US Freedom of Navigation ops in 2013 targeted PHL, China, Iran

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WASHINGTON - The US military carried out freedom of navigation operations challenging the maritime claims of China, Iran and 10 other nations last year, asserting its right to use the seas in defiance of their restrictions, a Pentagon report said Thursday.

The Defense Department's annual Freedom of Navigation Report to Congress for the 2013 fiscal year showed the US military targeted not only countries such as Iran, with whom it has no formal relations, but treaty allies like the Philippines, too.

The US military conducted multiple operations targeting China over what Washington believes are "excessive" claims about its maritime boundaries and its effort to force foreign warships to obtain permission before peacefully transiting its territorial seas.

US operations challenged Iran for trying to restrict the use of the Strait of Hormuz to ships from countries that have signed the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, an accord the United States has not formally adopted but treats as generally accepted customary law.

The report covers activity in the 2013 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, before the latest tensions over an incident between US and Chinese warships in the South China Sea and Beijing's declaration of an air defense identification zone over the East China Sea, which Washington rejected.

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US Freedom of Navigation ops in 2013 targeted PHL, China, Iran

Robot prosthesis transforms amputee drummer into 'cyborg' beat machine

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Jason Barnes from Atlanta lost his right arm below the elbow two years ago With help of Prof Weinberg, he created a robotic arm that uses 2 drumsticks The first stick is controlled using electrical signals in his upper arm muscles Other stick listens to the music being played and improvises its own beat 'Metal drummers might be jealous of what I can do now, said Mr Barnes

By Ellie Zolfagharifard

PUBLISHED: 14:28 EST, 6 March 2014 | UPDATED: 14:40 EST, 6 March 2014

A drummer who lost his arm in a freak accident now has a second chance of achieving his dream after being transformed into a cyborg musician.

Jason Barnes lost his right arm below the elbow two years ago after receiving an electric shock while cleaning a vent hood in a restaurant.

Determined to carry on drumming, the student from Atlanta built his own prosthetic device using a brace and some springs that attached to his arm.

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Jason Barnes, a drummer who lost his right arm in a freak accident, says he now has a chance of achieving his dream after being transformed into a 'cyborg' musician

The prosthesis uses a technique called electromyography to pick up on electrical signals in the upper arm muscles.

By tensing his biceps, Mr Barnes controls a motor that changes how quick the prosthetic arm moves and how tightly it grips the drumstick.

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Robot prosthesis transforms amputee drummer into 'cyborg' beat machine

Cyborg Drumming Arm Makes Amputee Into Superhuman Musician

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Gil Weinberg at Georgia Tech designs robots that make music. Not robots that play music, but robots that can actually create music, creatively improvising new melodies based on analysis of existing ones, allowing them to have jam sessions either by themselves, or with human musicians. Weinberg's newest project also involves musical robots collaborating with musical humans, except in a much more direct way, with the design of a cybernetic upgrade that gives a drummer who's missing an arm a robotic arm with a musical mind of its own.

Photo: Georgia Tech

Jason Barnes is a human drummer who lost his right arm just below the elbow a few years ago. To keep drumming, he built his own prosthetic, but it didn't provide him with the same level of control as a wrist and fingers would have. Weinberg was able to develop a more advanced prosthetic that is controlled physically by the Jasons' arm, as well as electronically using electromyography (EMG) muscle sensors in his upper arm, allowing him to adjust the prosthetic's grip on the stick to control how much it rebounds.

So that's cool, but what's really cool is that Weinberg took things a step farther, and gave the prosthetic drumming arm a second stick. And a brain.

That second stick literally has a mind of its own: it listens to the music that Jason is playing, and then improvises an accompaniment to play along with him. Jason can't control the second stick directly, but he can pull it away from the drum when he wants to play on his own. What's fascinating, though, is that the second stick allows Jason to do stuff that humans can't do. He can play faster, with a more stable beat, than any human can, because he's part robot.

Eventually, Weinberg wants to integrate this arm directly into Jason's brain so that it'll be able to predict when he wants to hit the drum, and then make sure that it activates to nail the beat at that exact moment. And beyond music, Weinberg envisions an even crazier future:

Weinberg says such robotic synchronization technology could potentially be used in the future by fully abled humans to control an embedded, mechanical third arm during time-sensitive operations. For example, Weinbergs anticipation algorithms could be used to help astronauts or surgeons perform complex, physical tasks in synchronization with robotic devices.

A robotic third arm? Yes, sign me up. I definitely need it to improve my ski boxing.

[ Georgia Tech ]

IEEE Spectrum's award-winning robotics blog, featuring news, articles, and videos on robots, humanoids, automation, artificial intelligence, and more. Contact us:e.guizzo@ieee.org

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Cyborg Drumming Arm Makes Amputee Into Superhuman Musician

Let’s Play: The Curse of Monkey Island (PC) part 6: Beaches, chickens and maggots – Video

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Let #39;s Play: The Curse of Monkey Island (PC) part 6: Beaches, chickens and maggots
This time we get some grub, talk about grub, look at plenty of grubs and wonder about... nothing. Follow me on Twitter and Twitch! http://twitter.com/SpiderM...

By: SpiderMwa

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Let's Play: The Curse of Monkey Island (PC) part 6: Beaches, chickens and maggots - Video

Spains beaches: open for business

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The center-right Popular Party (PP) has always made a point of defending chiringuitos beach bars that open during the summer season and it looks like the new coast law will bring yet more improvements to the sector.

Draft regulations to which EL PAS has had access talk about letting some chiringuitos take up twice as much surface area as they are currently allowed to do, and move closer to one another.

The document is part of a new law that purports to protect the coastline through sustainable activities, yet has been widely criticized for doing just the opposite: it allows all existing construction to remain standing, regardless of its legal status, and issues even more licenses to build.

The secretary of state for the environment, Federico Ramos, captured the essence of the law with the following sentence: Whatever impact has already been done, let us make the most of it.

Whatever impact has already been done, let us make the most of it

The new regulations developing the Coast Law make a distinction between urban beaches and natural beaches. In the latter, beach bars will have a maximum surface area of 70 square meters and be made entirely of collapsible elements. The minimum distance between chiringuitos will be 300 meters.

But urban chiringuitos will be allowed to take up 300 square meters, up from 150, and stand no more than 75 meters from one another if their activities are dissimilar.

Urban beaches will also be allowed to host public events with a tourism impact, including all kinds of sports and cultural events as long as they have national or international impact. Licenses will be granted by local authorities after securing a favorable report from the regional government. Visual or audio advertising, which used to be banned, will be allowed in exceptional cases for authorized leisure and sports activities.

Under the new regulations, two types of sand dune will remain outside the public domain the category that encompasses the beaches and affords the highest protection. This is because these dunes are not considered necessary to guarantee the stability of the coast. These criteria could open the door for building residential estates and hotel complexes in dune areas such as Valdevaqueros (Tarifa), several experts agreed.

The minimum distance between chiringuitos will be 300 meters

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Spains beaches: open for business

Ban on dogs from Bass Coast beaches angers locals

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Ban on dogs from Bass Coast beaches angers locals

A ban on dogs from Bass Coast beaches has left owners and locals furious.

There have been reports of holiday makers cancelling their house bookings, home buyers pulling out of deals and retirees looking to sell as a result of the ban, which applies to more than 50km of coastline from Inverloch to Grantville.

The ruling was introduced by the Bass Strait Shire Council last summer to protect children and elderly people using the beaches.

Dogs on a leash are allowed on the beaches between 7am and 10am and in the evening for three hours from 7pm.

The ban is in place everyday at all other times.

A trial for the ban will run until April 30 and it would be reviewed in May, according to reports.

Bass Coast mayor Neil Rankine is due to make a statement this afternoon.

Do you support the ban? Join the debate on 7News Melbourne Facebook page.

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Ban on dogs from Bass Coast beaches angers locals

CAC astronomy night gaining fans

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If you go

What: Central Arizona Colleges Science & Astronomy Night

When: 6-9 p.m., Friday

Where: CACs Signal Peak Campus, 8470 N. Overfield Road

Posted: Thursday, March 6, 2014 9:53 am

CAC astronomy night gaining fans By Rodney Haas Casa Grande Dispatch Casa Grande Valley Newspapers Inc. |

SIGNAL PEAK Wayne Pryor remembers a time when only 10 people would attend Central Arizona Colleges Science & Astronomy Night.

Pryor, a professor in astronomy and geology at the college, recalls how the crowd was so small everyone could hear his voice as he spoke. Today, the crowd has grown to hundreds and Pryor has to use a microphone, which he doesnt mind.

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Guidance for optimal quality, safety of HDR brachytherapy

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The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) has issued a new white paper, "A review of safety, quality management, and practice guidelines for high-dose-rate brachytherapy," that recommends specific guidance to follow in the delivery of high-dose-rate (HDR) brachytherapy to improve quality and patient safety, according to the manuscript published in the March-April 2014 print issue of Practical Radiation Oncology (PRO), the official clinical practice journal of ASTRO.

Commissioned by ASTRO's Board of Directors as part of the Target Safely campaign, the white paper evaluates the current safety and practice guidance for HDR brachytherapy, makes recommendations for guidance applications to the delivery of HDR brachytherapy, suggests topics where additional guidance is needed and examines the adequacy of general physics, quality assurance (QA) and clinical guidance currently available for the most common treatment sites with regard to patient safety. The manuscript also addresses HDR brachytherapy procedures, the use of checklists and forms, the multidisciplinary treatment team, challenges to maintaining safe use of HDR brachytherapy and key measures for avoiding catastrophic failure.

To ensure correct actions are followed for a specific brachytherapy procedure, the white paper recommends the use of a quality management program, including checklists and forms to maintain quality and prevent errors. ASTRO's white paper references the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) Task Group (TG) 59 report that includes examples of forms for quality control and checklists for the various stages of treatment, which can be customized by the treatment team. The AAPM TG-100 report that includes the tools and process for creating an effective quality management program is also cited.

Due to the multidisciplinary nature of HDR brachytherapy treatment, the modality requires coordination among several clinicians to treat the patient accurately and safely. The white paper details the roles and qualifications of those directly involved with radiation therapy decisions: the radiation oncologist, medical physicist, medical dosimetrist, radiation therapist and surgeon. The roles and qualifications are based on ASTRO's Safety is No Accident: A Framework for Quality Radiation Oncology and Care, a comprehensive book detailing minimum recommended guidelines for radiation oncology practices, and the AAPM TG 59 report specific to HDR brachytherapy.

The white paper addresses 12 anticipated challenges to maintaining quality in HDR brachytherapy because of the constant changes in the modality. Anticipated challenges include the replacement of the traditional radiation therapy simulator with a computed tomographic simulator, which requires significant changes in how HDR brachytherapy procedures are performed; the use of new procedures and methods, which can lead to mistakes due to inadequate training, QA or inappropriate procedures; the proliferation of devices, applicators and radionuclides used for brachytherapy treatment, which leads to an increased number of possible processes, types of equipment and clinical uses, making it increasingly difficult to determine how to assure that all of the variations are used with appropriate process control and quality management; and the potential for increased use of model-based algorithms such as Monte Carlo methods for dose calculations for brachytherapy sources, which will require new procedures for commissioning, new algorithm QA and new patient-specific planning checks. The full list of anticipated challenges is available in the supplemental material.

The manuscript makes seven recommendations for improved safety and quality in HDR brachytherapy. The white paper recommends that practitioners follow relevant guidance documents and that deviation from consensus recommendations should be supported by clinical studies or pursued in the setting of a clinical trial approved by an institutional review board; that practitioners receive training in a new procedure before beginning its practice, that the training should include a practical, "hands-on" component and that all team members directly involved with the radiation therapy decisions should participate in at least five proctored cases before performing similar procedures independently; and that professional societies should accelerate the generation of new or updated guidance documents for the following disease sites and techniques: skin, central nervous system, gastrointestinal, lung or endobronchial and esophagus, and, while outside the charge of this panel, assess the need for updated guidance documents for accelerated partial breast irradiation using electronic brachytherapy. The complete list of recommendations is available in the supplemental material.

The white paper describes six benchmarks to provide facilities with measures to evaluate compliance with the seven recommendations in the manuscript. The six benchmarks are: 1) HDR brachytherapy procedures are supported with the appropriate team as described in the report of the AAPM TG 59 and the American College of Radiology HDR Brachytherapy Practice Standard; 2) commissioning of the treatment unit, treatment planning system and each new source is performed by a qualified medical physicist and verified through a QA process; 3) assay of the HDR brachytherapy unit source is performed using a well-type ionization chamber with a calibration traceable to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and this assay is performed or confirmed for each source change. Planning system source strength parameters must be updated with each source change; 4) treatments are performed according to the guidelines from the American Brachytherapy Society when available for the treatment site; 5) treatment plans and programs are checked through independent verification before treatment delivery; and 6) daily QA checks of the HDR brachytherapy system are performed before any treatment.

"As the technology and use of HDR brachytherapy advances, it is imperative that clinical, physics and quality assurance guidance be reviewed and updated, as necessary, to ensure quality and patient safety in the treatment delivery," said Bruce R. Thomadsen, PhD, a professor in the Department of Medical Physics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. "This white paper affirms that HDR brachytherapy is a safe treatment option when current process guidance is followed and appropriate clinical decisions are made based on clinical guidance provided in white papers such as this."

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Guidance for optimal quality, safety of HDR brachytherapy