door partly open during a test flight for its astronomical observation mission. (NASA / Jim Ross) View Larger Image

PALMDALE, Calif. The first four Airborne Astronomy Ambassador (AAA) educators returned safely to Earth at Palmdale, Calif., early in the morning of Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2013, after completing their initial flight on NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA.

That flight launched the AAA program's first full year of operations, during which 26 educators from classrooms and science centers across the United States will fly on the SOFIA as partners with scientists conducting astronomy research using the airborne observatory.

On board for the Feb. 12-13 flight were ambassadors Constance Gartner of the Wisconsin School for the Deaf in Delavan, Wisc.; Chelen Johnson from the Breck School in Golden Valley, Minn.; Ira Harden and Vincente Washington, both from City Honors College Preparatory Charter School in Inglewood, Calif. The astronomers on the flight included Juergen Wolf and Doerte Mehlert of the German SOFIA Institute in Stuttgart, Germany and Ted Dunham of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz.

The SOFIA is a modified Boeing 747SP jetliner that carries a telescope with an effective diameter of 100 inches (2.5 meters) to altitudes as high as 45,000 feet (14 km). Flying above Earth's obscuring atmospheric water vapor, scientists can gather and analyze infrared light to further our understanding of puzzles such as the processes that form stars and planets, the chemistry of organic compounds in interstellar clouds, and the environment around the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.

"SOFIA enables educators to work with scientists and to experience a flight mission on the world's largest airborne observatory. Educators then take their experiences back to their classrooms and communities," said Eddie Zavala, NASA's SOFIA program manager. "They can relate the excitement, hardships, challenges, discoveries, teamwork and educational values of SOFIA and scientific research to students, teachers and the general public."

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Educator Teams Fly on NASA's SOFIA Airborne Observatory

Artificial intelligence could automate half of U.S. jobs in 20 years

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SAN FRANCISCO Who needs an army of lawyers when you have a computer?

When Minneapolis attorney William Greene faced the task of combing through 1.3 million electronic documents in a recent case, he turned to a so-called smart computer program. Three associates selected relevant documents from a smaller sample, "teaching" their reasoning to the computer. The software's algorithms then sorted the remaining material by importance.

"We were able to get the information we needed after reviewing only 2.3 percent of the documents," said Greene, a Minneapolis-based partner at law firm Stinson Leonard Street.

Artificial intelligence has arrived in the American workplace, spawning tools that replicate human judgments that were too complicated and subtle to distill into instructions for a computer. Algorithms that "learn" from past examples relieve engineers of the need to write out every command.

The advances, coupled with mobile robots wired with this intelligence, make it likely that occupations employing almost half of today's U.S. workers, ranging from loan officers to cab drivers and real estate agents, become possible to automate in the next decade or two, according to a study done at the University of Oxford in Britain.

"These transitions have happened before," said Carl Benedikt Frey, co-author of the study and a research fellow at the Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology. "What's different this time is that technological change is happening even faster, and it may affect a greater variety of jobs."

It's a transition on the heels of an information-technology revolution that's already left a profound imprint on employment across the globe. For both physical and mental labor, computers and robots replaced tasks that could be specified in step-by- step instructions jobs that involved routine responsibilities that were fully understood.

That eliminated work for typists, travel agents and a whole array of middle-class earners over a single generation.

Yet even increasingly powerful computers faced a mammoth obstacle: they could execute only what they're explicitly told. It was a nightmare for engineers trying to anticipate every command necessary to get software to operate vehicles or accurately recognize speech. That kept many jobs in the exclusive province of human labor until recently.

Oxford's Frey is convinced of the broader reach of technology now because of advances in machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence that has software "learn" how to make decisions by detecting patterns in those humans have made.

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Artificial intelligence could automate half of U.S. jobs in 20 years

First Japanese Astronaut Becomes New Commander on the International Space Station – Video

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First Japanese Astronaut Becomes New Commander on the International Space Station
Command of the International Space Station was passed from cosmonaut Oleg Kotov to Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency on March 9. The ch...

By: Thunder Aerospace

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First Japanese Astronaut Becomes New Commander on the International Space Station - Video

Seacoast aerospace consortium marks 1st anniversary

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Jets soar over the Portsmouth skies at the Boston-Portsmouth Service Credit Union Airshow at the Portsmouth International Airport at Pease in June 2012.Rich Beauchesne/rbeauchesne@seacoastonline.com

A partnership of four Seacoast cities, the state's economic development agency, Pease International Tradeport and a local community college is celebrating the first anniversary of an effort to promote the region as a place where aerospace suppliers can establish their businesses.

"We're working together for suppliers and the industry to expand in the Seacoast area," said Lorna Colquhoun, communication and legislative director for the N.H. Department of Resources and Economic Development.

New Hampshire Aerospace and Defense Export Consortium: Formed to market the state's more than 300 aerospace and defense related companies to overseas buyers. It is spearheaded by the N.H. International Trade Resource Center.

N.H. Aerospace and Defense Export Consortium: http://www.nhadec.com

Aerospace NH: http://www.aerospacenh.com

DRED, the cities of Portsmouth, Dover, Somersworth and Rochester, as well as Pease Tradeport and Great Bay Community College, have been working cooperatively since March of last year to promote the area as a "composites manufacturing region," according to Colquhoun.

It is part of the larger year-old effort called the New Hampshire Aerospace and Defense Export Consortium to market the state's more than 300 aerospace and defense-related companies to overseas buyers. It is spearheaded by the N.H. International Trade Resource Center (ITRC). Promotional material says these 300 companies supply about 4 percent to the state's GDP each year. As a share of a state economy, that ranks sixth in the country.

Exports are becoming one of the fastest-growing parts of the New Hampshire economy and that will only get bigger with the globalization of the aerospace industry and with cutbacks of domestic defense spending, according to Tina Kasim, ITRC program manager.

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Seacoast aerospace consortium marks 1st anniversary

Govt out to groom PH as global aerospace hub

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The Department of Trade and Industry has asked major players in the global aerospace industry to make the Philippines their prime hub in the region for maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) of their aircraft, given the countrys growing capacities to serve this sector.

Trade Undersecretary Ponciano C. Manalo Jr. said they were able to hold discussions with American multinational Boeing Co., Brazils Embraer-Empresa Brasileira de Aeronautica, and Airbus SAS of France during the 2014 Singapore Airshow held last month.

Manalo explained how Philippine trade officials approached the companies to pitch their proposal to turn the country into a maintenance repair and overhaul hub.

This sector, he said, can generate significant employment for the country and holds a huge potential in terms of technology transfer.

More importantly, it caters to growing fleet of airlines in Asia, Manalo said.

They are looking at Asia to grow between 8.5 percent to 9.5 percent in the next 15 to 20 years. That means that the value and volume of the MRO may more than double within that period, he added.

Apart from the three of the biggest players in the industry, the DTI delegation to the Singapore Airshow was able to speak also with the manufacturers of other aircraft like helicopters and drones to set up training facilities in the Philippines for mechanics and machinists.

We have a potential advantage because we already have an MRO sector. We have engineers who are capable, can be easily trained, and English proficient, Manalo said.

At present, the country is host to several maintenance, repair and overhaul facilities, including Lufthansa Technik in Naia which services, among others, Airbus A380s operating out of the Philippines.

The SIA Engineering (Philippines) Corp. in Clark, which is part of the Singapore Airlines Group, offers a suite of capabilities including aircraft certification and scheduled heavy maintenance checks, airframe structural inspections, repairs, modifications, paint-stripping, painting of aircraft exteriors and Non-Destructive Testing checks.

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Govt out to groom PH as global aerospace hub

US aerospace, aviation industries see threats in aging workforce

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WASHINGTON: US aerospace and aviation industry leaders warned lawmakers on Thursday that a coming wave of retirements in an aging workforce could hurt both sectors and create safety issues unless the government helps more young people qualify for those jobs.

"If we look at the demographics of our workforce across Boeing and much of the aerospace industry, about 50% of our top engineers and mechanics will be eligible to retire over roughly the next five years," Muilenburg told lawmakers at a US Senate Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety, and Security.

The Senate panel met to consider what the government can do to maintain the lead positions of the US aerospace and aviation industries as global competitors advance.

Workforce development, regulatory issues and the need for more modern infrastructure were among the topics discussed.

The Federal Aviation Administration, responsible for the safety and regulation of US civil aviation, also faces a staffing crisis, a labor official told lawmakers.

"One third of the (FAA) workforce, including controllers, inspectors (and) systems specialists are eligible to retire," said Edward Wytkind, president of the Transportation Trades Department at AFL-CIO.

"This is unsustainable and must be addressed because we believe it's going to not only impact operations for the airline industry, but also the safety of the system as you see this brain-drain of high quality people retiring and we're not hiring and replacing them fast enough," Wytkind said.

Encouraging science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education for US children at an early age could help create a pipeline of qualified engineers, the officials said.

"We have about 4 million children entering kindergarten this year. At current rates, that would produce about 60,000 to 70,000 engineers at the end of college," Muilenburg said. "That's not even enough to satisfy the aerospace industry, let alone all sectors that need engineers."

The aviation industry wants to position for growth as the U.S. economy continues to recover and air travel picks up. The US Transportation Department on Thursday reported a 6.1% rise in airline travel in 2013.

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US aerospace, aviation industries see threats in aging workforce