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Spain health warning issued as heatwave hits the Canary Islands – The Mirror

Posted on July 8, 2022 by Danzig

The Ministry of Health of the Government of the Canary Islands has issued a health warning over temperatures in Gran Canaria, Tenerife, Fuerteventura, Lanzarote, and La Palma

Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Health chiefs in the Canaries have issued an urgent alert as the temperature across the islands is set to soar into the mid-30s and more.

They are urging holidaymakers to take extra special care in the sun and not to risk heatstroke or severe sunburn.

The Ministry of Health of the Government of the Canary Islands has activated health risk notices between July 9 and 11 in different municipalities of Gran Canaria, Tenerife, Fuerteventura, Lanzarote, and La Palma .

On these dates it is predicted that temperatures will stretch well into the 30Cs.

"The plan is aimed at the entire population, and especially designed for the population groups most vulnerable to intense heat, such as the elderly, children and people with chronic pathologies," a spokesperson said of the warnings.

"All hospitals and the Canary Islands Emergency Service (SUC) have staff designated and specially trained to deal with and effectively coordinate services in the event of a possible heat wave, as well as the communication channels established for adequate surveillance."

The warnings specifically are:

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Gran Canaria.- July 9, 10 and 11 in Agimes, La Aldea de San Nicols, Ingenio, Mogn, San Bartolom de Tirajana, Santa Luca de Tirajana, Telde and Valsequillo.

Tenerife.- July 9, 10 and 11 in Adeje, Arona, Fasnia and San Miguel de Abona.

Gran Canaria.- July 10 in Agaete, Artenara, Arucas, Tejeda and Valleseco. July 9 and 10 in Santa Brgida and Vega San Mateo.

Tenerife.- July 10 in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Arafo, Arico, Granadilla de Abona, Santiago del Teide and Vilaflor. July 9 and 10 in Candelaria, Gmar, La Orotava, Puerto de la Cruz and Los Realejos.

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La Palma.- July 10 in Santa Cruz de la Palma, Brea Alta, Brea Baja and Villa de Mazo

Lanzarote.- July 10 in Arrecife, San Bartolom and Tas.

Fuerteventura.- July 10 in Puerto del Rosario, Antigua, Betancuria, Pjara and Tuineje.

Health chiefs have offered advice to those living on and visiting the islands on how best to keep safe and healthy in the intense heat.

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In the event of presenting any symptomatology associated with heat such as headaches, dizziness, cramps, general malaise, a sensation of suffocation due to heat, fatigue or exhaustion, you must contact 1-1-2.

Spain health warning issued as heatwave hits the Canary Islands - The Mirror

Islands of Ireland: If you ever posted a letter in the 1980s you’ll be familiar with Macdara’s Island – Irish Examiner

Posted on July 8, 2022 by Danzig

On Saturday, July 16, hundreds of pilgrims will cram onto a flotilla of currachs, pleasure craft and fishing boats at the several inlets and piers of Mace Head in Connemara to cross about 2km of sea to honour the memory of a sixth-century saint. Not a lot is known about St Macdara but his legacy has lasted more than 1,500 years from when he chose this barren island to establish his church.

As my kayak glides onto the beach on the southwestern shore on a bright and breezy day the imposing sight of his church stands out like a beacon. This trip is two weeks before the pilgrimage and, of course, no multitudes are in evidence. It is the calm before the storm when hundreds of people will disembark into the shallows, (there is no pier and clement weather is much sought-after) to attend a mass in honour of the saints feast day.

St Macdara is the patron saint of Connemara fishermen, who tradition has it, dip their sails on passing the island in order to receive his blessing. And if they dont myth records a fierce vengeance unleashed from the seas on the unbeliever.

All the boats will be blessed on the day too.

The only activity on arrival at this serene place, apart from this visitor, is of a cormorant drying its wings on a rock. In some years weather conditions have been very bad so it is with no little courage that the devout board the boats. Nine people drowned on the pilgrimage in a storm in 1907.

This is one of several summer pilgrimage sites in the west of Ireland: some of these are to islands such as Caher in County Mayo or the site that draws by far the greatest number of pilgrims Croagh Patrick itself.

St Macdara is believed to have established an oratory of wooden construction here in the sixth century at the dawn of Christianity on this island. The current building dates from the 12th century and had its roof restored in 1977. In addition to the church, there are three penitential stations comprised of cross slabs, and a holy well. There are also the ruins of a much later bothy around which animals were once raised.

Nobody has lived there for more than 800 years. It is a cause for speculation if the island had some trees back in those days when it was significant enough to be self-sustaining. The soil seems reasonable to support the growing of some vegetables.

The church is unusual, though not unique, in its design. A very steep-pitched roof is its standout feature and is a curiosity in itself. The church has just one room and a few very small windows.

Its appearance is so sturdy as to suggest it could last for another 500 years without much repair. it is regarded as one of the finest early Christian oratories in Ireland and, for this reason, was commemorated in a stamp issued in the 1980s.

One of the cross slabs has a motif of a Greek cross which are relatively widespread in early Church history in Ireland. The condition of some of the cross slabs prompted the late writer, Tim Robinson, to speculate that the island was subject to Viking raids. The hermitage on Inishboffin was raided by the Vikings in 895 as was the church on Caher Island to the east. It is reasonable to assume that Macdaras Island was also attacked and that treasures from the church lie undiscovered in a hoard somewhere in Denmark or Norway.

Unsurprisingly the island has had many versions of its name including: Oilen Mhic Dara; St Mac Daras Island; Cruach na Cara; Crownacarro; Crunakarra; Mackdarra; and Inis mic Dara, Contemporary poetry has referenced the mystical appeal of the island. It is mentioned in The 12 0clock Mass, Roundstone by Paul Durcan.

After Mass, the rain had drained away/

into a tide of Sunlight on which we sailed out/

to St MacDaras Island and dipped our sails/

Both of us smiling.

How to get there: For the pilgrimage on July 16 inquire at Carna, or follow the crowds! Otherwise, kayak from a small strand near Ard just west of Carna.

Other: logainm.ie

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Islands of Ireland: If you ever posted a letter in the 1980s you'll be familiar with Macdara's Island - Irish Examiner

Sister Islands’ Disaster Preparedness Drives To Be Held – Government of the Virgin Islands

Posted on July 8, 2022 by Danzig

The Office of the Deputy Governor, the Department of Disaster Management (DDM), and Resilience Teams will be hosting a series of disaster preparedness drives on Virgin Gorda, Anegada and Jost Van Dyke.

The drives will be held in high traffic areas in each community. Members of resilience teams will assemble and distribute flyers, share information, and answer questions regarding hurricane and disaster preparedness on each sister island.

Sister Islands Coordinator, Sasha Flax, said that disaster preparedness drives focus mainly on hurricane preparedness to raise awareness and help members of the community get prepared and stay in a state of readiness.

The resilience teams on each sister island will also ensure that seniors and members of vulnerable groups receive this important information with house-to-house visits. An educated community translates into a prepared community and that is the intent of this initiative, Ms. Flax elaborated.

The drives are scheduled to take place on:

Drives will specifically feature community preparedness tips for the season, a walk-thru/talk-thru of the Family Emergency Plan template and some information on training for prospective volunteers.

For more information on the Disaster Preparedness Drives and how to get involved on the Sister Islands, interested individuals can contact the Department of Disaster Management at 468-4200 or ddm@gov.vg.

The goal of the Sister Islands Programme is to promote and facilitate the execution of projects designed to bring about sustained improvement in the quantity, quality and delivery of Government services.

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Sister Islands' Disaster Preparedness Drives To Be Held - Government of the Virgin Islands

HS wrestling: Five pin down Staten Island Coaches first-team, all-star honors – SILive.com

Posted on July 8, 2022 by Danzig

The 2021-22 high school wrestling season had its share of hurdles for all the Staten Island teams.

COVID-19 restrictions and vaccine requirements hindered many wrestlers from competing in dual meets and tournaments. In some leagues it prevented non-vaccinated wrestlers from competing at all. Teams and wrestlers grinded out the season which limited travel to neighboring states and caused many regional and national tournaments to be canceled.

Monsignor Farrell went undefeated against New York City opponents in dual meets and went 5-0 in the Staten Island Duals with just its vaccinated wrestlers. The Lions took second at the Mayors Cup as a last-minute entry with only nine wrestlers.

Farrell had its largest squad in school history with 65 wrestlers last season. The team was led by senior captains Michael Adams and Michael Caserta. The closest dual meet was against Tottenville, which Farrell won, 36-28.

The youthful 2021 Pirates wrestling team never seemed to stop moving forward, getting better as the season progressed. The Pirates completed the year by winning the Public School Athletic League individual team title, and the PSAL Borough title. They finished second in the PSAL dual meet tournament falling to Mayors Cup champion, Eagle Academy. The Pirates will certainly be looking to challenge both programs next year.

As a result, the Lions and Pirates dominated the five first-team all-star selections picked by the coaches of Staten Islands wrestling programs. Plus. wrestlers from those two schools lead the contingent on the second and third teams below.

First Team

Michael Adams -- 118 pounds (Monsignor Farrell):

The last of the Adams brothers (Terry and Daniel prior) to attend the Oakwood school was the overall city champion at 118 pounds, winning the Mayors Cup for the third time by defeating fellow Islander Jacob Levin of Tottenville. The senior also won the prestigious Ironman Invitational for the third time. Adams also won his second CHSAA title, beating Chaminades Shane Meenaghan, a returning state place finisher. He placed seventh at the NYSPHSAA state championships. His record was 37-3, bringing his career mark to 136-18, including 91 pins. He is widely considered one of the best wrestlers in NYC history. He will be continuing his wrestling career at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania, where he will join older brother Terry.

John-Michael Economos -- 145 pounds (Monsignor Farrell)

The junior was the overall city champion and won the Mayors Cup with 15 seconds left in the match. He was down two points to state level wrestler Mitchell Barcus when he secured a takedown and took Barcus directly to his back in what many call the match of the tournament and year in New York City wrestling. Economos is a two-sport athlete, who also competes for the swim team.

McKee/Staten Island Tech's Joseph Masica, center, left, who copped the 189-pound Mayor's Cup title, poses with Seagull coach Charles Brancato. (Family photo)

Joseph Masica -- 189 pounds (McKee/Staten Island Tech)

The senior was the overall city champion at 189 pounds, beating Shaydon Bernadskiy of Tottenville in dominant fashion, 13-2. He also won the Borough Championships and was the PSAL Sectional champion. His season record was 34-3, including 25 pins.

118-pounder Jacob Levin will go down as one of Tottenville's top grapplers. (Photo courtesy of Tottenville wrestling)

Jacob Levin -- 118 pounds (Tottenville)

Heading into the season, the senior was looked at as one of the citys best wrestlers and he certainly delivered. The two-time All-Star won the Eagle Academy Invitational, Murrow Invitational and Tottenville Invitational. Levin captured his third individual Borough championship and second PSAL individual title. The Pirate captain capped his final year with 37 wins (148 career wins in 3 years), scoring bonus points in all the regular season matches he won. He concluded this stellar career by going 2-2 in the NYPHSAA championships. He is considered one of the best wrestlers in the history of the Tottenville program.

Jake Gulino -- 215 pounds (Tottenville)

The senior notched his first All-Star accolades by becoming the dark horse at the PSAL Individual Tournament when he avenged his only two losses of the regular season to capture his first PSAL Individual title. On his way to representing the PSAL at the NYSPHSAA championships, he beat this years Mayors Cup champion, Daniel Abramov of Stuyvesant, by major decision. He concluded his season by going 1-2 in the NYSPHSAA championships.

Staten Island Wrestler of the Year -- Michael Adams

2nd Team

Orlando Suarez 118lbs (Monsignor Farrell)

Max Borowiec 126lbs (Monsignor Farrell)

Michael Caserta 160lbs (Monsignor Farrell)

Dylan Pipitone 172lbs (Tottenville)

Charlie Curry 189lbs (Monsignor Farrell)

Shaydon Bernardskiy 189lbs (Tottenville)

Ben Rosa 285lbs (Monsignor Farrell)

3rd Team

Jack Borowiec 102lbs (Monsignor Farrell)

Branden Munoz 102lbs (Petrides)

Harrison Zufrani 132lbs (MSIT)

Kyle Jacobs 152lbs (Monsignor Farrell)

Nick Gebbia 152lbs (Monsignor Farrell)

Sean Mclaughlin 152lbs (Tottenville)

Alan Pinkasov 160lbs (Tottenville)

Christian Kiste 285lbs (Susan Wagner)

See the original post:

HS wrestling: Five pin down Staten Island Coaches first-team, all-star honors - SILive.com

When Is Movie Night On Love Island? Viewers Cant Wait For Islanders To See What Really Happened During… – Capital

Posted on July 8, 2022 by Danzig

8 July 2022, 11:51

Movie night led to one of the most dramatic episodes of Love Island last year, but when is it returning to series 8?

Love Island is becoming ever more dramatic by the day, especially after the re-coupling following Casa Amor.

The re-coupling saw Jacques O'Neill stay partnered with Paige Thorne after a romantic fling with bombshell Cheyanne Kerr, while Andrew Le Page re-coupled with Coco Lodge after the Casa Amor girls told him Tasha Ghouri had been lying to him.

How The Love Islanders Keep Their Conversations Off-Camera

As the aftermath of the re-coupling kicks off, viewers are demanding to know when movie night will take place on Love Island, the episode in which the islanders are shown moments from the series that some of their co-stars dont know about.

Last year, movie night saw Faye Winter and Jake Cornish come to blows after a clip was shown of Jake egging the other lads to crack on with the bombshells.

It also led to an explosive row between her and Teddy.

This year, even more couples are facing turmoil, so movie night would definitely be a dramatic one. But will there be movie night on Love Island this year and when will it happen?

Producers havent confirmed whether there will be a movie night on Love Island last year but the feature was a new addition to the series in 2021, so its likely it will return this year too.

ITV2 producers scrapped the postcard in Casa Amor this year, which usually sees photos from each of the villas sent to the boys and girls.

However, the out-of-context snapshots always led to complaints as the photos led the islanders to think their partner was doing something they werent.

This year, movie night might be a replacement for the drama-causing feature.

Movie night could take place the week commencing 11 July, in week six of Love Island series 8. Last year, it took place during week five in the villa, a few days after everyone returned from Casa Amor.

The fallout from the islanders Casa Amor antics is likely to continue for a few episodes, so movie night may just happen next week!

Love Island continues at 9pm on ITV2 and ITV Hub.

> Here Are All The Ways You Can Listen To Capital

When Is Movie Night On Love Island? Viewers Cant Wait For Islanders To See What Really Happened During... - Capital

‘Love Island’ 2022: Memes & Tweets Reacting To The Post-Casa Amor Recoupling Episode – Bustle

Posted on July 8, 2022 by Danzig

Lets face it, fans of ITVs reality dating smash Love Island are in it for the drama - and Series 8 is most certainly delivering in that department. During episode 37s intense recoupling (July 7) viewers were on the edge of their seats as the infamous Casa Amor twist came to a dramatic end. This years recoupling was so gripping, in fact, that the episode drew in a whopping 3.9 million viewers; the shows biggest overnight audience since the 2019 grand finale according to ITV.

As fans will recall, last week the Love Island girls moved into the Casa Amor villa, while the boys stayed put in the main villa. As usual, the boys and girls were tempted by a string of sizzling newcomers and were forced to decide whether or not to stay loyal to their current partner, or dump them in favour of a Casa Amor newbie. Unfortunately for some of the OG couples, heads were indeed turned, providing standout moments in Thursday nights episode, namely Indiyah Polack's return.

During the emotionally-charged recoupling, the islanders were shocked to learn that Dami Hope had decided to recouple with new arrival Summer Botwe, declaring Summer isn't over. However, Dami wasnt alone in his decision to link up with someone else, and moments later Indiyah returned to the main villa walking hand-in-hand with her new Love Island partner, Deji Adeniyi.

Another highlight from the night came when Jacques ONeill decided to stay in a couple with Paige Thorne, despite being intimate with Casa Amor newbie, Cheyanne Kerr. Following Paige and Jacques villa reunion, Cheyanne revealed to the group that she had shared a bed and a kiss with Jacques, to the shock of her fellow islanders.

As ever, fans had a lot of thoughts on the Casa Amor recoupling drama, with many viewers taking to social media to offer their hot takes on what went down. Do you know what this recoupling is really teaching me? Boys cant dish out what they do to girls. You just recoupled too, one frustrated fan wrote on Twitter, while another viewer commented, this recoupling has rattled everyone.

Keep scrolling for some of the best fan reactions to the dramatic Love Island recoupling.

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'Love Island' 2022: Memes & Tweets Reacting To The Post-Casa Amor Recoupling Episode - Bustle

Marco Island considers short-term rental registration program – ] – Gulfshore Business

Posted on July 8, 2022 by Danzig

Kathy Eil built her dream home on Marco Island four years ago. Little did she know when she and her husband chose the property it would be surrounded by short-term rentals on all sides of her house. Noise quickly became an issue.

We ended up having to buy a noise machine and earplugs because all of our lanais are within 20 feet of each other, Eil said. Whatever [the renters] are doing, we hear it.

Eil is one of many Marco Island residents who have voiced in favor of voting for a short-term rental registration program, a referendum that is appearing on the ballot of the primary general election at the end of August.

This referendum was written by political action committee Take Back Marco, a group established specifically to create the short-term rental registration ordinance.

If the ordinance passes, it will apply to those who rent out their homes for less than 30 days more than three times in a year. This will affect a large portion of the island as 25% of single-family homes are used as rentals.

Marco Island does not have any enforced laws specifically for short-term rentals, besides requirement to be registered with the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation. The proposed 16-page ordinance for Marco Island, which is almost an exact copy of the Fort Lauderdale rental registration ordinance, creates many new standards needed to operate a vacation rental.

Residents of Marco Island got to the point where they said Hey, we have to get these short-term rentals under control, Take Back Marco member and 24-year resident Ed Issler said. We formed this committee to do some research and we found a good rental registration program that was implemented seven years ago in Fort Lauderdale.

Under the proposed ordinance, the owner of the rental must complete a transient rental registration form and pay a registration fee. The fee has not yet been specified; however, the State of Florida is considering a maximum registration fee of $50 per year for all rental registrations. There will additionally be a program cost administration fee which will fund administrative staff hired to ensure compliance of the new ordinances numerous new rules.

Rentals will have stricter noise laws to abide by compared to full-time residences. No sound can be audible for over a minute 25 feet from the property line between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., and at a distance of 50 feet from the property during the day.

We just had an incident where people were all out on the neighbors lanai drunk and making a ton of noise, my husband went out and asked them to be quiet because our bedroom was right next to their lanai, Eil said. They did quiet down after about an hour, but you know, its not been pleasant.

The new ordinance has maximum occupancy rules of no more than two people per bedroom in a home, with up to four children under the age of 13 total. No guests are allowed after 10 p.m.

The only way to control the number of people that are using the beach, controlling the traffic, controlling the neighborhood parking is to limit the number of people that can stay in a house, Issler said.

The referendum requires a register of all the current guests within the household at all times to be submitted to the City of Marco Island. The owner of the house must appoint someone that is able to respond to an issue on-site within one hour.

You have to keep a log so that we know you dont have any sex offenders, so we have the names of everybody thats renting on your property, and we know the names of the people that are staying on Marco Island, Issler said.

The first violation of any of the provisions is between $200 and $275, the second violation between $500 and $650, and the third between $1,000 and $1,300. The rental will start being suspended at the fourth violation.

Denis Hanks is the Executive Director of the Florida Alliance for Vacation Rentals, a nonprofit organization that assists cities in adopting local rental registration ordinances. Hanks was involved with Fort Lauderdale when its ordinance was created in 2015, where compliance is now an ongoing issue.

There are a lot of vacation rentals in Fort Lauderdale that continue to not operate in their registration system, Hanks said. They come and go, they put them on the market and off the market.

Marco Islands City Attorney Alan Gabriel addressed Take Back Marcos referendum last month with a list of 19 areas of legal concern. Some of these potential issues stated include the requirement for vacation rental owners to obtain a minimum of $1 million in liability insurance coverage, the requirement to obtain an annual fire inspection for a single-family home and suspension time frames being against state law. According to Gabriels statement, noise regulations that are more restrictive than regulations for rest of the city could be a potential violation of the First Amendment.

Why move forward with something that you know youre going to be sued over or youre going to have a lot of litigation thats going to cost the taxpayers money, Hanks said. It seems kind of crazy.

Marco Island homeowners like Rob Ferrarie rent out their home when on vacation to pay off the mortgage and for renovations. Ferrarie has been renting out his house for 13 years but will stop if this ordinance gets passed.

When I moved here in 2009, the real estate agent told me all about rentals and I thought it was a great idea, this has been around for a long time, Ferrarie said. What theyre trying to do is eliminate something thats been here forever and its wrong.

Ferrarie rents out through Vrbo which has its own safety standards in place.

When I rent to these people, I have all their information, I can look them up and see whos coming into my house, Ferrarie said. We care very much if our house gets wrecked more than we care about anything else. Its the natural law of me caring about my home that makes Marco safe.

Jim Chamberlin and his two sons own Marco Island Bike Rentals. He knows if this ordinance gets passed, he will go out of business since the vast majority of his clientele are people renting a home.

It wouldnt be worth it, we would literally move to where there is a business-friendly place to do something else, Chamberlin said.

Chamberlin sees the potential impact of all local business on the island if this ordinance discourages renters from continuing their services.

Theres the trickle-down effect, when we pick up people were delivering them to the local restaurants and shops, Chamberlin said. Last night we picked up 98 people and not one of them was at a resort or hotel.

For residents like Eil, there is hope that this referendum will stray away at least the nightly rentals.

The people who really want to come here with their families, theyre going to come for a week, Eil said. Theyre not going to come for a night. Its the spring breakers, its the people from the other side of Florida that come over for one night and leak garbage all over the beach and then leave.

Chamberlin thinks this issue is something the residents of Marco can come together to fix without a ballot vote.

Unfortunately, theres probably some poorly run vacation rentals that sour it for a few but its not a huge problem, its a very isolated one, but it is an issue Chamberlin said. I think if everyone worked together and resolve that issue, we wouldnt have a problem. Everybody that came to this island came here on vacation and some people never left, thats why people live here.

Marco Island considers short-term rental registration program - ] - Gulfshore Business

Islands of Brilliance in Milwaukee gives students with autism a voice – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Posted on July 8, 2022 by Danzig

In February, a group of students got together with family members and mentors over Zoom.

One at a time, the students shared projects on their screensthey had made in programs like Photoshop, Procreate and Illustrator.

There were original drawings of SpongeBob, a Photoshoppedimage of a roller coaster with a student's family members in each seat, picturesof airplanes, rainbows and the moon, and a many-layered illustration of Star Wars characters.

The group's facilitator asked questions about how each student had worked with their mentor and what new skills and tools they had learned to use, while peersand family members complimented their workin the chat.

At the end of each student's presentation, the facilitator asked, "How would you like to celebrate your hard work?"

Some students asked everybody to do their favorite dance move, others requestedthumbs-ups and some just wanted a round of applause.

These presentations came at the end of a series of workshops at Islands of Brilliance, a Milwaukee nonprofit that provides learning experiences for children and young adults on the autism spectrum.They live by the words, "Rather than expect students to adapt to the environment, we create the ideal environment."

The slogan represents theepiphany that came to cofounders Mark and Margaret Fairbanks in 2001 when they found out their almost-3-year-old son, Harry, wason the autism spectrum.

"We accepted the diagnosis," Mark Fairbankssaid. "But it was the prognosis that really got us."

The neurologist told Mark and Margaretthey shouldn't plan on college for Harry; in fact, they shouldn't even plan on him going to first grade.

"We were defiant," said Fairbanks. "We decided we would determine what he was capable of."

They enrolled Harry in early intervention services, where a special education teacher told Margaret how critical it was to figure out how to best communicate with Harry, as many of his behaviors were as a result of his difficulty in expressing his needs.

"Harry's thing was trains, and specifically Thomas the Tank Engine," said Fairbanks. "All day long, that was his world. He was completely on the Island of Sodor."

So one day Margaret decided to "become a train." She picked up one of Harry's trains and talked to it as if she was also a train. "Harry spun around to look at her," said Fairbanks. "He made five seconds of sustained eye contact, the most he had done in 18 months."

At that point, Mark and Margaret decided that trains were "their way in" to Harry's world, that any communication, any education would revolve around Thomas. Trains were how Harry learned math, how he learned to read. He learned how to properly hold a pencil by drawing trains for hours at a time.

"We learned how to leverage his unique subject matter interest to help him. Most kids on the spectrum have something they're into to the exclusion of all else," said Fairbanks. "To help our kids, we'vegot to love what they love, and go all in on it."

Related: MATC is launching a program for autistic students to 'unlock' their skills and launch careers

Related: Parents, you're not alone: For the Crimmins family, having a son with autism means constantly adjusting expectations

In Islands of Brilliance programs, whether students are matched with one-on-one mentors in Foundationsworkshops, taking part in group socialization sessionsor making art in laidback Doodle Lounge virtual rooms, their activities, conversations and learning start with each student's topic of interest. Staff members and volunteers follow the students' lead.

Before joining Islands of Brilliance as the group's director of special education, Jessica Shafe was a special education teacher inpublic schools, where she felt limited in what she could provide for students.

"It's like you're trying to fit kids that are square pegs into round holes," said Shafe. "You're forcing students into spaces they don't belong, and that doesn't feel good."

Shafe appreciates the "topics of interest" focus at Islands of Brilliance because she feels children in traditional schools are forced to avoid their interests during the school day, to the detriment of their self-worth as well as their education.

She said everybody neurodivergent or not has subjects that interest them more than others, but that neurotypical students are more likely to have social skill sets that allow them to "branch out and talk about subjects that don't interest them."

But she also feels that forcing people on the spectrum to stop talking about the things that are their "whole world" can hurt more than help them to attain educational and social goals.

"At Islands of Brilliance, we tell these students, 'No, you don't have to consistently be changing and adapting to us to make us more comfortable. You be you and we will come to you and talk about what you want to talk about,'" Shafesaid. "We see in our programming how good it feels when somebody does talk to them about their interests.It seems to feel so freeing."

Shafe has also seen students naturally improve their ability to talk about different topics and build social skills through their programs. She remembersastudent who was talking about his fascination with puppets while another student who was interested instop-motion animation listened. After a while, the students recognized thesimilarities between their two interests and were able to connect with each other.

Shayne Mack, a 19-year-old Islands of Brilliance student, has been interested in cartoons since he was a child and started imitating the style of his favorite Cartoon Network show, "Ed, Edd 'nEddy," in his own drawings. He said he loved the style and humor of the cartoon, and also was fascinated by Disney animationslike "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Lion King."

He credits his mentors at Islands of Brilliance with giving him encouragement, skills and tools to help take his passion for cartoons to the next level as he has learned to animate his own characters.

"I share the character drawings I've done, and a lot of people at Islands of Brilliance think I usually do a lot of expressive work, like my characters have interesting poses and body movements," said Mack. "That's one of the reasons I want to go into animation as a career, to give me the chance to explore the motion and character expression that I really want to portray."

Dan Augustine, the creative director for Epic Creative, employed Mack as an intern at his company last summer. He has also been facilitating workshops for Islands of Brilliance for several years. Augustinecalled the topics of interest philosophy "foundational" to how volunteers see the students and understand their talents and abilities.

"Rather than forcing them into ways of doing things, we discover things about the students as artists and help them build on their owntalents and skills," said Augustine. "And that is helpful to us too. I've learned new ways of looking at things, and I've learned things from the students."

Augustine remembers working with a student several years ago who would draw "beautiful, elaborate" illustrations in her sketchbook and then erase each one. After watching her erase several creations, Augustineasked her why she was doing it.

The student showed Augustinethat a very faint drawing remained on her paper. She said she wouldgo home and use the pencil impression as a guide as she added ink and color to her artwork.

"What she was doing was like a lo-fi version of Photoshop. She was creating her own layers on a single set of paper which made a flat 2D illustration more textural," said Augustine. "It was so cool, and I've used her technique in my own art since then."

Related: Brewers will offer sensory bags, quiet area at American Family Field for guests with autism and other needs

Islands of Brilliance foundational workshops pair students with mentors to help students learn software such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator as they create projects based around the students' topics of interest.

One reason Mark and Margaret Fairbanks decided to focus their workshops on technology was based once again on their experience with Harry.

When Harry was about 8 years old, he was fascinated with stop-motion LEGO videos, which he watched on YouTube and talked about with fellow viewers in the comments.

"He struggled with communicating with his peers at school, but he was fluent when he was able to use a keyboard," said Fairbanks. "Technology was a level setter for him."

That realization was further reinforced for Fairbankswhen he noticed Harry watching him as he worked on Adobe Illustrator. Harry asked his dadif he could try, so Fairbanksgave him a five-minute tutorial, showing him how to draw shapes and change colors.

"A half hour later, he had drawn Percy from Thomas the Tank Engine,"said Fairbanks. "It blew me away because he had intuitively figured out how to use the tools I hadn't taught him to make the things he wanted to make."

That experience would inspire the pilot project for Islands of Brilliance recruiting technology industry volunteers to mentor students with autism which they tested outin the fall of 2012.

At a computer lab at Discovery World, seven kids were matched up with seven mentors the first week, and Fairbankssaid everybody kids and adults loved the class as "the mentors and mentees geeked out together on subject matter."

"The following week, five of the seven students had already gotten there 15 minutes ahead of time and found their mentors to start work," said Fairbanks. "We couldn't believe the kids' engagement and focus. It was that combination of subject matter interest, a mentor that shared their interest and the technology. That's when we knew we had something."

Islands of Brilliance opened as a nonprofit in 2015, offering programs for students and their one-on-one mentors.

When a parent calls Islands of Brilliance, staff members talk with them to learn about the student and what their interests are. Then they match them with one of their volunteer mentors.

When the mentor meets with the student for the first time, they'll talk about that interest and brainstorm ways to use technology to create a project. One end result of each project is the poster thatstudents present to their groups at the end of each several-week session.

"If we find out that a student is really into animation, we'll pass that along to the mentor and when the mentor starts working with them, they can right off the bat say, 'Let's talk about animation,'" said Shafe. "They'll talk about the specific parts of animation the student likes and ask if they want to create their own, and then the mentor pulls from that to develop the student's project."

Mackhas been mentored by people with experience in animation, who have encouraged his creativity and talent, as well as taught him how to use the tools.

"Now I'll see an animal and instead of just drawing it, I think, 'maybe I could make a character out of it,'" said Mack. "And I think of how it would look, how it would talk, what its personality would be."

Much of the encouragement for Mack's drawings, animations and character styles has come not just from the more formal one-on-one mentor workshops, but from more laidback virtual social gatherings anexpansion of Islands of Brilliance offerings that was necessary during the pandemic.

By 2019, Islands of Brilliance had grown to 500 enrollments in their technology-based, topics of interest-focused workshops. Then the pandemic happened, and all the sessions had to be canceled.

Islands of Brilliance workshops all start with a question of the day, so the Fairbanks decided to launch a question of the day YouTube series. They asked questions like "Who's your favorite superhero?" and invited their students to send in responses through creative means a drawing, an animation, a story.

"We filmed all the episodes in our attic and we made 80 episodes," said Fairbanks. "The amount of views and interactions were just amazing. It kept us connected as a community, and our community needed that."

The series also bought them some time to figure out how to pivot their programming during the pandemic. It had to be virtual, and their "Question of the Day" series experience inspired them to make it both casual and social.

In Doodle Lounge, students meet with facilitators in a Zoom room and draw together, share their artwork with each other and just talk. In Natterdays sessions, students and staff work together to collaboratively tell a story and do a lot of laughing.

"You hear a lot about how virtual doesn't work for students with special needs, and that's true for some people. But for a lot of the kids, they're digital natives, they're comfortable in that environment," said Fairbanks. "Technology allowed students to see each other on a daily basis. Prior to that, their relationships had been more with mentors, but now they had friends who they were sharing memes and art and interests with."

In a recent Doodle Lounge, Mackshared a drawing he had animated, as students complimented himin the chat and Islands of Brilliance facilitators asked him to zoom in on specific details.

After Macktalked about how he created his animation and where the ideas came from, another student took his turn, sharing a drawing of Thomas the Tank Engine and a Coca Cola can with an angry face. One of the facilitators said they were impressed by theexpression in the face and asked to take a screen shot.

Before ending the session, one more student shared a caricature of SpongeBob he had drawn. "Holy moley, that is a perfect SpongeBob," commented facilitator Natalie Derr. "Did you do that from your brain or reference an image?"

"It was from my head," the student answered.

Derr works as a creative technologist at Islands of Brilliance. Much of her day-to-day workis focused around the casual artsy virtual gatherings.

"A lot of students come to us because they're inherently creative, and when they come to Doodle Lounge, they can draw the thing that interests them every time they come if they want," said Derr. "They can bring who they are to Doodle Lounge, and we will make that environment suited to whoever comes. At the end of the day, the goal is community."

She also noted that, although the gatherings have a loose theme, the students don't have to follow it or even focus on art. Derrsaid some people like to talk about the worlds they're creating in Minecraft or the progress they've made in Beat Saber, and they're welcome to do so.

"Some people come in to talk about movies," she said. "A couple of students are our movie gurus. They go back and forth about what movies are the best, and I've learned a lot of interesting things that way."

Charlie Fairbanks Mark and Margaret's other son, who started working with Islands of Brilliance near the start of the pandemicoften co-facilitates the sessions with Derr. Hesaid they work to establish a positive and welcoming atmosphere and that students naturally encourage each other and inspire each other's confidence when they see the cool projects their peers are working on.

Mack said he's learned about his classmates' interests through the casual sessions, including many who are interested in cartoons like he is, and that he hangs out on Discord with themoutside of Islands of Brilliance, often talking about other topics like 3D art and cars.

"Islands of Brilliance has helped me to be more comfortable talking about my ideas with other people," Macksaid. "I used to not work well with people; most of the time, I'd just do my own thing. Now I've learned to become more of a team player."

Contact Amy Schwabe at (262) 875-9488 or amy.schwabe@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @WisFamilyJS, Instagram at @wisfamilyjs or Facebook at WisconsinFamily.

Our subscribers make this reporting possible. Please consider supporting local journalism by subscribing to the Journal Sentinel at jsonline.com/deal.

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Islands of Brilliance in Milwaukee gives students with autism a voice - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Body recovered near Boulder Islands at Lake Mead National Recreation Area – KTNV 13 Action News Las Vegas

Posted on July 8, 2022 by Danzig

BOULDER CITY, Nev. (KTNV)A body has been recovered near the Boulder Islands on Lake Mead where an adult female went missing on June 30.

The adult female was reported missing after falling off a jet ski with another adult male, who was located alive shortly after.

RELATED: Search underway for missing female jet skier at Lake Mead

The adult female is only known at this point as "Lily," according to National Park Services.

National Park Service rangers and Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Departments Search and Rescue Unit located and recovered the body with the use of a remotely operated vehicle (ROV).

The Clark County Medical Examiner has been contacted and is en route to the scene to confirm the victims identity and determine the cause of death.

The incident is currently under investigation.

RELATED: Authorities continue search for missing female jet skier at Lake Mead

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Body recovered near Boulder Islands at Lake Mead National Recreation Area - KTNV 13 Action News Las Vegas

Rare wild ancestors of domestic pigeon found on Scottish islands – The Guardian

Posted on July 8, 2022 by Danzig

Colonies of extremely rare and endangered birds that are the wild ancestors of domestic and feral pigeons have been found on secluded Scottish islands.

Researchers have spoken of their excitement and surprise at discovering small populations of wild rock doves in places that include the Outer Hebrides.

It is thought rock doves were domesticated, originally to provide food, between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago making them some of the first domesticated birds.

Feral pigeons originate from escaped domestic birds and can be seen in towns and cities everywhere. As feral pigeons thrived, rock doves partly because of extensive interbreeding declined around the world.

Will Smith, an Oxford University DPhil student and lead author of a new study, said there had been lots of research into Scottish wildcats and how hybridisation with feral cats had pushed the species to the brink of extinction. But there was hardly any into rock doves and their similar trajectory because of feral pigeons.

If you ask most bird watchers in the UK about rock doves they will say theyve been hybridised out of existence by feral pigeons, he said.

The Oxford research team identified relict populations of rock doves and then set about analysing their DNA to determine whether the birds were truly wild.

This is the first genomic study that proves there are undomesticated rock doves that are relatively isolated from feral pigeons, said Smith. It was quite a surprise. It is exciting. It is also kind of weird that its in the UK because there are so many feral pigeons here. I guess places like the Outer Hebrides are far enough away from from towns and cities that theres less gene flow.

To the untrained eye, rock doves look similar to pigeons. The biggest difference is that if you see a flock of pigeons there will be many different colours whereas rock doves are identical with the same plumage.

The rock dove is like a wolf, said Smith, in that all wolves kind of look the same colour-wise, whereas feral pigeons are like dogs and all look different.

The Scottish rock doves live in sea caves and ruins. To see flocks of them flying from their nests to feed in flower meadows is, said Smith, a really lovely experience to see that happening every morning and every night, flying back and forwards.

It is the sort of movement that is less obvious in feral pigeons because they might move from one street to a different street, or from McDonalds to Waitrose.

The research team managed to confirm that its rock doves were descended from the undomesticated lineage from which all feral pigeons originate.

Some of the rock doves the team examined in Orkney had experienced extensive interbreeding with pigeons. But the Outer Hebridean rock doves showed negligible signs of hybridisation, said Smith.

The team hopes the conclusions, published in the journal iScience, will encourage research into potential wild rock dove populations in other parts of the world.

Also increasing understanding of extinction by hybridisation will, said Smith, help efforts to prevent other plants and animals undergoing the same fate as the rock dove.

Continued here:

Rare wild ancestors of domestic pigeon found on Scottish islands - The Guardian

A Super Smash Bros-playing AI has taught itself how to stomp professional players – Quartz

Posted on February 24, 2017 by Danzig

A Super Smash Bros-playing AI has taught itself how to stomp professional players
Quartz
The AI, nicknamed Phillip, had been built by a Ph.D student from MIT, with help from a friend at New York University, and it honed its craft inside an MIT supercomputer. By the time Gravy stopped playing, the bot had killed him eight times, compared to ...

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A Super Smash Bros-playing AI has taught itself how to stomp professional players - Quartz

Elon Musk’s Freak-Out Over Killer Robots Distracts from Our Real AI Problems – WIRED

Posted on July 18, 2017 by Danzig

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Elon Musk's Freak-Out Over Killer Robots Distracts from Our Real AI Problems - WIRED

Game Tree and Optimization under Adversarial in AI – Analytics Insight

Posted on August 8, 2020 by Danzig

Game theory, in economics, considers the environment with multiple agents as a game. This is regardless of whether the agents in the game are cooperative or competitive. In AI Solutions Company, games are considered adversarial in nature. By adversarial we mean that the environment is two-player, turn-taking in which after the game, the utility values are equal and opposite.

These take place in a deterministic, full observable environment. An example of this is chess. The rules of chess can make the computer representation of the game correct in every relevant detail. However, the presence of an opponent makes solving more complicated because it introduces uncertainty.

Lets consider a game of two players, and call them MIN and MAX. These two players will compete where MAX will try to maximize the payoff. A search problem in the form of a game can be defined with the following 4 components:

In a normal search problem, the objective of MAX would be to search for a payoff value that leads to a terminal state that is a winner, thereby making its first move. However, in the presence of adversary MIN, the strategy of MAX will be to find a winning terminal state regardless of what move MIN makes.

To determine the optimal strategy for MAX, the minimax algorithm is used to determine the best first move. The 5 steps in this algorithm are:

Since the decision maximizes the payoff under the assumption that the opponent will play perfectly to minimize it, it is called the minimax decision.

Figure 1

In the two-player game tree generated in Figure 1, the A nodes indicate the moves by MAX and the V nodes indicate those of MIN. The terminal nodes show the payoff value for MAX calculated by the rules of the game, i.e. the utility function. The payoff values of the other nodes are calculated by the minimax algorithm from the payoffs of their successors. In this case, MAXS best move is A1, and MINs best reply is A11.

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Game Tree and Optimization under Adversarial in AI - Analytics Insight

Controversial facial recognition software being used to identify child victims of sexual… – Business Insider – Business Insider

Posted on February 8, 2020 by Danzig

Police departments across the United States are paying tens of thousands of dollars apiece for access tosoftware that identifies faces using images scraped from major web platformslike Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

The software is produced by a relatively unknown tech startup named Clearview AI, and the company is facing major pushback over its data-gathering tactics, which wereearlier reported by The New York Times. It pulls images from the web and social media platforms, without permission, to create its own, searchable database.

Put simply: The photos that you uploaded to your Facebook profile could've been ripped from your page, saved, and added to this company's photo database.

Photos of you, photos of friends and family all of it is scraped from publicly available social media platforms, among other places, and saved by Clearview AI. That searchable database is then sold to police departments and federal agencies.

Those law enforcement groups are using those photos for, among other things, identifying child victims of abuse. According to a report in The New York Times on Friday, police departments across the US have repeatedly used Clearview's application to identify "minors in exploitative videos and photos."

In one example from the report, Clearview's application assisted in making 14 positive IDs attached to a single offender.

The company doesn't hide the fact that its software is used as such. "Clearview helps to exonerate the innocent, identify victims of child sexual abuse and other crimes, and avoid eyewitness lineups that are prone to human error," the company's website reads.

It's a clear upside to a piece of technology that comes with major tradeoffs many of the billions of photos Clearview scraped from the internet weren't intended for use in a commercially sold, searchable database. The company pulls its photos from "the open web," including services like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

The companies in charge of the services it pulls from have issued cease-and-desist letters to Clearview. They each have provisions explicitly spelled out in their user agreements to prevent this type of misuse.

"YouTube's Terms of Service explicitly forbid collecting data that can be used to identify a person," YouTube spokesperson Alex Joseph told Business Insider in an email on Wednesday morning. "Clearview has publicly admitted to doing exactly that, and in response we sent them a cease and desist letter."

Twitter sent a similar letter in late January, and Facebook sent one this week as well.

Facial recognition technology has existed for years, but searchable databases tied to facial recognition are something new. APPhoto/Mike Derer

Clearview AI CEO Hoan Ton-That argues that his company's software isn't doing anything illegal, and doesn't need to delete any of the images it has stored, because it's protected under US law. "There is a First Amendment right to public information," he told CBS This Morning in an interview published on Wednesday morning. "The way that we have built our system is to only take publicly available information and index it that way."

As for his response to the cease-and-desist letters? "Our legal counsel has reached out to them, and are handling it accordingly."

Ton-That said that Clearview's software is being used by "over 600 law enforcement agencies across the country" already. Contracts to use the service cost as much as $50,000 for a two-year deal.

Clearview AI's lawyer, Tor Ekeland, told Business Insider in an emailed statement, "Clearview is a photo search engine that only uses publicly available data on the Internet. It operates in much the same way as Google's search engine. We are in receipt of Google and YouTube's letter and will respond accordingly."

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Controversial facial recognition software being used to identify child victims of sexual... - Business Insider - Business Insider

AI and Robotics Trends: Experts Predict – Datamation

Posted on February 15, 2017 by Danzig

Many experts in the field firmly believe 2017 will be a breakout year for both artificial intelligence and robotics, since the two often go together. Spoiler alert: it's all good.

AI Makes Robots Smarter

Robots use an increasing number of sensing modalities including taste, smell, sonar, IR, haptic feedback, tactile sensors, and range of motion sensors. They are also becoming better at picking up on facial expressions and gestures, so their interactions with humans become more natural, said Kevin Curran, IEEE senior member and professor of cyber security at Ulster University.

"Basically, AI is crucial for all their learning and adaptive behavior so they can adapt existing capabilities to cope with environmental changes. AI is key to helping them learn new tasks on the fly by sequencing existing behaviors," he said.

Karsten Schmidt, head of technology at the Innovation Center Silicon Valley for SAP Labs echoed this sentiment. "In 2017, we will see AI gain greater acceptance and momentum as humans come to increasingly rely, trust and depend more on AI-driven decisions and question them less. This will happen as a direct result of improved AI learning due to more usage and a broader user base, and as the quality and usefulness of AI software in turn improves," he said.

Meet Your AI Co-Worker

Many people fear losing their jobs to robots, but more than likely you will have a robot for a co-worker. Then again, if you've been in the workforce long enough, you've probably already had a robot for a co-worker, just in human form.

"In 2017, we are seeing a growing emergence of robots designed to operate alongside people in everyday human environments. Autonomous service robots that assist workers in warehouses, deliver supplies in hospitals, and maintain inventory of items in grocery stores are emerging onto the market," said Sonia Chernova, assistant professor at Georgia Tech College of Computing.

These systems need humans because one thing robotics researchers are still struggling with is robotic arms. There's no substitute for the human arm to pick things up and manipulate objects. "[Robot arms] have of course been used successfully for decades in manufacturing, but current techniques work reliably only in controlled factory environments, and are not yet robust enough for the real world," said Chernova.

This could lead to the rise of "AI Supervisors," said Tomer Naveh, CTO of Adgorithms, an AI-based digital marketing platform. Robots already have taken on many labor-intensive, manual (read: boring) tasks we do in our everyday life but robots will get smarter, and need AI to do it, he said.

"AI systems will get better at communicating their decisions and reasoning to their operators, and those operators will respond with new rules, business logic, and feedback that make it more and more useful in practice over time. As a result we will see people shifting from doing tasks by themselves, to supervising AI software on how to do it for them," he said.

That's actually a disturbing thought.

Changing Retail

AI and robotics will slowly move into another area where human error is common: retail. To some degree there is already automation in optical scanners and retail tracking used by stores to manage inventory, but it will be considerably improved.

The retail industry, for example, has been unable to address the problem of non-scanned items at checkout, which accounts for 30% of retailers annual losses. They only discover the loss in inventory well after the fact.

"AI is stepping in to address issues of this caliber across industries, and as a result, its often gathering just as much data as its processing. This resulting data is becoming a secondary benefit to businesses that use AI. AI Apps created to detect these non-scans are now also providing retailers with information about their origins, whether theyre fraudulent or accidental, and how customers and cashiers are gaming the system," said Alan OHerlihy, CEO of Everseen, developer of AI products for point of sale systems.

And as consumers have positive experiences with drone deliveries, public opinion may go a long way towards opening up regulations for further drone use, said Jake Rheude, director of business development for Red Stag Fulfillment, an eCommerce fulfillment provider.

"Consumers are already fully on board with the concept of drone delivery. According to The Walker Sands Future of Retail 2016 Study, 79% of US consumers said they would be 'very likely' or 'somewhat likely' to request drone delivery if their package could be delivered within an hour. And 73% of respondents said that they would pay up to $10 for a drone delivery. This is an unprecedented level of acceptance for new technology with so little real word experience from consumers," he said.

AI in Your Home

Another prediction made by umpteen science fiction movies usually with an alarmist tone is that AI will come into the home in a big way. It already has if you have an iPhone, with Siri, or use Windows 10 and Cortana. Gradually it will move into other devices, the experts predict.

"Alexa, Cortana and Siri are great, but they still lack the sophistication and accuracy to be relied upon as a utility. In 2017, advances in natural language processing and natural language generation will transform what digital assistants understand and how they analyze and respond with legitimately useful information. The era of just opening a related Wikipedia page are over," said Matt Gould, AI expert and co-founder of Arria NLG, which develops technology that translates data into language.

To make these devices work optimally, they need to develop an emotional quotient, or an EQ, predicts Dr. Rana el Kaliouby, CEO and co-founder, Affectiva, which develops facial recognition software. "We expect to see Emotion AI really come to the fore this year, and once AI systems develop social skills and rapport, AI interfaces will be more engaging and sticky, and less frustrating for their users, driving even wider adoption of the technology," she said.

She predicts that in the future, all of our devices will be equipped with a chip that can adapt our experiences to our emotions in real time, by reading facial expressions, analyzing tone of voice and possessing built-in emotion awareness. "The ability of technology to adapt to our mood and preferences could enhance experiences ranging from driving a car to ordering a pizza," she said.

And this should mean less typing, said Scott Webb, president of Avionos. "Physical interaction with hand-to-keyboard commands will give way to more organic input methods like voice and physical response as we move forward," he said.

Better Security

It's been said before but is worth repeating that AI will improve security because, like in so many other cases, security AI won't be prone to human failings of boredom, fatigue, illness and disinterest that often causes a security lapse. It will also have much faster reaction times and much better recognition of unusual patterns.

"Machine learning and the models generated through processes around machine learning are helping enterprises analyze massive amounts of data and identify trends, anomalies, and things not detectable through standard modeling. Machine learning algorithms are helping security researchers dynamically identify threats, airlines improve maintenance and reliability of their aircraft, and provide the back bone for self-driving cars to analyze data in real-time to make decisions," said David Dufour, senior director of engineering at antimalware vendor WebRoot.

That immediacy is needed with catching data breaches, as well. The average time to discover a network attacker is about five months, giving attackers plenty of time to achieve their goals, said Peter Nguyen, director of technical services at LightCyber, which does behavior based security software.

"Finding signs of an attacker is difficult and demands the use of AI. Instead of trying to encounter, identify and block threats by their known characteristics, the way to find an active attacker is through their operational activities. Using machine learning, its possible to learn the good behavior of all users and devices and then find anomalies. Then, AI can be focused to find those anomalies that are truly indicative of an active attack," he said.

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AI and Robotics Trends: Experts Predict - Datamation

Visit the cutting edge in AI: Transform 2020 Expo (July 15-17) – VentureBeat

Posted on July 11, 2020 by Danzig

Take the latest VB Survey to share how your company is implementing AI today.

To say that the speed of technological change in AI is fast-firing is an understatement. As engineers and data scientists unlock more of the potential of AI and machine learning, ever-more innovative solutions continue to advance the goals of business leaders.

At Transform 2020 next week, youll have a chance to see those solutions for yourself. Transform 2020 Expo (July 15-17) will showcase some of the most cutting edge AI companies, from large tech giants like Intel and Dell to some of the most innovative growth companies and startups like Dataiku, Cloudera, and Modzy.

This means youll be able to get an up-close look at some of the most advanced solutions spanning AI security, automation, conversational AI, explainable AI, training data, as well as solutions for specialized areas, such as customer experience, and specific industries, such as wealth management.

Each exhibitor will host a virtual expo booth, where you can interact, engage in live Q&A and chat, as well as book private meetings in order to have more in-depth discussions about your needs and how they can be met.

Once the event begins, just click on the Expo Booths icon in the menu displayed on the event platform. From there, youll be able to earmark and select all those youd like to follow up with.

And if you happen to be a company thats disrupting the AI space? We may still be able to slip you in, if you get in touch asap. Just head to our registration page and select the Digital Expo Booth option.

This, combined with our special 1-1 meeting feature for business decision makers, will make Transform one of the best networking events of the year for business executives looking to implement AI.

See you there!

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Visit the cutting edge in AI: Transform 2020 Expo (July 15-17) - VentureBeat

Sci-fi perpetuates a misogynistic view of AI Heres how we can fight it – The Next Web

Posted on June 10, 2020 by Danzig

Fiction helps us imagine the future of AI and the impact that it will have on our lives. But it also perpetuatesstereotypes forgenerations to come.

From Greek mythology to contemporary sci-fi,robots are constantly anthropomorphized. The female androids are typically portrayed as beautiful, subservient, and sexually passive or deceitful killers on the rampage. Warrior machines, meanwhile, are normally gendered male, whether theyre protecting humans like Robocop, or trying to wipe them out like the Terminator.

These stereotypes endure long after the story ends. They help foster Silicon Valleystech-bro culture and the productsthat it creates.

[Read:Microsofts AI editor uses photo of wrong mixed-race popstar in story about racism]

Take the tendency to give voice assistants female voices and names. Weve been conditionedto prefer synthesized female voices as they sound warmer. Once that prejudice is embedded in the tech, its sustained by our interactions with it.

As AI researcherKanta Dihal noted at the CogX conference this week:

Because people get used to a feminine, servile Alexa, theyll continue to associate women with servile roles. And these roles relate not only to jobs, such as the servant in the case of women,or the soldier in the case of men, but also to social roles and roles within relationships and hierarchies.

Its not only stereotypes of gender that fiction reinforces. The realexperiences of people of color have also been sidelined or sublimated.

In Dihalsresearch on depictions ofintelligent machines, shes uncovered misleadingallegories of slavery in stories of AI rebelling against humans:

Those narratives also in a way perform a dehumanizing function. Because by drawing on existing narratives of black slaves and transposing them onto narratives of robots that are very often racialized as white, this is a way of reappropriating a literary history and erasing these black voices from that non-fictional history.

Excluding BAME, trans, and female voices from these stories help sustainbiases intech. But we can still challenge these narratives,by diverting attention from tech bro fantasies towards marginalized voices. FromNnedi Okorafosvision of childbirth in a future Nigeria toCassandra Rose Clarkstale of a girls love affair with an android, there are already plenty of alternatives to try.

But the first step towards promoting diverse perspectives in fiction is acknowledging the homogeneity of theWestern canon. As Dihals colleague Kate Devlin put it:

If you examine the narratives, then you have a chance of disrupting the narratives.

Published June 10, 2020 18:18 UTC

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Sci-fi perpetuates a misogynistic view of AI Heres how we can fight it - The Next Web

An AI hiring firm says it can predict job hopping based on your interviews – MIT Technology Review

Posted on July 30, 2020 by Danzig

The firm in question is Australia-based PredictiveHire, founded in October 2013. It offers a chatbot that asks candidates a series of open-ended questions. It then analyzes their responses to assess job-related personality traits like drive, initiative, and resilience. According to the firms CEO, Barbara Hyman, its clients are employers that must manage large numbers of applications, such as those in retail, sales, call centers, and health care. As the Cornell study found, it also actively uses promises of fairer hiring in its marketing language. On its home page, it boldly advertises: Meet Phai. Your co-pilot in hiring. Making interviews SUPER FAST. INCLUSIVE, AT LAST. FINALLY, WITHOUT BIAS.

As weve written before, the idea of bias-free algorithms is highly misleading. But PredictiveHires latest research is troubling for a different reason. It is focused on building a new machine-learning model that seeks to predict a candidates likelihood of job hopping, the practice of changing jobs more frequently than an employer desires. The work follows the companys recent peer-reviewed research that looked at how open-ended interview questions correlate with personality (in and of itself a highly contested practice). Because organizational psychologists have already shown a link between personality and job hopping, Hyman says, the company wanted to test whether they could use their existing data for the prediction. Employee retention is a huge focus for many companies that we work with given the costs of high employee churn, estimated at 16% of the cost of each employees salary, she adds.

The study used the free-text responses from 45,899 candidates who had used PredictiveHires chatbot. Applicants had originally been asked five to seven open-ended questions and self-rating questions about their past experience and situational judgment. These included questions meant to tease out traits that studies have previously shown to correlate strongly with job-hopping tendencies, such as being more open to experience, less practical, and less down to earth. The company researchers claim the model was able to predict job hopping with statistical significance. PredictiveHires website is already advertising this work as a flight risk assessment that is coming soon.

PredictiveHires new work is a prime example of what Nathan Newman argues is one of the biggest adverse impacts of big data on labor. Newman, an adjunct associate professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, wrote in a 2017 law paper that beyond the concerns about employment discrimination, big-data analysis had also been used in myriad ways to drive down workers wages.

Machine-learning-based personality tests, for example, are increasingly being used in hiring to screen out potential employees who have a higher likelihood of agitating for increased wages or supporting unionization. Employers are increasingly monitoring employees emails, chats, and other data to assess which might leave and calculate the minimum pay increase needed to make them stay. And algorithmic management systems like Ubers are decentralizing workers away from offices and digital convening spaces that allow them to coordinate with one another and collectively demand better treatment and pay.

None of these examples should be surprising, Newman argued. They are simply a modern manifestation of what employers have historically done to suppress wages by targeting and breaking up union activities. The use of personality assessments in hiring, which dates back to the 1930s in the US, in fact began as a mechanism to weed out people most likely to become labor organizers. The tests became particularly popular in the 1960s and 70s once organizational psychologists had refined them to assess workers for their union sympathies.

In this context, PredictiveHires fight-risk assessment is just another example of this trend. Job hopping, or the threat of job hopping, points out Barocas, is one of the main ways that workers are able to increase their income. The company even built its assessment on personality screenings designed by organizational psychologists.

Barocas doesnt necessarily advocate tossing out the tools altogether. He believes the goal of making hiring work better for everyone is a noble one and could be achieved if regulators mandate greater transparency. Currently none of them have received rigorous, peer-reviewed evaluation, he says. But if firms were more forthcoming about their practices and submitted their tools for such validation, it could help hold them accountable. It could also help scholars engage more readily with firms to study the tools impacts on both labor and discrimination.

Despite all my own work for the past couple of years expressing concerns about this stuff, he says, I actually believe that a lot of these tools could significantly improve the current state of affairs.

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An AI hiring firm says it can predict job hopping based on your interviews - MIT Technology Review

Precision Medicine pushes demand for HPC at the Edge: AI on the Fly Delivers – insideHPC

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Danzig

In this special guest feature, Tim Miller from One Stop Systems writes that by bringing specialized, high performance computing capabilities to the edge through AI on the Fly, OSS is helping the industry deliver on the enormous potential of precision medicine.

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Advances in high performance computing equipped with rapid diagnostic tools, advanced imaging devices, and genetic sequencers are enabling a growing trend toward precision medicine where healthcare is personalized based on an individuals genetic make-up. Artificial intelligence can deliver transformative insights that enhance and accelerate this trend. This is a dramatic example of how high performance computing at the edge can improve the quality of life of millions of people around the world.

To enable this revolution, the most powerful, high performance computing technologies historically associated with centralized enterprise and cloud data centers need to move out to the edge, often embedded directly in specialized medical devices or co-located with the primary data sources in the field at hospitals and clinics.

Three key elements are fundamental in many of these edge devices; from MRI or CT imaging devices, to genetic sequencers and cell analysis systems. First, there is the requirement to acquire and shape massive amounts of high speed incoming data. Second, edge devices need to efficiently store this raw data and then move it to compute and analysis engines. Third, these engines then transform the transferred data to actionable intelligence. All of these capabilities need to be designed and integrated to meet the specialized size, power, and environmental constraints of the edge based application.

Increasingly, the power required in these compute engines is being delivered through NVIDIA Tensor Core GPUs where each NVIDIA GPU has thousands of computational cores that can process massive data in parallel, as well as the NVIDIA end-to-end software solution stack. An illustrative example is secondary genomic analysis used in precision medicine. Modern genomics involves the rapid production of vast amounts of raw sequencing data using next-generation sequencers (NGS) coupled with massive computing for secondary analysis that converts the data into useful results. The most popular toolkit for doing this secondary analysis is GATK4 Best Practices pipeline. Traditionally, this work has been done by large numbers of CPUs. Parabricks, a company recently acquired by NVIDIA, has changed the paradigm and developed a GPU based solution that executes genomic analysis best practices workflows on NVIDIA GPUs. Parabricks is built using NVIDIA CUDA-Z and benefits from CUDA, cuDNN and Tensor TR inference software and is now available through the NVIDIA GPU Cloud (NGC), a software hub for accelerated computing applications. Deploying this capability integrated with sequencing platforms in the hospital and clinic environment is a critical requirement for making precision medicine a reality.

One Stop Systems, Inc. (OSS) has developed the technology and expertise required to work with OEMs to build this next generation of highly intelligent medical devices ready for field deployment. In fact, its AI on the Fly platforms and building blocks are being used by OEMs to build and deliver these medical solutions to the market today. AI on the Fly puts computing and storage resources for AI and HPC workflows, not in the datacenter, but on the edge near the sources of data. Applications are emerging for this new paradigm not only in precision medicine, but in diverse areas including autonomous vehicles, battlefield command and control, and industrial automation. The common elements of these solutions are high data rate acquisition, high speed low latency storage, and efficient high performance compute analytics. With OSS, all of these building block elements are connected seamlessly with memory mapped PCI Express interconnect configured and customized as appropriate, to meet the specific environmental requirements of in the field installations.

OSS building blocks include high slot count PCI Express expansion systems capable of acquiring 100 GB per second of data, NVMe storage nodes providing up to a petabyte of high speed, low latency solid state storage, as well as platforms capable of housing up to 16 of the latest NVIDIA GPUs or other HPC/AI accelerators for high end compute engine requirements. OSS also provides the customization capabilities to provide all of these elements in unique form factors or designed for specialized environmental and ruggedized conditions.

OSS is working with genomic sequencer OEMs to embed its data acquisition, storage, and compute engine platforms directly in genomic analysis solutions deployed in medical facilities worldwide. In 2019, OSS worked with Parabricks to benchmark genomic analysis results on its compute accelerator utilizing 16 NVIDIA V100S GPUs in parallel. When executed on the OSS platform, execution speed for secondary analysis was increased by a factor of 40X with a full human genome analysis reduced from taking two-days to taking less than one hour. OSS is working with other medical OEMs to deploy AI on the Fly solutions in live cell analysis systems which captures and analyzes images for cell therapy, oncology, and immunology research. Additional deployed applications include robotic eye surgery and high speed blood analysis systems.

By bringing specialized, high performance computing capabilities to the edge through AI on the Fly, OSS is helping the industry deliver on the enormous potential of precision medicine.

Disclaimer: This article may contain forward-looking statements based on One Stop Systems current expectations and assumptions regarding the companys business and the performance of its products, the economy and other future conditions and forecasts of future events, circumstances and results.

Tim Miller from OSS

About the Author

Tim Miller is Vice President of Strategy at One Stop Systems. Tim has over 33 years of experience in high tech operations, management, marketing, business development, and sales. He previously was the CEO of Dolphin Interconnect Solutions and CEO and founder of StarGen, Inc. Tim holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from Cornell University, a Masters of Business Administration from Wharton, and a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania.

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Precision Medicine pushes demand for HPC at the Edge: AI on the Fly Delivers - insideHPC

DARPA Is Working to Make AI More Trustworthy – Futurism

Posted on June 10, 2017 by Danzig

In Brief In order to probe the AI mind, DARPA is funding research by Oregon State University that will try to understand the reasoning behind decisions made by AI systems. DARPA hopes that this will make AI more trustworthy. Cracking the AI Black Box Artificial intelligence (AI) has grown by leaps and bounds over the past years. Now there are AI systems capable of driving carsand making medical diagnoses, as well as numerous other choices which people makeon a day-to-day basis. Except that when it comes to humans, we actually can understand the reasoning behind such decisions (to a certain extent).

When it comes to AI, however, theres a certain black box behind decisions that makes it so that even AI developers themselves dont quite understand or anticipate the decisions an AI is making. We do know that neural networks are taught to make these choices by exposing them to a huge data set. From there, AIs train themselves into applying what they learn. Its ratherdifficult to trust what one doesnt understand.

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) wants to break this black box, and the first step is to fund eight computer science professors from Oregon State University (OSU) with a $6.5 million research grant. Ultimately, we want these explanations to be very natural translating these deep network decisions into sentences and visualizations, OSUs Alan Fern, principal investigator for the grant, said in a press release.

The DARPA-OSU program, set to run for four years, will involve developing a system that will allow AI to communicate with machine learning experts. They would start developing this system by plugging AI-powered players into real-time strategy games like StarCraft. The AI players would be trained to explain to human players the reasoning behind their in-game choices. This isnt the first project that puts AIs into video game environments. Googles DeepMind has also chosen StarCraft as a training environment for AI. Theres also that controversial Doom-playing AI bot.

Results from this research project would then be applied by DARPA to their existing work with robotics and unmanned vehicles. Obviously, the potential applications of AI in law enforcement and the militaryrequire these systems to be ethical.

Nobody is going to use these emerging technologies for critical applications until we are able to build some level of trust, and having an explanation capability is one important way of building trust, Fern said. Thankfully, this DARPA-OSU project isnt the only one working on humanizing AI to make it more trustworthy.

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DARPA Is Working to Make AI More Trustworthy - Futurism

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