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Great American Eclipse 101: Bill Nye and Two Astronomy Whiz Kids Talk Solar Science – Parade

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

Magazine August 4, 2017 5:00 AM ByNeil Pond Parade @NeilPond More by Neil

Everyone will be looking up on Monday, August 21, when whats being called the Great American Eclipse sweeps across the U.S.

I really encourage you to be in a place where you can see the total solar eclipse, says Bill Nye, known as the Science Guy from his popular 1990s-era PBS kids show. This one moment where the Earth, moon and sun are in a lineit really is spectacular, says Nye, 61, who serves as the CEO of the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is star of Bill Nye Saves the World on Netflix.

Check out these eclipse must-knows from Nye and astronomy whiz kids Cannan and Carson Huey-You.

Related: Cannan and Carson Huey-You Interview Bill Nye the Science Guy

The sunlight filtering around the advancing moon creates alternating bands of light and dark on the ground racing across the land. Its crazy; theyre several football fields wide, and they move over you. Its otherworldly and spooky, Nye says.

This aura of gasses that surrounds the sun and shoots out into space for millions of miles is spectacularly visible to the unaided eye as a brilliant, glowing halo during the total eclipse.

The amount of time it will take for the eclipse to zoom across the entire continent.

The longest anyone, anywhere will be able to witness its totalitythats in Hopkinsville, Kentucky.

Unlike most other total eclipses, the 2017 eclipse will cross directly overheador nearbymany major population areas. Its going right across the United States, Nye says. Take a felt-tip marker and draw from Oregon to Georgia, and there it is.

Thats how long ago the previous coast-to-coast solar eclipse was last seen in the U.S. There will be another total solar eclipse in July 2019, but it will be visible only in parts of Argentina and Chile. The truth is, eclipses arent all that rare. Total solar eclipses occur every two years, says Nye, author of the just-released Everything All at Once. They come in pairs. Theyre more frequent than presidential elections! Most are visible only to relatively few people or from places where many people cant easily goremote mountaintops, the middle of an ocean, unpopulated areas hundreds or thousands of miles away from anything else. That makes the 2017 eclipse extra special.

During the total eclipse, as the light from the sun is blocked, these points of light begin to appear as sunlight streams through the valleys of the moons horizon.

In a total eclipse, the moons shadow flies across the face of the planet at supersonic speed. Thats fastalmost as fast as it took Carson Huey-You and his younger brother, Cannan, science-minded kid geniuses in the Dallas area, to zip far ahead academically of most kids their age.

Carson, 15, enrolled in Texas Christian University when he was 11 and graduated in May with a degree in physics and minors in math and Chinese. He plans to continue with graduate studies in physics toward a masters degree and ultimately a doctorate. Cannan, 11, will enter TCU this fall to study engineering and astrophysics.

Here are 10 things Carson and Cannan want you to know about the upcoming eclipse.

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Great American Eclipse 101: Bill Nye and Two Astronomy Whiz Kids Talk Solar Science - Parade

Local astronomy professors share eclipse tips – Spartanburg Herald Journal

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

Zach Fox Staff Writer @ZachFoxSHJ

Local astronomy professors say Spartanburg County residents should at least try to get to the southern part of the county on Aug. 21 to experience the full solar eclipse.

The eclipse path runs through Spartanburg County, but only the southern and southwestern portions of the county will see 100 percent totality that Monday afternoon. Events are scheduled across the Upstate, and state public safety officials are preparing for increased traffic on state roads.

Astronomy professors Andy Leonardi of the University of South Carolina Upstate and Bill Yarborough of Converse College said the eclipse will be a once-in-a-lifetime sight.

What else will be visible in the sky during the eclipse?

Leonardi:Not so much when youre looking up at the sun and the moon itself. The wispy corona that will appear during the eclipse will be pronounced. The little extra bit of light will make the sky look a little different.

Yarborough:What you can see is whats called the suns corona. Surrounding the sun is a very tenuous region thats far, far hotter than the surface. It doesnt emit enough light for us to normally see it. Its like a huge, bright halo. When the moon completely blocks the disk of the sun we normally see, the corona will light up the sky. Its an absolutely incredible view.As far as planets or things of that sort, it wont quite be like a dark night. Itll be like dusk or sunset. Not quite dark enough to see a lot of planets and things like that.

What does it mean that Spartanburg isn't in the path of totality?

Yarborough:What that means for Spartanburg is, the sun will never be completely blocked. A little edge of sun will still be visible from behind the moon. Its still more than a 90 percent eclipse. At any point where the sun is even partially visible, its not safe for the naked eye.In that region, in totality, its safe to look at it without protection. You can briefly take (viewing glasses) off and look before you put them back on.

Is there any way, besides getting safety glasses, to prepare for the eclipse?

Leonardi:Even animals, youll start to hear nighttime animal sounds because they get fooled, too. Its so outside normal experience that you cant honestly prepare for it. Its not like when daytime turns to night, its much different than that.

What's the best way to enjoy the eclipse itself?

Leonardi: You definitely want to give yourself time before the eclipse to see the approach. The eclipse itself lasts for a couple of minutes, but you want to see all the subtle changes first. If they can tear their eyes away for those two minutes, take a little time to glance at the horizon because youll see some weird, unique effects. Youll see sort of sunset effects all across the horizon. ... I would just urge people to do it safely.

Yarborough: Probably the most important thing everyone knows is they need to protect their eyes. Looking up at the sun, even briefly, can do real damage to your eyes. Ordinary sunglasses simply will not protect their eyes from looking up at an eclipse.Its an exciting event, one everyone ought to see. For anybody whos interested, it (traveling to the area of totality) would be worth it. Once you get 10 miles or so south or southwest of Spartanburg, youll be in the edge of the total region. The difference will be noticeable. Anywhere in South Carolina will experience a partial eclipse, however, which is still a sight to see. It wont be something to forget.

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Local astronomy professors share eclipse tips - Spartanburg Herald Journal

Storm chasing time-lapse video: Pursuit – SYFY WIRE (blog)

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

Mike Olbinski is a masterful photographer and storm chaser. Ive written about his jaw-dropping time-lapse animations of storms before, like "Pulse" and "Monsoon III". His sense of framing and pacing is really quite good, and the results are always stunning.

So, when he sent me a note saying he had wrapped his spring storm chasing season for 2017 and put it all together in a video called Pursuit and he shot it in 4k I dropped what I was doing to watch.

The opening is quite lovely, and even, despite showing gathering intense storms, quite peaceful.

Then, at 1:40, all hell breaks loose. Watch (warning: flashing strobe effects from lightning):

Ye. GADS. Ill admit, there were several times during this video where I might have sworn out loud. But who can blame me? Mesocyclones! Supercells! Downbursts! Tornadoes! Lightning! Mammatus clouds!

Ive written about many of these weather events in the past, like how mesocyclones form, what a supercell is, and the bizarre nature and sight of mammatus clouds. Curious, though, I watched all the lightning and wondered how much energy was released in each stroke. That was easy to look up: about 500 megaJoules. Doing a quick conversion, thats roughly equivalent to 100 kilograms of TNT detonating. Impressive! Especially considering the hundreds and hundreds of lightning bolts you can see in these storms.

But that energy is positively dwarfed by the total energy content of the storm itself. Powered by condensing water releasing heat, a typical thunderstorm can have as much energy as a small nuclear bomb! Think on that as you watch that video.

But Mike saved the best for last. Even as I was scraping my jaw off my desk, the video got to the 6:18 mark, and I was rocked again. On June 2, 2017, he was in Bowdon, North Dakota, and caught an undulatas asperatus cloud formation, one of the rarer and most bizarre clouds there is. In the video, these deep, aquamarine waves roll in, and then their magnificence is multiplied as the Sun sets and the reddening light paints them in luminous hues of purple, pink, magenta, orange ... its ridiculously beautiful.

And, it turns out, familiar: I wrote about this very sequence in June. But this capped off Mikes storm-chasing season, and he felt it was fitting end to the video.

And as to the title, Pursuit: The proximate and obvious reason he chose that is that hes chasing storms. But as he writes on his own blog, during one chase he missed an opportunity to get what might have been the best storms erupting of the season. He despaired, but then found his trust in himself, and was able to figure out a way literally around his loss to capture some of the best footage he got.

I think thats pretty good advice. We all have our oncoming storms, but what matters is how we pursue the solutions.

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Storm chasing time-lapse video: Pursuit - SYFY WIRE (blog)

Penn Astronomers Contribute to the Most Accurate Measurement of Dark Matter Structure in the Universe – Penn: Office of University Communications

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

Penn: Office of University Communications

Penn Astronomers Contribute to the Most Accurate Measurement of Dark Matter Structure in the Universe
Penn: Office of University Communications
... of the universe is accelerating, which wouldn't happen in a 'normal' universe, said Gary Bernstein, Reese W. Flower Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics in the School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania and Project Scientist ...
Survey Provides High-Precision Measurements of Universe's MakeupLawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Our clumpy cosmos | symmetry magazineSymmetry magazine
Dark Energy Survey: Most Accurate Map of Recent Universe Unveiled by ScientistsNewsweek
The Daily Galaxy (blog) -Engadget -Tech Times
all 35 news articles »

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Penn Astronomers Contribute to the Most Accurate Measurement of Dark Matter Structure in the Universe - Penn: Office of University Communications

3X Performance Boost Using Intel Advisor and Intel Trace Analyzer in Astrophysics Simulations – insideHPC

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

How artificial intelligence can help deliver better search results – TechRadar

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

Google has become very interested in artificial intelligence in recent years, and particularly its applications for regular people. For example, here's a load of experiments that it's running involving machine learning.

Now, however, researchers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center have shown how artificial intelligence techniques can also deliver better search engine results. They've combined AI, crowdsourcing and supercomputers to develop a better system for information extraction and classification.

At the 2017 Annual Meeting for the Association of Computational Linguistics in Vancouver this week, associate professor Matthew Lease led a team presenting two papers that described a new kind of informational retrieval system.

"An important challenge in natural language processing is accurately finding important information contained in free-text, which lets us extract it into databases and combine it with other data in order to make more intelligent decisions and new discoveries," Lease said.

"We've been using crowdsourcing to annotate medical and news articles at scale so that our intelligent systems will be able to more accurately find the key information contained in each article."

They were able to use that crowdsourced data to train a neural network to predict the names of things, and extract useful information from texts that aren't annotated at all.

In the second paper, they showed how to weight different linguistic resources so that the automatic text classification is better. "Neural network models have tons of parameters and need lots of data to fit them," said Lease.

In testing on both biomedical searches and movie reviews, the system delivered consistently better results than methods that didn't involve weighting the data.

"We had this idea that if you could somehow reason about some words being related to other words a priori, then instead of having to have a parameter for each one of those word separately, you could tie together the parameters across multiple words and in that way need less data to learn the model," said Lease.

He added: "Industry is great at looking at near-term things, but they don't have the same freedom as academic researchers to pursue research ideas that are higher risk but could be more transformative in the long-term."

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How artificial intelligence can help deliver better search results - TechRadar

Artificial Intelligence: A Journey to Deep Space – insideHPC

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

In this sponsored post,Ramnath Sai Sagar, Marketing Manager at Mellanox Technologies, explores how recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence, especially deep learning, are set to make an impact in the field ofastronomy and astrophysics.

Ramnath Sai Sagar, Marketing Manager at Mellanox Technologies

Since the dawn of the space age, unmanned spacecraft have flown blind, with little to no ability to make autonomous decisions based on their environment. That, however, changed in the early 2000s, when NASA started working on leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) and laying the foundation that would help Astronauts and Astronomers to work more efficiency in Space. In fact, just last month, NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory published how AI will govern the behavior of space probes.

Recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence, especially Deep Learning (a subfield in AI), are set to make a deeper impact in the field of astronomy and astrophysics. From navigating the unknown terrain of Mars, to analyzing petabytes of data generated from Square Kilometer Array, to finding Earth-like planets in our messy galaxy, AI is already revolutionizing our lives here on earth by building smarter and more autonomous cars, helping us find solutions to climate change, revolutionizing healthcare and much more. Mellanox is proud to be working closely with the leading companies and research organizations to make advancements in the field of Artificial Intelligence and Astronomy.

AI: The Next Industrial Revolution

Coined in 1956 by Dartmouth Assistant Professor John McCarthy, AI existed before the Race to Space but could only deliver rudimentary displays of intelligence in specific context. Progress was limited due to the complexities of algorithms needed to tackle various real-world issues. Many were above the ability of a mere human to execute. This however, changed in the past decade mainly due to two reasons:

Due to this, AI now presents one of the most exciting and potentially transformative opportunities for the mankind. In fact, in some quarters it is being heralded as the next industrial revolution:

The last 10 years have been about building a world that is mobile-first. In the next 10 years, we will shift to a world that is AI-first. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, October 2016

AI for the Messy Galaxy

While humanity has made great strides in exploring the observable universe, we need to rely on intelligent robots to explore where we cannot humanly go. This is because our galaxy, the Milky Way, is one messy place, filled with cosmic dust from stars, comets, and more; concealing the very things scientists want to study. That said, there are three major challenges in leveraging AI in the future of space exploration. Firstly, the probes will have to be able to learn about and adapt to unknown environments including responding to thick layers of gas in a planets atmosphere, extreme temperatures or unplanned for fluctuations in gravity.

Secondly, when a probe falls outside the communication range, would have tofigure out when and how to return the data collected during the time the signal was lost. Finally, given the vast distances in space, it could take several generations before the probe reaches its destination and therefore, will need to be flexible enough to adapt to any new discoveries and innovations we make here on earth. The solution to these problems will require training AI models on petabytes of data captured using supercomputers.

The benefits of using AI to control space-exploring robots are already being realized by missions that are currently underway. For example, Opportunity, the Mars Exploration Rover, which was launched back in 2003, has an AI driving system called Autonav that allows it to explore the surface of Mars. In addition, Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science (AEGIS) has been used by the NASA Mars rover, Curiosity, since May in order to select which aspects of Mars are particularly interesting and subsequently take photos of.

Image Captured by AEGIS Enabled Curiositys ChemCam.

But Mars is by no means the final destination and the exploration of more challenging destinations will require even more advanced AI. For example, exploring the subsurface ocean of the Jovian moon Europa in the hope of finding alien life, will require bypassing a thick (~10km) ice crust. Controlling this exploration would be severely limited without advanced autonomy.

Artificial Intelligence Needs Intelligent Network

Since the early age of Mellanox, we have been working closely with NASA and many research labs help solve the challenges of scientific computing, whether its the aerodynamic simulation of the Jet Propulsion Engine or monitoring the universe in unprecedented detail. In addition, over the last few years, Mellanox has also enabled the pioneers in the field of AI including Baidu for their advancements in autonomous cars and Yahoo for image recognition. The applications of autonomous driving and object recognition go far beyond the limits of Earth and Mellanox is proud to be working closely with several research organizations and companies and helping them achieve technological breakthroughs in the field of astronomy and astrophysics.

Forty-eight years ago, Neil Armstrong said Thats one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind, when he became the first human to set the foot on the surface of the moon. The next giant leap for mankind will come from the small step of a robot, powered by AI and Mellanox.

Ramnath Sai Sagar is Marketing Manager at Mellanox Technologies. This post originally ran as part of Mellanox Technologies Interconnected Planet blog series.

Artificial intelligence now powers all of Facebook’s translation – Popular Science

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

Spend enough time on Facebook, and youll likely encounter a post written in a tongue thats foreign to you. Thats because the social network has two billion users and supports over 45 languages. On Thursday, Facebook announced that all of its user translation servicesthose little magic tricks that happen when you click see translation beneath a post or commentare now powered by neural networks, which are a form of artificial intelligence.

Back in May, the companys artificial intelligence division, called Facebook AI Research, announced that they had developed a kind of neural network called a CNN (that stands for convolutional neural network, not the news organization where Wolf Blitzer works) that was a fast, accurate translator. Part of the virtue of that CNN is that instead of looking at words one at a time, it can consider groups of them.

Now, Facebook says that they have incorporated that CNN tech into their translation system, as well as another type of neural network, called an RNN (the R is for recurrent). Those RNNs, Facebook said in a blog item about the news, are better at understanding the context of the whole sentence than the previous system, and can reorder sentences as needed so that they make sense.

The upshot? Facebook says that the new AI-powered translation is 11 percent more accurate than the old-school approach, which is what they call a phrase-based machine translation technique that wasnt powered by neural networks. That system translated words or small groups of words individually, and didnt do a good job of considering the context or word order of the sentence.

As an example of the difference between the two translation systems, Facebook demonstrated how the old approach would have translated a sentence from Turkish into English, and then showed how the new AI-powered system would do it. The first Turkish-to-English sentence reads this way: Their, Izmirs why you said no we dont expect them to understand. Now check out the newer translation: We dont expect them to understand why Izmir said no. Notice how the AI fixed the mistakes in word and phrase order?

While neural networks had been working together with the more traditional translation system before today, now all the translation gets its smarts from AI. This new system is capable of translating in 2,000 directions. For example, a translation from English to French is one direction, French to English is a second, and French to Italian is a third direction, and so forth. Astoundingly, the neural networks handle 4.5 billion translation per day, making them quite the linguists.

Artificial intelligence now powers all of Facebook's translation - Popular Science

Artificial intelligence proves that craft beer names are total nonsense – Mashable

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

Mashable

Artificial intelligence proves that craft beer names are total nonsense
Mashable
If you're a craft beer connoisseur or even just an occasional drinker you've likely noticed that names for new brews are getting out of hand. Likely in order to distance themselves from traditional, European beer names such as Franziskaner Royal ...

and more »

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Artificial intelligence proves that craft beer names are total nonsense - Mashable

5 Ways to Advance Your Machine Learning Initiatives – HuffPost

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

There is no doubt that AI (artificial intelligence) is the new electricity and everyone is trying to get benefits from the trend. Many companies are integrating AI solutions in their business operationsto reap the benefit of emerging machine learning (ML) technologies. The seamless introduction of AI, however, requires thoughtful adaptation of corporate strategy to requirements of this emerging technology.As a partner at a venture studio, I see companies try to get in the trenches of machine intelligence without the proper preparation. Here's what we recommend companies to advance their initiatives effectively.

To be efficient, data that is fed into ML algorithms should be properly labeled, cleaned up and structured. Companies produce huge amounts of unstructured data that adds no value unless necessary transformations are made. To succeed in improving their data, companies have the option of in-house data labeling and data cleansing or using third-party services of companieslike Scale that offer programmatic access to a growing community of people specializing in making data usable.

Similarly, to enhance their AI preparedness, companies need to integrate their dispersed data sources into the unified data warehousing framework. Data warehouses and data marts allow storing data generated by different business operations and departments in one place and in the uniform representation. This allows for centralized sourcing of data for ML algorithms. Even though it sounds like a simple exercise, most of the companies we work with have trouble organizing their data sources.

Prioritize and Grow Narrow Expertise

It is often tempting to use AI solutions in every business process that may benefit from automation and ML. However, such strategy leads to dispersion of organizational resources and decreases the cumulative effect of AI innovation.

Instead of creating a horizontal platform for AI innovations, companies should prioritize concrete AI solutions that have the biggest potential to increase financial value and customer satisfaction. Growing narrow expertise in one specific area will help concentrate organizational resources on one particular task, ultimately contributing to the development of a more general solution for your business.

Get Advantage of the Academia

Academia is the main breeding ground of expertise and skills in emerging technologies like AI. The depth of theoretical knowledge and expertise offered by AI researchers is hard to attain in the private sector.

Therefore, each company that we partner with is trying to find its own machine intelligence expertise to boost its strategy. We recommend these companies reach out to talent in academia. Academic AI experts can offer a long-term AI agenda for your company. breathing life in the most exciting and revolutionary ideas that would otherwise be lost in the lengthy articles published in academic journals.

In turn, companies should provide AI researchers with an opportunity to share their research with the public by encouraging them to publish scientific papers, participate in conferences, and maintain a connection with universities. AI researchers will join those companies that offer more freedom and necessary organizational resources to put their theoretical ideas into practice.

Create a Process Versus Chaotic Experimentations

AI experimentation is great. However, too many companies rush into new AI domains without putting structured approach in place. Treating AI innovation as a process starts from automating existing data analytics procedures to create a pipeline of fresh data. Without automation of existing operations, new AI solutions may reach the wrong conclusions simply because they work on out-of-date data.

The integrity of the AI process requires modernization of the entire IT infrastructure, ranging from in-house servers and databases to cloud-based services and networks. Sound AI innovation process may be also facilitated by the organizational change towards multi-disciplinary teams and training employees to new roles associated with the AI innovation. With all departments of your organization prepared for the technological disruption, AI integration will be closely aligned with the corporate strategy and organizational goals.

Global leaders of the AI innovation facilitate the fast adoption of AI technology in all industries by open-sourcing ML libraries and APIs (Application Programming Interface). Such ML libraries as Google TensorFlow offer companies access to out-of-the-box algorithms and neural networks optimized for fast deployment in the enterprise setting.

Businesses can also take advantage of cloud-based ML APIs that allow to easily bootstrap in-house AI software. One example of such APIs is Googles Cloud Vision API provided as part of Google Cloud offerings. The system encapsulates powerful machine learning models for image classification, object detection, image-to-text transformation provided as REST API. The system may be used by companies for building metadata of their image catalogs, moderating offensive content, and developing new marketing strategies based on image sentiment analysis.

Similar functionality is also available in the recently released TensorFlow Object Detection API. Apple has recently joined the party by unveiling its Core ML API that may be used to integrate fast ML algorithms on iPhones, iPads and Apple Watch. Companies using these solutions will have instant access to image and face recognition, and natural language processing in their applications.

Partner atColab, helping startups build tech products.

The Morning Email

Wake up to the day's most important news.

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5 Ways to Advance Your Machine Learning Initiatives - HuffPost

Links for August 4, 2017: Why we’ll survive artificial intelligence, how smart phones are ruining an entire … – American Enterprise Institute

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

We survived spreadsheets, and well survive AI WSJ

Treating prediction as an input into an economic process makes it much easier to map AIs impact. History and economics show that when an input such as energy, communication or calculation becomes cheaper, we find many more uses for it. Some jobs become superfluous, but others more valuable, and brand new ones spring into existence. Why should AI be different? . . .

AI has already made some skills obsolete. Google Translate is faster, cheaper and often as good as a human interpreter. Some AI programs can outperform human radiologists at identifying malignant tumors.

Yet as AI gets cheaper, so its potential applications will grow. Just as better weather forecasting makes us more willing to go out without an umbrella, Mr. Manzi says, AI emboldens companies to test more products, strategies and hunches: Theories become lightweight and disposable. They need people who know how to use it, and how to act on the results.

Mr. Manzi should know. He co-founded a company, Applied Predictive Technologies, to test companies strategies using AI, and sold it to Mastercard Inc . for $600 million in 2015. Its still hiring.

When will AI be better than humans at everything? Singularity Hub

Despite Crisprs gene-editing success, superbabies arent imminent Wired

Legal robots deployed in China to help decide thousands of cases The Telegraph

Do fewer immigrants mean more jobs? Economists say no NYT

WASHINGTON When the federal government banned the use of farmworkers from Mexico in 1964, Californias tomato growers did not enlist Americans to harvest the fragile crop. They replaced the lost workers with tomato-picking machines. . . .Economists say the tomato story and a host of related evidence show that there is no clear connection between less immigration and more jobs for Americans. Rather, the prevailing view among economists is that immigration increases economic growth, improving the lives of the immigrants and the lives of the people who are already here. . . .

George J. Borjas, the Harvard immigration economist whose work is the only evidence that the administration has cited as justifying its proposals, said in an interview on Wednesday that there was no economic justification for reducing skilled immigration.

That is a political decision, he said. That is not an economic decision.

Short answers to hard questions about the opioid crisis NYT

The real reason there are so few conservatives on campus Damon Linker

Have smart phones destroyed an entire generation? The Atlantic

The advent of the smartphone and its cousin the tablet was followed quickly by hand-wringing about the deleterious effects of screen time. But the impact of these devices has not been fully appreciated, and goes far beyond the usual concerns about curtailed attention spans. The arrival of the smartphone has radically changed every aspect of teenagers lives, from the nature of their social interactions to their mental health. These changes have affected young people in every corner of the nation and in every type of household. The trends appear among teens poor and rich; of every ethnic background; in cities, suburbs, and small towns. Where there are cell towers, there are teens living their lives on their smartphone.

To those of us who fondly recall a more analog adolescence, this may seem foreign and troubling. The aim of generational study, however, is not to succumb to nostalgia for the way things used to be; its to understand how they are now. Some generational changes are positive, some are negative, and many are both. More comfortable in their bedrooms than in a car or at a party, todays teens are physically safer than teens have ever been. Theyre markedly less likely to get into a car accident and, having less of a taste for alcohol than their predecessors, are less susceptible to drinkings attendant ills.

Psychologically, however, they are more vulnerable than Millennials were: Rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011. Its not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades. Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones.

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Links for August 4, 2017: Why we'll survive artificial intelligence, how smart phones are ruining an entire ... - American Enterprise Institute

Hawkesbury aerospace firm to close US plant, relocate jobs to eastern Ontario – CBC.ca

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

A Hawkesbury, Ont.,aerospacefirm has decided to shut down its U.S. design and manufacturing facility andrelocate about 20 jobs to eastern Ontario.

In a statement posted on its website, Dart Aerospace said it would be closing its plant in Eugene, Oregon, by the end of 2017.

The decision to shut downthe facility which designed tools, hooks and other helicopter parts means the workforce at their remodeled Hawkesbury plantwill grow from about 85 to 105 employees, said Alain Madore, the company's president and CEO.

Alain Madore is the president and CEO of Dart Aerospace. (CBC)

Madoresaid there were two main reasons to "centralize" the company's activity in Canada: to reduce costs and to take advantage of the exchange rate, which is currently favourable for exporters like Dart.

"Most of our business is international. With the strength of the U.S. dollar and the exchange rate with the Canadian dollar, there was a 20 to 25 per cent saving in this area," said Madore.

The majority of Dart's workforce isfrom either eastern Ontario or western Quebec, said Madore,callingthe decision to relocate "good news for the region."

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Hawkesbury aerospace firm to close US plant, relocate jobs to eastern Ontario - CBC.ca

2017 Canadian Aerospace Summit expected to attract more than 1000 attendees – Skies Magazine (press release)

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

A global perspective on innovation and technology will be the focus of this years Canadian Aerospace Summit, an annual gathering of industry leaders organized by the Aerospace Industries Association of Canada (AIAC).

The focus is around innovation because of the work that the government has done in terms of the innovation and skills agenda and other policies similar to the defence policy, explained Jim Quick, president and chief executive officer of the AIAC.

We think this is the premier event for Canadian aerospace. Certainly, thats what the attendees tell us, he said. This is really a global-facing type of event where we are looking at where the future of our industry is going, and then what Canada needs to do to maintain its position as a global leading aerospace nation.

AIAC expects to welcome more than 1,000 attendees, including government officials, representatives of original equipment manufacturers like Airbus, Bell Helicopter and Lockheed Martin, as well as other industry leaders and international companies.

Last year, Canadas aerospace industry contributed nearly $28 billion to Canadas gross domestic product (GDP) and 208,000 jobs to the Canadian economy.

What we have been trying to do is bring in the leaders of large international companies to talk about where they see the future of our industry, to talk specifically about their relationships with the Canadian industry and then what we should be doing as a global leading aerospace nation to be more successful in the future, explained Quick.

He told Skiesthat AIAC has three main goals for the Summit.

The first is to bring global thought leaders to Canada to discuss what this country needs to be doing in order to be successful over the next 10 to 15 years.

The second goal is for the Summit to be the premier place to meet Canadian industry members.

The third goal is to use the event to build on existing relationships with Canadas federal government.

When you come to the Canadian Aerospace Summit you are going to see all of the companies across the country that are major players inside the Canadian aerospace industry, and their leaders will be there, he said. So, if you want to see where Canadian aerospace leadership is, then this is the place to come to see them.

AIAC has already confirmed an impressive line-up of speakers for this years Summit, including Dirk Hoke, the CEO of Airbus Defence and Space; Marc Parent, president and CEO of CAE; Charles Charlie Bouchard, CEO of Lockheed Martin Canada; David Curtis, president and CEO of Viking Air; Don Osborne, president of MDA Information Systems; and Cynthia Garneau, president of Bell Helicopter.

The executive panel of CEOs will discuss the trends, challenges and opportunities Canadian aerospace executives face as they try to move forward while managing uncertain times. Its very much looking at the question of how we are successful in the future and who to be successful with, said Quick.

Some of the other things we are going to be looking to do is talk about connections with other industries, especially on the innovation and technology front, and how they might be related to the aerospace industry, he added. So you can expect to hear more program announcements that will be very interesting and different from what weve done in the past.

AIAC has also reached out to Judy Foote, Canadas public services and procurement minister, and Navdeep Bains, minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, to attend the Summit and discuss defence procurement, as well as the federal governments innovation agenda.

Its going to be a pretty complete program, concluded Quick.

The 2017 Canadian Aerospace Summit will take place from Nov. 7 to 8 at the Shaw Centre in Ottawa.

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2017 Canadian Aerospace Summit expected to attract more than 1000 attendees - Skies Magazine (press release)

Aerospace Industry Now Supported By South Bay Alliance – Patch.com

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

Patch.com

Aerospace Industry Now Supported By South Bay Alliance
Patch.com
REDONDO BEACH, CA The South Bay Association of Chambers of Commerce (SBACC) has approved a new organization to support the regional aerospace industry. The South Bay Aerospace Industry Alliance is a non-partisan community-based coalition ...

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Aerospace Industry Now Supported By South Bay Alliance - Patch.com

ARC Advisory Group Names IFS Leader in Aerospace and Defense … – Markets Insider

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Danzig

WASHINGTON, Aug. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

IFS, the global enterprise applications company, has today been confirmed as the number one vendor of enterprise asset management (EAM) software for the aerospace and defense (A&D) sector. This is the ninth consecutive year that IFS has been named as the global market leader by the major research and advisory firm ARC Advisory Group.

The ARC "Enterprise Asset Management Global Market Research Study" found IFS has continued to increase its A&D market share, and now has a commanding market share lead over the next highest participant. These 2016 figures do not include the gains following the acquisition of the A&D maintenance management software provider Mxi Technologies that closed in January 2017.

IFS has a strong and growing customer base in aviation and defense that includes BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, SAAB, GE Aviation, Pratt & Whitney, HAL, Emirates, LATAM, Qantas, China Airlines, Air France-KLM, Southwest Airlines. and most recently PSA Airlines. The company's partner ecosystem continues to grow in support of the A&D sector with Malaysia's G7 Aerospace most recently joining the IFS Partner Network.

"IFS is particularly strong in the aerospace and defense industries worldwide," Ralph Rio, Research Director for Enterprise Software, ARC Advisory Group said. "The company extended its lead by acquiring Mxi Technologies."

Scott Helmer, SVP, Aviation and Defense Business Unit at IFS added: "With the move towards servitization and the complex support requirements of next-generation equipment, EAM is a top priority for defense and commercial aviation organizations. The flexibility, agility and market-leading record of IFS's EAM solution means it is second to none in helping these organizations monitor and maintain assets, keeping them operational for as long as possible."

For more information on ARC's findings, visit here to view an overview of the report.

Find out more about how IFS supports its aerospace and defense customers here.

CONTACT:

Anders Lundin, PR Manager for IFS Strategic Marketing and Communications.Phone: +46-8-58-78 45-00, rel="nofollow">press@ifsworld.com

Amanda Patton, Analyst Relations. Phone: +1-47-969-8919, rel="nofollow">amanda.patton@ifsworld.com

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com http://news.cision.com/ifs/r/arc-advisory-group-names-ifs-leader-in-aerospace-and-defense-eam-software-for-ninth-consecutive-year,c2321624

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Scientists, Theologians Ponder If Latest Biological Findings Are More Compatible With Religion – Sojourners

Posted on August 3, 2017 by ev1

When Charles Darwin published his landmark theory of evolution by natural selection in the 19th century, religious leaders were confronted with a powerful challenge to some of their oldest beliefs about the origins of life.

Then evolutionary theory was expanded with the insights of genetics, which gave further support for a scientific and secular view of how humans evolved.

Faith and tradition were forced further onto the defensive.

Now, exciting progress in biology in recent decades may be building up a third new phase in the scientific explanation of life, according to thinkers gathered at a University of Oxford conferencefrom July 19-22.

Although this 21st-century wave has no single discovery to mark its arrival, new insights into developing technologies such as genetic engineering and human enhancement may end up giving another important boost to the belief that science has (or eventually will have) the answers to lifes mysteries.

Some scientists, theologians, and philosophers see in this ever deeper knowledge of how genes work a possible alternative to the more reductive approach to evolution one that brings in a broader view that also considers the influence of the environment.

Unlike the earlier views, which seemed to lead toward either agnosticism or atheism, the theologians see this new biology or holistic biology as more compatible with religious belief.

Weve added definition to the picture of evolution that has deepened and enriched our understanding of biological processes, Donovan Schaefer, an Oxford lecturer in science and religion who co-organized the conference, told the opening session of the July 19-22 meeting.

But he added: It would be naive to imagine that the grander questions about biology, religion, the humanities, and evolutionary theory generally have been put to death.

The achievements on their list include new fields like epigenetics, the science of how genes are turned on or off to influence our bodies, and advances in cognitive and social sciences that yield ever more detailed empirical research into how we behave.

Waiting in the wings are new technologies such as genome editing, which can modify human genes to repair, enhance, or customize human beings. Scientists in China are believed to have already genetically modified human embryos, and the first known attemptto do so in the United States was reported on July 26.

Schaefer compared todays deeper understanding of biology to the higher resolution that photographers enjoy, now that photography has advanced from film to digital images.

Genes once thought to be fairly mechanical in influencing human development leading to the my genes made me do it kind of thinking have been found to be part of complex systems that can act in response to a persons environment.

Since scientists succeeded in sequencing the genome in the late 1990s, they have found that epigenetic markers that regulate patterns of gene expression can reflect outside influences on a body.

Even simpler living objects such as plants contain a complex internal genetic system that governs their growth according to information they receive from outside.

To theologians who see a new biology emerging, this knowledge points to a more holistic system than scientists have traditionally seen, one more open to some divine inspiration for life.

In this view, the fact that epigenetic markers can bring outside pressures to bear on the genome deep inside a human means genetics is not a closed system, but part of the wider sweep of nature in which they, as religious thinkers, also see Gods hand.

Nature is so complex and rich, and that prompts questions about why on earth is this the case? If youre an atheist, how do you explain a universe that seems to have the capacity to produce these things in the first place? asked Alister McGrath, an Oxford theologian who is director of the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion that hosted the conference.

This in turn opened a space for theologians to augment the discussion about the new biology, he said.

Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher at New Yorks City College with doctorates in genetics and evolutionary biology, also said scientism the idea that science can answer all lifes important questions was too limited.

Science informs and grounds certain philosophical positions; it doesnt determine them, he said. But the data cant settle ethical questions.

Pigliucci agrees with the trend to use the evolutionary paradigm to analyze fields outside of biology, including topics such as ethics and morality.

The life sciences tell us that the building blocks of what we call morality are actually found presumably they were selected for in nonhuman social primates, he said. Science gives you an account of what otherwise looks like magic: Why do we have a moral sense to begin with? How did we develop it?

Not all present agreed that science could explain religion.

Some suspect that biology has triggered some kind of devotion and there are too many people who practice this cult, said Lluis Oviedo, a theologian at the Pontifical University Antonianum in Rome.

His own research has found at least 75 books and academic articles trying to explain religion through evolution, and he knew of about 20 more on the way, he said.

Although he thinks, the time of explaining through radical reduction is over, he admitted few biologists seemed ready to accept the more holistic new biology.

Even some scientists at the conference, while ready to engage with the philosophers and theologians, showed less interest in discussions about whether a new biology was emerging.

Im pragmatic, explained Ottoline Leyser of the University of Cambridge, whose lecture on plant genetics was one of the conferences highlights.

Theologians in the decades long science and religion debate, which argues the two disciplines complement each other, have also become more pragmatic as their dialogue proceeds.

Oxfords McGrath said the theologians had become more modest in the claims they made about what religion could contribute to this debate. Unlike some more doctrinaire scientists, he said, they did not think they had all the answers.

They dont say These observations in nature prove or disprove God, he said. Our religious way of thinking gives you a framework which allows you to look at the scientific approach to the world and understand why it makes sense, but at the same time also to understand its limits.

Those things need to be in the picture if were going to lead meaningful lives.

Via Religion News Service.

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Scientists, Theologians Ponder If Latest Biological Findings Are More Compatible With Religion - Sojourners

Do these 4 natural anti-aging alternatives work? – Fox News

Posted on August 3, 2017 by ev1

In anti-aging skin care, there are many alternative treatments you'll come across, from skin-needling to Ayurvedic medicine to a diet detox, but all of them aren't created equal.

We asked skin care professionals which ones are worth your time and moneyand which ones you can skip. (We've also got loads of good natural skin care tips and tricks, from coconut oil to rosehip oil based moisturizers, to masks containing that anti-bacterial beauty balm, honey.) Below, we break down everything you need to know about four popular treatments.

RELATED: 6 MOST IMPORTANT BEAUTY PRODUCTS TO BUY ORGANIC

AYURVEDIC MEDICINE

This system of traditional Indian healing relies on techniques such as diet changes, breathing exercises and botanical medicine to treat patients based on their dosha, or "mind-body type."

Does it work?

"The doshas seem to line up with skin types we're familiar with," says Jasmina Aganovic, an MIT-trained chemical and biological engineer and founder of the Stages of Beauty skin-care line. "The Vata dosha typically coincides with dry skin," she says, "Pitta coincides with sensitive; and Kapha, with oily or combination skin."

Even so, there's no scientific evidence that treating your skin based on your dosha is beneficial, says Susan Stuart, MD, a dermatologist in San Diego. However, there is proof that many of the powerhouse plant-based ingredients used in Ayurvedic medicine can help you look younger.

For example, "research shows that turmeric and ginger, both used frequently in Ayurvedic medicine, can reduce wrinkles," says Shyam Gupta, PhD, a chemist and founder of Bioderm Research, a cosmetic research company in Scottsdale, AZ. And several studies show that grapeseed extract, another Ayurvedic ingredient, protects against photodamage.

RELATED: I TRIED DRINKING FRESH TURMERIC JUICE EVERY DAY FOR A MONTHHERES WHAT HAPPENED

Bottom Line

Try healing Ayurvedic recipes, and products with Ayurvedic ingredients like turmeric and ginger, but don't overhaul your beauty regimen based on your dosha just yet.

ALKALINE DIET

A few studies have shown acidity can be damaging to the body, so it's thought by some that eating mostly alkaline-forming (or, acid-lowering) foods like fruits and vegetables may slow skin aging.

Does it work?

There's no research proving this theory. Our bodies do a good job of regulating acidity regardless of diet. But there is anecdotal support: "My clients who eat 80% alkaline-forming foods notice fewer lines and more hydrated skin in weeks," says author and nutritionist Kimberly Snyder.

Bottom Line

The diet won't erase wrinkles, but eating more fruits and veggies improves overall health (including preventing weight gain)and that can only be good for skin.

SKIN NEEDLING

In this procedure, you roll a small needle-covered device over your face to create tiny, temporary pricks in your skin, which may trigger a healing response (similar to what occurs after a cut), leading to a smoother complexion.

Does it work?

San Francisco dermatologist Kathy Fields, MD, who helped develop a home skin needling package with a peptide-and retinol-based serum for Rodan + Fields, says her company's analysis shows using it can induce skin's collagen-building process and improve penetration of anti-aging ingredients applied afterward. But there aren't peer-reviewed studies of at-home devices, and Dr. Stuart believes needling is safer and more effective done in a dermatologist's office with a pro version of the tool.

Bottom Line

Used before a retinol-based product, an at-home skin-needling tool can smooth skin, but it's likely the retinol doing most of the work. Check with your dermatologist first.

RELATED: 11 OLD FASHIONED BEAUTY TREATMENTS GRANDMA USED THAT YOU SHOULD TOO

DIET CLEANSE

Some experts think that temporarily restricting your diet (whether with a cleanse, a juice fast or a similar detox plan) can clarify your complexion and make your skin glow.

Does it work?

"Most people's skin improves when they do a cleanse because they're removing foods that have a pro-inflammatory effectand inflammation is the root of many skin issues, including rosacea, acne and premature aging," says Frank Lipman, MD, an integrative physician and founder of Eleven Eleven Wellness in New York City. Although it's best to have an integrative medicine expert guide you in the cleansing process, it's possible to see benefits on your own.

RELATED: 7 DIY FACE MASKS AND SCRUBS THAT ACTUALLY WORK

Dr. Lipman says avoiding caffeine, sugar, dairy, gluten and meat for a few weeks can offer a short-term boost to your complexion. Research supports this theory to some extent (gluten intolerances have been linked to skin issues for some people, and several studies have shown a correlation between dairy consumption and acne). However, Mary Lupo, MD, a dermatologist, says there are no studies showing that a temporary cleanseno matter what types of food are restrictedcan reduce cellular inflammation or provide long-term skin benefits.

Bottom Line

A cleanse won't turn back the clock, but eating less sugar and fewer starchy carbohydrates could be beneficial in the long run, and help you determine what's potentially throwing off your body chemistry. "These foods can spike blood glucose levels, and that accelerates aging of all organs, including the skin," says Dr. Lupo.

This article originally appeared on Rodale Organic Life

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Do these 4 natural anti-aging alternatives work? - Fox News

In My Memory: Is Trance Tiesto Gone for Good? (Opinion) – Dance Music Northwest

Posted on August 3, 2017 by Danzig

Since last year, trance has seen a resurgence that has been years in the making. Sales and artist bookings are up, dedicated trance festivals are growing bigger, and new sub-genre sounds, like Psy Trance, are emerging. Helping lead the charge are trance legends who have returned to the genre after branching off to make more mainstream, progressive sounds- names like Sander van Doorn, W&W, Ferry Corstens Gouryella and Arty. Noticeably absent from this movement back to trance: probably one, if not, the best trance artists of all-time: Tiesto.

Before he became the house music playing, big room pumping, Grammy award-winning superstar he is today, Tijs Michiel Verwest, of the Netherlands, operated in the shadows as DJ Tiesto. Starting his career in the early 90s, Tiesto helped define the trance genre with his uplifting and progressive sounds, in addition to the creation of record labels like Black Hole Recordings and In Trance We Trust. Joining him in his early projects include fellow Dutchmen Ferry Corsten, who, along with Tiesto, created Gouryella, and Armin van Buuren, who Tiesto helped take Armins sound into the mainstream (look how well that has turned out!).

Tiestos debut solo studio album, In My Memory, released in 2001, saw this legend score some of his biggest career hits. Does Flight 643 and Lethal Industry ring a bell?

As trance in its entirety continued to grow, both of these tracks stood the test of time, having been remixed by plenty and featured in sets galore- even to this day. Who could forget when the legendary Markus Schulz dropped 643 at Bliss; Transcendence, here in Seattle, a few months ago?!

In My Memory took Tiestos career to new heights. He began to do global tours, including his USA debut in 2003, and lengthy solo sets- a concept that was new at the time. The idea of one DJ playing alone in front of a crowd of thousands? His groundbreaking Tiesto in Concert solo shows, in 2003, helped pave the way for DJs who aspire to do concerts in massive venues; He showed it could be done.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily represent the views of Dance Music Northwest or its leadership.

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In My Memory: Is Trance Tiesto Gone for Good? (Opinion) - Dance Music Northwest

Cyberpunk 2077 release date rumours, news and trailers: Everything we know so far – Alphr

Posted on August 3, 2017 by Danzig

CD Projekt Red has a lot of expectation riding on Cyberpunk 2077. Not only is the studios latest title, The Witcher 3, widely regarded as one of the best videogames ever made, its new project is also based on a tabletop roleplaying game thats been capturing imaginations with tales of leather jackets and neon lights since 1988.

The Polish studio has shown its more than capable of handling complex, multi-layered storytelling across a vast open world so the signs are good that the shift from fantasy to science fiction will be a fruitful one. Beyond an initial trailer, however, theres relatively little known for certain about Cyberpunk 2077.

To keep you abreast with all the latest news and rumours, here is our rundown of everything you need to know about Cyberpunk 2077. Well be updating this page as new information surfaces.

Cyberpunk 2077 was revealed way back in 2012, three years before The Witcher 3 was released. This was followed in 2013 by a trailer that said the game would be released when its ready, which isnt a great deal to go on.

Some further hints came in early 2016, in the shape of a company investor call. This noted a timeframe to release Cyberpunk 2077 before June 2019, as well as plans to release two blockbuster RPGs before 2021. It was later clarified that the first of these would be Cyberpunk 2077.

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In 2016, a grant of 30 million zloty (around 6 million) from the Polish government was given to CD Projekt RED, to research seamless multiplayer and virtual city creation. That comes with a stipulation that the team delivers something over the next few years. Throw in a 2017 financial results conference, which made mention of progress on Cyberpunk 2077 being quite advanced, and wed say late 2018 or early 2019 is a good bet.

As for which platforms Cyberpunk 2077 will arrive on, the time frame makes it likely that the game will follow a similar release pattern to The Witcher 3 with a release on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. The main difference will be the inclusion of 4K editions for Xbox One X and PS4 Pro.

Back in 2013 CD Projekt RED's managing director Adam Badowski mentioned in a chat to Eurogamer that Cyberpunk 2077 would have multiplayer features, but tapered this by stressing the game would be a predominantly single-player experience.

News at the end of 2016, about the studios grant from the Polish government, also emphasised that the game would push the envelope for seamless multiplayer.

Will Cyberpunk 2077 have a multiplayer shooter mode? Will it be an MMO? Most likely not. Given CD Projekt REDs track record, we doubt the developers will want to stray too far from the scripted narratives that have made the studios name. Instead, expect a form of pervasive multiplayer that will aim to make Night City feel more alive, perhaps in the strand of Dark Souls and Bloodborne, where the paths of other players are seen as ghosts, and where other players can help or hinder progress through the games path.

Another upcoming AAA sci-fi game, Beyond Good and Evil 2, is aiming to straddle the balance between written storytelling and pervasive co-operation and competition although we expect CD Projekt RED to go less in the multiplayer direction than Ubisoft.

CD Projekt RED visual effects artist Jose Teixeira said in 2015 that Cyberpunk 2077 would be far bigger than anything else the studio has done. Part of the stipulation of the Polish government grant was that the developers create "cities of great scale based on the principles of artificial intelligence and automation", so it makes sense for the studio to approach this on a big scale.

The studio has also doubled in size, with more developers allegedly working on Cyberpunk 2077 than those that worked on The Witcher 3 at its most intensive. Not a lithe indie adventure, then.

Image 5 of 8

Cyberpunk 2077 takes place in the Cyberpunk tabletop universe, created by Mike Pondsmith, whos also a consultant on the project. Pondsmiths RPG, mainly known by its second edition name of Cyberpunk 2020, is based in a sprawling fictional metropolis on the US West Coast, called Night City.

Even if youre unfamiliar with the details of Pondsmiths world, youll no doubt be familiar with the Cyberpunk tropes it went some way to solidify. From the novels of William Gibson to films such as Blade Runner, the Cyberpunk style tends to feature (in no particular order) rampant megacorporations, hackers, cybernetic implants, social unrest, artificial intelligence, leather jackets, sex robots, mohawks, hardboiled detectives, neon lights. Expect Night City to have all of these things at some point or another.

Marcin Przybyowicz did stellar work on the atmospheric, if occasionally overpowering, Witcher 3 soundtrack. Hes continuing to work for the studio on Cyberpunk 2077, so itll be interesting to see how the composer works within a genre that already has a very established soundscape.

Image 6 of 8

Set over 50 years after Pondsmiths Cyberpunk 2020, CD Projekt RED has scope to explore technologies and cultures that were nascent in the original tabletop game. One of these will be Braindances virtual reality-like devices that let viewers experience events from the perspectives of other people. "People live someone elses life while sleeping in the gutter," lead gameplay designer Marcin Janiszewski told The Verge. "Its like a new drug."

Given its reverberations with current debates around the limits of immersive technology, wed expect these braindances to be a major part of Cyberpunk 2077s makeup.

One intriguing aspect of Cyberpunk 2077 may be how its creators handle language. While it was only floated as a consideration in 2013, CD Projekt REDs narrative and setting director, Sebastian Stepien, mentioned the possibility of having NPCs speaking in different languages with the player needing a translator implant to interpret what people are saying.

Speaking to dubscore.pl, Stepien said: The idea is to record everything in its original language. If there are, for example, Mexicans in the game, they will speak with slang. All performed by Mexican actors.

"Then a player could try a translating implant, and according to its level, he will get better or worse translation."

Its a very intriguing idea one that could lead to a lot of interesting narrative opportunities from a writing perspective but hasnt yet been confirmed as a definite feature in the game.

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Cyberpunk 2077 release date rumours, news and trailers: Everything we know so far - Alphr

Howie Lee is the cyberpunk-obsessed club producer concerned we’re trapped in the Matrix – FACT

Posted on August 3, 2017 by Danzig

FACT Rated is our series digging into the sounds and stories of the most vital breaking artists around right now. This week, Claire Lobenfeld talks to Beijing-born club innovator Howie Lee about 3D design, GarageBands Chinese instruments library and the possibility that were all just living in a simulation.

IN SHORT NAME: Howie Lee FROM: Beijing, China MUST-HEAR: Homeless EP (2017, Do Hits) FOR FANS OF: Aphex Twin, M.I.A., James Ferraro

Howie Lee thinks we might be living in the Matrix. Speaking from his home in Taipei, Taiwan, the Beijing-born club producer is waxing on the possibility that weve all just been imagined by someone else, either human or artificial. I dont know what to believe and I dont know what is to value in this world anymore, he says. Im always very anxious about whats going to happen in the short future. I believe in the Matrix and I believe we might already be in it.

Listening to his thrilling recent EP Homeless, one can hear the digital dread he describes, but its substance isnt all future-fearing flourishes. When he speaks to FACT in June, he says hes been digging a lot of old folk music from the Western border of China sounds from Xinjiang, Tibet and Yunnan that meld Buddhist histories with Muslim traditions from Chinas neighbors. This global influence from both the physical and digital worlds is imprinted all over the EP, which was named after the placelessness of the music.

Created with software like the granular synthesizer iPad app iDensity and popular entry-level DAW GarageBand most people delete it, but GarageBand has Chinese drum kit and erhu thats really awesome as well as live instruments, the six-song collection is slaughtering club music made for our nearly-dystopian present. And if you cant grasp the technicolor collage that its sounds invoke, Lees music videos deftly illustrate the world he is trying to sort out.

Im scared about real life, but the virtual life is more scary to me when I play music, I feel safe.

His visual identity is inspired by his wife, renowned designer Veeeky. Im inspired by a lot of cyberpunk things and I always think were already living in a dream and living in a sort of AI-controlled dream, Lee says. You have your own space, but you never really have space. Everything is in front of you like: BUY ME, CLICK ME. He uses Cinema 4D and other 3D drafting tools to make his videos and other pieces of art. For a half decade, Lee has been incorporating these elements into his live show with Veeeky crafting the visual accompaniments to his music and another friend supplying a self-made game engine to the video art.

Lee is part of Do Hits, a label that originated in 2011 as a party at Beijing punk hangout School Bar before becoming fully-realized after moving to underground dance club Dada. But like Do Hits, Lees origins are also in punk. I was in cheesy pop-punk like Green Day, Lee says, looking back at his time as an audio engineering student a Communication University of China. There were just a lot of show opportunities, but I had no idea why I was doing until I said, OK, fuck this, this is boring, its not creative, these are cheesy pop songs.' His roommate at the time taught him how to use Traktor and the two started DJing at bars together. But it was after university that dance music truly became his passion.

When Justice came out and I was like, OK, this is new music. Its not punk, but its not the trance music that I used to listen to. It just grabbed my mind and I said, I wanna do something like this. And like Justice, Lees brand of dance music is all about pushing the conversation forward. Throughout Homeless, there are multiple threads to latch onto in each track that transport its listener across varying musical landscapes. Hes created a kaleidoscopic world in order to grapple with what he sees as an easily manipulated reality. Im scared about real life, but the virtual life is more scary to me, he says. There is no way to get rid of the internet and its not necessary to, either. Its more about self-control and not losing your awareness of yourself. When I play music, I feel safe.

Claire Lobenfeld is on Twitter.

Read next: Icelands Bjarki makes 10 tracks a day and has Nina Kraviz on speed dial

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