Artificial Intelligence: The New Impulse For Alphabet – Seeking Alpha

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An important shift from a mobile first world to an AI first world

Google CEO, Sundar Pichai

The active investments of Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) in the artificial intelligence market, the growth rate of which over the next decade will be four times higher than that of the digital advertising market, increase the long-term investment attractiveness of the company.

To begin, let's take a look at the current growth forecasts for the global Artificial Intelligence (AI) market in the coming decade.

Here is information provided by Statista:

For a better clarity, Ive slightly modified these data and projected the trend until the year 2030. Here is what Ive got: over the next 15 years, this market will be growing at the CAGR of 40%, and in the next 10 years, it will be increasing by an average of 50% each year:

Tractica forecast (a market intelligence firm that focuses on human interaction with technology) is a bit more modest, but it still suggests that the annual worldwide AI revenue will grow from $643.7 million in 2016 to $36.8 billion by 2025, demonstrating a CAGR of 49.88%:

So, the growth in the next decade at an average annual rate of 50% - is really a lot?

It depends on what to compare with, but given that I'm performing this analysis through the prism of perspectives for Alphabet, it probably makes sense to compare AI with digital advertising market, which is accountable for 87% of Googles revenue.

As we can see, according to eMarketers data and assuming the trend will persist, in the coming decade this market will be growing at an average annual rate of 12.3%, i.e. four times slower than the AI market:

Also, Alphabet is one of the market leaders in cloud computing, therefore, I propose to compare the growth rate of this market with AI as well.

According to the Wikibon enterprise cloud spending will be growing at a CAGR of 19% between 2016 and 2026:

Approximately, the same forecast for the next five years was given by IDC:

So, in the horizon of the coming decade, the rates of growth of the AI market will be at least twice higher than those of the cloud computing market and four times higher than those of the digital advertising market. The most obvious conclusion from this: In order to ensure a double-digit annual growth rate in the next ten years, Alphabet needs to actively invest in the AI market. The good news for the owners of Alphabet shares is that the company is already actively doing it.

Starting with 2012, Alphabet acquired 11 startups specializing in AI, which exceeds the number of similar acquisitions by Microsoft (MSFT) and Facebook (FB) combined:

However, it should be remembered that the quantity does not always turn into quality. Nevertheless, if you judge about the success of Alphabet in the field of AI by the level of artificial intelligence of Google Voice Assistant, it becomes clear that the company is currently in a position of a leader.

According to the March study conducted by Stone Temple, that compared the quality of the responses of intelligent assistants developed by Alphabet (Google Assistant), Microsoft (Cortana), Apple (AAPL) (Siri) and Amazon (AMZN) (Alexa), Google Assistant gave answers to the biggest number of questions, and also made the smallest number of mistakes:

It has been observed that not the fastest runner wins a long distance race, but the one who starts earlier. The AI market is an incredibly long "distance," but, apparently, Alphabet has started this "race" first and is already a leader.

Moreover, Alphabet, being the most popular global search engine with an enormous amount of data, has all chances to remain on a leading position in the artificial intelligence market in the long term, and it will be the companys growth driver for the next decade.

P.S. I have recently published my version of Alphabet's valuation through the DCF analysis, and I came to the conclusion that, given the most conservative prediction parameters and the revenue growth at a CAGR of 12.5% in the next ten years, the fair price of the companys shares will be at least 30% above the current level. Considering the figures provided in this article, I will probably have to review the DCF model, increasing the revenue growth forecasts. Of course, this will enhance the growth potential of the company's share price.

Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.

I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

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Artificial Intelligence: The New Impulse For Alphabet - Seeking Alpha

The Power of Artificial Intelligence – A Glimpse at HR’s Future – HuffPost

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Artificial Intelligence has infused its majestic wonders in the business world spread through many industries and niches. From predictive technology and fully automated self-regulating processes, to the way companies manage data and market their products; Artificial Intelligence is as real as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

And, its here to stay!

Its 2017. The question is how can companies effectively exploit the absolute potential of the tools available at their disposal, while growing their business and still maintaining a personal connection with the customer base?

Recently, Google has become one of several global powerhouses that are financially backing a new $150 million AI research institute in Toronto, Canada. This also includes $20,000 a year in funding as pledged by The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the investment fund of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan.

One of the most interesting areas for AI applicability is Human Resources in the Retail and Hospitality industries, where reducing hiring biases and enforcing complete transparency for acquiring talented individuals is crucial.

Knockri, an innovative young tech start-up from Toronto, Canada is one such example of a company taking AI-based HR solutions by the horns.

The ultimate goal is to be able to help every recruiting team in the world, who require strong front-line customer service talent. Our AI system for HR uses audio and videoanalysis, assessing personality attributes to gauge how fit an applicant would be for a position based on employer feedback, industryknowledge and scientificallybacked data, says Jahanzaib Ansari, the companys CEO.

The software system does not eliminate the person to person interview; it only acts as a highly intelligent screening tool, allowing employers to get the best applicant to the interview a lot quicker. Since its founding in 2016, the start-up is already disrupting the retail and hospitality industry by saving employers an immense amount of time and money in the screening and short-listing process of hiring by using the power of AI.

The company is further enhancing their system alongside IBM Watsons cutting edge Artificial Intelligence technology, based out of IBMsInnovation Space in Toronto.

Artificial Intelligence has the potential to have an enormous impact on the Human Resources industry.

Here are 5 ways that stand out:

1. Personalization: Personalizing the process of learning at the corporate level and recording critical employee data relating to a broad spectrum of behaviours and learning patterns.

2. Improved Recruitment: HR is a highly human-centric realm. Since human beings are complicated creatures, its very hard to acquire basic analysis-focused data on individuals during the hiring process. This is where AI helps in predictive analytics using natural language, thus speeding up the recruitment process by empowering businesses to weed out undesirable candidates faster, while committing far fewer mistakes.

3. Workflow Automation: AI is poised to be a game-changer when it comes to workflow problems. Automating processes like interview scheduling, employee performance reviews, employee on-boarding, and even the answering of basic HR questions - all fall under this category.

4. Better prediction models: Prediction models are vital in improving efficiency, productivity and overall cost effectiveness for any organization. This is where AI works its magic by analyzing turnover rates, internal employee engagement levels and communications or any other unforeseen problems that could take months or years to be visibly surface. Artificial Intelligence will always be one step ahead of companies themselves.

5. Reducing Hiring Biases: The quality of data that a companys AI is being trained on is really important. One of AIs fundamental goals should naturally be to help companies build a stronger & more diverse workforce.This means that the data being used to train the AI should be as unbiased as possible, so it can really help businesses increase their employment equity in an honest way.

With a lot of retail brick and mortars shutting down, a huge focus has been put on the in-store customer experience.

It is critical that employers get the best applicant for a position 10x quicker by using technologies and software that work as an enabler; making daily operations alot more efficient via the power of AI, instead of replacing the traditional recruiter altogether.

So whats the take-away here?

HR professionals need to embrace big data, so they can be prepared to adapt the profound technological advancements in AI that are set to revolutionise the recruitment industry forever!

With the fast paced and ever evolving world of business going through tremendous technological changes, it is imperative that companies around the globe - particularly those in the HR, Retail and Hospitality industries - understand, employ and effectively apply the power of Artificial Intelligence.

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The Power of Artificial Intelligence - A Glimpse at HR's Future - HuffPost

Workers are not as enthusiastic about artificial intelligence and automation as their bosses – The Australian Financial Review

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Businesses are enthusiastically investigating the possibilities of artificial intelligence and automation, and workers are scared for their future.

A quarter of Australians fear redundancy due to increased use of artificial intelligence and automation as businesses increasingly investigate options, according to a new report into business use of emerging technologies.

The study from research firm Telsyte looks broadly across Australian businesses and the rapid adoption of new technologies under way, including artificial intelligence and automation, wearable technology, augmented and virtual reality and drones.

It finds that nearly two-thirds of businesses are already dabbling with machine learning or deep learning to improve operations or influence business decision making, with so-called artificial intelligence and automation technology use growing for things ranging from physical robots to digital assistants and chatbots.

Telsytemanaging director Foad Fadaghi said there was a distinct difference in the enthusiasm for intelligent automation among company executives from the general population. Despite regular statements that automation will augment rather than replace jobs, workers are not buying it.

The study found that financial processes are considered ripe for early automation with 65 per cent of chief information officers questioned saying they saw opportunities to deploy machine learning in financial modelling and fraud detection.

However, it is in customer-facing roles that jobs may be noticeably affected first, with almost two thirds of organisations saying they intend to use cognitive computing for applications like chatbots, which mimic human interaction.

"AI intentions are running at two speeds in the Australian market, with businesses much more bullish about using automation technology than consumers," Mr Fadaghi said.

"There is an undercurrent of fear in the average consumer about the impact of AI on jobs and future prospects for later generations in a highly automated world. When we compare with consumer research, we see that mainstream Australians are cautious about technology, in particular automation.

"One in four Australians are concerned they might lose their job to a machine or robot in the future, and only 45 per cent think the future will be betterthanks to the opportunities technology offers."

Elsewhere in the Telsyte study it found that organisations are rapidly adopting the internet of things (IoT), which means non-traditional connected devices like sensors and cameras providing vast amounts of data for analysis.

Almost 90 per cent of technology executives in the study said their organisation would be using IoT for important processes within five years, and 59 per cent of early adopters said they are already seeing cost savings from its introduction.

Meanwhile, over 60 per cent see value in smart wearable devices such as smart watches and smart glasses in their organisation, for internal operations, access control and customer-facing applications. More than half of organisations are investigating augmented reality applications and a quarter of tech executives believe that drones or autonomous flying vehicles will become useful.

Mr Fadaghi said this would include most sectors like agriculture and fishing with underwater drones, mining operations, security and surveillance, transport and logistics, warehousing and emergency services

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Workers are not as enthusiastic about artificial intelligence and automation as their bosses - The Australian Financial Review

Brainpower is so yesterday leave it to AI – Kansas City Star

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Kansas City Star
Brainpower is so yesterday leave it to AI
Kansas City Star
Smart people are starting to worry about the brainpower of machines. A recent report from Harvard said the emergence of artificial intelligence as a weapon poses as much game-changing potential as the airplane and the nuclear bomb. They worry it could ...

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Brainpower is so yesterday leave it to AI - Kansas City Star

Chinese State Council Guidelines for Artificial Intelligence / Boing … – Boing Boing

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The Chinese government's wish-list for AI researchers is pretty ambitious: "Breakthroughs should be made in basic theories of AI, such as big data intelligence, multimedia aware computing, human-machine hybrid intelligence, swarm intelligence and automated decision-making."

They'll get right on that, I'm sure.

A common technology system should be developed based on algorithms, data and hardware. Technologies in the system include a computational knowledge engine, swarm computing, virtual reality modeling and natural language processing.

Innovation platforms should be constructed, such as an open-source computing platform, which can promote coordination among different hardware, software and clouds.

More AI professionals and scientists should be trained.

The AI economy should be promoted. New industries using AI technology should be developed, such as smart robot, smart vehicle, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and smart terminal. Traditional industries should be integrated with AI to develop smart manufacturing, agriculture, finance, logistics and business.

Chinese State Council Guidelines for Artificial Intelligence [Beyond the Beyond]

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The Department of Agricultures chief scientist oversees more than 1,000 scientists in 100 research facilities: Trumps pick to run the agency is Sam Clovis, a climate-denying talk-radio host who not only lacks any kind of scientific degrees he didnt take a single science course at university.

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Chinese State Council Guidelines for Artificial Intelligence / Boing ... - Boing Boing

The future of jobs: Automation technologies, robotics, and artificial intelligence – ZDNet

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Recently, McDonald's shares hit an all-time high, buoyed by Wall Street's expectations that investments in automation technologies will drive business value: As part of its "Experience of the Future" initiative, McDonald's announced plans to roll out digital ordering kiosks that will replace cashiers in 2,500 of its locations. The company will also extend its customer self-service efforts, deploying mobile ordering at 14,000 locations.

Given McDonald's bold bet, where does your company currently stand in its use of automation technologies to transform your workforce and reshape customer experience?

The forward march of automation technologies -- which include hardware (e.g. robots, digital kiosks), software (e.g. AI), and customer self-service (e.g. mobile ordering) -- continues to reshape the world economy. Automation has already started to reshape every company's workforce, including yours.

Leaders across all roles, companies, and verticals are taking note. My research on the future of jobs caught the attention of many business leaders when Forrester forecasted that automation will cannibalize 17 percent of US jobs by 2027, partly offset by the growth of 10 percent new jobs from the automation economy. Most importantly, we see human-machine teaming as a key workforce trend in the future, as more and more human employees find themselves working side-by-side with robotic colleagues.

To follow up on this research, I recently published a second report that digs deeper into the automation technologies, robotics, and AI in the workforce that will reshape how work is done. As automation technologies become more prevalent, organizations need long-term strategic plans for their workforce.

Why? For starters, companies face the new challenge of implementing and managing a mixed human/machine workforce. To navigate this world, they must understand the use cases and relative maturity of key technologies that will power this new era, then build a strategic plan to support long-term investments.

In this research, Forrester identified and evaluated twelve key automation categories -- including virtual agents, retail/warehouse robots, and cognitive AI -- that will drive change in the workforce. Our analysis groups these technologies into specific maturity phases and their potential for business value creation. Here are a few key takeaways:

There are five automation technologies that have proven to be more than just an idea -- and all have received investments from companies like AWS, IBM, and Microsoft. One of the five, AI solutions solving complex problems, will grow to $48.5 billion by 2021. An example in this category is that in 2000, Goldman Sachs employed 600 equity traders; Today, the investment firms employs only two -- but it has hired 200 computer engineers to support automated trading efforts.

Automation technologies with longer histories are seeking reinvention, and three of the technologies I analyzed fall into this category. For example, while industrial robots have operated at scale since the 1980s, they're now transforming due to current technologies and are working better with humans as a result.

Read also: Prepare for increasing 'nation-state' cyberattacks with strategy, not technology | How to get in front of digital disruption | The shift away from bimodal is already happening and CIOs need to get on board -- fast | Three key challenges that could derail your AI project

Because the AI and robotics technologies evaluated in this research are immature, enterprises must tread carefully. While some automation solutions -- like robotic process automation (RPA) or self-service kiosks -- have broad deployments to learn from, in other cases you'll be at the vanguard of inventing the future. But it's imperative to experiment now, because over the next five years, companies that fail to bring robots into their workforce will under-perform those that do it well.

In the end, enterprises need to develop a strategic plan as automation technologies continue to change the workforce. To start, companies can benchmark their use of a wide variety of automation technologies against their maturity, tap into technologies they've not previously deployed (but that are making a big impact on other companies), and begin to develop their own five-to-10-year strategic digital workforce transformation plan around automation.

J.P. Gownder is a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester.

Interested in hearing more? Listen to Forrester's 'What It Means' podcast where I discuss the future of jobs and how these technologies are changing the workforce.

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The future of jobs: Automation technologies, robotics, and artificial intelligence - ZDNet

Here’s why Inland officials hope the American Aerospace Technical Academy will attract high-tech jobs to the area – Press-Enterprise

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Officials with the March Joint Powers Authority believe a new training program they are supporting eventually will attract more high- tech industry to the Riverside area.

Last week, March Field Air Museum became host for the American Aerospace Technical Academy, a nonprofit school that teaches nondestructive testing. A class of 16 students began learning different methods of assessing the quality of mechanical and machined metal parts used in shipbuilding and automobile brakes.

Right now, its a little piece, said Riverside Councilman Mike Gardner, chairman of the March Joint Powers Commission. I think it has the potential to very quickly become a big piece. If you tied this to things like the Air Resources Board bringing its testing facility to UCR, I think theres a lot of synergy here that can really take off.

John Stewart is the founder of the technical school. While open to anyone, its main goal is to train veterans and low-income students for what Stewart says is an industry in need of skilled workers.

Nondestructive testing is a very niche market, Stewart said.

It uses tools such as ultrasound, radiography and magnetic-particles to find flaws in structural materials and metal components.

Stewart says the school at the March museum is one of the few in the country that offers full-time instruction for the 10-week, 400-hour course. With grant support, most students attend the school for free, he said.

You have a lot of other people who provide NDT training, but they provide one week at a time with several weeks in between, or a few hours a week, Stewart said.

Last year he was part of a coalition, along with Cal State Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Unified School District, that received a $1 million grant from the California Community Colleges Chancellors Office. The grant is aimed at establishing apprenticeship programs in industries that have not traditionally had them. Stewart said he is working with such firms as SpaceX and NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory to hire graduates of the NDT course.

Mike Forester, 74, of Ontario, started the training program in 2015 in Los Angeles. He now works for Integrated Quality Services in Ontario. He primarily does radiographic analysis of welds.

A Marine Corps veteran, Forester said he found the training program to be comprehensive and intense.

Several of his classmates who also got jobs at the Ontario firm, have left and are working for SpaceX and other companies, he said.

Kelly Bartlett, 47, is an Army veteran living at the U.S. Vets facility near March Air Reserve Base. Bartlett said he has been homeless for years and got tied into the program through U.S. Vets, a nonprofit agency that helps veterans get back on their feet.

I feel Im finally ready to move forward, and I feel this has tremendous potential, Bartlett said during a class break. I look forward to learning every facet.

Jesse Gossling, 25, came from Illinois to enroll in the course. He said he found out about the training during a counseling session at a Tony Robbins seminar. A veteran of both the Navy and the Marine Corps, he said the course was costing him nothing. He was impressed by the first day of class.

They are shoving information down our throats, he said. Im learning a lot. I have three chapters to learn today.

Jamil Dada, president of the March museums board and a member of the California Workforce Development Board, said the training program is also tied in with the Val Verde Unified School District in Perris.

We started this originally with the high school, and we added a program for veterans, he said. We get calls from people for workers, but we dont have people with the qualifications. Thats what this is. Its all about upscaling our workforce.

Were looking to expand this thing with other school districts, he added.

Gardner said March JPA is planning to build a $4 million, 50,000-square-foot building on Van Buren Boulevard, just west of Riverside National Cemetery. Part of that building, he said, would be classroom space for the academy.

He and the JPAs executive director Danielle Wheeler said it was part of a long-term push to bring defense and aerospace companies to the area. Wheeler said when she met with Defense Department officials recently in Washington, D.C., they told her such technicians are needed. The academy, she said, can be a source for those workers.

Its going to drive that defense industry here, she said.

Information regarding the American Aerospace Technical Academy is available at http://www.aatatraining.org

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Here's why Inland officials hope the American Aerospace Technical Academy will attract high-tech jobs to the area - Press-Enterprise

Some Spartan College aerospace maintenance instructors are on … – Tulsa World

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About 22 Spartan College aerospace mechanics instructors in Tulsa are on strike because of concerns about an increase in the cost of employer health-care coverage.

Several who were on strike demonstrated roadside Monday in front of Spartan College of Aeronautics and Technologys main campus in Tulsa at 8820 E. Pine St. Contract negotiations stopped Thursday after they had been ongoing since discussions began in April.

Spartan College trains airplane pilots and technicians.

Avionics instructor Morgan Neal said union members walked away from the negotiating table Thursday because Spartan College was proposing a 15 percentage point increase on health-care costs for plans that included a spouse, child or family. That would raise the employees burden of the plan to 50 percent from 35 percent in the five-year deal that expired April 30, Neal said.

He said the increase would cost an estimated $3,000 more per employee each year on those plans.

We did try to negotiate with them; we even tried to table the discussion, Neal said. They didnt want to move onto any other issue until we had settled health coverage.

The instructors are members of United Aerospace Workers Local 286.

Spartan College spokeswoman Sheila Curley called the unions walkout abrupt and premature. She said that while family plans were subject to a proposed 15 percentage point increase, individual plans were to stay the same.

Curley said rising health coverage costs is out of Spartan Colleges control and is a national issue that affects private corporations, publicly traded companies and government entities alike.

These are things that have only been discussed, and terms of an agreement have never been reached to be submitted to corporate or leadership for approval or denial, Curley said. Because it simply never reached terms for consideration, the terms are still unknown at this point.

Curley said the strike involves faculty of the aerospace maintenance and non-destructive testing programs, not the pilot faculty. She said the school has 55 maintenance instructors, with some who are continuing to teach despite the strike. Online courses are unaffected, she said.

However, Curley added, certified instructors from other Spartan College campuses are on their way now to Tulsa to resume the interrupted classes. Spartan College, headquartered in Dallas, has campuses in Los Angeles and Denver.

Neal said at this point the union wont rejoin discussions until it receives a contract that members feel is worthy of a vote.

At this point were waiting on the college to bring us a contract that we can look at and vote on, he said. As soon as they call us and tell us theyve got a proposal, well go back to work. Were waiting on them to bring us something.

Curley said its impossible to speculate on how long the strike may go, but that its up to the union to return to negotiations.

Right now they prematurely left those discussions, so theres nothing for them to vote on and nothing for Spartan College to consider, she said.

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Some Spartan College aerospace maintenance instructors are on ... - Tulsa World

Ghana to host 1st African aerospace exhibition – BusinessGhana … – BusinessGhana

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Ghana will host the first ever Aerospace and Aviation Exhibition (African Air Expo 2017) in West Africa, scheduled for October 24-26, 2017, at the Kotoka International Airport in Accra.

The event, would, among other objectives, to connect professionals from all areas in the aviation industry to examine human capital needs in the African aviation and aerospace industries, is under the auspices of the Ministry of Aviation in collaboration with 4M Events, based in Dubai.

The Minister of Aviation, Mrs CecIlia Abena Dapaah, yesterday inaugurated a 25-member local organising committee to oversee the event which is expected to attract delegates from all parts of the world.

Membership

The committee has representatives from the Aviation Ministry, the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority, the Ghana Airports Company Limited, the Ministries of Tourism and Foreign Affairs, the Ghana Immigration Service and the Ghana Armed Forces.

The rest are National Security, the Ghana Police Service, State Protocol, Port Health, the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority, Air Traffic Control and the private sector.

Aviation hub

The minister in her inaugural remarks said the ministry was to make Ghana the aviation hub of West Africa for which reason it was important for such an event to be organised to showcase the different opportunities available in the aviation sector in the country.

She said the aviation industry in the country had seen a boost in recent times, a development she attributed to the liberalised aviation policies, the stable political climate and the conducive business environment.

There is, therefore, the need for us as a country to be abreast of technology to meet the dynamic demands in the aviation sector globally, Mrs Dapaah added.

She said the expo would thus provide a forum for interaction among stakeholders and prospective investors in line with the governments policy of public private partnership in the development of the countrys aviation infrastructure and services.

Mrs Dapaah expressed the ministrys commitment to partner with M4 Events to organise the exhibition successfully.

Expectation

Mrs Dapaah urged the committee to bring members invaluable expertise from their various backgrounds to bear on the event since they were identified as important personalities with the requisite experiences to organise the Air Expo.

The task ahead is enormous, yet the resources are limited. I will, therefore, implore you to come up with very pragmatic and innovative ideas to ensure that the event is not only successful but an event to be remembered in the annals of the aviation sector in Ghana and Africa, the minister charged the committee.

The Chairperson of the committee, Mrs Joyce Bannerman Wood, thanked the minister for the confidence reposed in members and said the committee would acquit itself well in the organisation of the expo.

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Porcher works with Stelia Aerospace on thermoplastic fuselage – CompositesWorld

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Porcher Industries (Badinieres, France)has been working withStelia Aerospace (Toulouse, France)during its recent Arches BoxTP research project.Stelia Aerospace has developed a full-scale thermoplastic fuselage demonstrator to allow an internal evaluation of the use of high performance thermoplastics - as opposed to thermosets within a next generation single aisle aircraft. The demonstrator featured all the typical characteristics of a primary fuselage airframe those being thin skin, lightning protection, stringers and frames, to allow a detailed evaluation of these technologies in a true industrial environment.

For the ArchesBox TP project, Porchers Industries technical team developed an organosheet from the Pipreg range of thermoplastic solutions as the optimal material for the frames based on the initial Stelia Aerospace specification.

The PEKK based Pipreg laminates, supplied use a specific carbon reinforcement, providing a reportedexceptional combination of mechanical and fatigue properties from cryogenic to very high temperatures. Thanks to a cutting-edge and disruptive development mixing chemistry and processing, Porcher Industries has been able to develop an improved and unique interface between fibers and PEKK.

Porcher Pipreg laminates satisfied all testing, engineering and processing targets for the Arches BoxTP project and were used by Stelia Aerospace to produce all composite frames in the demonstrator module, as well as being incorporated into an overmolded access door component.

Porcher Industries has worked with Stelia Aerospace for more than two years. Following on from the success of this recent project they look forward to working with Stelia Aerospace to continue the development of innovative high-performance thermoplastic composite components in aerospace applications.

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Porcher works with Stelia Aerospace on thermoplastic fuselage - CompositesWorld

Why XPRIZE Is Asking Writers to Take Us Through a Wormhole to 2037 – Singularity Hub

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In a world of accelerating change, educating the public about the implications of technological advancements is extremely important. We can continue to write informative articles and speculate about the kind of future that lies ahead. Or instead, we can take readers on an immersive journey by using science fiction to paint vivid images of the future for society.

The XPRIZE Foundation recently announced a science fiction storytelling competition. In recent years, the organization has backed and launched a range of competitions to propel innovation in science and technology. These have been aimed at a variety of challenges, such as transforming the lives of low-literacy adults, tackling climate change, and creating water from thin air.

Their sci-fi writing competition asks participants to envision a groundbreaking future for humanity. The initiative, in partnership with Japanese airline ANA, features 22 sci-fi stories from noteworthy authors that are now live on the website. Each of these stories is from the perspective of a different passenger on a plane that travels 20 years into the future through a wormhole. Contestants will compete to tell the story of the passenger in Seat 14C.

In addition to the competition, XPRIZE has brought together a science fiction advisory council to work with the organization and imagine what the future will look like. According to Peter Diamandis, founder and executive chairman, As the future becomes harder and harder to predict, we look forward to engaging some of the worlds most visionary storytellers to help us imagine whats just beyond the horizon and chart a path toward a future of abundance.

Why is an organization like XPRIZE placing just as much importance on fiction as it does on reality? As Isaac Asimov has pointed out, Modern science fiction is the only form of literature that consistently considers the nature of the changes that face us. While the rest of the world reports on a new invention, sci-fi authors examine how these advancements affect the human condition.

True science fiction is distinguished from pure fantasy in that everything that happens is within the bounds of the physical laws of the universe. Weve already seen how sci-fi can inspire generations and shape the future. 3D printers, wearable technology, and smartphones were first seen in Star Trek. Targeted advertising and air touch technology was first seen in Philip K. Dicks 1958 story The Minority Report. Tanning beds, robot vacuums, and flatscreen TVs were seen in The Jetsons. The internet and a world of global instant communication was predicted by Arthur C. Clarke in his work long before it became reality.

Sci-fi shows like Black Mirror or Star Trek arent just entertainment. They allow us to imagine and explore the influence of technology on humanity. For instance, how will artificial intelligence impact human relationships? How will social media affect privacy? What if we encounter alien life? Good sci-fi stories take us on journeys that force us to think critically about the societal impacts of technological advancements.

As sci-fi author Yaasha Moriah points out, the genre is universal because it tackles hard questions about human nature, morality, and the evolution of society, all through the narrative of speculation about the future. If we continue to do A, will it necessarily lead to problems B and C? What implicit lessons are being taught when we insist on a particular policy? When we elevate the importance of one thing over anothersay, security over privacywhat could be the potential benefits and dangers of that mentality? Thats why science fiction has such an enduring appeal. We want to explore deep questions, without being preached at. We want to see the principles in action, and observe their results.

At its core, this genre is a harmonious symbiosis between two distinct disciplines: science and literature. It is an extension of STEAM education, an educational approach that combines science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics. Story-telling with science fiction allows us to use the arts in order to educate and engage the public about scientific advancements and its implications.

According to the National Science Foundation, research on art-based learning of STEM, including the use of narrative writing, works beyond expectation. It has been shown to have a powerful impact on creative thinking, collaborative behavior and application skills.

What does it feel like to travel through a wormhole? What are some ethical challenges of AI? How could we terraform Mars? For decades, science fiction writers and producers have answered these questions through the art of storytelling.

What better way to engage more people with science and technology than through sparking their imaginations? The method makes academic subject areas many traditionally perceived as boring or dry far more inspiring and engaging.

XPRIZEs competition theme of traveling 20 years into the future through a wormhole is an appropriate beacon for the genre. In many ways, sci-fi is a precautionary form of time travel. Before we put a certain technology, scientific invention, or policy to use, we can envision and explore what our world would be like if we were to do so.

Sci-fi lets us explore different scenarios for the future of humanity before deciding which ones are more desirable. Some of these scenarios may be radically beyond our comfort zone. Yet when were faced with the seemingly impossible, we must remind ourselves that if something is within the domain of the physical laws of the universe, then its absolutely possible.

Stock Media provided by NASA_images/ Pond5

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Why XPRIZE Is Asking Writers to Take Us Through a Wormhole to 2037 - Singularity Hub

Ascension, Goodwill program leads to job placements – Journal Times

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RACINE COUNTY Since July 2011, Goodwill Industries of Southeastern Wisconsin and Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare now Ascension have teamed up to train nearly 1,500 people in the health care and customer service industries.

Of that number, which includes people from Racine County, 426 have been permanently placed within Wheaton/Ascension.

The program that facilitates this opportunity for placement is dubbed Project Prism.

Applicants work through Goodwills TalentBridge program to get paid training by Ascension in either medical group operations or patient access/business office in order to create great patient advocates, according to Suzanne Maldonado, managing director of professional services for TalentBridge.

Prism was born of a desire for better customer service for Ascension customers. Trainees need not have an extensive work history, but soft skills and a strong sense of empathy, emotional intelligence, critical thinking and organization are preferred, if not required, Maldonado said.

The biggest change from a hiring perspective is: In health care there was a big focus on people who worked in health care before, Maldonado said.

By shifting the narrow focus of prior experience to a larger swath of workers who have good soft skills, it has fostered a more fluid workforce, she said.

One such example is Mirabel Berinyuy Kongnyuy, a woman originally from Cameroon who now lives in Greenfield. Growing up, she said, she knew the job market in her home country was sparse at best.

Kongnyuy said she observed people who went through years and years of school but did not get hired for any work, so she took a gamble and came to the United States last February. She started in Project Prism in August and was hired by Ascension as a customer service representative.

There was somewhat of a language barrier at first though she and most people she knew in Cameroon are bilingual but Kongnyuy said she quickly picked everything up.

I thought people might not accept my culture, Kongnyuy said. (My classmates) made me feel at home.

Customer service representatives are started at $13 to $14 an hour, Maldonado said. This allowed Kongnyuy to help out her family back home.

When you can train people and make them comfortable in jobs, thats when they succeed, said Cheryl Lightholder, manager of communications for Goodwill.

The program itself lasts about 11 weeks, starting with three full days of training with Goodwill, then 10 to 11 weeks with Ascension.

Though Ascenions takeover of Wheaton could have easily thrown a wrench into Project Prism, the transition was smooth, and Prism will continue as it has been for the past six years until further notice, Maldonado said.

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Ascension ESPY’s – Gonzales Weekly Citizen – Weekly Citizen

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I cant hand them shiny trophies or whisk them away to Hollywood for the glamorous red-carpet treatment, but Ive written this column to honor these parish athletes for their terrific play throughout the season.

All of the biggest stars in entertainment and in sports showed up for the ESPY Awards last week.

There, professional and collegiate athletes were honored for their great achievements during the sports year.

Well, I thought Ascension high-school athletes deserved the same recognition.

I cant hand them shiny trophies or whisk them away to Hollywood for the glamorous red-carpet treatment, but Ive written this column to honor these parish athletes for their terrific play throughout the season.

The first award is for Breakthrough Athlete of the Year. There are many players that could have earned this distinction.

Off of the top of my head, I can think of two freshmen softball players in St. Amants Alyssa Romano and Dutchtowns Paige Patterson.

Ultimately, I decided to go with East Ascension football player Cameron Wire.

Prior to last season, Wire was strictly known for his exploits on the basketball court. As a football player, he was still a work in progress.

However, Wire seemed to flip the switch in 2016. He came out of nowhere to earn a starting job on the Spartans offensive line.

In addition to making the all-district and All-Parish teams, Wire became one of the hottest prospects in the area and received scholarship offers from powerhouses like Alabama and Florida State. He ultimately chose to make his verbal commitment to LSU over the summer.

He now heads into his senior season as one of the top offensive linemen in the state.

For Best Game, look no further than the classic the Ascension Catholic baseball team had against Central Catholic in the state semifinals.

The Bulldogs took a 4-0 lead against the defending Class 1A state champions, just to see Central Catholic storm back to tie the game.

The contest remained deadlocked after seven innings, creating bonus baseball.

After 11 tension-filled innings, the game finally came to a close when Central Catholics Mitchell Lemoine came up with a walkoff RBI single to punch their ticket to the title game.

The nod for Best Coach goes to St. Amant footballs David Oliver.

Oliver was one of the many residents of St. Amant that had their house flooded last August. Many players on his team suffered the same fate.

Despite dealing with the personal hardships, he was able to get his squad ready for the 2016 season, and they had the best year of any team in the parish.

The Gators went 9-1 during the regular season, finished as runner-up in District 5-5A and reached the state quarterfinals.

Best Comeback Athlete goes to Dutchtown football player Kyle Sarrazin.

Sarrazin came into 2016 hungry after being forced to miss almost all of 2015 with a serious knee injury.

He recovered beautifully, becoming a great anchor for the Griffins defensive line, on his way to being named all-district and All-Parish. He signed with Louisiana College.

Best Female Athlete goes to St. Amants Taylor Tidwell. Tidwell was the driving force behind both the Lady Gators volleyball and softball teamsboth of which reached the state quarterfinals.

In volleyball, she was named All-State and the districts MVP. In softball (where shes committed to LSU) she made first-team All-District, All-Parish and All-State.

Best Male Athlete goes to St. Amants Briggs Bourgeois. Bourgeois was a standout in three sports for the Gators.

In football, he was All-State and district MVP. He also signed with Southern Miss.

In soccer, he was district MVP for the fourth straight season and the states Offensive MVP, and in baseball, he was a starter on a Gator squad that reached the second round of the playoffs.

The Best Moment would have to be when the St. Amant football team played their first home game at The Pit on Sept. 9. Just a few weeks earlier, the stadium was under water.

It was a great moment for the St. Amant community as they were able to come together and experience a little bit of normalcy in the face of so much strife and heartache.

The Best Upset was during the boys basketball regular season when Donaldsonville made a road trip to face two-time defending 3A champion University.

The Tigers were huge underdogs, but they werent intimidated. Ladarius Jackson hit a buzzer-beating 3-pointer that gave them a scintillating 81-78 victory.

University went on to finish the season as Division II runner-up.

The distinction of Best Team goes to the Ascension Catholic baseball squad.

The Bulldogs had a terrific regular season, and in the first two rounds of the playoffs, they dominatedwinning by a combined score of 17-3.

This pushed them through to the state semifinals for the first time since 2005.

There, they played defending champion Central Catholic in the 11-inning marathon, falling just short of the championship game.

Nine of their players made the All-District 6-1A team.

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The task of the church – The Hillsdale Daily News

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Jesus ascension is a key event in the history of redemption. The ascension of Jesus is when he returned to heaven, and is recorded for us in Acts 1:1-11. In fact, his ascension into heaven is on par in importance with his death and resurrection. Without the ascension, redemption would be incomplete.

Why? Without the ascension we would not have a high priest in heaven who is praying for us. If youre not sure whether thats even necessary, Id encourage you to read through the Old Testament. It makes clear that we cannot approach God without a mediator. In the Old Testament the mediator was the high priest, and the New Testament declares that we have an even better High Priest in Jesus!

But the ascension raises some questions. What was supposed to happen after Jesus ascended into heaven? If Jesus was just going to be gone for a generation, or two, then it might not have been much of a problem. However, he left with no indication of when he would return. Moreover, here we are almost two-thousand years later and still no return.

Some in church history have tried to make up a kind of return. Some will say that he returned in 70 AD at the destruction of the Temple. Others pinpoint a specific date much later, like 1914. What is clear, though, is that none of these dates really line up with what Jesus said his return would be like (new creation, end of sin and sorrow, etc). Others have tried to argue that Jesus left the kingdom-building up to his disciples. This is where we get ideas like Christendom or attempts to make America into a Christian country.

It should be comforting to know that Jesus own disciples at that time didnt fully understand it all. In Acts 1:6 they come to Jesus and ask, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?

John Calvin famously says of this verse that there are more errors here than words. Throughout Jesus ministry, the disciples misunderstood what he had come to do. When he was rejected in a town, two of his disciples asked if they should call down fire from heaven to consume the people, reminiscent of Gods judgment against Sodom and Gomorrah. Jesus rebuked them.

When Jesus tells his disciples that he must suffer death, Peter tells him no. Jesus rebukes him with the stinging words, Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.

Just as in those instances, so here they do not fully comprehend what Jesus has told them. They display three errors: they think that the time is now; they think that it is geo-political kingdom that Jesus came to establish; and they think that the center of the Kingdom is in a particular land.

They still miss the point. They do not understand that Jesus is not just the fulfillment of the Messianic King but the fulfillment of all of Gods promises. He is the true Israel; he brings the kingdom. All of it centers on him.

What, then, should they do? Jesus tells them, It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. (Acts 1:7-8)

The first helpful part of this answer from Jesus is that his disciples are not supposed to worry about dates. Whenever you see someone predicting the return of Jesus, then, theyre doing something that theyre not supposed to do. Its not for them to know. God is working things according to his timetable, not ours.

What are we supposed to do then? If were not just to wait around for the kingdom to come, but were also not supposed to force the kingdom to come, what do we do? Jesus is just as clear here. They were to wait for the Holy Spirit (who comes in Acts 2) and then they are to be witnesses to Christ. That is, they were to begin the ordinary work of the church. This is the very thing that he commanded in the Great Commission. The church is to be active in spreading the Gospel of Christ. This is precisely what the book of Acts is all about.

Pastor Everett Henes, the pastor of the Hillsdale Orthodox Presbyterian Church, can be reached at pastorhenes@gmail.com.

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The Summer of Love was more than hippies and LSD it was the start of modern individualism – The Independent

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Something remarkable happened to the youth of the Western world 50 years ago. In the summer of 1967 a huge number of American teenagers nobody knows exactly how many, but some estimate between 100,000 and 200,000 escaped what they saw as their suburban prisons and made for the city district of Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco.

We now look back on the Summer of Love the name originated at a meeting of counter-cultural leaders in the spring as a lost golden age of bliss, excitement and adventure; a paradise which can never be recreated. But in actual fact, this centre-piece of the Sixtiesstill looms large over popular culture and social mores today.

Drawing on utopian traditions which date back to the founding fathers, and fuelled by the euphoric and hallucinatory powers of marijuana and LSD, the summer of 1967 saw an extraordinary culture rise in a remarkably short space of time.

There was a creative explosion in the arts, music and fashion combined with a belief that the world could be born anew. Characterised by the vivid, flowing colours of psychedelic art, and a belief that love was the solution to all problems, hippy culture set out to transform the world by rejecting every social, political, economic and aesthetic feature of mainstream Western society.

This hippy revolution became a media sensation with the release of Scott Mackenzies song, San Francisco, in May 1967, which was a huge hit in the US and much of Europe.

The story goes that a paradise of peace and love prevailed in San Francisco for much of the year, but came sadly unstuck very soon after. This new Garden of Eden was destroyed progressively by the sheer numbers of teenagers who descended on Haight-Ashbury. One leading figure described the resulting chaos as a zoo.

Commercialisation of the hippie dream compounded the problem and disillusion set in. The twin shock of the Manson murders in August 1969, and the brutal killing by Hells Angels of an audience member at the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont a few months later, provided the epitaph to an era.

According to this version, the survivors renounced psychedelia, abandoned the vain belief that love would solve everything and knuckled down to political action gay liberation, second wave feminism and environmentalism. Or they found gurus and became new agers. The Sixties were sealed off, preserved in aspic as a lost golden age, a time of innocence. It was over, finished, forbidden to anyone who wasnt there.

However, like all golden age stories, this narrative is largely bogus.

Happy together

Criticism of the Summer of Love mythology dates back to 1967 itself, to the Diggers named after the English radicals of 1649-50. This guerrilla street theatre group regarded the hippy phenomenon as a media creation, a distraction from the true attempt to build a new and more just society. They denounced the irresponsible preaching of psychedelic guru Timothy Leary, who urged teenagers to take LSD and renounce work and education, and attacked the catchy nonsense of MacKenzies song as a marketing ploy.

The truth is that like all apparently simple cultural phenomena, the Summer of Love was complex. There was a deep tension between the Diggers back-to-basics idealistic communism, the commercialism of hippy capitalists selling bells and beads, the advocates of psychedelic transformation, and the politicos of the new left based in Berkeley, California.

The single issue all these groups opposed was American involvement in Vietnam. When the war came to an end with the Paris peace accord in 1973, there was no longer a binding external enemy. The illusion of a single, principled counterculture vanished.

Flowers in your hair

In reality, there was no single Sixties, no golden age, and nothing to come to an end. Instead there were three taste cultures that all coincided, and started to change societys values.

The first of these cultures was based in fashion and music. Peacock styles for men long hair and bright colours and women in mini-skirts or flowing hippy garb. The second group were political revolutionaries, post and neo-Marxists for whom the transformation of socio-economic conditions was the pressing priority. The third group believed in inner transformation and liberation achieved through marijuana and LSD.

Though the three groups priorities were fundamentally different, they shared a belief that the past was old and stale, along with a commitment to unfettered individualism. There were, of course, still significant overlaps, and when psychedelic culture met the radical left, notions of protest as play and performance took centre stage.

Half a century on from the height of the Summer of Love, all three taste cultures have survived, but with a different relevance. Individuality and self-expression in fashion and music has continued unhindered. Traditions of political protest flourish as new targets are found in environmental activism and sexual politics. And new generations of spiritual seekers find inspiration in psychedelic drugs, now also known as entheogens.

Defining the Sixties as a single unique period, a lost golden age, seals it off from contemporary experience. The sun may have set on the Summer of Love, but the warmth of its rays are still being felt today.

Nicholas Campion is anassociate professor in cosmology and culture, principal lecturer in the faculty of humanities and the performing arts at The University of Wales Trinity Saint David. This article was originally published on The Conversation (www.theconversation.com)

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Record-breaking heatwave leaves panda in a trance at Shanghai Zoo – 9news.com.au

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As a record-breaking heatwave plagues much of China, pandas in the countrys capital have struggled to battle the scorching temperatures.

Authorities on Friday issued a weather red alert as temperatures in Shanghai reached a new high of 40.9 degrees, troubling animals at Shanghai Zoo.

A panda was filmed ambling slowly through its enclosure before idly sitting down in a trance.

Pandas need an indoor temperature of about 25 degrees Celsius. If it gets hotter than 28 degrees Celsius, we dont let them out, a zookeeper told AFP.

Pandas arent afraid of the cold but they are afraid of the heat.

Zookeepers left large blocks of ice inside enclosures to help animals brave the heat, with pandas particularly enjoying a frozen apple or three.

They werent the only ones troubled by the stubborn heatwave, with local media reporting an increase in hospital patients suffering from heat-related illnesses.

Chinas most populous city has baked under soaring temperatures for more than two weeks, reaching its hottest point on Friday afternoon since the launch of its benchmark weather station in 1872, the municipal weather bureau said.

A red alert is triggered when temperatures in excess of 40 degrees are forecast and comes with a warning to members of the public to remain indoors.

Fridays alert was the first to be issued this year.

Shanghai's weather bureau on Thursday said a stubborn subtropical high and hot south-westerly winds were to blame.

The city is expected to continue to bake at least until early August when typhoon season begins and the weather begins to shift.

With AFP.

Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2017

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Date palm cloning ensures traditional UAE industry has a sweet future – The National

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Franck Marionnet's family set up Al Wathba Marionnet with an Emirati partner in the UAE in 1998. Pawan Singh / The National

The date palm has been a key source of food in the Arabian Gulf for well over 5,000 years and its role in providing sustenance here shows no sign of fading.

Each year tens of thousands of people attend the Liwa Dates Festival, which runs until July 29, a vivid demonstration that dates remain as important a commodity as ever.

With more than 40 million date palms, the UAE is a key centre for the production of the fruit but it is also heavily involved in cloning date palms by tissue culture.

While there are other ways of propagating date palms, only sophisticated laboratory techniques can produce the tens of thousands of genetically identical plants needed by the date-growing industry each year.

Among the few companies able to propagate date palms on an industrial scale is Al Wathba Marionnet, an Emirati-French company with headquarters in Abu Dhabi and with tissue-culture laboratories and greenhouses at Al Khazna, between the capital and Al Ain.

Tissue culture will get rid of any disease and give you the capability to produce in high quantities; theres no other choice, said Franck Marionnet, the companys general manager.

Other companies involved in tissue culturing date palms are Green Coast Nurseries in Fujairah, which collaborates with a UK company, Date Palm Developments, which has tissue-culture laboratories in south-west England.

In addition, UAE University has a date palm tissue culture laboratory that propagates date palms and sells them commercially.

The UAE is a hub for this business because, from the late 1990s, authorities offered tenders for companies to supply thousands of tissue-cultured date palms, said Buthaina Khazal, managing partner of Green Coast Nurseries. These plants were subsequently passed on to farmers.

Mrs Khazal said support from Sheikh Zayed, the UAEs Founding Father, was key to the technologys adoption. However, even now, the techniques remain problematic.

Date palms were one of the last things [scientists] worked on with tissue culture, and the most difficult, said Mrs Khazal.

Mr Marionnet described the use of tissue culture with date palms as very, very specific and something that so few laboratories are able to carry out successfully.

So many started and closed; they cannot succeed, he said. If youre producing strawberries, its very easy. Technically [with date palms] its very, very difficult. Every day we have failures and successes.

We keep improving all the time but we havent produced the ideal production capability and ideal ease of production.

Like other flowering plants, date palms can reproduce by seed. However, because these seeds are created by mixing the genetic material of a male and female plant, they vary from one to another, so the resulting plants may not be consistent in their yield of dates or other characteristics.

Also, it is just female date palms that produce dates, so farmers do not want to waste time and resources growing plants only to find they are male.

As an alternative, female plants can be cloned, generating offspring genetically identical to the parent. One method involves taking offshoots, which are small versions of the plant that grow out from the base of the trunk, and growing them into trees.

When you have a big tree, you have a small one growing from its foot. This one you can take; it will be exactly the same, said Mr Marionnet.

[However], within the lifespan of one adult tree, it will produce 10 to 15 daughters; its not enough to supply the demand.

Also, if the mother plant has a disease, a daughter plant grown from an offshoot will have the same condition. Mr Marionnet said only about 60 per cent of offshoots grow successfully.

So instead, tissue culture, which involves taking tiny pieces of plant derived from offshoots and growing them under laboratory conditions, is used.

The Marionnet family, which has an agricultural company in France with more than a century of history, set Al Wathba Marionnet up with an Emirati partner in the UAE in 1998 because the country is a key market for date palms. They employ 35 people, most in the laboratories and greenhouses, and produces 200,000 to 250,000 date palms each year, many exported to India, Pakistan, Central America, Africa and many Middle Eastern countries.

Green Coast Nurseries, which also exports all over the world, has an 86-hectare nursery where annually it grows more than 100,000 palms, including types of palm other than the date palm, such as the Listona fan palm. The company also has a large date farm.

Mrs Khazal said early varieties of date palm produce fruits from June onwards and the harvesting season runs until October. Most varieties come mid-season - June, July, August. Right now [at] our farm you will see an army of people. They work early morning and in the afternoon, she said.

The date palm industry has methods to ripen dates in storage, allowing them to be harvested early.

Other countries to have date palm tissue culture facilities include Kuwait, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Spain.

How date palms are cloned by tissue culture

Producing date palms by tissue culture typically involves cutting out small sections of the growing part of offshoots and planting them in a nutrient medium before keeping them in the dark. New shoots are generated and are cut out and planted separately. After about six months of growth, the small plants are put in pots and may be kept in a high humidity section of a greenhouse before further growth in a regular area of a greenhouse. Al Wathba Marionnet keeps plants for between eight months and a year in a greenhouse, by which time they are large enough to be sent by air to customers. They are packed in boxes that hold 25 plants and that fit in air-freight pallets. Customers can expect plants to start producing dates after three to five years. The prices charged vary from one date palm variety to another. Al Wathba Marionnet produces about 16 varieties, while the date palm tissue culture laboratory at UAE University publishes a list of 18 varieties that it sells, the most expensive of which, Barhee and Majhool, cost Dh150 per plant. One variety, Khlass, sells for Dh140 each, while the remaining 15 varieties, among them Sultana, Lulu, Debbas and Khadri, are Dh130 per plant. The laboratory pledges that plants will be true-to-type to the variety, be free of pests or diseases, have a strong root system and be able to grow more rapidly than normal offshoots. If looked after properly, survival rates are said to be nearly 100 per cent.

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Date palm cloning ensures traditional UAE industry has a sweet future - The National

In Croatia, Just 57% of People Believe in Theory of Evolution – Total Croatia News

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The result is disappointing, although not surprising.

Turkey has recently announced a new school curriculum that would ban Darwins theory of evolution in primary and secondary education. The decision of the Turkish government has led to protests from proponents of secularism whose foundations have been undermined since 2002 when Recep Tayyip Erdogan came to power, reports Jutarnji List on 23 July 2017.

The events in Turkey have brought the issue into focus in other countries as well. The Pew Research Centre has recently published a study Religious beliefs and national affiliation in Central and Eastern Europe in which it examined attitudes towards evolution in 18 European, mostly former communist, countries. The research in Croatia was conducted by the Ipsos agency from June 2015 to July 2016, on a sample of 1,616 respondents.

The survey showed that the theory of evolution is accepted by 57 percent of the population, which is four percent less than in Serbia, where a scandalous initiative to expel Darwin from the curriculum was launched two months ago.

I think that we in Croatia do not need to fear such efforts for now. Nevertheless, we need to actively promote the learning and teaching of evolution in schools, as it is one of the fundamental pillars of scientific thinking and the foundation of developed societies, based on numerous evidence, said Boris Joki from the Institute for Social Research and the former leader of the expert working group for the implementation of curricular reform.

I would find it extremely harmful and dangerous if the teaching of evolution in Croatian schools were to come into question. Although currently there is no organised and publicly articulated initiative to expel evolution from Croatian schools, during the work of curricular reform expert group there was pressure from certain circles to do precisely that. Some of those who have actively hampered the efforts of more than 500 teachers and university professors personally spoke to me about it. But, as in many other situations, they are not brave enough to say it in public, explained Joki.

A few years ago, he published the book Science and Religion in Croatian Elementary Education: Pupils' Attitudes and Perspectives, which is the first study of the positions of students towards natural sciences and religion. The survey included 500 students of elementary schools in Zagreb who attended Catholic catechism classes.

My scientific paper showed that most students at the end of their primary education belong to the so-called theistic-evolutionist position, in which evolutionist explanation is accepted. They just attribute the initiation of the process to the influence of the supernatural. A smaller number of students take up the entirely evolutionist position, while an even smaller percentage of them completely reject evolution and assume the creationist position, said Joki, whose team has prepared a curriculum of which the teaching of evolution was an essential element.

Working groups that have developed the curricula have devoted particular attention to issues of diversity of the living world. These topics should be taught from the first grade of elementary school, while a more specific discussion of the evolution would begin in the fifth grade of elementary school and should be elaborated through several grades of elementary and high school, as well as through different subjects. That was supposed to bring Croatia closer to developed Western societies, concluded Joki.

Translated from Jutarnji List.

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‘The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs’: Zen and the art of opera – Santa Fe New Mexican

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If opera is going to grow as an art form in the 21st century, its going to need more than directors imposing quirky concepts onto familiar repertoire or composers retracing well-worn tracks of post-Romanticism. Its going to need the kind of musical and dramatic persuasiveness that enthralled the Santa Fe Operas audience on Saturday night at the world premiere of The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, a bracing opera by composer Mason Bates and librettist Mark Campbell.

This is an American tale told with American bravado. Steve Jobs was both adored and vilified as a person and as a corporate genius, but as the visionary behind the Apple computer empire he was ultimately responsible for the iGadgets (phone, pad, pod, ) that have become defining artifacts of modern life. The operas scenario extracts seminal chapters from his life story, casting him as both hero and villain, a man at war with himself. He develops his passion for engineering as a child, achieves technological breakthroughs in his familys garage and gleans ideas from his educational experiences. He has a relationship (and a daughter) with a woman he treats terribly, and he searches for inner peace through Zen Buddhism. He establishes and oversees his mega-successful corporation, he marries a supportive woman who helps tame some of his demons, he gets sick, he dies. Librettist Campbell shuffles these episodes and arrives at a nonlinear narrative that, on the face of it, seems somewhat random; and yet it unrolls with a strong sense of theatrical momentum and is not at all confusing.

Simple, clear-cut, uncluttered and clean sings Jobs at one point, clarifying his design goals to an engineer. Director Kevin Newbury seems to have taken that as his own watchword, masterminding a production in which one scene flows to the next seamlessly, each employing visual details that support the thrust of the action rather than distract from it. Sets, lighting and projections (devised respectively by Victoria Vita Tzykun, Japhy Weideman and 59 Productions) work as a piece. Horizontal bars of multicolored fluorescence contain the space from above, sometimes echoed by thin pillars of light ranged near the sides of the stage. Brightly lit wall-height blocks skim fluidly across the stage as if in balletic choreography. Furnishings are limited to what is essential to the story: workbenches, office desks and chairs, nothing extraneous. The production capitalizes on the projection capacities made available through the theaters recent overhaul. The imagery of Jobs life is projected, often in energetic juxtaposition (circuit boards, press clippings, Zen calligraphy), and a scene where he does LSD with his girlfriend in an apple (!) orchard gets woozy indeed. This is in no way a costume drama, although Paul Careys realistic wardrobe designs help clarify the intermixed chronology and they even make clothing styles of the 1970s and 80s seem relatively unobjectionable, which is quite an achievement. Groups of employees or board members are moved about as precisely as the elements of the set.

Just before an early expanse in which we first see Jobs with his Zen master, Campbells libretto proposes a stage direction: If the back wall of the Santa Fe Opera House can open up for the next scene, that would be lovely. It could and it was, with the last sliver of the sun gleaming on the horizon of the Jemez Mountains. Quite a sun, sings Jobs mentor. Always loveliest when its leaving. And yet, having tapped the houses ace in the hole, Newbury does not overplay the hand. The point is made, the audience inhales the exquisite moment, and the stage soon reconfigures so the plot can move on.

Bates music tends to be powerfully optimistic, trading to some degree in sustained transcendence. The scores vivaciousness comes more from high-energy rhythms, often repeated in a post-minimalist way (John Adams may come to mind), and from a vivid sonic palette. A good deal of advance chatter focused on Bates use of electronic sounds, which he presided over from his computer setup in the orchestra pit. But its not like olden days when superimposing electronic sounds over an orchestra had an oil-and-water quality. Bates has spoken of how he considers modern electronica to be a further family of symphonic music-making strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion, electronica and this score exemplifies his contention, with the electronic sounds weaving in out of the integrated texture with a sense of inevitability. These are hardly unfamiliar sounds, to be sure. We hear them all the time in movie soundtracks, but Bates shows real expertise in using them to enlarge orchestral texture.

He had some challenges to meet. He has been almost exclusively an instrumental composer, building up a solid output of symphonic and chamber works but a vocal catalog that is limited to six choral pieces and two song cycles. An opera obviously requires skill in vocal writing, and Bates showed that he has the requisite chops to write effectively for lyric theatre. Indeed, this is not much of a stop-and-sing numbers opera. Although it includes some certifiable arias and ensembles, these seem crafted more to support the dramatic narrative than as opportunities for vocal display which is not meant as criticism. One also wondered how effectively Bates would navigate the sheer scale of operatic structure, since none of his concert pieces has extended beyond a half-hour and most run 15 minutes or less. But the question of whether he could maintain musical interest through a 95-minute operatic score (without intermission) seemed to some extent moot. The piece consists of a prologue and epilogue with 18 discrete episodes in between, so that averages out to four and three-quarter minutes per scene. Some are longer and some shorter, but with his succession of modestly scaled segments, Bates landed on an effective plan that was entirely achievable for a composer writing his first opera one that moreover helps define the works kinetic verve.

Michael Christie conducted with precision and pizzazz, and a couple of orchestral interludes truly got the adrenaline pumping. One of them, at about the operas one-hour mark, accompanies projected images charting the meteoric rise of the company and its growing complication as a corporate organism. I wouldnt be surprised if it were extracted to stand as a frenetic orchestral showpiece in its own right.

The cast was uniformly commendable for their acting as well as their singing. In the title role, baritone Edward Parks is on stage practically the whole time. He appears in roles like Figaro in The Barber of Seville and Valentin in Faust, so he is obviously able to sing in an expansive operatic baritone style. But he didnt really do that here. He presented the part more intimately, as a lieder-singer might, with naturalness of style and exemplary diction. Subtle amplification underscored his performance, and indeed those of all the singers a logical use of electronic technology in a score such as this.

Mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke was a pleasure to hear as Jobs wife, Laurene. Her rich, warmly covered tone was put to finest use in her climactic aria Humans are messy, awkward and cluttered, an anthem to empathy, one that may become embraced as a standalone piece. A similarly touching performance came from Wei Wu, as Jobs Buddhist mentor Kbun Chino Otogawa. This beautifully written role encompasses both wisdom and wry humor, and Wei Wus bass not particularly large but of velvety texture infused it with a feeling of profound comfort, a welcome anchor in the emotional turbulence that sometimes surrounded it. Garrett Sorenson conveyed substantial character development as Jobs fellow inventor and business partner Steve Wozniak; he began as a comical dork and ended up as a serious corporate grown-up, his bright tenor letting loose fully in the tenseness, and then fury, of his aria Goliath, in which he resigns from the company he has built with Jobs. Smaller roles were admirably conveyed by baritone Kelly Markgraf (as Jobs father), mezzo-soprano Mariya Kaganskaya (as a calligraphy teacher), soprano Jessica E. Jones (as Chrisann Brennan, Jobs girlfriend), and Asher Corbin (a nonsinging part upheld admirably by a young actor portraying the 10-year-old Jobs).

Bates and Campbell are not the only people charting a path for operas future, but one is more likely to find seriously creative new work in warehouses and experimental theatres than on a major opera stage. Santa Fe Opera and its general director, Charles MacKay, deserve congratulations for making such a piece available at this level. The day of the premiere, the company added an additional performance (on Aug. 22) to the six it had originally scheduled. That should help accommodate audience demand as word circulates about this charismatic piece. It will surely appeal to millennials, thanks to its dynamism in harnessing the technology of today to tell the story of technologys yesterday. But more traditional opera-lovers are bound to embrace it, too. Like all the finest operas, it is animated by a stimulating plot, it is brimful with compelling music, and not less important it has an ample heart.

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'The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs': Zen and the art of opera - Santa Fe New Mexican

Black Hat and DEF CON: The evolution of Hacker Summer Camp – CSO Online

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If you had to select one symbol of cybersecurity industry, youd be hard pressed to find a better choice than the pair of conferences, Black Hat Briefings (Black Hat) and DEF CON. The duo is known affectionately as Hacker Summer Camp by many conference goers. Much has changed since the first Black Hat in 1997 and DEF CON in 1993. Not only have the crowds swelled, but so has the very nature of digital technology.

Over the decades the conferences have expanded in both audience and content covered. Black Hat, for example, has shifted from its focus on enterprise security red teaming to include more defensive security work, security team management in addition to its staple of systems exploitation. The conference even added a CISO Summit to its schedule, which extended the length of the show by a day. With this years event starting today in Las Vegas, lets look at how the pair of conferences have changed over the years.

Chris Wysopal, the seventh member of the hacker collective L0pht and the current CTO of software security firm Veracode attended many the early DEF CON and Black Hat conferences. Over time, as the number of events during the week expanded and the week grew longer, something had to give, and he took a not-so brief hiatus from DEF CON. After Black Hat had added the CISO Summit, it became a four-day long event, and I decided to skip DEF CON, recalls Wysopal. It just grew to become too long of a grind.

[ Related: 4 places to find cybersecurity talent in your own organization ]

When DEF CON 20 rolled around, Wysopal grew curious about how the show changed. It was DEF CONs 20th anniversary, and I figured itd be worth it to stay and check out, he recalls. I was just blown away. It had tripled in size. It didn't feel like a conference anymore. It felt like a festival, he says. Not only were there more activities, such as the lock-picking village, but the existing activities grew. The Capture the Flag contest used to be five or six tables of people hacking, it grew to about 50 tables. Everything had just grown and grown, he says.

Things had certainly changed and grown since the first Black Hat, as well. Presentations at the inaugural Black Hat included talks on local network security assessments, firewall management and attack techniques over the Internet. Renowned security researcher Mudge keynoted on secure coding practices and source code analysis, while Adam Shostack spoke on code reviews and deriving value from the effort. Sluggo focused on defending against denial-of-service attacks.

Richard Thieme, an author and professional speaker who has spoken at all but two DEF CONs from DEF CON 4 though DEF CON 25 and numerous Black Hat conferences recalls the Thursday keynote he gave at the very first Black Hat. It was a bunch of guys and some gals who have been instrumental from the very beginning working to figure out how do we do this security thing, says Thieme.

[Related: 3 tips to get the most out of Black Hat/Defcon]

In a way, these conferences are a moving image showing the maturation of the security community, says Thieme. In the first days, they got to see for themselves, firsthand, as having something valuable to offer to important people: how to protect assets, he says. In the beginning, they were finding their way.

DEF CON certainly found its way. At the first DEF CON, held at the Sands Hotel & Casino, there were about 100 attendees. In 2016, about 22,000 attended DEF CON, and 15,000 attended Black Hat.

Black Hat certainly had its share of historical moments over those years. Most of those moments revolved around the release of high-impact security vulnerabilities released from edgy security research. Such incidents included David Litchfields making known a proof-of-concept attack against SQL Server that shortly after that resulted in the infamous 2003 SQL Slammer worm.

Security researcher Michael Lynn felt it necessary to quit his job at Internet Security Systems (the vendor was put under pressure from Cisco to squelch the talk) to release information regarding flaws he uncovered in the operating system that powers Cisco routers. Today, such research is likely to be released ahead of the actual conference rather than during the show, such as when researchers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek unveiled their remote Jeep hacks in 2015.

For most conference goers, big historic events aside, when you ask them about their early conference memories and the value they get from either show, theyll usually mention networking and the chance to meet security professionals that might be otherwise out of reach.

Stefano Zanero, information security consultant and researcher, and Black Hat review board member, recalls the impression from his first Black Hat (2004) where he also presented. I was a young Ph.D. student presenting for the first time to such a large international audience. Obviously, it made quite a big impression on me, says Zanero. Black Hat was extremely engaging. The conference was smaller then and being a speaker made sure that you had occasions to meet the whole "who's who" of security. That character probably gets lost somehow in its growth, Zanero says.

That growth hasnt stopped Zaneros ability to make valuable contacts over the years, he says. I think networking and in-person meetings are the actual value

of conferences in this growing but still very small world of cybersecurity. The network of professional contacts I made over the years at Black Hat is an invaluable asset in my work, he says.

When I first attended Black Hat, it seemed to be a unique amalgam of hacker culture and business focus, united around information security something that was both novel and necessary for security to garner the attention and budget it would need to become a priority for all but the tech elite, says Taylor Banks, long-time security researcher and principal Hacktologist at ACE Hackware.

Banks, says that some in the DEF CON and broad hacker community viewed the Black Hat conference as selling out. For me, I found it [Black Hat] to be a good mix, and was pleasantly surprised to find an information security conference that could justify a high price tag and simultaneously provide a good environment for networking and recruiting, while still proving to be a good value to attendees and their employers, he says.

Admittedly, I think to compare Black Hat to DEF CON was a bit unfair. I would argue that while much of the same information was often presented at both events (and often by the same people), it made DEF CON a significantly better value. But for many organizations, the stigma of sending employees to a hacker con made it much more difficult to justify even a small expense to less tech-savvy stakeholders and board members. I also think that, because of the environment, those new to the field found DEF CON quite intimidating, while Black Hat seemed a much easier event to break into, says Banks.

How has Black Hat changed over the years? The obvious answer is that it dramatically grew. The less obvious answer is that growth brought in a wider spectrum of people, so networking activities and occasions dramatically changed, says Zanero, who says he does miss the more tight-knit community of years ago. The current exhibit hall is overwhelming, Zanero says. What has not changed, in my opinion, is the quality and level of the talks, while they somehow [also] broadened to a wider range of topics, he adds.

[Related: The best of Black Hat: The consequential, the controversial, the canceled]

When speaking with many who have attended the conference over the years, the verdict on whether the quality of the talks has remained high is mixed. The past that disappeared was Black Hat as a cutting-edge hacking convention, says Thieme.

What it's become, especially since it was sold, is a mini RSA. It's vendor-driven, and the focus is determined somewhat by the technical expertise, but also clearly voiced needs of the marketplace, which are not necessarily always highly technical, says Thieme. In the old days, there were probably more hitters who swung for the fences. Today, there are more journeymen ball players who self-censor about things that are likely to get them or the enterprise into real hot water, Thieme says. It's become mainstream.

Another big change that paralleled the growth of the audience has been the growth of the expo floor. The expo floor was much smaller, and it was always companies that were focused almost exclusively on the things Black Hat was doing. The expo floor was full of companies who were pen testing or were hardcore security companies, and it wasn't just companies that happen also to have a security product or service that came to the show, says Wysopal.

That begs the question, considering all of the growth and broadening of focus: Is there still value to be found? The answer is near unanimously a yes. One just has to work harder for it and hunt down what they want from the show. If you're targeted and know how to hunt value, then the place is an absolute jungle teeming with animals, says Thieme.

Wysopal agrees. There are many different types of audiences going to these shows. There are people who want to attend the talks, and theyre learning something by doing that. There are others that are going to network. Maybe they are looking for a job, or theyre simply catching up with people they only see at the conference every year. Then you have those who are actually looking for products and solutions there. You have all of this going on at once, and not everyone is doing everything. You get a successful conference when you can satisfy a lot of different audiences, says Wysopal. And by that measure, both Black Hat and DEF CON certainly continue to succeed.

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Black Hat and DEF CON: The evolution of Hacker Summer Camp - CSO Online