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Looking back at the beaches of Normandy on D-Day: June 6, 1944 – AOL

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

On June 6, 1944, the world was forever changed.

World War II had already been raging around the globe for four years when the planning for Operation Neptune -- what we now know as "D-Day" -- began in 1943.

SEE ALSO: Tense photos capture the atmosphere as New Yorkers wait for news on D-Day

Operation Neptune was part of the larger Operation Overlord, the Allies' undertaking to invade Western Europe and free the nations from the control of Nazi Germany.

After intense and successful deception of the Axis forces, both operations began on Tuesday, June 6, 1944, with the storming of France's Normandy shore.

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Alongside the Allied military on D-Day

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U.S. troops wade ashore from a Coast Guard landing craft at Omaha Beach during the Normandy D-Day landings near Vierville sur Mer, France, on June 6, 1944 in this handout photo provided by the US National Archives. On June 6, 1944, allied soldiers descended on the beaches of Normandy for D-Day - an operation that turned the tide of the Second World War against the Nazis, marking the beginning of the end of the conflict. REUTERS/Robert F. Sargent/US National Archives/Handout via Reuters

FRANCE - JUNE 01: A Convoy Of American Soldiers In A Military Barge On The Point Of Landing On The French Beaches Of Normandy Between June 6, 1944 And July 15, 1944. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

6th June 1944: American troops come ashore at Omaha Beach in a life-raft after their Landing Craft Vehicle-Personnel had been sunk off the Beachhead. (Photo by Weintraub/MPI/Getty Images)

U.S. reinforcements land on Omaha beach during the Normandy D-Day landings near Vierville sur Mer, France, on June 6, 1944 in this handout photo provided by the US National Archives. On June 6, 1944, allied soldiers descended on the beaches of Normandy for D-Day - an operation that turned the tide of the Second World War against the Nazis, marking the beginning of the end of the conflict. REUTERS/Cpt Herman Wall/US National Archives/Handout via Reuters

World War II, More and more German prisoners are gathered together on Utah Beach after the allied Normandy landings, Around June 6, 1944. (Photo by Photo12/UIG/Getty Images)

Omaha Beach landings, D-Day, the Normandy Invasion, June 6, 1944. (Photo by CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

Hundreds of American paratroopers drop into Normandy, France on or near D-Day, June 6, 1944. Their landing, part of an all-out Allied assault from air and sea, was the beginning of a sweep through Europe that would finally defeat Nazi Germany. (Photo by Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

A British ship launching a depth bomb to hit German submarines off the coast of Normandy. Normandy, 6th June 1944 (Photo by Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)

A group of U.S. wounded soldiers sheltering behind a wall after the Normandy landing on the beach called Omaha Beach in code. Normandy, 6 June 1944 (Photo by Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)

World War II, US soldiers on a Normandy Beach, June 6, 1944 (D)-Day. (Photo by: Photo12/UIG via Getty Images)

FRANCE - JUNE 01: World War II. Normandy landings. American soldiers helped by their companions after the wreck of their boat at their arrival at Utah-Beach (Manche), June 6 1944. (Photo by Roger Viollet/Getty Images)

FRANCE - JUNE 01: Troops And Boats Arriving On A Beach Of Normandy On June 6, 1944, Or In The Days Which Followed. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

American soldiers go ashore during the Normandy landings. landing operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 (termed D-Day) of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

FRANCE - JUNE 01: American Troops Landed On The Beaches Of Normandy From June 6 To July 15, 1944, In Order To Liberate France From German Occupation. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

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The weather on D-Day was less than ideal, but the Allies were relying on very specific tides and moon phases, a perfect mix of circumstances which prevented them from postponing the attack.

Roughly 50 miles of the Normandy shore were targeted. The coast was broken up into five sectors, codenamed Omaha, Utah, Juno, Gold and Sword, which were attacked by 156,000 troops led by future President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Casualties were highest at Omaha beach, and 4,414 Allied soldiers were confirmed dead in total.

Operation Neptune ended as a decisive victory, as the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and the rest of the Allies established five new beachheads on the Normandy shore.

The Normandy landings remain the largest seaborne invasion in history, and many believe the operation signified the beginning of the end of World War II.

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Looking back at the beaches of Normandy on D-Day: June 6, 1944 - AOL

A Guide to Israel’s Stunning Beaches – Vogue.com

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

Israel is perhaps best knownand deservedly sofor its holy sites, but its standing as a stellar beach destination often goes unsung. With coastline bordering the Mediterranean, the Dead Sea, the Red Sea, and the Sea of Galilee, and everything from world-class scuba diving to ancient ruins to explore, the beaches of the Land of Milk and Honey have something for every type of sand lover. Here are the must-visit spots for a day (or a few) in the sun:

Tel Aviv The White Citys perpetual sunshine draws people to its 13 beaches, which rest on a nine-mile stretch of Mediterranean seashore. A casual, walking city with sycamore-lined streets and clusters of Bauhaus architecture, beach life in Tel Aviv is part of the culture. Life happens outside in Tel Aviv, in the cafs and on the streets, said Ofra Ganor, owner of seaside restaurant Manta Ray at Alma Beach. The connection to the sea is part of our daily life.

Mezze at Manta Ray Photo: Courtesy of Avi Ganor

Beachgoers traipse from sand to street, popping into restaurants with indelible views of the Mediterranean, such as Manta Ray, known for its mezze and fashionable crowd; chef Meir Adonis internationally renowned Israeli-Moroccan restaurant, Lumina , overlooking the Tel Aviv Marina; Cassis , a Mediterranean restaurant in the millennia-old port city of Jaffa; and Fortuna Del Mar for rustic fare in a more removed setting in the northern part of Tel Aviv.

Hilton Beach is the LGBT communitys second home and where Israels Pride parade starts and ends. A special light system at the beach also allows for surfers to ride waves late into the evening. The neighboring Nordau Beach is frequented by Tel Avivs more religious residents and segregated by gender during the week. Windsurfers and kitesurfers hang out at Aviv Beach for the perfect wind conditions. A promenade runs along Tel Avivs coastline where people jog, bike, and work out at outdoor gyms in the sand; there are several public beach libraries along the coast; and free Wi-Fi is available just about everywhere. The beach belongs to everybody, Ganor explained. We have a big mix of people in Tel Aviv: Jews, Arabs, surfers, yogis. Its about peace here.

Tel Avivs larger hotels, such as the Carlton with its rooftop bar; the David Intercontinental ; and the Shalom , preside over the sea. Smaller boutique hotels, like the Montefiore , the Norman , and the Rothschild , are tucked into the bustling city and are about a 10-minute stroll to the beach.

Alma Beach in Tel Aviv Photo: Courtesy of Avi Ganor

Old City Acre Old City Acre, pronounced akko, is a charmingly small, walled 18th-century former fortress and one of the oldest cities in the world (the area has been continuously inhabited for thousands of years, and there are also remains from a Crusader town). Its 2 hours north of Tel Aviv, and travelers can rent or hire a car to make the drive up the Mediterranean or take the train for about $5 each way.

Beachgoers sunbathe beside ancient ruins and purple wildflowers, but be sure to bring your essentials, as there are no shops on the beach. Tourist boats at Acre Harbor grant visitors panoramic views of Old City Acre from the sea. For lunch, swing by Uri Buri , a famed restaurant nestled in a 400-year-old stone house with spectacular views of waves crashing into the fortress walls. Just steps from the beach, the Efendi Hotel is a masterfully restored structure made of two ancient palaces and is itself worth the trip to Acre.

Efendi Hotel Photo: Courtesy of Asaf Pinchuk

Caesarea Herod the Great built this port town in 25 B.C. and many ancient remains can still be seen. Aqueduct Beach, also known as Arches Beach, is the site of an impressive Roman-era aqueduct and provides sunbathers an opportunity to swim and lounge beside the ruins. Just south of Aqueduct Beach is the Old Port of Caesarea, where a small hub of art galleries, shops, and restaurants line the harbor.

Housed in a structure more than 2,000 years old is Helena , where esteemed chef Amos Sion uses local ingredients to create inspired Mediterranean dishes. The calamari swam right there, just a few hours ago, Sion said, pointing to the sea outside panoramic windows and referring to the star of his calamari a la plancha dish, served on zaatar leaves with chickpeas and labaneh cheese.

Behind Helena is Old Caesarea Diving Center , where divers can experience the port ruins from underwater. Also in the Old Port of Caesarea is the Roman Theatre of Caesarea, an ancient amphitheater right on the Mediterranean that is still used today to host live concerts for big-name artists such as Bjrk and the Pixies.

There arent any beachside hotels in Caesarea, so many travelers simply make this a day trip from Tel Aviva 45-minute car ride south.

Ein Bokek The best way to enjoy the Dead Sea is to spend the day (or a night or two) in Ein Bokek, the seas four-mile Israeli shoreline (it also borders Palestine and Jordan). For thousands of years, people have traversed the mountainous desert to reach the Dead Sea to float in its salty water (it is almost 10 times as salty as the ocean) and rub some of the mineral-rich mud on their skin. For those wanting to spend the night, book a room with views overlooking the Dead Sea and Jordans immense mountains in the distance. Hod Hamidbar , Daniel Dead Sea Hotel , and Isrotel Dead Sea Hotel and Spa are all good options.

Isrotel Hotel Photo: Courtesy of Isrotel Hotel

Eilat Only from Eilat, Israels southernmost point, can beachgoers see Jordan to the east and Egypt to the west: a striking view. The northern area of Eilat hosts seaside resorts, including the Royal Beach hotel , a boardwalk with shops and nightclubs, and Eilats hottest restaurant at the moment, Leviathan, Hebrew for whale, which overlooks the Eilat Lagoon at Herods seaside hotel.

In-the-know adventurers head to Eilats southern side, an oasis for kiteboarders, snorkelers, and scuba divers who want to experience one of the worlds northernmost coral reefs. At Coral Beach, amateurs and pros alike rent gear and take lessons at Surf Center Eilat , before swimming out to explore the coral reef. Aqua-Sport Red Sea Diving Center offers boat rides for scuba divers and snorkelers to more obscure locations on the Red Sea.

Dolphin Reef Photo: Courtesy of Eva Fedderly

Mosh Beach (pronounced moosh), the relaxed locals spot, has a small but lively scene. Enjoy a nourishing vegetarian Mediterranean lunch on the sand at Mosh, which also has a bar where tanned local bartenders serve up fresh cocktails and fruit smoothies. At Eilats Dolphin Reef , an ecological attraction and dolphin oasis, guests pay a day rate to sun on the private beach; wander the tree houses; and swim with dolphins, which come and go as they please. Three relaxation pools of salt water, freshwater, and water akin to the Dead Sea are surrounded by lush botanical gardens.

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A Guide to Israel's Stunning Beaches - Vogue.com

Outdoors: Md., NJ beaches host ancient event – The Evening Sun

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

Bob Marchio, For The Hanover Evening Sun 12:12 p.m. ET June 6, 2017

With warmer weather coming, here are five things to do at Codorus State Park to take advantage of the warmer months. Ty Lohr, The Evening Sun

While the horseshoe crab may look menacing, they are actually very gentle creatures and do not bite.(Photo: zTONY, Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Visitors to the Maryland and New Jersey beaches during the month of June can expect to witness an event officials say has been taking place for at least 350 million years the annual migration of horseshoe crabs.

The Maryland Department of Natural Resources is asking beachgoers to help the creatures as they emerge from the Atlantic Ocean for their annual spawning pilgrimage. The event is believed to be the largest spawning event of horseshow crabs in the world.

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To ensure the horseshoe crab has a chance of survival, visitors can do their part in helping protect this valuable species. Anyone who spots a horseshoe crab flipped on its back is asked to gently flip the crab over so it can return to the wild. The best practice for flipping over a horseshoe crab is to pick the crab by its sides, not by its tail. While the horseshoe crab may look menacing, they are actually very gentle creatures and do not bite.

This ancient species isnt the most nimble creature, and their short legs dont do the best job of helping them right themselves, DNR biologist Steve Doctor, who conducts an annual survey of horseshoe crabs, said in a department news release.

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The species is important to the ecosystem. Horseshoe crab eggs are a vital source of food for millions of fauna, including migrating shore birds, blue crabs, white perch and striped bass. Also, adult horseshoe crab blood has been found to be a vital resource in medical products and research.

Anyone who spots a horseshoe crab flipped on its back is asked to gently flip the crab over so it can return to the wild.(Photo: waholmes, Getty Images/iStockphoto)

The largest numbers of horseshoe crabs can likely be found on or around the full moon, which takes place Friday (June 9), or the new moon June 23. During this spawning period, an individual horseshoe crab could lay nearly 20,000 eggs on the beaches and shores.

BASS SEASON The promise of warmer and longer days has Pennsylvania anglers gearing up for the opening of a new bass season across the state on Saturday, June 17.

Largemouth and smallmouth bass, both species of black bass, are second only to trout in popularity among Pennsylvania anglers, says John Arway, executive director of the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission. Arway reports that a large turnout is expected.

One of the main reasons bass is popular is because the Commonwealth has so many fantastic spots for anglers to catch smallmouth and largemouth bass, from creeks and rivers to large ponds and lakes, Arway said in an agency report. Our Commonwealth has over 86,000 miles of streams and rivers to fish and more than 4,000 lakes and reservoirs, most which contain bass.

READ:Trout stocking schedule set for York, Adams

READ:Petition circulates to save Hanover-area dam

READ:Outdoors: Codorus Creek project receives funding

State parks are great family-friendly places to fish, particularly if you have young kids, he said. And this year the start of bass season falls on Fathers Day weekend. I cant think of a better way for grandfathers and fathers to spend their weekend than outside fishing with their sons, daughters and grandkids.

In most waters during bass season, anglers can keep a daily limit of six bass, which must be at least 12 inches in length. There are also lakes and rivers managed with higher length limits and lower creel limits. Anglers can consult the Summary of Fishing Regulations for more specific information.

Arway added that another option is to practice voluntary catch and release which provides another angler the opportunity to enjoy the same experience that you had catching that lunker bass!

READ:Lake Pinchot to welcome Family Fishing Festival

READ: Five Hanover-area places to fish not affected by Conewago Creek contamination

The PFBC reminds anglers that catch and immediate release no harvest regulations apply to smallmouth and largemouth bass on the lower sections of the Susquehanna River (below Sunbury) and Juniata River (below Port Royal) and into the rivers tributaries to points one-half river-mile upstream from the confluence.

Bob Marchio is outdoor writer for The Hanover Evening Sun. He may be reached at: bmarchio@embarqmail.com.

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Outdoors: Md., NJ beaches host ancient event - The Evening Sun

Beach report: Bacteria high in Long Branch – Asbury Park Press

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

Watch the video about to find out when the state tests nearly all New Jersey public beaches for the presence of a dangerous bacteria. Wochit | Russ Zimmer

Swimmers play in the surf in Point Pleasant Beach in this file photo from 2016.(Photo: P Ackerman/Staff Photographer)Buy Photo

Water at two public beaches in Long Branch tested high for a bacteria known to be a red flag for the presence of pathogens that could putswimmers at risk of illness.

Another beach in Highlands, which isn't open to swimmers, was measured at nearly 9 times thethreshold for recreational use.

No beach in Ocean County tested above the safe swimming standard, continuing the county's nearly perfect run of water quality early in the season.

But a troubling trend continues forMonmouth County, which has struggled with bacteria issues so far.

In Ocean County, three non-ocean beaches failed tests on May 15, the only time so far since testing began last month that high bacteria counts have been an issue south of the Manasquan Inlet.

However, Monmouth County has now had 31such failures, half of which have been on oceanfront beaches, which is unusual in New Jersey.

LAST WEEK: 6 Monmouth beaches test high for bacteria

MORE: Bacteria levels subside, Spring Lake beach reopens

The tests are part of a weekly monitoring program thatis on the lookout forenterococcus, a bacteria that grows inside the intestines of humans and other warm-blooded animals and can be found alongside their feces. This kind of bacteria is considered a warning sign of dangerous pathogens.

Swallowing any contaminated water could result in cramps and diarrhea from gastrointestinal illnesses, according to the National Institutes of Health.

The standard for safe swimming is less than 104 colony forming units, or cfu, per 100 milliliters of water.

Per NJbeaches.org, here are the beaches that tested above the safe swimming threshold:

These beacheswere scheduled to be tested again Tuesday, and every day after that, until they are measured back at safe levels. Results will be released Wednesday morning on APP.com.

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In New Jersey, rainfall is closely linked to high bacteria levels. Bacteria counts tend to spike following precipitation, and then moderate as the rainwater is dispersed into the river, bay or ocean.

There was light rain across the region on Monday, with most Monmouthlocations receiving between a tenth and a half inch of precipitation, according to Rutgers University's NJ Weather and Climate Network.

Every Tuesday online,the Press and app.com will post water-quality test results from every Jersey Shore beach that exceeds federal safe swimming standards for fecal bacteria.

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Beach report: Bacteria high in Long Branch - Asbury Park Press

Normandy: The D-Day Beaches – Kentucky Kernel

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

If you leave the bustling bright lights and crowded city of Paris and take the train a few hours northwest youll arrive in Normandy. This seemingly quaint seaside area is truly alive and rich with history and beauty.

The city of Caen is where youll arrive, and a very provincial, old-style, village town will greet you. Towering cathedrals lined with stained glass and little cafes are everywhere you turn. The city is set on a series of canals that leak into the ocean so that the fisherman can come and go with their fresh catches. It is an incredible sea-to-table set up. Fish come in early in the morning and only have to travel a mile or less to the surrounding restaurants. Normandy is famous for its mussels, seafood paella and whole fish plates. Normandy also has its name on the map to the equestrian world after hosting the World Equestrian Games in 2014. The gorgeous scenery behind the horses and riders truly made the WEG memorable.

However, Normandy is most famous for the D-Day beaches where France was liberated from German occupation on June 6, 1944. Termed Operation Neptune, the allied invasion was also the largest seaborne invasion of its kind. Most people are probably familiar with Omaha Beach from their high school history class, but many people dont know that there were actually 6 beaches that made up the D-Day invasion. While Omaha Beach houses the piece of art that was given in memorial of those who lost their lives, you cant leave Normandy without seeing Utah, Pointe du Hoc, Gold, Juno, and Sword Beaches as well.

In downtown Caen there is a beautiful World War II museum that talks about the invasion, the airmen who were on the attack, and artifacts from that day. Overhead there are several German and Allied Force airplanes as well. Most of the tours to the beaches depart from and finish here. While the museum offers some less lengthy tours to the beaches in vans, getting a private tour is worth the time and money. A private driving tour is a great way to learn about the details of the invasion, ask questions, and get to see all of the beaches!

The tour can last anywhere from 2-6 hours depending on how much you want to see. Remember to take into account that the drive itself is stunning and there are bunkers and machine guns still standing just as they were left in the fields overlooking the beaches. These are also a good thing to stop and see because it gives you the perspective of the invasion from the German side.

Currently you can walk freely wherever you want on the beaches, in the battlefields, into the bunkers, etc. You can touch everything and really get up close and personal to the front lines. While the beaches are simply that beaches take some time to look at the coast, the scenery, and take in what happened on D-Day. Two parts of the tour are extremely humbling. One is a large stone obelisk that stands watch over Omaha Beach symbolizing a beacon of hope for the Allied Forces.

At the end of the tour you can stop by the Normandy American Cemetery and walk amongst the headstones of the fallen allies. The stones are all simple white crosses etched with names lined for what feels like miles. Some have flowers, wreaths, candles, and other gifts adorning them, and the some have never been visited.

This is the end of your driving tour of the D-Day Beaches and surrounding coast. If you are a history buff or even if you just love seeing beautiful coastline, this trip has something for everyone. Be sure to take at least 2 hours to visit the WWII museum and really see all the stories and history within its walls. At the end of the day be sure and try the delicious seafood Normandy has to offer!

Jacksonville beaches begin new phase for renourishment – ActionNewsJax.com

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

by: Action News Jax Updated: Jun 6, 2017 - 7:16 AM

The second phase of restoring area coastlines begins Tuesday as crews head out to plant more than half a million plants and vegetation to build up the dunes.

The Army Corps of Engineers announced last week they finished the first part of the beach re-nourishment project to replace sand eroded in the storm.

RELATED: Army Corps of Engineers can fix Hurricane Matthew dune damage, if city of Jacksonville pays

The goal of the project is to help reduce any coastal damage from storms or hurricanes.

After hurricane Matthew tore through the dunes, Duval County has been preparing for potential hurricanes during the 2017 season, which started June 1.

Last week contractors finished dredge work to restore protection features.

The project started in mid-September, but when hurricane Matthew hit in October it put a hold on the project and created additional work.

Close to 3 billion pounds of sand was dredged and used to rebuild the beach and dunes, and the 600,000 native dune plants such as sea oats and railroad vine will help reinforce the work from phase one of the project.

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Thousands of residents and businesses in Duval County benefit from this shore project because storm events erode the beach rather than destroying coastal infrastructure.

Coastal communities with engineered beaches have historically fared much better than other communities as proven by numerous studies.

Crews will be planting vegetation through mid-August on the Neptune, Atlantic and Jacksonville beaches.

2017 Cox Media Group.

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Jacksonville beaches begin new phase for renourishment - ActionNewsJax.com

MIT students propose Apophis asteroid mission | Astronomy.com – Astronomy Magazine

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

Asteroid Apophis is going to have a close encounter with Earth in 2029 and astronomers arent the only ones preparing for the event.

20 students at MIT are designing a space mission to get close to the asteroid as it comes within about 21,770 miles (35,040km) from Earth. The mission will get more information on the asteroid, as well as measure the effects of Earth and other planetary bodies on it.

MIT faculty members Richard Binzel, professor of planetary sciences, and David Miller, the Jerome C. Hunsaker Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, are advising the students as they design their missions.

The approaching asteroid is about 1,066 feet (325m) across and weighs 20 million metric tons. An asteroid passing this close to Earth is a rarity, so the students are working hard to get their calculations just right.

Binzel said in a press release that this project is the kick-starter that he hopes will encourage space agencies to study the asteroid.

There have been plenty of missions to comets and asteroids, so why is this unique? Binzel said. Apophis is coming so close that Earths gravity is going to tug and redirect its path. The Earth is going to give it a big thunk.

The proposed spacecraft would carry instruments to study Apophis shape, size, density, surface topography, rotation rate, and spin rate. The craft will have to launch by August 2026 to cross paths with the asteroid in March 2028, and then follow it until the missions end in 2033.

The students presented their work to NASA scientists and engineers, who asked direct questions that will help shape a future proposal for the mission. NASA Planetary Defense Officer Lindley Johnson said the students made a really good effort and stated that the project is almost ready for a NASA proposal.

While China and the European Space Agency are both considering missions to Apophis, should this proposal remain in budget and successfully beat out other competition, theres a real chance it could be approved for an official NASA mission.

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MIT students propose Apophis asteroid mission | Astronomy.com - Astronomy Magazine

Extreme exoplanet: Astronomers discover alien world hotter than … – Phys.Org

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

June 5, 2017 Artist's illustration of star KELT-9 and its super-heated planet KELT-9b. Credit: Robert Hurt / NASA/JPL-Caltech

Imagine a planet like Jupiter zipping around its host star every day and a half, superheated to temperatures hotter than most stars and sporting a giant, glowing gas tail like a comet.

That is what an international research team led by astronomers at Ohio State and Vanderbilt universities think they have found orbiting a massive star they have labeled KELT-9, located 650 light years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.

The discovery is described this week in a paper titled "A giant planet undergoing extreme-ultraviolet irradiation by its hot massive-star host" published by the journal Nature and in a presentation at the spring meeting of American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas.

With a day-side temperature peaking at 4,600 Kelvin (more than 7,800 degrees Fahrenheit), the newly discovered exoplanet, designated KELT-9b, is hotter than most stars and only 1,200 Kelvin (about 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit) cooler than our own sun. In fact, the ultraviolet radiation from the star it orbits is so brutal that the planet may be literally evaporating away under the intense glare, producing a glowing gas tail.

The super-heated planet has other unusual features as well. For instance, it's a gas giant 2.8 times more massive than Jupiter but only half as dense, because the extreme radiation from its host star has caused its atmosphere to puff up like a balloon.

Because it is tidally locked to its staras the moon is to Earththe day side of the planet is perpetually bombarded by stellar radiation and, as a result, it is so hot that molecules such as water, carbon dioxide and methane can't form there.

"It's a planet by any of the typical definitions based on mass, but its atmosphere is almost certainly unlike any other planet we've ever seen just because of the temperature of its day side," said Scott Gaudi, professor of astronomy at The Ohio State University and one of the lead authors of the study.

The reason the exoplanet is so hot is because the star it orbits is more than twice as large and nearly twice as hot as our sun. "KELT-9 radiates so much ultraviolet radiation that it may completely evaporate the planet. Or, if gas giant planets like KELT-9b possess solid rocky cores as some theories suggest, the planet may be boiled down to a barren rock, like Mercury," said Keivan Stassun, Stevenson Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Vanderbilt, who directed the study with Gaudi.

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On the other hand, the planet's orbit is extremely close to the star so if the star begins to expand it will engulf it. "KELT-9 will swell to become a red giant star in about a billion years," said Stassun. "The long-term prospects for life, or real estate for that matter, on KELT-9b are not looking good."

While Stassun and Gaudi spend a lot of time developing missions, such as the NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, designed to find habitable planets in other solar systems, the scientists said there's a good reason to study worlds that are unlivable in the extreme.

"The astronomical community is clearly focused on finding Earthlike planets around small, cooler stars like our sun. They are easy targets and there's a lot that can be learned about potentially habitable planets orbiting very low-mass stars in general. On the other hand, because KELT-9b's host star is bigger and hotter than the sun, it complements those efforts and provides a kind of touchstone for understanding how planetary systems form around hot, massive stars," Gaudi said.

Stassun added, "As we seek to develop a complete picture of the variety of other worlds out there, it's important to know not only how planets form and evolve, but also when and under what conditions they are destroyed."

How was the new planet found?

"We were pretty lucky to catch the planet while its orbit transits the face of the star," said co-author Karen Collins, a post-doctoral fellow at Vanderbilt. "Because of its extremely short period, near-polar orbit and the fact that its host star is oblate, rather than spherical, we calculate that orbital precession will carry the planet out of view in about 150 years, and it won't reappear for roughly three and a half millennia."

In 2014 astronomers spotted the exoplanet using one of two telescopes specially designed to detect planets orbiting bright starsone in the northern and one in the southern hemispherejointly operated by Ohio State, Vanderbilt and Lehigh universities. The instruments, "Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescopes" or KELTs, fill a large gap in the available technologies for finding extrasolar planets. They use mostly off-the-shelf technology to provide a low-cost means of planet hunting. Whereas a traditional astronomical telescope costs millions of dollars to build, the hardware for a KELT telescope runs less than $75,000. Where other telescopes are designed to look at very faint stars in small sections of the sky at very high resolution, KELTs look at millions of very bright stars at once, over broad sections of sky, at relatively low resolution.

"This result demonstrates that even 'extremely little' telescopes can play an important role in discovery," commented James Neff, astronomical sciences program director at the National Science Foundation, which partially funded the research.

Using the KELT-North telescope at Winer Observatory in Arizona, the astronomers noticed a tiny drop in the star's brightnessonly about half of one percentwhich indicated that a planet may have passed in front of it. The brightness dipped once every 1.5 days, which means the planet completes a "yearly" circuit around its star every 1.5 days. Subsequent observations confirmed that the signal was caused by a transiting planet and revealed that it was what astronomers call a "hot Jupiter"an ideal kind of planet for the KELT telescopes to spot.

The astronomers hope to take a closer look at KELT-9b with other telescopesincluding Spitzer, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and eventually the James Webb Space Telescope after it launches in 2018. Observations with HST would enable them to see if the planet really does have a cometary tail and allow them to estimate how much longer the planet will survive its current hellish condition.

Explore further: New 'styrofoam' planet provides tools in search for habitable planets

More information: B. Scott Gaudi et al, A giant planet undergoing extreme-ultraviolet irradiation by its hot massive-star host, Nature (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature22392

Journal reference: Nature

Provided by: Vanderbilt University

Fifth-graders making styrofoam solar system models may have the right idea. Researchers at Lehigh University have discovered a new planet orbiting a star 320 light years from Earth that has the density of styrofoam. This ...

(Phys.org)A "hot Jupiter" exoplanet transiting a rapidly rotating star has been discovered jointly by WASP and KELT survey, a new study reveals. The newly found alien world, designated WASP-167b/KELT-13b, is several times ...

(Phys.org)A large international team of researchers has found that a hot Jupiter called KELT-16b is likely to offer a unique opportunity for research for many years to come. In their paper published in The Astronomical ...

(Phys.org)Using the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) astronomers have detected a new gas giant alien world. The newly discovered exoplanet, designated KELT-18b, turns out to be a highly inflated "hot Jupiter" ...

A team of researchers working at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has announced the finding of a triple-star systemone that also as has a stable orbit planet in it. In their paper published in The Astronomical ...

A giant gas planet up to fifty times the mass of Jupiter, encircled by a ring of dust is likely hurtling around a star more than a thousand light years away from Earth, according to new research by an international ...

Cosmologically speaking, the Milky Way and its immediate neighborhood are in the boondocks.

Two galaxy clusters in the process of merging created a layer of surprisingly hot gas between them that University of Colorado Boulder astronomers believe is from turbulence caused by banging into each other at supersonic ...

Boosted by natural magnifying lenses in space, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured unique close-up views of the universe's brightest infrared galaxies, which are as much as 10,000 times more luminous than our Milky ...

(Phys.org)Astronomers have recently conducted spectroscopic observations of the exoplanet WASP-127b the puffiest "super-Neptune" known to date. The new study, presented in a paper published May 25 on arXiv.org, reveals ...

The risk is growing that Earth will be hit by an asteroid from a meteor stream known as the Taurids, Czech astronomers said on Tuesday.

In biology, "symbiosis" refers to two organisms that live close to and interact with one another. Astronomers have long studied a class of starscalled symbiotic starsthat co-exist in a similar way. Using data from NASA's ...

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I notice that there is not the usual mention of how this planet formed - could it be that at least some notion of honesty is being entered into by acknowledging that hot jupiters are simply inexplicable challenges for the nebular paradigm? No amount of forming elsewhere and then drifting inwards is going to account for the huge number of these enigmas discovered so far.

The planet's temperament is not dependent on the star's star temperature. From: http://www.svemir...Universe Planet.. Mass of Jupiter ..Temperature K ....Distance AU GQ Lupi b ................ 1-36 ...... 2650 100 ........ 100 ROXs 42Bb .................. 9 ..... 1,950-2,000 ....... 157 HD 106906 b ............... 11 ...... 1.800 ............... ~ 650 DH Tauri b ................... 12 ...... 2.750 ................. 330 CT Chamaeleontis b.10.5-17...2.500 ............... 440 HD 44627 ................. 13-14 ...... 1.600-2.400 ..... 275 1RXS 1609 b .............. 14 ........ 1.800 ................ 330 USCENT 108 b ........ 14 ........ 2.600 ................ 670 Oph 11 B ..................... 21 ........ 2.478 ................ 243

TrES-2b / Kepler-1b, ...... ... G0V, ...... 0.03556 AU, ... albedo (Ag) 0.0136; OGLE-TR-111 (b) ............ G or K, ... 0.047 AU, ...... .940 K; HD 40307 (b) ~ 5,000 K ... ..K2,5V, ... 0,0468 AU, .... ..804,5 K; etc. http://www.svemir...ncorrect

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ALMA Probes Boomerang Nebula, Universe’s Coldest Known Object – Sci-News.com

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) may have solved the mystery of the coldest known object in the cosmos the Boomerang Nebula, a pre-planetary nebula produced by a dying red giant. The research is published in the Astrophysical Journal.

Composite image of the Boomerang Nebula: ALMA observations (orange) showing the hourglass-shaped outflow, which is embedded inside a roughly round ultra-cold outflow; the hourglass outflow stretches more than 1.9 trillion miles from end to end, and is the result of a jet that is being fired by the central star, sweeping up the inner regions of the ultra-cold outflow like a snow-plow; the ultra-cold outflow is about 10 times bigger. The ALMA data are shown on top of an image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (blue). Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / NASA / ESA / Hubble / AUI / NSF.

An ancient red giant has produced the Boomerang Nebula, the coldest object found in the Universe so far. How this star was able to create an environment strikingly colder than the natural background temperature of deep space has been a mystery for more than two decades.

According to astronomers using ALMA, the answer may be that a small companion star has plunged into the heart of the red giant, ejecting most the matter of the larger star as an ultra-cold outflow of gas and dust.

This outflow is expanding so rapidly that its temperature has fallen to less than half a degree Kelvin (minus 458.5 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 272.5 degrees Celsius).

The ALMA observations enabled the astronomers to unravel this mystery by providing the first precise calculations of the Boomerang Nebulas extent, age, mass, and kinetic energy.

These new data show us that most of the stellar envelope from the massive red giant star has been blasted out into space at speeds far beyond the capabilities of a single, red giant star, said lead author Dr. Raghvendra Sahai, an astronomer at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The only way to eject so much mass and at such extreme speeds is from the gravitational energy of two interacting stars, which would explain the puzzling properties of the ultra-cold outflow.

Such close companions may be responsible for the early and violent demise of most stars in the Universe.

The extreme properties of the Boomerang Nebula challenge the conventional ideas about such interactions and provide us with one of the best opportunities to test the physics of binary systems that contain a giant star, said co-author Prof. Wouter Vlemmings, an astronomer at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden.

Also known as the Bow Tie Nebula and the Centaurus Bipolar Nebula, the Boomerang Nebula is located about 5,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Centaurus.

When the nebula was first observed in 1995, astronomers noted that it was absorbing the light of the Cosmic Microwave Background, the fossil light resulting from a time when the Universe was hot and dense, only 380,000 years after the Big Bang.

This radiation provides the natural background temperature of space only 2.725 degrees above absolute zero.

For the Boomerang Nebula to absorb that radiation, it had to be even colder than this lingering, dim energy that has been continually cooling for more than 13 billion years.

The new ALMA observations also produced an evocative image of the nebula, showing an hourglass-shaped outflow inside a roughly round ultra-cold outflow.

The hourglass outflow stretches more than 1.9 trillion miles (3 trillion km, or about 21,000 times the distance from the Sun to the Earth) from end to end, and is the result of a jet that is being fired by the central star, sweeping up the inner regions of the ultra-cold outflow like a snowplow.

The ultra-cold outflow is more than 10 times bigger. Traveling more than 335,540 mph (150 km/s), it took material at its outer edges approximately 3,500 years to reach these extreme distances after it was first ejected from the dying star.

These conditions, however, will not last long. Even now, the Boomerang Nebula is slowly warming.

We see this remarkable object at a very special, very short-lived period of its life, said co-author Dr. Lars-ke Nyman, an astronomer at the Joint ALMA Observatory in Santiago, Chile.

Its possible these super cosmic freezers are quite common in the Universe, but they can only maintain such extreme temperatures for a relatively short time.

_____

R. Sahai et al. 2017. The Coldest Place in the Universe: Probing the Ultra-cold Outflow and Dusty Disk in the Boomerang Nebula. ApJ 841, 110; doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/aa6d86

ALMA Probes Boomerang Nebula, Universe's Coldest Known Object - Sci-News.com

When the stars align … well, one star with a hundred billion stars. – Blastr

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

Coincidences happen. Even in space.

Or, at least, when we look into space from Earth. The sky is big, and you can only see a few thousand stars by eye, so honestly without optical aid you dont see many that are super close together.

But part of the main function of a telescope is to gather light, collecting it like rain in a bucket. This makes fainter objects look brighter, so when you use a telescope much dimmer stars become visible; even a small one allows you to see millions. When you use something like Hubble, that number can get substantially larger. That makes the sky more crowded.

And its not just stars. Only a handful of galaxies are visible to the eye, but with even a small scope you can see hundreds. Hubble? Billions. Billions.

So if you look long enough, youre bound to see some overlap.

And that brings us to HD 107146 ... but, before we get to the coincidence, let me explain some fun stuff.

The star is relatively nearby, about 90 light-years from us. Its a solar analog, a star much like the Sun in mass, size and temperature. But theres a big difference: Its very young, just 100 million years old or so (the Sun is 45 times older than that).

Stars that young are sometimes surrounded by debris disks, material left over from their formation. And yup, HD 107146 has one as well. It was discovered in 2004, but the best image of it was made using Hubble in 2011:

The star is very bright, a million or more times brighter than the disk of material around it, so the astronomers who took the data (including my old friend Glenn Schneider) were clever: First they placed the star behind a metal occulting bar, literally a bar of metal inside the camera (my old camera, STIS!) that blocks the light from the core of the star. They also took multiple images, rotating the observatory between each observation; that helps reduce noise in the image. Finally, they also did exactly the same thing with another star that happens to be very similar to HD 107146 (but lacks the disk), and they subtracted those images from the ones of HD 107146, further reducing the light from the star.

That leaves an odd-looking image of the star, with the center blacked out from the occulting bar and lots of radial spikes from light scattered and diffracted by Hubbles optics. But it blocks the vast majority of the starlight, allowing the far fainter disk to appear. Thats the wide band of light circling the star.

This all, by itself, is really interesting! Better yet, the material is not so much a disk as it is a ring; that annulus is real, with less light closer to the star. The ring is huge, starting about 7 billion kilometers from the star and stretching out to well over 20 billion km. Neptunes orbit around the Sun is only about 5 billion km, so this ring is like our own Kuiper Belt, the region past Neptune populated by smaller icy bodies. (Pluto is likely the biggest of these objects).

Observations using the fantastic radio telescope array ALMA indicate this material may be small grains of dust, which youd expect if Pluto-sized objects formed out there and started smashing into one another and any planets forming there. The ALMA data also indicate the presence of a gap in the ring, too narrow to show up in the Hubble images, about a billion km wide, which may have been carved out by the presence of a newly formed planet there. If so, it would have several times Earths mass.

But theres more! And now we get to the fun coincidence.

See that blob to the lower right of the ring? Thats not a part of the ring, or even the star. Thats a galaxy, far, far in the background, likely hundreds of millions of light-years away. It was first seen in 2004, when the disk itself was discovered in a different set of Hubble observations:

By coincidence, the star happens to lie very nearly along our line of sight to the galaxy, so they appear very close in the sky despite their mind-crushingly different distances. Now take another look at the two images ...here, Ill put them side by side to make it easier for you:

Notice anything? The galaxy is closer to the star in the 2011 image than it was in 2004! Or more accurately, the star is closer to the galaxy. Thats because the star is moving across the sky!

Sure, the stars rise and set, so theres a daily (what astronomers call diurnal) motion. But stars also orbit the center of our galaxy at different speeds, and over time we can see that motion with powerful telescopes. They move relative to one another across the sky, which is proper motion. Its small, but higher for nearby stars due to perspective (just as nearby trees seem to whiz by you as you drive past them, but distant buildings or mountains seem to crawl).

HD 107146 has a decent proper motion, and over the seven or so years between Hubble observations, it moved southwest (to the lower right), bringing it closer to the galaxys position.

Extrapolating, the galaxy is already behind the ring right now. In a few more years (around 2020) itll be fully behind the ring. The ring, itself, is optically thin, which means light can pass through it, so well see the galaxy right through it. Itll look like a really bright blob in the ring. Its actually a good thing the galaxy was seen a few years ago; if the first observations were made in 2020, it couldve been confused for something happening in the ring itself, like a planetary collision!

Given the stars motion, the ring will be superposed on the galaxy for about a decade before the galaxy slips into the gap between the star and ring.

How cool is that? Answer: Pretty damn cool.

And useful. This is a unique geometry, with a galaxy behind a ring like this. While the ring is optically thin, its not transparent. Itll block some of the galaxys light, and that can be measured. Because we have images of the galaxy when it was well outside the thickest part of the ring, measuring how much light is blocked will give some insight into the ring particles physical properties. In fact, Glenn and his team have follow-up Hubble observations planned for the next few years to take advantage of this serendipitous situation.

One final bit. What do we call this event? When the Sun is blocked by the Moon, we call that a solar eclipse. When the Moon is blocked by the Earth, we call that a lunar eclipse. So I suppose that this event could be called a galactic eclipse.

I love that! It has a Flash Gordon-esque feel to it ... but, unfortunately, it wont work. In an eclipse, an object has its light source blocked by an intruding object, and the ring is lit by the star. The galaxy is literally millions of times of times farther away, so it cant block the starlight!

Another type of astronomical event like this is an occultation, when an object passes in front of another (its a more general term for eclipse, I suppose). But again, the ring is mostly transparent and isnt blocking the light from the galaxy (at least not all of it), so this doesnt fit, either.

I talked to Glenn about it, and he suggested calling it a transit, which is fair enough. Thats when one body passes in front of another, regardless of whether its opaque or not. That works, but dangit. I liked galactic eclipse. Oh, well. The Universe is under no compulsion to obey our etymological astronomical desires.

Still, whatever we call it, this is a fantastic chance to get a wholly new type of observation. I worked on observations of these kinds of disks using STIS back in the day, and I can remember when this field was brand spanking new. Something like this is amazing to me. Its an actual event where the stars align!

Science! I love this stuff.

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When the stars align ... well, one star with a hundred billion stars. - Blastr

Astronomy Festival Set for Black Canyon Park – Kiowa County Press

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

Astronomy Festival Set for Black Canyon Park
Kiowa County Press
Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, in partnership with the Black Canyon Astronomical Society, will be celebrating the starlit skies of Western Colorado with their 8th annual Astronomy Festival June 21-24. Black Canyon was designated as an ...

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Astronomy Festival Set for Black Canyon Park - Kiowa County Press

Company Seven | Astro-Physics 13cm f8 EDT Telescope

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

The 130mm f8 StarFire EDT is a very portable, lightweight refractor with a Super ED triplet objective that is highly corrected for false color (chromatic aberration). The color error is lese than 0.01% from 706nm to 450 nm, compared to a two element Fluorite apochromat with 0.05%, or a Doublet Achromat with 0.45% color error over the same spectral range. In an age when Fluorite is being marketed as the best lens material for fast refractors, it is significant that Astro-Physics has developed a non-Fluorite objective with 5 times better chromatic aberration at a fraction of the cost of Fluorite. Super ED glass (ED stands for extra low dispersion, Vd> 90) is a real glass, not a crystal like Fluorite. ED is a harder, less fragile material with a much lower expansion coefficient than Fluorite. Unlike Fluorite, ED glass is not affected by atmospheric contaminants and acids. It is for these reasons that all the world's major camera manufacturers are incorporating ED glass into their best lenses.

The extremely high color correction of the Super EDT design allows the construction of a relatively short-focus objective that is superior to long-focus achromats in contrast and definition of subtle planetary detail. The EDT lens is also perfectly matched to the characteristics of the fine grained Technical Pan emulsions which have their peak sensitivity at 45nm. With our matching accessories, you can create impressive astrophotos with CCD cameras, or on 35mm and 6 x 7cm film formats.

The optical design of the 130mm EDT objective consists of a positive element of ED glass surrounded by two matching hard crown meniscus lenses. The two outer elements are chosen so that the combination is free of coma, spherical aberration and other higher-order aberrations. All surfaces are spherical, which results in a very smooth overall figure. Under steady viewing conditions, you will see a hard white Airy disc at focus surrounded by the first diffraction ring. Inside and outside of focus, you will see an evenly illuminated, expanded disc with concentric Fresnel rings, the outermost ring brighter and wider than the rest. The two air-glass surfaces have multi-layer anti-reflection coatings that result in overall light transmission greater than 97% in peak visual wavelengths.

Our superb Astro-Physics focuser is a very finely crafted unit with several unique features. The components are machined on Astro-Physics' CNC to extremely high tolerances, assuring that there is no wiggle between the drawtube and housing. More than a dozen knife-edge baffles are machined into the wall of the drawtube and painted flat black in order to maximize contrast by essentially eliminating any internal reflections. We inside diameter (I.D.) of the drawtube is 2.7" which allows the avid astrophotographer to use a medium format camera to capture images in a 6 x 7cm format with minimal vignetting. You can use standard accessories with the 2" and 1.25" adapters. Recessed brass locking rings are installed at each thumbscrew location. As you tighten each thumbscrew, the brass locking ring damps onto the part that has been inserted. Consequently, your focuser drawtube and 2" and 1.25" accessories are held securely in place. This is particularly important considering the heavy and expensive accessories that you may use. As an added advantage, the brass will not mar the surface of your accessories.

The 130EDT optical design is ideal for astrophotography with small- and medium-format cameras. The widefield coverage in the 6x7 photographic format will record gorgeous images of a wide variety of objects such as the Andromeda Galaxy and the Lagoon and Trifid Nebulas. The negatives contain so much finely resolved detail that you can enlarge a small portion to feature one particular aspect of the object, i.e. the Gulf of Mexico portion of the North American Nebula. One of the finest solar eclipse photographs of the corona was taken with the 130 EDT StarFire refractor in July 1991. This photo and other deep sky photos that were taken with our 5" f8 StarFire have appeared on the cover of numerous astronomical publications around the world.

Diagonals and Binocular Viewers: Prism diagonals have aberrations which degrade image quality. Since this is especially noticeable in telescopes with fast focal ratios, we recommend the 2" Precision Mirror Diagonal. If you use a binocular viewer (which has prisms), then place a Barlow between the focuser and binocular viewer.

Eyepieces: Plossls, Orthoscopics, and Widefield eyepieces show sharp images only in the center of the field. These are fine as long as you realize this limitation. If you object to astigmatic images at the edge of the field, we recommend the TeleVue Nagler and Panoptic eyepieces. These oculars have the best flat field images and will bring out the most in your 130 StarFire EDT. Use our 2x (2") Barlow to double your magnification.

Right: Company Seven ATA Case custom fitted for a Astro-Physics 13cm EDT Apochromat Telescope with 2.7 inch Focuser (65,974 bytes). Click on image to see enlarged view (215,942 bytes).

Features include:

Left: Astro-Physics Model 900 Mount in optional Company Seven ATA case. Case 1 of 2 shown here, with Declination housing (left side shown) with GTO Keypad Controller and Counterweight Shaft (94,326 bytes).

Please refer to the brochure for descriptions of these items and additional accessories.

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Company Seven | Astro-Physics 13cm f8 EDT Telescope

New artificial intelligence system can tell if a sheep is …

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

Researchers from the University of Cambridge have created an artificial intelligence system that uses five different facial expressions to diagnose if a sheep is in pain. It can also estimate the severity of the pain.

The research, which is being presented at a conference in Washington D.C. on Thursday, could improve sheep well-being -- and help in the early diagnosis and treatment of painful conditions in other animals like horses and rats.

The new system, which uses machine learning, can detect different parts of a sheep's face and compares them with the standardized measurement tool developed by veterinarians for diagnosing pain.

The researchers trained their model using about 500 photographs of sheep. It could estimate pain levels with about 80% accuracy in early tests.

Related: This tech could save millions of piglets from accidentally being crushed

Five main things happen to a sheep's face when it is in pain -- its eyes narrow, cheeks tighten, ears fold forward, lips pull down and back, and the nostrils change into a V shape, according to the standard expression scale. The characteristics are then ranked on a scale of one to 10 to assess the severity of the pain.

"You can see a clear analogy between these actions in the sheep's faces and similar facial actions in humans when they are in pain -- there is a similarity in terms of the muscles in their faces and in our faces," said Dr. Marwa Mahmoud, a coauthor of the paper.

The team's research builds on earlier work that teaches computers to recognize emotions and expressions in people.

Related: This 'bee' drone is a robotic flower pollinator

Next, the researchers will teach the system to detect sheep faces from moving images and when the animal isn't looking directly at the camera.

In the future, the team wants to position a camera at a place where sheep gather over the course of the day. The system would identify any sheep that are in pain, and the farmer could then get them proper veterinary care.

"From a farmer's point of view, a sheep that is in pain due to foot rot or other condition is also one that won't put on weight, so it's in both the farmer's financial and moral interests to ensure that their sheep are cared for," University of Cambridge spokeswoman Sarah Collins told CNNTech.

Foot rot -- a condition that causes the foot to rot away -- is very common in sheep and highly contagious. Finding it early could help prevent it from spreading to the whole flock, according to the researchers.

CNNMoney (New York) First published June 1, 2017: 11:09 AM ET

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New artificial intelligence system can tell if a sheep is ...

Using Artificial Intelligence for Emergency Management …

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

Natural disasters are out of the reach and influence of human beings. However, a lot can be done to minimize loss of lives. Artificial intelligence is one viable option that can potentially prevent massive loss of lives while at the same time make rescue efforts easy and efficient. To learn more, checkout the infographic below created by Eastern Kentucky Universitys Online Masters in Safety degree program.

In the period between 2005 and 2015, a total of 242 natural disasters occurred in the United States of America. These caused loss of human lives and massive destruction of property across the country. Storms registered the highest number of natural disasters with 134 recorded incidents. Other disasters included the following, in order from the highest number to the lowest. 51 flood incidents, 37 fires, 9 extreme temperature periods, 6 droughts, 4 earthquakes and 1 landslide.

In 2015, flood incidents were responsible for over $1.3 billion in property damages in the U.S., and 32 deaths. In one specific incident, about 12,000 Americans were affected when a flood ravaged through the states of Texas, Colorado, Oklahoma and Arkansas.

Fire-related cases are responsible for over $2 billion in damages and 6 deaths in 2015. A particular wildfire that occurred in Northern California affected a whopping 7,302 people.

Storms caused the highest amount of damages and property destruction worth $3 billion. These incidents also caused 46 deaths. Convective storms often travel through southern states reaching Texas and New Mexico.

Artificial Intelligence can greatly help emergency and disaster management efforts not only in America but also the rest of the world. Today, Drones, robots and sensors can provide intelligent and accurate information concerning landscapes and damaged buildings. This allows rescue workers to understand the topography of a landscape and the extent of damage to a building. Drones can be used to find victims trapped in debris allowing rescue workers to get to them quickly.

Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) is a free online tool developed by the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development. The company is based in Doha, Qatar. QCRI aims to increase efficiency of agencies and volunteer services during disaster management. The tool utilizes machine learning to automatically identify texts and tweets that relate to particular crises.

1CONCERN produces a common and comprehensive picture during emergency operations to be used by emergency operation centers. Its main goal is to assist these centers to allocate resources that are needed for rescue efforts. The tools also prepare effective planning modules, which stimulate lifelike disasters purely for training purposes. These modules also determine potentially vulnerable areas that would be affected the most during a natural disaster.

1CONCERN has been able to map about 163,696 square miles, and has covered over 39 million people so far. In addition, it has analyzed nearly 11 million structures and modeled an impressive 14,967 fault lines. This allows the program to be prepared and stay alert in case a natural disaster occurs.

BlueLine Grid was created and developed by Bill Braxton, David Riker and Jack Weiss. Braxton is the current Police Commissioner of the New York Police Department (NYPD). Until 2013, he served as the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).

BlueLine Grid is a mobile communications platform developed to assist rescue efforts during disasters. It connects all users to an established network of first responders, security teams and law enforcement bodies via voice, text, location and group services. This platform is effective because it allows users to quickly find public employees by geographic proximity, area or agency. It also fosters efficient connectivity, collaboration and communication.

Artificial Management for Disaster Response has proven effective in many natural disasters around the world. Technology allows people to quickly and efficiently respond to such cases, and save many lives in the process. However, these systems are not only reactive but also proactive. By predicting earthquakes and quickly warning potential victims about impending disasters, these intelligence systems have proven to be quite useful. Below are two incidents were AIDR averted massive loss of life.

In April 2015, an earthquake hit Nepal causing massive damage to property. The 7.8 magnitude quake occurred near Lamjung. Barely 72 hours after the first wave hit, over 3,000 volunteers mobilized via Standard Task Force (STF). STF is one of Digital Humanitarian Networks member organizations. The volunteers were pooled from over 90 countries and were soon on the ground ready to help victims and survivors.

The volunteers were able to assemble quickly because they were tagged in crisis-related photographs and tweets. AIDR used all the tagged tweets to identify and categorize needs based on urgency, infrastructure damage and resource deployment. This allowed rescuers and volunteers to work efficiently as a unit to help affected victims.

On September 2015, Chile was hit with a massive earthquake with a magnitude of 8.3. It occurred about 29 miles from the city of Illapel. Quick reaction from emergency responders was able to evacuate thousands of people out of the identified danger zones swiftly. This prevented further loss of life. Whats more, minutes after the quake, disaster warning sirens rang throughout the impacted areas up to the nearby coast. Mobile phones in the area were targeted with warning messages of a potential Tsunami following the aftermath of the quake. Residents in all the designated coastal areas were asked to evacuate these danger areas immediately.

Many American startup companies are coming up with ways of using artificial intelligence (AI) in a bid to save lives when natural disasters occur. Leveraging artificial intelligence has numerous potential pros making it a suitable solution to use. Using robots, sensors or drones can help first responders and rescue workers quickly access the situation as well as the extent of the damage caused to come up with a suitable action plan of saving trapped victims. It also makes rescue efforts less time-consuming, safe and properly coordinated.

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Apple is finally serious about artificial intelligence Quartz – Quartz

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

As research teams at Google, Microsoft, Facebook, IBM, and even Amazon have broken new ground in artificial intelligence in recent years, Apple always seemed to be the odd man out. It was too closed off to meaningfully integrate AI into the companys softwareit wasnt a part of the research community, and didnt have developer tools available for others to bring AI to its systems.

Thats changing. Through a slew of updates and announcements today at its annual developer conference, Apple made it clear that the machine learning found everywhere else in Silicon Valley is foundational to its software as well, and its giving developers the power to use AI in their own iOS apps as well.

The biggest news today for developers looking to build AI into their iOS apps was barely mentioned on stage. Its a new set of machine learning models and application protocol interfaces (APIs) built by Apple, called Core ML. Developers can use these tools to build image recognition into their photo apps, or have a chatbot understand what youre telling it with natural language processing. Apple has initially released four of these models for image recognition, as well as an API for both computer vision and natural language processing. These tools run locally on the users device, meaning data stays private and never needs to process on the cloud. This idea isnt neweven data hoarders like Google have realized the value of letting users keep and process data on their own devices.

Apple also made it easy for AI developers to bring their own flavors of AI to Apple devices. Certain kinds of deep neural networks can be converted directly into Core ML. Apple now supports Caffe, an open-source software developed by the University of California-Berkeley for building and training neural networks, and Keras, a tool to make that process easier. It notably doesnt support TensorFlow, Googles open-source AI framework, which is by far the largest in the AI community. However, theres a loophole so creators can build their own converters. (I personally expect a TensorFlor converter in a matter of days, not weeks.)

Some of the pre-trained machine learning models that Apple offers are open-sourced Google code, primarily for image recognition.

Apple made it clear in the keynote today that every action taken on the phone is logged and analyzed by a symphony of machine-learning algorithms in the operating system, whether its predicting when you want to make a calendar appointment, call a friend, or make a better Live Photo.

The switch to machine learning can be seen in the voice of Siri. Rather than using the standard, pre-recorded answers that Apple has always relied on, Siris voice is now entirely generated by AI. It allows for more flexibility (four different kinds of inflection were demonstrated on stage), and, as the technology advances, it will sound exactly like a human anyway. (Apples competitors are not far off.)

Apple also rattled off a number of other little tweaks powered by ML, like the iPad distinguishing your palm from the tip of an Apple Pencil, or dynamically extending the battery life of the device by understanding which apps need to consume power.

Okay, so Apples really only published one paper. But it was a good one! And Ruslan Salakhutdinov, Apples new director of AI research, has been on the speaking circuit. He recently spoke at Nvidias GPU Technology Conference (although Apples latest computers use AMD chips), and will be speaking later this month in New York City, to name a few.

Apple also held a closed-door meeting with their competitors at a major AI conference late last year, shortly after Salakhutdinov was hired, to explain what it was working on in its labs. Quartz obtained some of those slides and published them here.

Is Apple a leader in AI research? Not according to most metrics. But many consider open research to be a way of recruiting top talent in AI, so we might see more papers and talks in the future.

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Apple is finally serious about artificial intelligence Quartz - Quartz

Apple Just Unveiled A Breakthrough Artificial Intelligence System – Futurism

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

In BriefApple live streamed their Worldwide Developers Conferencekeynote this afternoon. During the talk, they unveiled a new kindof AI system, HopePod.

Today, Apple is holding itsWorldwide Developers Conference. So far, they have announced a host of updates. For example, during the presentation, the company noted that theirwatchOS 4 is going to include advanced AI and be far more personalized.

Moving forward, Siri intelligence will automatically display information that is relevant to you on the face of the watch using advanced machine learning technologies that improve and learn over time. Ultimately, this means thatthe more you interact with the watch, the smarter it gets.

But the biggest announcement comes in a pod.

Its called HomePod. And its meant to revolutionize theway we experience musicand transform how we interact with our homes. Taking a look at the gadget itself, its not necessarily the AI announcement that some were hoping for; however, it is nonetheless a breakthrough announcement. Just 7 inches tall, the HomePod is the first major Apple hardware product that has been unveiled since the Apple Watch.

The Pod has spacial awareness, meaning that it can identify where it is in a room and adjust the music in order to fit in and around the space. But thats just the beginning. You can control your blinds, your heat, your lightingbasically everything in your house.

This works thanks to the smart home hub features, which work for all HomeKit-compatible devices. If you are concerned about security and privacy on this new device,Apple stated that Siri wont send any of your data to Apple servers or register information until you say the wake word. That said, at the present time, it remains a little unclear exactly how Apple will store and protect user data. Presumably, more information will be made available soon.

The product has already entered development and was described at the conference by Apple executive Phil Schillert. He stated that it is currently priced at $349 and that their Siri digital assistant has been updated to allow it to understand more spoken requests and better interact with humans.

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Apple Just Unveiled A Breakthrough Artificial Intelligence System - Futurism

Career site Workey raises $8M to replace headhunters with artificial intelligence – TechCrunch

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

One of the ways companies fill their ranks with good employees is by scouting passive talent, or people who arent currently looking for new jobs but might be convinced with the right offer. This usually takes hours of networking, but a Tel Aviv-headquartered startup called Workey uses artificial intelligence to streamline the process by matching companies with potential candidates. Workey launched in the U.S. today and also announced that it has raised $8 million in Series A funding.

The round was led by PICO Partners and Magma VC and brings the total Workey has raised so far to $9.6 million, including its earlier seed funding. Workey will use the new capital to expand in the U.S., open an office in New York City, and hire people for its research and development and data science teams.

A LinkedIn study released last year found that recent college graduates are more likely to switch jobs at least twice before their early 30s than previous generations. Workey targets people who are interested in potential opportunities, but dont want to broadcast their curiosity to everyone, including their current employers. Once they sign up for the site, they create an anonymous profile that is used to find positions their background and skills qualify them for.

Workeys recommendation system then matches companies with promising candidates. If a company requests an introduction through the site, users can respond by revealing their full details. Otherwise, all rejections are anonymous. As an example, Workeys co-founders say Yahoo has found several candidates by spending 10 minutes a week on Workey.

Founded in 2015 by Ben Reuveni, Danny Shteinberg, and Amichai Schreiber, Workey has worked with more than 400 companies so far, including Yahoo, Amazon, Dell EMC, and Oracle. In a group interview by email, the trio told TechCrunch that the anonymous platform helps mitigates hiring bias, because companies dont see a candidates race, gender, ethnicity, or religion first. It also allows candidates to see how they stand in relation to the rest of the job market, which can help them during wage negotiations.

Another benefit is combatting the stigma associated with job seekers.

Like it or not, there is much truth to the belief that candidates who are currently working are more desirable than those who are out of a job and full-time job hunting, Workeys founders explained. Passive talent, those who are not actively looking but wouldnt want to miss out on their dream job, are often the most desirable candidates since they typically are already secure in their current position (likely because they perform them well).

Once they do decide to interview for a new job, Workey lets candidates track the status of their application, so they dont spend weeks in limbo waiting for an offer or rejection. The startup works mainly with tech companies right now, because it was invented by engineers for engineers, but can be adapted for other industries. Its free for job candidates and monetizes by charging companies a fee, but its founders claim that they potentially save thousands of dollars by using Workeys AI instead of headhunters or recruitment agencies.

Workey isnt the only career services startup that wants to use AI to streamline the recruitment process, which often takes months. Other companies that have developed AI tools to improve or replace headhunting, job searches, or interviews include Engage, FirstJob, Arya, and Mya. Though their services dont necessarily overlap with Workey right now, its a sign that Workeys competition is likely to increase soon. But its founders insist that one of the most exciting aspects of business today is that there is no future-proofing. Workey will continue to evolve and grow, with a continued investment in R&D to ensure that we provide users with the best possible matches enhancing their careers.

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Career site Workey raises $8M to replace headhunters with artificial intelligence - TechCrunch

Elon Musk (and 350 Experts) Predict Exactly When Artificial Intelligence Will Overtake Human Intelligence – Inc.com

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

Given the speed at which researchers are advancing artificial intelligence, the question has become not if A.I. will become smarter than its human creators, but when?

A team of researchers from Yale University and Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute recently set off to determine the answer. During May and June of 2016, they polled hundreds of industry leaders and academics to get their predictions for when A.I. will hit certain milestones.

The findings, which the team published in a study last week: A.I. will be capable of performing any task as well or better than humans--otherwise known as high-level machine intelligence--by 2060 and will overtake all human jobs by 2136. Those results are based on the 352 experts who responded.

Monday night, Elon Musk, who's been a consistent A.I. fear monger, chimed in on Twitter.

The entrepreneur followed up his tweet with an ominous, "I hope I'm wrong." Musk has been a vocal critic of A.I. the past several years, painting nightmare scenarios in which it becomes weaponized or outsmarts humans and leads to their extinction. He co-founded OpenAI, a non-profit that aims to ensure A.I. is used for good, in 2015.

Musk's own firm, Tesla, is one of the companies leading the charge in creating self-driving vehicles. The trucking and taxi industries employ about 2 million Americans, all of whom could soon find their jobs obsolete should vehicles become fully autonomous.

The experts polled in the study predicted that A.I. would become better at driving trucks than humans in 2027. The surveys were completed before robotics startup Otto successfully sent a self-driving truck on a 120-mile journey in October.

A.I. will surpass humans in a number of other milestones, the experts suggested: translating languages (2024), writing high-school level essays (2026), and performing surgeries (2053). They estimated that it would be able to write a New York Times bestseller in 2049.

In May, Google's AlphaGo machine won a game of Go against China's Ke Jie, widely considered to be the world's best player. An A.I. system created by scientists at Carnegie Mellon won $2 million from top poker players in a tournament in January.

It's worth noting that the predicted timelines did not vary based on the experts' levels of experience with artificial intelligence. One variable that did correlate with the predictions was the location: North American experts thought A.I. would outperform humans on all tasks within 74 years, while experts in Asia thought this would take only 30 years. The researchers who published the study didn't provide a potential explanation for the discrepancy.

What You Need to Know About Apple Inc.’s Artificial-Intelligence Chip – Motley Fool

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman recently published a scoop about an upcoming piece of chip technology from Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL). Gurman says Apple is "working on a processor devoted specifically to AI-related tasks."

The chip, Gurman reports, is "known internally as the Apple Neural Engine," and it would "improve the way the company's devices handle tasks that would otherwise require human intelligence -- such as facial recognition and speech recognition."

Image source: Apple.

This sounds cool, and I hope Apple deploys it sooner rather than later. Let's consider why the development of this so-called Apple Neural Engine isn't a surprise and how it's part of a broader, ongoing trend with respect to mobile applications processors.

In a mobile device, power efficiency is of the utmost importance. These mobile devices are battery powered, and those batteries aren't getting much bigger or better. And since the longer a battery can stay charged, the better, power consumption must be minimized.

Apple could very well run these artificial intelligence-related tasks on, say, the CPU cores inside its A-series chips. However, a CPU is a general-purpose piece of technology, meaning it can do anything the software developers can code up, but it might not be very fast or efficient at performing the tasks.

Slow processing of a task degrades the user experience, and so does excessive power consumption. Indeed, it is the fundamental realization that certain well-defined and computationally intensive tasks can be performed much faster and more efficiently that drives the very concept of a mobile system-on-a-chip.

A mobile system-on-a-chip like Apple's A-series chips includes all sorts of dedicated functionality in service of efficiency. For example, the graphics processor inside the A-series chips is much better at quickly and efficiently rendering complex 3D games than the CPU could ever hope to be.

The image signal processor that's used to help the camera subsystem generate high-quality images quickly is another example of such a dedicated processor: Doing all those computations on the CPU, or even the GPU, would certainly be much less efficient and deliver a much worse user experience.

The trade-off, of course, is that designing these specialized processors certainly isn't cheap, and embedding those processors into the main system-on-a-chip increases chip area. This is, for example, why the major contract chip manufacturers and their customers are so interested in moving to smaller chip manufacturing technologies. They want to be able to cram in more stuff -- often, chip technology for handling specific functionality -- without letting chip sizes get out of hand.

So if AI functionality is going to become a critical part of Apple's future smartphones and, potentially, tablets, then it only makes sense for Apple to build a specialized piece of silicon to handle that functionality.

A competitive advantage for Apple There's no doubt that other mobile-chip makers will follow suit and build similar technologies to Apple's Neural Engine, democratizing the technology. However, I suspect that Apple will have a lead for quite some time over other smartphone makers in utilizing such functionality.

According to Gurman, "Apple plans to offer developer access to [the Apple Neural Engine] so third-party apps can also offload artificial intelligence-related asks."

Since Apple controls the chip and iOS, it should have a much easier time making such a dedicated AI processor easily accessible to developers. Apple's control of the software and hardware ecosystem should also allow it to add new, interesting capabilities to future iterations of the engine and expose them to developers at a pace that competitors will have a tough time matching.

Ashraf Eassa has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

What You Need to Know About Apple Inc.'s Artificial-Intelligence Chip - Motley Fool

Aerospace – Liebherr

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Danzig

Liebherr-Aerospace develops, manufactures and services aircraft flight control and actuation systems, landing gear, air management systems, on-board electronics as well as gears and gearboxes for the aerospace industry. Liebherr provides a complete OEM customer service based on a global network with maintenance, repair and overhaul services, engineering support, documentation and spare parts as well as AOG service.

In each product line, Liebherr offers the full integration of leading-edge technology equipment making the company the adequate partner for all air framers and aircraft programs. Products and Solutions

Our service team is a reliable partner for our worldwide customers by providing superior support solutions for air management, flight controls, landing gear systems, gears and gearboxes. Customer Services

Liebherr-Aerospace develops technologies of the future that will make air transport greener, safer and more comfortable for passengers and crew. Technologies for the future

Liebherr-Aerospace has been certified by all relevant quality assurance and aviation authorities. Find the certificates here along with other downloads. Downloads and certificates

Liebherr-Aerospace congratulates COMAC to the successful first flight of the C919. Play video

Liebherr-Aerospace congratulates COMAC to the successful first flight of the C919. The company supplies the integrated air management and landing gear systems for this prestigious aircraft program.

Liebherr-Aerospace has invested 1.4 million Euros in a new vibration test bench which will enable to internally certify its air conditioning packs. Play video

Liebherr-Aerospace has invested 1.4 million Euros in a new vibration test bench which will enable to internally certify its air conditioning packs.

Faced with the challenging demand for increasingly lightweight aircraft, Liebherr-Aerospace as chosen to invest in the manufacture of titanium parts. Play video

Faced with the challenging demand for increasingly lightweight aircraft, Liebherr-Aerospace as chosen to invest in the manufacture of titanium parts.

Liebherr-Aerospace began additive layer manufacturing six years ago and presented the fruits of its labours during ILA Berlin Air Show in June 2016. Play video

Liebherr-Aerospace began additive layer manufacturing six years ago and presented the fruits of its labours during ILA Berlin Air Show in June 2016.

Learn more about Liebherr-Aerospace in two of our most recent print publications.