Select Page ::

Freedom Shoe owner uses fashion to celebrate imperfections – fox4kc.com

Posted on February 27, 2017 by Danzig

Please enable Javascript to watch this video

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A metro woman is sharing an important message that our differences make us beautiful. The London transplant is taking our imperfections and turning them into purse designs.

"I believe we all have scars and imperfections that give us character, tell our story, and make us who we are. So when I design and create, I'm in that space," said Freedom Shoe owner Pamela Williams.

In the fashion industry that is known for going after the perfect style, Pamela Williams said she gave up that vision to instead focus her designs on our imperfections.

Williams moved to Kansas City several years ago and created the business Freedom Shoe.

"I feel that we all as human beings want to be free, free to express ourselves, free to be who we want to be. That's how I kind of came up with that name," Williams recalled.

Proceeds from her purse sales go towards the anti-bullying organization, Stand for the Silent.

You can find those purses at The Space at 1412 in the West Bottoms, and check out Williams' Instagram for the latest designs.

‘Sweden has given me so much freedom to be a photographer’ – The Local Sweden

Posted on February 27, 2017 by Danzig

Michelle Job. Photo: Private

The Local speaks to Michelle Job, a photographer and blogger from India who recently relocated to Stockholm.

"Sweden has given me so much freedom to be a photographer. I can pick any place, walk there, and I'm not bothered by anyone. It has really given me freedom."

Michelle Job speaks with genuine enthusiasm about her new adventure as a photographer in Sweden. The Indian mum of two moved to Stockholm last August with her family, and has found the possibilities afforded to her in the Nordic nation to be liberating.

"I had done a few shoots before I moved here. I feel it's much easier to photograph here. There arent many restrictions, unlike in India."

Job came to Stockholm from Hyderabad in the south of India, a city with a population of over 6.8 million people, dwarfing the Swedish capital. She had been working as the editor of a magazine there, a different path from the one many Indians are expected to follow.

"I was born in the outskirts of a quaint little town in southern India called Tiruchirappalli. On average, if you ask any family in India what they want their child to become, they'd say 'an engineer or a doctor'. Its a very driven, very ambitious culture," she relates.

"I was unaware that there were courses other than engineering or medicine," the Indian laughs. So study engineering she did despite never really feeling a connection with the discipline.

Going to university would ultimately have its benefits however, as it introduced her to the creative work she would fall in love with.

"At the college they had their own national magazine, and eventually I became its editor. A few years later I got married, moved to a different city, and became the editor of an Asia-Pacific magazine. I got to work with a lot of creative people such as writers, designers and photographers," she enthuses.

Job eventually stopped working as an editor when she had her children, opting to spend time at home with them instead. But that also gave her a chance to start properly pursuing another love.

"Photography has always been my passion because my mum used to take great pictures when we were kids. I quit my job when I was pregnant, and when the kids arrived, I started photographing and blogging about them."

She uploaded some of her pictures to social media, and friends were so impressed they encouraged her to pursue photography professionally. A few memorable early shoots in India soon followed.

When her husband then got offered a job in Sweden, the whole family opted to move, and the resulting period of free time gave her a chance to take her pictures and writing even further.

Michelle's kids in the Stockholm snow. Photo: Michelle Job

"We had a one-month break before our kids started school. So I said 'Ok, I should start exploring the city'. So when my husband would go to work, I would take the kids, and we would check out every park, every museum, every palace, everything I could possibly go to. I started exploring the city slowly on my own, and documenting my kids in pictures."

Taking pictures proved to be the perfect antidote to the loneliness the newcomer felt after first making the move to the Nordic nation a feeling many internationals will likely be familiar with.

"I came here with a lot of excitement. I spent months and weeks researching the place. All the excitement just crumbled within the first week," she recalls.

"All of a sudden you're left all alone in a place where you don't know the language. It's so difficult to meet people and build friendships. The first time I walked around my neighbourhood and saw everything was in Swedish I panicked. I don't know if it's because it's so silent here, there are not as many people as in India. I started feeling very alone."

Job managed to turn that initial feeling of alienation into something positive by taking pictures and writing whenever she explored something new. In turn, that led to work, with Facebook groups proving to be a useful way to make a breakthrough as an outsider in Sweden.

Michelle's husband and kids. Photo: Michelle Job

"I knew there were Facebook groups before, but I never knew the power of them until I came here. I wanted to get some second-hand stuff, strollers etc, and a few of my friends recommended some Indian groups," she explains.

"I thought it was just for buying stuff, but then I posted one of my pictures there and a lot of people showed interest and wanted me to take their pictures."

One person who contacted her was Renjith Ramachandran, founder of Indian expat network Search Indie, who The Local has previously interviewed.

He commissioned photographs of the Stockholm Sangeet Conference and an event put on by the Indian Embassy. Things soon picked up from there.

"I was contacted by the Indian Cultural Centre of Scandinavia to capture a couple of their events. I'm getting to meet more people and explore diverse opportunities."

An example of Michelle's work. Photo: Michelle Job

Along with Facebook groups, Job found reaching out and contacting other creatives to be a useful was of breaking into the Swedish photography world. In her experience, the stereotype of cold Swedes simply isn't accurate.

"I started following some prominent Swedish photographers on Instagram like Juliana Wiklund, a famous family/wedding photographer. She's amazing. I just followed her, left her a message asking about her workshops and if shes going to conduct any in English. She was so warm, she said 'let's meet up for lunch!' and we met."

"I also met a Jamaican-Scandinavian photographer, Andrea Davis Kronlund, who has her own online fashon website," she adds.

"The impression I got is that the Swedes are reserved, unapproachable. To my pleasant surprise when I introduced myself as a photographer and wanted to learn from them, they were extremely welcoming, friendly, and very approachable."

Along with the creative side of being a photographer there is also the business side to take care of, and thankfully that hasn't been too tricky either, according to Job's experience so far. Starting a company "sounds complex, but its actually very easy," she notes, adding that free seminars by Startup Stockholm are helpful.

Stockholm's Drottningholm in the summer. Photo: Michelle Job

Beyond getting her company up and running, one exciting goal she wants to tackle in the future is trying out birth photography.

"I've already got people interested so I can go into the labour ward and document births. I'm also looking forward to documenting engagements, small European weddings and, day-in-the-life family documentary sessions."

And a bigger target for the long term is to try her hand at a Stockholm equivalent of Humans of New York a world famous photoblog featuring portraits and interviews on the streets of New York City.

"I'd just like to document stories, go on to the streets, photograph individuals and showcase their stories. Something small, something big, something inspiring or moving. That's one of the things I really hope to capture," she reveals.

After half a year in Stockholm, the blogger has concluded that the key to succeeding in Sweden's creative world is to get out and connect with the people you admire.

"You just need to identify the people who inspire you here in Stockholm, connect with them, and learn from them," she suggests.

"Both of the renowned photographers I met had moved to Sweden from somewhere else. They were so generous in explaining how their journey has been. It's really inspiring and motivating."

Visit link:

'Sweden has given me so much freedom to be a photographer' - The Local Sweden

Freedom Riders recall 1961 bus rides – Gadsden Times

Posted on February 27, 2017 by Danzig

By Jim LittleThe Opelika-Auburn News

AUBURN, Ala. Bill Harbour and Charles Person were two of the young activists who sought to end segregation in the South by doing a simple thing taking a bus ride.

Those bus rides brought about bombings, beatings and imprisonment but also the eventual end of segregated transportation in the South.

Harbour and Person spoke at the Hotel at Auburn University on Wednesday night as part of a Black History Month program hosted by the Auburn Alumni Association.

Harbour and Person recounted their experiences during the 1961 Freedom Rides.

Person was the youngest of the 13 riders of the first Freedom Ride that left Washington D.C. to travel to New Orleans on May 4, 1961.

"All change begins with young people," Person said. "Young people want to see things happen. Older people, we rationalize things and make things seem OK."

Person described his arrival at the bus station in Anniston, learning that the other bus had been firebombed. Klansmen boarded and demanded they move to the back of the bus.

"Well being smart students, we said no, we weren't going to move," Person said. "So they began to punch us."

At that point, James Peck and Walter Bergman, two white Freedom Riders, tried to intervene.

"That really infuriated them to think that whites would come to aid black students," Person said.

The men beat Peck and Bergman and forced the rest of the group into the back of the bus, which continued on an alternate route to Birmingham bypassing the angry crowd that had burned the other bus.

When the bus arrived in Birmingham, Peck and Person went to test the desegregation at the bus station, but they were intercepted by another mob. Person suffered a severe injury to his head in the beating. A photographer snapped a photo and the crowd turned on him letting Person go.

The riders eventually boarded an airplane in Birmingham to reach their destination of New Orleans.

Person later went on to serve in the U.S. Marine Corps in Vietnam.

Harbour went on two Freedom Rides at the end of May 1961, including a bus ride from Nashville to Montgomery.

Harbour said the bus was met in Birmingham by the infamous Bull Conor, who put the group in jail "for their own protection."

After being driven out of town in cars, the group re-boarded a bus and made it through Birmingham with the protection of the state police.

"We pulled into Montgomery and everybody vanished," Harbour said. "No protection nowhere. Didn't see anybody. John Lewis said, 'Bill something's wrong.'"

Then an angry mob appeared in the station and attacked the Freedom Riders.

"It was rough," he said. "It was real real rough. I have scars now that happened at that bus station in Montgomery."

The group continued its ride after an intervention from the National Guard to Jackson, Mississippi where they were arrested.

"We went into the bus station and asked for a hamburger and Coke, and they put us straight in jail," Harbour said.

Students from across the country sought to take part in the Freedom Rides and 436 students were arrested, Harbour said.

"Fifty percent were black, and fifty percent were white," he said. "We're not sure how that happened, but it did."

Before the remarks from Person and Harbour, the Auburn University Moasic Theater company debuted a new work titled "There are no Free Rides," an interpretation of the history of the Freedom Rides.

"They were going to war armed only with their passion and freedom songs inherited from their ancestors," one actor said during the play.

Original post:

Freedom Riders recall 1961 bus rides - Gadsden Times

Genetics Are the New Eugenics: How GMO’s Reduce the Human Population – Center for Research on Globalization

Posted on February 27, 2017 by Danzig

The following is from an interview transcript

Last year, we had a series of mergers in the agribusiness GMO-corporations worldwide. This has created an alarming concentration of corporate power in the hands of basically three corporate groups.

The first one is Bayer AG of Germany, which made a friendly takeover of Monsanto. The reason for this was that Monsanto became identified in the public mind as pure evil and everything bad about GMOs, which was accurate. This became a burden on the whole GMO project. So, Bayer stepped in, which has a friendly image of an aspirin, harmless, nice company, but in fact is the company that invented heroin in the 1880s and made gas for the ovens of Auschwitz during WWII. Its one of the dirtiest agribusiness companies in the world with a series of homicides and pesticides that killed off bee colonies and many other things that are essential to life and to nature.

Flickr.com/Miran Rijavec (public domain)

ChemChina China State Chemical giant for some reason took over Swiss Syngenta, which makes weed-killers.

Then, Dow Chemicals and DuPont merged their GMO businesses together.

So, we have three gigantic corporate groups worldwide controlling the genetically-modified part of the human food chain. As dangerous as the GMO crops are and the more they sell, it is becoming more and more obvious that they are the chemicals that by contract must be applied to those GMO seeds by the corporations. They demand that if you buy roundup ready soybeans or corn, you must use Monsanto (now Bayer) roundup.

Therefore, this is giving more corporate power to the GMO industry than ever before and thats an alarming trend. They are putting pressure on the bureaucracy in Brussels. One example: there was a massive public campaign against the renewal of the license of the European Commission for Glyphosate. Glyphosate is the most widely used weed-killer in the world. Glyphosate is the main ingredient in Monsantos roundup. The other ingredients are Monsantos corporate secret, but the combination of them is one of the most deadly weed-killers.

The World Health Organizations body responsible for assessing genetic dangers made a ruling the last year that Glyphosate was a probable cancer-causing agent.

The license came up for automatic renewal last year a 15-year license. The EU commission for health was prepared to automatically renew it for 15 years. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which is responsible allegedly for the health and safety of European citizens, recommended approval based on a German study by the German Food Safety Agency that was simply lifted 100% from studies given by the private corporation Monsanto! So, the whole chain was corrupt from the beginning and all the information was rigged. In reality tests have shown that in minuscule concentrations, lower than in recommended levels in Europe and in the US, Glyphosate causes kidney disease, liver disease, and other illnesses that are potentially fatal.

Now, Glyphosate has shown up in urine tests, in urban drinking water, in gardens, in ground water and so forth. And that gets into the system of childbearing women, for example, with embryo. Its all in this!

The EU commission, despite a million petitions this is a record setting and despite recommendations from leading scientists around the world to not renew the license, made a compromise under huge industry pressure and renewed it for 18 months. Why did they renew it for that time? Because at the end of 18 months, they were told by Bayer and Monsanto that the takeover of those two giant corporations will be completed and Bayer is going to replace Glyphosate with another, likely more deadly toxin, but not so well-known as Glyphosate. So, they simply bought time. And that is just one example.

This agenda of GMO is not about the health and safety; its not about increasing crop yields thats a lie that has been proven in repeated tests in North America and all around the world. Crop yields for farmers, using GMO plants, may increase slightly for the first 1-2 harvest years, but ultimately decline after 3-4 years. And not only that! Weve been promised by Monsanto and other GMO giants that the use of chemicals will be less, because of these wonderful traits that GMO plants resist. In fact, the weeds become resistant and you have super weeds, which are 5-6 feet in a height and choke out everything. Its a catastrophe. So, farmers end up using added weed killers to kill the super weeds. This whole mad playing around with the genetic makeup of nature is a disaster from the beginning.

The real agenda of GMO, which I have documented in great detail in my book Seeds of Destruction, comes from the Rockefeller Foundation. It comes out of the 1920s-1930s Eugenics movement. The Rockefeller Foundation during the 1930s, right up to the outbreak of World War II when it became politically embracing too, financed the Nazi Eugenics experiments of Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin and in Munich. Why did they do this? Their goal was the elimination of what they called undesirable eaters. That is called population reduction.

After the war, the head of the American Eugenic Society, who was a good friend of John D. Rockefeller, at the annual conference of the American Eugenic Society said: From today, the new name of eugenics is genetics. Moreover, if you keep that in mind genetic engineering, the Human Genome Project and so forth they all are scientific frauds. Russian scientists have proven that the entire Genome Project utterly disregarded 98% of the scientifically valuable data in favor of 2% that was completely nonsense and a waste of billions of dollars.

Therefore, they have been obsessed with the idea of how to reduce human population in a way that would not be so obvious as simply going out and carrying out mass-sterilization.

Actually, they have done that in Central America together with the World Health Organization by giving certain vaccines that they cooked-up to have abortive effects. Therefore, the women of child-bearing age in Central America were given these vaccines against tetanus. The organization of the Catholic Church became suspicious because the shots were given only to women, not to men. And they found that there was buried in the vaccine an abortive effect that made it impossible for women to conceive and bear children. This is all covert population reduction.

These are the Western patriarchs who believe they are the gods, sitting on the throne with great dignity, controlling mankind. I think they are a bunch of fools, but they have this agenda of genetic manipulation. Its against nature, its chemically unstable. And I have to congratulate the Russian Federation that they had the courage and the moral concern for their own population to ban GMO cultivation across Russia. That was a step forward for mankind. I would hope that Russia will use its influence to get China to do the similar thing, because their agriculture is in dire need of some healthy Russian input. But this step by Russia to make a GMO-free agriculture is a great step for mankind.

Read this article:

Genetics Are the New Eugenics: How GMO's Reduce the Human Population - Center for Research on Globalization

2 New England Beaches Land on World’s Best List – NBC Boston

Posted on February 27, 2017 by Danzig

Two New England beaches have landed on TripAdvisor's World's Best Beaches 2017 Travelers' Choice Awards.

Ogunquit Beach in Maine and Race Point on Cape Cod were among the top 25 beaches picked by the travel website company. It's the second year both beaches have been selected.

Ogunquit was called "idyllic" by one TripAdvisor reviewer.

"Stroll or run on this beach when the tide is low, you will have plenty of space. In the off season go anytime. In summer the water is great," said Sandy, one reviewer.

The site says the best time to go to Race Point is June through August, although some TripAdvisor reviewers say they love going in the off-season.

"Even in the winter months, Race Beach has spectacular sunsets that will warm your heart," wrote Cecilia, another reviewer. "The sunset will absolutely infiltrate your senses with joy and wonderment!"

The full list of top 25 beaches are:

1. Siesta Beach, Florida

2. Ka'anapali Beach Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii

3. St. Pete Beach St. Pete Beach, Florida

4. Clearwater Beach Clearwater, Florida

5. Beach at Panama City Panama City Beach, Florida

6. Hollywood Beach Hollywood, Florida

7. Pensacola Beach Pensacola Beach, Florida

8. Saint Augustine Beach Saint Augustine Beach, Florida

9. Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve Honolulu, Hawaii

10. Ocean City Beach Ocean City, Maryland

11. Fort Lauderdale Beach - Fort Lauderdale, Florida

12. South Beach - Miami Beach, Florida

13. Wai'anapanapa State Park - Hana, Hawaii

14. Ogunquit Beach - Ogunquit, Maine

15. Wailea Beach - Wailea, Hawaii

16. Lanikai Beach - Kailua, Hawaii

17. Henderson Beach State Park - Destin, Florida

18. Driftwood Beach - Jekyll Island, Georgia

19. Virginia Beach - Virginia Beach, Virginia

20. Santa Monica Beach - Santa Monica, California

21. La Jolla Shores Park - La Jolla, California

22. Hapuna Beach - Waimea, Hawaii

23. Race Point Beach - Provincetown, Massachusetts

24. Carlsbad State Beach - Carlsbad, California

25. Poipu Beach Park - Poipu, Hawaii

Published at 11:31 AM EST on Feb 26, 2017 | Updated at 12:06 PM EST on Feb 26, 2017

Read the original:

2 New England Beaches Land on World's Best List - NBC Boston

Ocean City’s North End Beaches May Get a Facelift This Fall – OCNJ Daily

Posted on February 27, 2017 by Danzig

By Donald Wittkowski

Large chunks of the dunes along some of Ocean Citys north end beaches have been sliced away, as though someone took a gigantic cleaver and cut them in half.

Whats left are cliff-like walls of sand that tower 7 or 8 feet above the beach in spots between Third and Fifth streets.

Although Ocean City isnt scheduled for its next round of beach replenishment until 2018, there is a possibility fresh sand could be added to the badly eroded north end beaches this year to get them in tip-top shape.

Mayor Jay Gillian announced in his State of the City address Thursday night that the city has been in positive talks with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers about the possibility of starting an additional beach restoration project in the north end as early as this fall.

Ocean City is now on a regular three-year cycle for beach replenishment projects funded by the Army Corps of Engineers. The mayor said the next phase of pumping is scheduled for 2018. That timetable would be accelerated if the city is successful in its talks to get the north end beaches replenished this fall.

First Ward Councilman Michael DeVlieger, who represents the north end of town and has advocated for more beach restoration work, said he was thrilled to hear Gillians remarks.

DeVlieger noted that healthy beaches are essential for Ocean Citys tourism industry and for maintaining the towns reputation as Americas Greatest Family Resort.

Our beaches are a critical part of what makes us great. We have to do everything we can to keep them in the shape that people have come to expect, he said.

Coastal Living Magazine named Ocean City in 2016 as the winner of its Best Beach in America award, the result of a nationwide online poll. City officials said the award underscored the importance of having a pristine beachfront.

However, some of the north end beaches got hammered by the powerful coastal storm Jonas in January 2016. In addition to carving sharp drop-offs in the dunes between Third and Fifth streets, the storm also washed away the top layer of powdery sand that provides a comfortable cushion for beachgoers to lie on.

Gabriella DiMarco, an Ocean City resident, was taking her dog, Toby, for a walk Sunday on the north end beaches. At one point, DiMarco stood at the base of some of the dunes on Fifth Street that had been dramatically sheared away.

I noticed that they have become badly eroded, she said.

She pointed out that her dog seems to have an easier time running on the dunes now because they are not nearly as big as before.

Scott Smyth, a Strathmere resident who grew up in Ocean City, noted that the beaches are ravaged by Mother Nature virtually every year. He said he remembers many beach replenishment projects that have been wiped away by the ocean.

Overall, Smyth characterized most of the north end beaches as being in fairly good shape now, especially when compared to what they were like in the 1970s and 1980s. During his youth in the 1970s, the beach was so sparse that the surf would wash up all the way under the Boardwalk, he said.

We used to go swimming right off the Boardwalk, the 53-year-old Smyth recalled. At high tide, the water would come in under the Boardwalk and we jumped right in.

The north end beaches were last replenished in 2015, when the Army Corps of Engineers pumped 1 million cubic yards of new sand between the northernmost jetty at Seaspray Road and 12th Street.

Ocean Citys share of the $12.3 million north end project was about $1.1 million, with the state and federal governments picking up the rest of the tab.

In 2016, the citys south end received 473,000 cubic yards of new sand to restore the storm-damaged beaches between 37th and 59th streets. The work was part of a federally funded $15.8 million project that also replenished beaches in Sea Isle City and Strathmere.

See the article here:

Ocean City's North End Beaches May Get a Facelift This Fall - OCNJ Daily

PH beaches in 2017 lists of Conde Nast, TripAdvisor – ABS-CBN News

Posted on February 27, 2017 by Danzig

One of the many white sand beaches in El Nido. Karen Flores, ABS-CBN News

MANILA Two Philippine destinations were once again recognized internationally.

Palawans El Nido, popular among locals, tourists and celebrities for its white sand and limestone formations, ranked fourth in Conde Nast Travelers list of 20 most beautiful beaches in the world.

Shockingly, Palawan remains steadily under the radar even though it continues to rank highly in our Readers Choice Awards. El Nido alone is home to around 50 white sand beaches its impossible to choose just one all of which are set around dramatic limestone formations and boast the finest and whitest sand youll ever see, Conde Nast said in an article published last February 23.

The water is so blindingly blue it makes the Caribbean Sea look murky in comparison. And the sunsets? Well, theyll ruin your life. Consider yourself warned, it added.

The three other beaches that surpassed El Nido in Conde Nasts list are all located in Hawaii. At number one is Honokalani Beach in Maui, followed by Honopu Beach in Kauai and Sunset Beach in Oahu.

The other beaches featured in Conde Nasts article came from St. Lucia, Aruba, French Polynesia, Jamaica, the Caribbean, Turks and Caicos, United States Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Bahamas, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Barbados and Bali.

Meanwhile, Boracays White Beach made it to TripAdvisors Top 25 beaches in the world for 2017, a list based on votes by users of the travel website.

The beach party hotspot ranked 24th in the list, which is topped by Baia do Sancho in Brazil.

Go here to read the rest:

PH beaches in 2017 lists of Conde Nast, TripAdvisor - ABS-CBN News

Zip, zero, zilch: TripAdvisor list excludes SWFL beaches – The News-Press

Posted on February 27, 2017 by Danzig

Subscribe today for full access on your desktop, tablet, and mobile device.

245

Let friends in your social network know what you are reading about

TripAdvisor released its new list of America's favorite beaches, and seven of the top eight are right here in Florida.

Try Another

Audio CAPTCHA

Image CAPTCHA

Help

CancelSend

A link has been sent to your friend's email address.

A link has been posted to your Facebook feed.

Lance Risinger didn't catch many fish Thursday near the lighthouse on Sanibel Island in Florida. Risinger said he didn't care because the sunset he caught was good enough. Video by Kinfay Moroti/news-press.com

Beach sunset view from the Kane Tiki Bar at JW Marriott Marco Island.(Photo: JoNell Modys/Special to The News-Press)

TripAdvisor released its new list of America's favorite beaches, and seven of the top eight are right here in Florida.

So which Southwest Florida beaches made the 2017 Travelers' Choice list?

NONE!

That's the same number of Lee, Collier and Charlotte county beaches that made Dr. Beach's Top 10 list in 2016.

What gives?

The sun is still shining, the water is still warm, and sand and seashells still dazzle beach-goers. Last winter and spring, however, the region's reputation took a little hit when brown water emerged in the Gulf of Mexico following discharges from Lake Okeechobee. And then there's the issue of red tide, which has impacted our coastal areas off-and-on for years.

Just today, reporter Laura Ruane reported that Southwest Florida's tourist season outlook was flat, butthat's not necessarily a bad thing. For January, Southwest Florida International Airport reported a year-over-year passenger decline of 2.8 percent, but that still represented RSW's second-best January in its history.

Don't see the poll above? Click this link:Vote: Which Southwest Florida Beach is your favorite?

According to TripAdvisor users, these Florida beaches are among America's best:

Autoplay

Show Thumbnails

Show Captions

RELATED: TripAdvisor ranks the best beaches in the world

Autoplay

Show Thumbnails

Show Captions

Read or Share this story: http://newspr.es/2lzpZyS

1:53

1:06

8:43

3:55

1:59

3:49

1:25

1:09

1:31

1:09

0:43

2:58

1:40

0:32

0:39

0:37

1:11

0:36

0:55

1:26

0:42

1:11

2:49

2:14

0:46

2:11

0:39

10:18

1:29

1:14

0) { %>

Link:

Zip, zero, zilch: TripAdvisor list excludes SWFL beaches - The News-Press

Okaloosa aims to keep using white beach sand – The Northwest Florida Daily News

Posted on February 27, 2017 by Danzig

By Tony Judnich | 315-4438 | @Tonyjnwfdn | tjudnich@nwfdailynews.com

SHALIMAR Okaloosa County Chairwoman Carolyn Ketchel told numerous Okaloosa Island residents last week that the countys beaches will not have dirty sand with shards as long as shes a commissioner.

She and other commissioners then took a major step toward such a guarantee. The commission approved hiring an independent, special counsel to help ensure that any potential beach re-nourishment project will use the native, white sand cherished by residents and tourists.

The county recently had applied to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for a 15-year permit that would extend its existing permitting for beach restoration on Okaloosa Island and Destins beaches by 10 years. The state Department of Environmental Protection has already approved the extension, which could take several months to be finalized.

While county officials said they have no beach restoration plans, numerous Okaloosa Island residents expressed concern Tuesday about the quality of sand used in any potential re-nourishment projects. Some of the residents were plaintiffs in a past beach sand-quality lawsuit against the county.

One of those plaintiffs was Rebecca Sherry, who is an officer in the Condominium Alliance of Okaloosa Island.

Pause the Okaloosa Island Corps permit application, she told the commission Tuesday. Use better sand.

But county officials said that without the permitting, they would have to start from scratch to seek the authority to re-nourish the beaches. They said that could take as long as a year at a time when the area might be struggling to recover from major storm damage.

I can clearly understand the level of concern about wanting good sand, commission Vice Chairman Graham Fountain said. But, Okaloosa needs to get this permit. Its sound public policy. There is no plan to add sand on the public beaches. Theres no intention to use bad sand. We dont want it.

County Administrator John Hofstad on Thursday said the special counsel would be tasked with representing the county in meetings involving staff, the Corps and the DEP.

At this point, Im not sure if (the special counsel) will be a single representative, or if we will have more than one person/firm to recommend, Hofstad said via email. The issue of pay will need to be negotiated once suitable counsel is located to provide representation on our behalf.I suspect that this will be a short engagement, possibly for a few months into the spring or early summer.

In 2010, David and Rebecca Sherry filed a lawsuit challenging the countys original permit application. In September 2011, an administrative law judge sided with island residents and ruled that sand the county wanted to put on the beach was not of the same quality as the islands native sand.

Three months later, the DEP secretary issued a final order to approve the countys permit to restore the beach. But the commission then voted against moving forward with the $12 million project.

Originally posted here:

Okaloosa aims to keep using white beach sand - The Northwest Florida Daily News

Society names new observatory for Marion Oaks astronomer – Ocala

Posted on February 27, 2017 by Danzig

The Southern Cross Astronomical Society recently dedicated its observatory in Homestead, just west of Miami, in honor of Matthew Tippy DAuria and his wife Pat, of Marion Oaks.

Some people are named after relatives, celebrities, famous singers/musicians or sports figures. And sometimes venues are named after people.

The latter is the case with Matthew Tippy DAuria of Marion Oaks, to whom the Southern Cross Astronomical Society recently dedicated its observatory in Homestead, just west of Miami.

During a ceremony Jan. 28, the society named their new observatory The DAuria Observatory. DAuria, a former resident of Miami, attended the dedication with his wife, Pat. He said he wanted just his last name used on the observatory, So my wife would get credit too.

The plaque of dedication includes the names Tippy and Patricia DAuria. It also reads: Florida amateur astronomer Tippy DAuria (born 1935) is founder of the Winter Star Party. For many years he has worked to encourage both beginning and advanced sky-watchers in the hobby.

The Winter Star Party is not political, but is, in fact, a party. DAuria and Pat started the event in 1985, as an astronomers convention.

Its a gathering of astronomers, he said.

The event is usually held each year in February, in Scout Key in the Florida Keys. As an offshoot of the Southern Cross Astronomical Society, it is attended by astronomy buffs from all over. There are classes and lectures during the day. Attendees bring their own telescopes for sky-viewing at night.

This year's event began Feb. 20 and ended Sunday, according to http://scas.org/winter-star-party.

DAuria has dedicated himself to educating the public about all he has studied and learned about the cosmos. He has been involved with astronomy since 1980. That was the same year he joined the Southern Cross Astronomical Society. He served as vice president of the society for 15 years and now is a life member of the group. He also is currently a board member of the Astronomy Outreach Network.

More than 100 people attended the recent observatory naming ceremony, which was presided over by Mike Reynolds. He was the executive director emeritus of the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland, California, from 1991 to 2003. When he retired, center officials named the main observatory The Michael D. Reynolds Observatory in his honor. Reynolds currently is professor of astronomy at Florida State College in Jacksonville and executive director of the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers.

Tippy has been a leader in astronomy outreach for over three decades. Tippy loves to share the night skies with others. These celestial treasures inspired him, so he passes that on, Reynolds said, citing reasons DAuria was chosen for the honor.

The observatory is not the first time something has been named in honor of D'Auria. In 1998, he had an asteroid named after him: Asteroid 11378 DAuria.

Before his interest in astronomy, DAuria served from 1954 to 1958 as an electricians mate aboard a diesel attack submarine, the USS Trumpetfish 55425. He attended sub school in New London, Connecticut, and earned his dolphins, similar to a pilots wings. From a starting class of 50 students, only 22 made it to graduation.

I would recommend that anybody who wants to try the submarine service do so. If its not suited for you, youll find out long before you go to sea on a submarine, DAuria said.

He remembers going topside in the North Atlantic and becoming somewhat star struck: There were so many stars, it was like black velvet with diamond dust scattered all over the sky, he said.

DAuria was hired in 1992 at Miami-Dade Community College in Miami as an instrumentation technician, at the same time he was working on earning two degrees. In 1997, he obtained an Associate of Science in electrical engineering and, in 2000, an AS in computer integrated manufacturing. He also taught creative photography and darkroom techniques, and introduction to electronics and DC circuit theory at Miami-Dade.

DAurias interests also include volcanoes. In 2001, he led a National Geographic sponsored expedition to study volcanoes in Costa Rica. His subject was the moons gravitational pull on magma chambers in volcanoes.

This helped predict volcanic eruptions, based on positions of the moon, he said.

Parade magazine featured his photo and a cover story in the March 14, 1999, issue.

D'Auria also is affiliated with the Deep Sky Observers, Institute for Planetary Research Observatories, Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers and the Astronomy League. He is a frequent guest lecturer and speaker on astronomy at universities, high schools, star parties, civic groups and astronomy clubs. He often is invited to state and national parks to share his knowledge. He said he is not a fan of science fiction novels or films because, Theyre too far fetched.

The nickname Tippy comes from when D-Auria was a toddler and cut his feet walking on broken glass from a dropped baby bottle. He walked "tippy" as a result and his father started calling him tippy toes.

DAuria married Pat in 1980. After retiring in 2006, they visited Ocala on vacation and liked it so much they bought a home here. The house is spacious and his many awards and citations of recognition line the walls and his office, along with deep sky photographs.

A large framed photograph of Hollywoods famed Rat Pack (Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin, shown playing pool), looks out on one room with a pool table in the center.

Pat D'Auria loves to quote one of her husbands favorite slogans: Theres no sense in retiring if you dont have a pool table!

Read the original here:

Society names new observatory for Marion Oaks astronomer - Ocala

Mapping the family tree of stars Astronomy Now – Astronomy Now Online

Posted on February 27, 2017 by Danzig

Resembling an opulent diamond tapestry, this image from NASAs Hubble Space Telescope shows a glittering star cluster that contains a collection of some of the brightest stars seen in our Milky Way galaxy. Called Trumpler 14, it is located 8,000 light-years away in the Carina Nebula, a huge star-formation region. Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Maz Apellniz (Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia, Spain)

Astronomers are borrowing principles applied in biology and archaeology to build a family tree of the stars in the galaxy. By studying chemical signatures found in the stars, they are piecing together these evolutionary trees looking at how the stars formed and how they are connected to each other. The signatures act as a proxy for DNA sequences. Its akin to chemical tagging of stars and forms the basis of a discipline astronomers refer to as galactic archaeology.

It was Charles Darwin, who, in 1859 published his revolutionary theory that all life forms are descended from one common ancestor. This theory has informed evolutionary biology ever since but it was a chance encounter between an astronomer and an biologist over dinner at Kings College in Cambridge that got the astronomer thinking about how it could be applied to stars in the Milky Way.

Writing in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Dr. Paula Jofr, of the University of Cambridges Institute of Astronomy, describes how she set about creating a phylogenetic tree of life that connects a number of stars in the galaxy.

The use of algorithms to identify families of stars is a science that is constantly under development. Phylogenetic trees add an extra dimension to our endeavours which is why this approach is so special. The branches of the tree serve to inform us about the stars shared history, she says.

The team picked 22 stars, including the Sun, to study. The chemical elements have been carefully measured from data coming from ground-based high-resolution spectra taken with large telescopes located in the north of Chile. Once the families were identified using the chemical DNA, their evolution was studied with the help of their ages and kinematical properties obtained from the space mission Hipparcos, the precursor of Gaia, the spacecraft orbiting Earth that was launched by the European Space Agency and is almost halfway through a 5-year project to map the sky.

Stars are born from violent explosions in the gas clouds of the galaxy. Two stars with the same chemical compositions are likely to have been born in the same molecular cloud. Some live longer than the age of the universe and serve as fossil records of the composition of the gas at the time they were formed. The oldest star in the sample analysed by the team is estimated to be almost ten billion years old, which is twice as old as the Sun. The youngest is 700 million years old.

In evolution, organisms are linked together by a pattern of descent with modification as they evolve. Stars are very different from living organisms, but they still have a history of shared descent as they are formed from gas clouds, and carry that history in their chemical structure. By applying the same phylogenetic methods that biologists use to trace descent in plants and animals it is possible to explore the evolution of stars in the galaxy.

The differences between stars and animals is immense, but they share the property of changing over time, and so both can be analysed by building trees of their history, says Professor Robert Foley, of the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies at Cambridge.

With an increasing number of datasets being made available from both Gaia and more advanced telescopes on the ground, and on-going and future large spectroscopic surveys, astronomers are moving closer to being able to assemble one tree that would connect all the stars in the Milky Way.

Read this article:

Mapping the family tree of stars Astronomy Now - Astronomy Now Online

The night sky this week – AccuWeather.com (blog)

Posted on February 27, 2017 by Danzig

Astronomy blog By Dave Samuhel, AccuWeather senior meteorologist 2/26/2017, 4:44:03 PM

The new moon will enter the evening sky through the course of this week. The very thin waxing crescent will appear near Venus on Tuesday night. It will not be far from Mars on Wednesday night.

Jupiter will overtake the Venus as the night skys most impressive planet as we head into March.

insert Jupiter map

Jupiter rises a bit before midnight. It will continue to rise earlier and earlier, and will soon be in the sky through the entire night. Later in March, Mercury will be easier to spot in the evening sky.

Image Credit: AccuWeather Astronomy friend Ronald Shawley took this imagery Saturday night.

There is no active meteor shower at this time, but there have been a decent amount of fireball reports. Interestingly enough, the American Meteor Society reports that, evening fireballs seem to peak this time of year as seen from the Northern Hemisphere. Read the rest of their weekly meteor activity report here.

There is a lot to see in the night sky this week. So, just look up! You never know what you will see!

More here:

The night sky this week - AccuWeather.com (blog)

Astronomy Enthusiasts Over The Moon After Exoplanet Discovery – Harvard Crimson

Posted on February 27, 2017 by Danzig

The discovery of seven Earth-sized planetsat least three of which may be able to support lifeorbiting a nearby star has thrilled Harvard astronomy scholars and enthusiasts.

A team of astronomers published findings in the journal Nature Feb. 22 that the seven planets40 light-years from Earthmay be prime candidates for extraterrestrial life forms. According to researchers, last weeks discovery is the first in which multiple Earth-sized planets were found orbiting the same star.

For Andrew W. Mayo 17, vice president of the Student Astronomers at Harvard-Radcliffe and a joint Physics and Astrophysics concentrator, the discovery brought pure excitement.

Mayo said last weeks findings mark the largest discovery in the exoplanet field since NASAs 2009 Kepler Space Mission, which found other Earth-sized planets much further away from Earth than Trappist-1, which the seven planets orbit. Because researchers found three planets in the habitable zone, he said, it was a much more interesting discovery than those made in the past.

David Charbonneau, an astronomy professor, said that the Kepler Mission revealed that small, rocky planets often orbit small stars. After the Kepler Mission concluded, Charbonneau and an astronomy graduate student conducted a follow-up study that found that about one in four stars have planets roughly the size and temperature of Earth. Charbonneau said, however, that the stars studied in the Kepler Mission were very far away.

Trappist-1s solar system, by contrast, is only 40 light-years away, which is relatively close for astronomical research and accessible via telescope. Charbonneau said that the relative closeness of the newly discovered planets means that astronomers may be able to study their properties and look for life.

Andrew M. Vanderburg, a graduate student studying planetary systems at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said he thinks the biggest thing these planets show is that were on the right track.

Mayo said he is excited to see further research on the Trappist-1 discovery.

Everyone who is involved in astronomy on campus is very intrigued by the discovery, and beyond that, I think were all excited to see what people find in the coming years, Mayo said. Theres a lot of follow-up to be done.

Vanderburg added that similar and follow-up projects are already happening at Harvard. Professor Charbonneaus MEarth project, for example, which also looks for exoplanets orbiting small stars, is similar to the project that found the Trappist-1 planets. The MEarth project specifically examines stars close to Earth and looks for rocky planets with the potential to sustain life.

According to Vanderburg, the Giant Magellan Telescope will be able to detect biosignatures, or certain molecules like methane, carbon, and oxygen which signal the presence of life. This and the other telescope projects will allow scientists to analyze the seven recently discovered planets and determine whether or not they contain life relatively soon, Vanderburg said.

Continue reading here:

Astronomy Enthusiasts Over The Moon After Exoplanet Discovery - Harvard Crimson

Goldman Sacked: How Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Wall Street – Newsweek

Posted on February 27, 2017 by Danzig

For the past year, we as a society have been worried sick about artificial intelligence eating the jobs of 3 million truck drivers. Turns out that a more imminently endangered species are the Wall Street traders and hedge fund managers who can afford to buy Lamborghinis and hire Elton John to play their Hamptons house parties.

So maybe hooray for AI on this one?

Financial giants such as Goldman Sachs and many of the biggest hedge funds are all switching on AI-driven systems that can foresee market trends and make trades better than humans. Its been happening, drip by drip, for years, but a torrent of AI is about to wash through the industry, says Mark Minevich, a New York-based investor in AI and senior adviser to the U.S. Council on Competitiveness. High-earning traders are going to get unceremoniously dumped like workers at a closing factory.

Try Newsweek for only $1.25 per week

It will really hit at the soul of Wall Street, Minevich tells me. It will transform New York.

Some of these AI trading systems are being built by startups such as Sentient in San Francisco and Aidyia in Hong Kong. In 2014, Goldman Sachs invested in and began installing an AI-driven trading platform called Kensho. Walnut Algorithms, a startup hedge fund, was designed from the beginning to work on AI. Infamously weird hedge fund company Bridgewater Associates hired its own team to build an AI system that could practically run the operation on its own. Bridgewaters effort is headed by David Ferrucci, who previously led IBMs development of the Watson computer that won on Jeopardy!

AI trading software can suck up enormous amounts of data to learn about the world and then make predictions about stocks, bonds, commodities and other financial instruments. The machines can ingest books, tweets, news reports, financial data, earnings numbers, international monetary policy, even Saturday Night Live sketchesanything that might help the software understand global trends. The AI can keep watching this information all the time, never tiring, always learning and perfecting its predictions.

RELATED: How robots will save the global economy

A report from Eurekahedge monitored 23 hedge funds utilizing AI and found they outperformed funds relying on people. Quants, the Ph.D. mathematicians who design fancy statistical models, have been the darlings of hedge funds for the past decade, yet they rely on crunching historical data to create a model that can anticipate market trends. AI can do that too, but AI can then watch up-to-the-instant data and learn from it to continually improve its model. In that way, quant models are like a static medical textbook, while AI learning machines are like a practicing doctor who keeps up with the latest research. Which is going to lead to a better diagnosis? Trading models built using back-tests on historical data have often failed to deliver good returns in real time, says the Eurekahedge report.

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) as the Dow Jones industrial average closed above the 20,000 mark for the first time on January 25 in New York City. Spencer Platt/Getty

Human traders and hedge fund managers dont stand a chance, in large part because theyre human. Humans have biases and sensitivities, conscious and unconscious," says Babak Hodjat, co-founder of Sentient and a computer scientist who played a role in Apples development of Siri. "It's well-documented we humans make mistakes. For me, it's scarier to be relying on those human-based intuitions and justifications than relying on purely what the data and statistics are telling you."

So whats going to happen to the finance people who find themselves standing in front of the oncoming AI bus? Well, average compensation for staff in sales, trading and research at the 12 largest investment banks is $500,000, according to business intelligence company Coalition Development. Many traders earn in the millions. In 2015, five hedge fund managers made $1 billion or more, according to an industry survey. If you think Carls Jr. is motivated to replace $8-an-hour fast-food workers with robots, imagine the motivation to dump million-dollar-a-year ($500 an hour!) traders.

Goldman Sachs shows just how devastating automation can be to traders. In 2000, its U.S. cash equities trading desk in New York employed 600 traders. Today, that operation has two equity traders, with machines doing the rest. And this is before the full brunt of AI has come into play at Goldman. In 10 years, Goldman Sachs will be significantly smaller by head count than it is today, Daniel Nadler, CEO of Kensho, told The New York Times. Expect the same to happen on every trading floor at every major financial company.

Much of America is not going to weep for the types of people depicted in The Wolf of Wall Street, yet this new AI reality could be devastating in many ways. Imagine the impact on high-end real estate in New York. Think of the For Sale signs on summer beach homes in Southampton. How will luxury retailers survive the likely dip in sales of $2,000 suits and $5,900-per-pound white truffles? Maybe Donald Trump will be driven to demand that somebody bring back traders jobs, thinking theyve moved to Mexico.

Minevich, though, sees a net positive if AI drives brilliant people out of finance and into, well, almost anything else.

As the surest, fastest path to million-dollar paydays, Wall Street trading and hedge fund managing have long soaked up a large chunk of Americas best and brightest. About one-third of graduates from the top 10 business schools go into finance. Only a tiny sliver, usually around 5 percent, go into health care. An even smaller percentage go into energy or manufacturing businesses, and you can count on two hands the number who take jobs at nonprofits each year.

Most of the rest of society looks at that and sees selfishness. Yeah, sure, we need liquid markets and financial instruments and all that. But if were going to pay a group of people so much money, maybe wed be better off if they were inventing electric cars that go 1,000 miles on a charge, or healthy vegetarian kielbasa, or babies who dont cry on airplanes. Just do something that brings tangible benefits to the masses.

Some of these smart people will move into tech startups, or will help develop more AI platforms, or autonomous cars, or energy technology, Minevich says. That could be really helpful right now, since the tech industry is always fretting that it doesnt have enough highly skilled pros and might be facing a geek drought in the age of Trump travel bans. If the MBA elite leave Wall Street but stay in New York, Minevich adds, New York might compete with Silicon Valley in tech.

As math Ph.D.s no longer find that hedge fund recruiters are salivating over them, they might leap into efforts to model climate change or the behavior of cancer cells in the body. The National Security Agencys website says it is actively seeking mathematicians to work on some of our hardest signals intelligence and information security problems. Math whizzes could help catch terrorists! Or liberals!

The pay for a mathematician at the National Security Agency is around $100,000. Compared with a hedge fund salary, that would be a major lifestyle downgrade. But at least the traders and quants will have options, which is more than we can say for truck drivers and other workers threatened by AI.

Theres one other benefit to AI machines taking over finance. Ben Goertzel, chief scientist at Aidyia, says his machine will never need human intervention. If we all die, it would keep trading, he once said.

So if Trump pulls out the nuclear codes and pushes the button, at least some people will still get a good return on their 401(k)s.

How Artificial Intelligence Can Benefit E-Commerce Businesses – Forbes

Posted on February 27, 2017 by Danzig

Forbes

How Artificial Intelligence Can Benefit E-Commerce Businesses
Forbes
According to Business Insider, 85 percent of customer interactions will be handled without a human by 2020. Artificial Intelligence may be changing the way ...
Machine Intelligence Revolutionizing Marketing-Anoop Karumathil ...BW Businessworld

all 2 news articles »

See original here:

How Artificial Intelligence Can Benefit E-Commerce Businesses - Forbes

Government promises 20m investment in robotics and artificial intelligence – The Independent

Posted on February 27, 2017 by Danzig

The government will launch a review into Artifical Intelligence (AI) and robotics in an attempt to make the UK a world leader in tech.

The government said in a statement on Sunday that it would invest 17.3 million in university research on AI.Artificial intelligence powers technologies such as Apples SIRI, Amazons Alexa, and driverless cars.

According to a report by consultancy firm Accenture, Artificial Intelligence could add around 654 billion to the UK economy.

A report by the Institute for Public Policy Research recently forecast that millions of jobs will be lost to automation over the next two decades. Researchers predicted that two million jobs retail jobs will disappear by 2030 and 600,000 will go in manufacturing.

Jrme Pesenti, CEO of Benevolent Tech, who will be leading government research into AI, said,

There has been a lot of unwarranted negative hype around Artificial Intelligence (AI), but it has the ability to drive enormous growth for the UK economy, create jobs, foster new skills, positively transform every industry and retain Britains status as a world leader in innovative technology.

EU universal income must be 'seriously considered' amid rise of robots

The announcement is part of the governments new Digital Strategy, which will be announced in full on Wednesday. As well as investment in research and the tech industry, the strategy is also expected to detail a comprehensive modernisation of the civil service.

The government has been heavily criticised the delay in the publication of the strategy. In 2015, Ed Vaizey, the then DigitalMinister, said plans would be published in early 2016.

In January, the chairman of the governments Science and Technology Committee criticised the government for this delay.

In a letter to Digital Minister Matt Hancock, Mr Metcalfe expressed his disappointment over such a long delay.

The letter also asked why the strategy continues to be a work in progress nearly a year after [Mr Hancocks] predecessor considered it already largely completed.

The government has said it was forced to delay the publication of the report to take into account the impact of Brexit.

However, other sources have suggested that Whitehalls resistance to the modernisation of the civil service under the Government Digital Service plans was also a significant factor.

Here is the original post:

Government promises 20m investment in robotics and artificial intelligence - The Independent

Artificial intelligence advances to make farming smarter – Stuff.co.nz

Posted on February 27, 2017 by Danzig

TIM CRONSHAW

Last updated16:27, February 27 2017

Murray Wilson/ Fairfax NZ.

A robotic milking system for dairy farms.

More artificial intelligence, cheaper sensors and longer flying dronesare only some of the technological advances that Kiwi farmers can look forward to on "data-driven" farms overthe next 10 years.

Microsoft Researchprincipal researcherRanveerChandra has been in New Zealand for a week offering insights into precision agricultureand advances the United States technology company is working on to improve farming and food production.

He said Kiwi farmers and their innovations could help lead world farming, but they would see more advances themselvesoverthe next decade.

Supplied

Ranveer Chandra is a principal researcher for Microsoft.

Farmers faced doubling food production to feed a growing population by 2050 and this would require more technological advances world-wide, he said..

*Automatic milkers easy on people, cows and farms

Kirk Hargreaves

More robotics are being introduced at meat plants to increase safety and processing efficiency.

*Precision tools help make a difference

*NZ on road to becoming the Detroit of agriculture

" New Zealand is quite advanced as far as technology and agri-practicesgo and I think thisis where New Zealand can lead the world because there is more work to bedone."

Chandra was a keynote speaker at the eResearch NZ conference in Queenstownbefore travelling to Christchurch and Palmerston North to meet withAgResearchandother leaders and leavingfor the United States on Monday.

The Indian-born researcherwent to the US 18years ago to complete post-graduate studies and has led Microsoft projects including in longer lasting batteries andTV white space networking.

Chandra said using technology to provide more food for the world was close to his heart as India had much to do to lift its food production.

"I think the one change that will absolutely happen is a move forward to data driven farming."

Farmers would rely less on intuition before taking actions on their farm as they gained more data and this was happening in the technological space and wouldincrease in farming for "precision nutrition", better yields and profits, he said.

The focuson precision nutrition would havenutrients customised for every animal based on the evaluation ofdata showing, for example,their body condition score, phenotyping and other genetic research. However, this data had to beaffordable for farmers to increase its uptake.

Data-driven farming required more sensors andunmannedaerialvehiclessuch as dronesto captureinformation such as the location of an animal, soil and ambienttemperature, humidityand soil nutrients.

The limitation with drones was that it remained difficultto send large amounts of data to the cloud, but this wouldbe solved once faster data streaming was available.

Chandra's research included aerial imagerywork with drones and tethered balloons above cattle farms in the US to plot cow movements in a pasture farm to see if they were grazing properly and pastures were being grazed at the right level.

Abarrier to advancing farm technology was the cost of sensors, he said.Research for field crop farms in the US showed precision agriculture improved yieldsand returns on investment, but the sensors were expensive with five of them costing US$8000.

"That is not feasible for farmers when most farmers don't make much money and ... if we reduce the cost of sensors we couldbring the benefit ofprecision agriculture to farmers worldwide."

Chandra's team found that to shortenrural gaps in wireless access they coulduseTV band white spaces unused VHF and UHF TV channels - and because of their lower frequency they could increase the distance ofcoverage during US and India projects, so farmers could connect to the internet.

"This is how we wouldenable dense placing of sensors if we had $25-$30 sensors and if we could scale this up they would fall down .... because there is so much spectrum available we can get camera data and stream to the cloud."

Chandra said advances in artificial intelligencethat had beeninitiated on farms would be more mainstream over the next 10 years.Artificial intelligence wouldguide farmers with data-driven predictions such as forthe best time to sow seeds,applyfertiliser and providethe best nutrition for livestock.

Weather forecasts would be co-ordinated with available water storage for irrigating crops and pastures or applying fertiliser to them and farmers would take pictures of pests and use artificial intelligence to analyse the best pesticide to control them.

Other research was being carried out to prolong the life of batteries to extend drone flightsandassist precision agriculture advances.

-Stuff

Visit link:

Artificial intelligence advances to make farming smarter - Stuff.co.nz

The Aerospace Industry Supercycle Is Losing Altitude (BA, GE … – Investopedia

Posted on February 27, 2017 by Danzig

Investopedia

The Aerospace Industry Supercycle Is Losing Altitude (BA, GE ...
Investopedia
Sluggish economic growth, low oil prices, dollar strength and higher interest rate together suggest the aerospace supercycle may be ending.
Aerospace composites in the more for less era : CompositesWorldCompositesWorld

all 2 news articles »

The Aerospace Industry Supercycle Is Losing Altitude (BA, GE ... - Investopedia

Fairchild’s history finally found a home at Honor Point Military … – The Spokesman-Review

Posted on February 27, 2017 by Danzig

SUNDAY, FEB. 26, 2017, 5:30 A.M.

After more than a decade in limbo, a collection of items reflecting the heritage of Fairchild Air Force Base is on display in Spokane.

The Honor Point Military & Aerospace Museum opened in June to house a collection of uniforms and other pieces from Fairchilds history.

Fairchilds Heritage Museum closed in 2002 at the order of the Pentagon, leaving its thousands of artifacts without a home. Supporters of the project worked for years to create a new museum to honor both Fairchild and the regions other military history, so that the items many donated by individuals over the years wouldnt be lost to the region and its residents.

At one point, Congress stepped in to ensure the artifacts would stay in the Inland Northwest and not be shipped off to museums elsewhere, according to Spokesman-Review archives.

The 10,000-square-foot Honor Point museum houses vintage aircraft parked in the hangar, a Jeep, historic photos, uniforms and other memorabilia. Some of the items have a connection to Spokane and Eastern Washington.

The collection also includes items from the former Fort George Wright in northwest Spokane, Nazi memorabilia and military weapons. And vintage Stearman and Piper Cub aircraft belonging to a former commercial airline pilot are on display.

Tobby Hatley, project manager for the museum, told The Spokesman-Review when the museum opened that its a beginning.

This is the first time weve ever had a home and the first time some of this stuff has ever been on display, so we will continue to work with it and it will evolve, and become better and better as time goes on, he said.

Honor Point is not exclusive to the Air Force. The other branches of the military are represented in its displays.

Continued here:

Fairchild's history finally found a home at Honor Point Military ... - The Spokesman-Review

Godrej Aerospace readies 200-crore facility for defence business orders – Hindu Business Line

Posted on February 27, 2017 by Danzig

Only incremental investment from here on, ready for large orders: Kaustubh Shukla

Mumbai, February 26:

Godrej Aerospace (GA), a business unit of Godrej & Boyce, which had recently contributed to the ISROs successful launch of 104 satellites by manufacturing critical systems and components for the launch vehicle, is ready with a 200 crore facility for taking on new orders from Aerospace and Defence sector.

For ISROs launch, GA had manufactured second stage liquid propulsion engine and the fourth stage reaction control system components for the launch vehicle.

Since 1985, the company has been working with government agencies such as Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and ISRO. Later, it became a supplier to Brahmos Aerospace for its missile programme.

It has also been a top vendor for ancillary supplies to global Defence and Aerospace majors such as Rolls Royce, GE and Snecma.

Kaustubh Shukla, Chief Operating Officer (Industrial Products) of Godrej & Boyce, told BusinessLine that Godrej & Boyce has been building capacities to produce larger numbers of equipment and today it is completely geared for fresh orders from ISRO and Ministry of Defence.

Shukla said that building manufacturing capabilities have taken many years for the company, as it believes that extensive experience is required for working with advance materials such as Inconel (nickel-chromium super alloy) and Titanium, which are extensively used in global Defence and Aerospace industries.

Capital equipment for making high-tech components can be bought easily on the market, but the expertise lies in knowing what to make and how to make those parts.

Over the years the company has gathered a huge amount of knowledge, manpower and certifications and now it is ready to accept new challenges, he said. Shukla said that with 200 crore investments made by the company, a major phase of the investment is over. Only incremental investments will be made for buying required capital equipment.

We are no longer just a precisions component maker, today we can handle the whole value chain from machining, surface treatment to the assembly of mission critical components for the sectors, he said.

He pointed that making parts for a missile is a one-shot affair, but making parts for civil aviation companies is far more challenging as the lives of hundreds of people depend on those parts, which may be in service for six years in an aircraft. From space, defence to civil aviation, Godrej & Boyce is present in all these sectors.

(This article was published on February 26, 2017)

Please enter your email. Thank You.

Newsletter has been successfully subscribed.

Visit link:

Godrej Aerospace readies 200-crore facility for defence business orders - Hindu Business Line

Select Page ::