Farmer, astronomer, climate change sceptic mourned

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Feb. 14, 2014, 4 a.m.

ASTRONOMY and a penchant for political debate will be remembered tomorrow by family and friends as they reflect on the life of Portland region farmer Don Ward.

ASTRONOMY and a penchant for political debate will be remembered tomorrow by family and friends as they reflect on the life of Portland region farmer Don Ward.

The regular contributor to The Standards letters page died suddenly last week aged 73. His funeral is scheduled to be held tomorrow morning at Warrnambools Anglican Church.

Mr Ward was a Victorian Astronomical Society member and contributed to the associations journal for a number of years, as well as other publications.

He became known for his outspoken views on climate change and wrote dozens of letters to the editor on the subject.

Mr Wards sister Betty Stafford said her brothers interest in astronomy was stimulated by the beginnings of the American-Soviet space race in the late 1950s.

Don was fascinated by astronomy and invested a lot in his equipment. He even built his own telescope as a teenager, Mrs Stafford said.

He also had firm views on global warming and climate change.

Don wrote so many letters to the editor, I think we lost count of how many he contributed.

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Farmer, astronomer, climate change sceptic mourned

Distro Astro Is a Stunning Star Voyager

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Distro Astro 2.0 is an excellent Linux OS to learn about the basics of a simple desktop environment as well as explore the marvels of the universe. It is also an excellent all-in-one Linux platform for astronomy enthusiasts and professional astronomers alike with some of the best celestial-studying software included. Distro Astro is an impressive and solidly performing Linux distro.

The Linux desktop offers distributions for many diverse interests and specialties. Distro Astro is for astronomy enthusiasts.

The latest version, Distro Astro 2.0, is dubbed "Pallas." It was released Nov. 20, 2013, at the South East Asian Young Astronomers Collaboration conference in Bandung, Indonesia. It is a major upgrade focusing on refinements for professional astronomers.

The next release, version Juno 3.0, is due next November. It will focus on the needs of amateur stargazers.

Astronomy software falls into two broad categories. It is designed either for amateur or for professional astronomers. Distro Astro addresses both of these user groups.

Generally, the best amateur astronomy software is written for Microsoft Windows. However, the Linux platform provides the best professional strength astronomy software. This Pallas release gives both amateur and professional astronomers a means of bridging that software divide.

This distro release supports the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface and Microsoft's Secure Boot extension. This means you can install Distro Astro 2.0 as a dual boot on Windows 8 and Windows 8.1.

Earlier Distro Astro versions could not dual boot with Windows 8. So this Pallas version could become a smooth migration path for astronomers of all stripes looking to run the best available astronomy software for both platforms.

While I am very conversant with both Linux and Windows OSes, I am less than a newbie on all things related to astronomy. So I walked a long-time colleague through Distro Astro. My cohort is an avid Mac user and devoted astronomy buff.

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Distro Astro Is a Stunning Star Voyager

Anki’s Boris Sofman – "Artificial Intelligence and Robotics" – D.I.C.E. 2014 Summit – Video

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Anki #39;s Boris Sofman - "Artificial Intelligence and Robotics" - D.I.C.E. 2014 Summit
As an engineer and researcher with experience in building diverse robotic systems from consumer products to off-road autonomous vehicles and bomb-disposal ...

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Anki's Boris Sofman - "Artificial Intelligence and Robotics" - D.I.C.E. 2014 Summit - Video

Artificial intelligence, situated approach – Wikipedia …

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In artificial intelligence research, the situated approach builds agents that are designed to behave effectively successfully in their environment. This requires designing AI "from the bottom-up" by focussing on the basic perceptual and motor skills required to survive. The situated approach gives a much lower priority to abstract reasoning or problem-solving skills.

The approach was originally proposed as an alternative to traditional approaches (that is, approaches popular before 1985 or so. After several decades of success, these older approaches to modeling decision-making, such as expert systems, finite state machines or decision trees reached their limitations in the 1980s when researchers tried to use them to drive real robots in uncertain environments. In fact, classical AI technologies face intractable issues, such as combinatorial explosion, when confronted with real-world modeling problems, and several directions have been explored by researchers to address these issues. All these approaches focus on modeling intelligence situated in a given environment: they have come to be known as the situated approach to AI.

During the late 1980s, the approach now known as nouvelle AI (nouvelle means new in French) was pioneered at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory by Rodney Brooks. As opposed to classical or traditional artificial intelligence, nouvelle AI purposely avoided the traditional goal of modeling human-level performance, but rather tries to create systems with intelligence at the level of insects, closer to real-world robots. But eventually, at least at MIT new AI did lead to an attempt for humanoid AI in the Cog Project.

The conceptual shift introduced by nouvelle AI flourished in the robotics area, given way to behavior-based artificial intelligence (BBAI), a methodology for developing AI based on a modular decomposition of intelligence. It was made famous by Rodney Brooks: his subsumption architecture was one of the earliest attempts to describe a mechanism for developing BBAI. It is extremely popular in robotics and to a lesser extent to implement intelligent virtual agents because it allows the successful creation of real-time dynamic systems that can run in complex environments. For example, it underlies the intelligence of the Sony, Aibo and many RoboCup robot teams.

Realizing that in fact all these approaches were aiming at building not an abstract intelligence, but rather an intelligence situated in a given environment, they have come to be known as the situated approach. In fact, this approach stems out from early insights of Alan Turing, describing the need to build machines equipped with sense organs to learn directly from the real-world instead of focusing on abstract activities, such as playing chess.

Classically, a software entity is defined as a simulated element, able to act on itself and on its environment, and which has an internal representation of itself and of the outside world. An entity can communicate with other entities, and its behavior is the consequence of its perceptions, its representations, and its interactions with the other entities.

Simulating entities in a virtual environment requires simulating the entire process that goes from a perception of the environment, or more generally from a stimulus, to an action on the environment. This process is called the AI loop and technology used to simulate it can be subdivided in two categories. Sensorimotor or low-level AI deals with either the perception problem (what is perceived?) or the animation problem (how are actions executed?). Decisional or high-level AI deals with the action selection problem (what is the most appropriate action in response to a given perception, i.e. what is the most appropriate behavior?).

There are two main approaches in decisional AI. The vast majority of the technologies available on the market, such as planning algorithms, finite state machines (FSA), or expert systems, are based on the traditional or symbolic AI approach. Its main characteristics are:

However, the limits of traditional AI, which goal is to build systems that mimic human intelligence, are well-known: inevitably, a combinatorial explosion of the number of rules occurs due to the complexity of the environment. In fact, it is impossible to predict all the situations that will be encountered by an autonomous entity.

In order to address these issues, another approach to decisional AI, also known as situated or behavioral AI, has been proposed. It does not attempt to model systems that produce deductive reasoning processes, but rather systems that behave realistically in their environment. The main characteristics of this approach are the following:

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Colorado legislature considers aerospace-related property-tax break

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A barrier to aerospace companies growing and staying in Colorado may soon be removed if a House bill that cleared the finance committee Thursday becomes law.

The bipartisan measure is an effort to keep the state competitive in a rapidly changing national landscape by matching similar tax breaks given to the aerospace industry in other states.

Introduced by House Speaker Mark Ferrandino, D-Denver, and House Minority Leader Brian DelGrosso, R-Loveland, House Bill 1178 would give sales-and-use-tax exemptions for spaceflight property with minimal impact on Colorado's tax revenue.

"There are several other states that have moved this way," DelGrosso said. "Now Colorado has become uncompetitive."

Aerospace accounted for $8.7 billion of the Colorado economy in 2011 but is rarely discussed in the Colorado legislature something that many industry and political leaders believe must change.

"We are good right now, but there are storm clouds on the horizon and we have to be proactive," said Vicky Lea, manager of the Colorado Space Coalition and the aerospace industry for the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp. "Competition among major aerospace states has never been more fierce."

For satellite companies such as Longmont-based DigitalGlobe, this tax which requires any spaceflight equipment to have an ownership transfer if it stays in the state longer than 60 days after it was built discourages keeping the work close to home.

"We were looking where to store (a new satellite received in an acquisition), and obviously we wouldn't do it in Colorado because they didn't have this legislation," said Brent Wilson, DigitalGlobe's director of tax. "We are hiring high-paying employees out of state to maintain that technical equipment."

The national aerospace landscape is shifting dramatically as a result of a number of factors, including federal budget constraints, which are disruptive to Colorado's aerospace cluster.

"Historically, Colorado has relied heavily on federal spending and contract awards to grow our aerospace industry," said Stacey DeFore, chairwoman of the Colorado Space Business Roundtable.

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Colorado legislature considers aerospace-related property-tax break

Vector Aerospace Helicopter Services North America Attending Heli-Expo 2014

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Richmond, BC Vector Aerospace (www.vectoraerospace.com), a global independent provider of aviation maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) services, is pleased to announce that Vector Aerospace Helicopter Services North America (HS-NA), a subsidiary of Vector Aerospace and one of the worlds leading providers of helicopter maintenance, repair and overhaul services will be exhibiting at the Helicopter Association International (HAI) Heli-Expo at the Orange County Exhibition Centre in Anaheim, California, February 25-27th.

Vector Aerospace has been attending Heli-Expo for over 25 years and it has always been a positive experience for us, states Paul Cockell, President, Vector Aerospace Helicopter Services North America. We are looking forward to re-connecting with existing customers and fostering new relationships and opportunities again this year.

Heli-Expo provides HS-NA with the opportunity to support its existing customer base while reaching new customers across North and South America, Europe and Asia. This year, HS-NA will be highlighting its full UH-1H upgrade program, AS350 capabilities, and broad range of Supplemental Type Certificates (STCs) for Sikorsky, Airbus and Bell helicopters.

HS-NA will have a custom-designed UH-1H demonstrator onsite at Heli-Expo so attendees and customers can sit inside and experience it first-hand. This modified integrated cockpit consists of two Sagem 10 MFD (EI indication) and two Sagem 10 PFDs for right or left hand seat operations, and is just one example of all of Vectors UH-1H upgrade capabilities. Make sure to stop by Booth #5906 for an introduction to our displays and for any other additional information, or to set up a meeting with a sales or customer service representative. You may also contact HS-NA prior to the show by email, sales-hsna@vectoraerospace.com or by phone at 1-888-729-2276.

HS-NAs comprehensive helicopter service portfolio includes: Rolls-Royce M250; Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6T series engines; Turbomeca Arriel 1 and Arriel 2; General Electric T58 / CT58 and CT-7A / T700 engines; dynamic components, full-service avionics capability; up to and including glass cockpit engineering, development and integration, complete aircraft rewires, as well as airframes and major inspections support for a variety of Airbus, Sikorsky, Boeing and Bell helicopter models.

About Vector Aerospace

Vector Aerospace is a global provider of aviation maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) services. Through facilities in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Australia, South Africa, and Kenya Vector Aerospace provides services to commercial and military customers for gas turbine engines, components and helicopter airframes. Vectors customer-focused team includes over 2,700 motivated employees.

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Vector Aerospace Helicopter Services North America Attending Heli-Expo 2014

Reader Comments

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Pontius Pilate would have made a good modern American liberal. When he stood in judgment of Jesus and dismissively said "What is truth?" he pretty much set the standard.

But there are worse things than skepticism and agnosticism. Pilate could have corrected Jesus like some pagan schoolmarm.

That still happens too, of course, as when WTE columnist Rodger McDaniel recently lampooned the teachings of Jesus in this newspaper and weirdly dubbed it the Sagebrush Gospel.

For those who didnt see it, he began by copying three verses verbatim from Jesus Gospel in the Book of Matthew, Chapter 25. Then he edited and reworked the rest of the verses to suit his purposes.

What began as the teachings of Jesus got perverted into some strange amalgam of Karl Marx, Joel Biden, Saul Alinski and Lady Gaga.

Any reader who went in expecting some profound Biblical exegesis got punked with a typical ration of blasphemous left-wing performance art instead n the authors rhetorical equivalent of setting fire to a bag of his own waste, ringing the doorbell of every Christian in town and running away to watch the fun.

Mr. McDaniel, who fancies himself a Christian preacher, is what you call a heretic. Thats a word that was overused during most of church history but is underused today. It describes anyone who makes it their business to misrepresent the teachings of Christ.

Modern liberals attack Christianity all the time of course, but most of them arent heretics because most of them are simply pushing modern liberalism as a replacement for Christianity. And at least they are honest about it.

But Mr. McDaniel preaches modern liberalism and calls it Christianity. And that is not honest.

Its not even possible. Christianity and modern liberalism are mutually exclusive because they rise from opposite assumptions about the natures of God and man and how they interact.

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Total Recovery Lecture Series: Novel Treatments for Joint, Tendon & Ligament Pain, Part 3 – Video

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Total Recovery Lecture Series: Novel Treatments for Joint, Tendon Ligament Pain, Part 3
Dr. David Wang, Harvard trained and Board Certified in Physical Medicine Rehabilitation, is an international leader in the growing field of Regenerative In...

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Total Recovery Lecture Series: Novel Treatments for Joint, Tendon & Ligament Pain, Part 3 - Video