Spring break ideas: from beaches to Europe to new museums … – nwitimes.com

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NEW YORK Spring break is right around the corner. For some travelers, that means seeking out beaches and sunshine. Others may be tempted by Europe, which has become more affordable for Americans, or by spring skiing.

AIRFARE, DESTINATIONS AND BOOKINGS

Airfares vary considerably this time of year. Travelers not tied to a holiday week may find flights are cheaper at other times. Most colleges schedule a week off in March, but family vacations often revolve around school breaks for Easter (April 16 this year) or Passover (beginning April 10).

Booking.com's data shows that travel March 18-April 30 will be 2 percent more expensive overall than last year, but a few domestic destinations are cheaper, including New Orleans, 8 percent cheaper than last spring; Miami Beach, 4 percent cheaper; and Tampa, Florida, 9 percent cheaper.

And take a look at Europe: A strong U.S. dollar has made vacations there much more affordable for Americans.

Expedia's top 10 destinations for March and April are Cancun, Mexico, followed by Orlando, Florida; Las Vegas; New York; Miami; Los Angeles; London; Punta Cana, Dominican Republic; Phoenix and Paris.

American Express Travel's top five international destinations are London, Cancun, Rome, Paris and Tel Aviv. But American Express reports a few other spots spiking compared with last year, with spring bookings to Iceland up 150 percent, to Auckland, New Zealand, up 129 percent, to Madrid up 114 percent, to Casablanca, Morocco, 103 percent, and Zurich, 101 percent.

AAA's bookings have three Florida destinations Orlando, Fort Lauderdale and Miami in the top five domestic destinations, along with Anaheim, California (home to Disneyland), and Las Vegas. Internationally, AAA's top five are Punta Cana, Rome, Jamaica, London and the Bahamas.

At StudentUniverse, which caters to travelers 18-26, top spring break destinations are London; Los Angeles; New York; Miami; Paris; Madrid; Orlando; Barcelona, Spain; Cancun; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Tokyo and Dublin.

Debbie Sebastian, a Travel Leaders agent in Danville, Kentucky, says she's seeing lots of "groups traveling with Punta Cana being the most popular choice this year. The flight times and charter options make it a great option."

March is typically the Miami airport's busiest month for domestic arrivals, with 1.08 million passengers in March 2016.

Karen Malone, with Travel Leaders in Woodbury, Minnesota, says in addition to the Dominican Republic, Jamaica is also proving popular, with both destinations offering new resort choices. "We here in the frozen North are attracted to those turquoise blue waters and white sand beaches," she said.

Cancun's always big for spring break, but it's not just a destination for the pina colada-and-party crowd. "Cancun also serves as the gateway for more quiet environs like Isla Mujeres, which is growing in popularity, as well as the entire Riviera Maya and all points directly south of Cancun, including Playa del Carmen," said Travel Leaders spokesman Steven Loucks. The region has all-inclusive resorts for every kind of traveler couples, families, multigenerational groups.

SPRING SKIING, SPRING TRAINING

Some ski resorts schedule fun events to mark the end of winter, from concerts to costume contests and parties with a beach-and-barbecue theme. Vail, Colorado's Spring Back to Vail festival is April 14-16 and includes the World Pond Skimming Championships, where skiers land in the water. Breckenridge, Colorado, has a Spring Fever festival, April 1-23.

Baseball fans often schedule trips to catch their favorite MLB teams getting ready for opening day. Late February through April 1, the Cactus League plays in the Phoenix area, the Grapefruit League plays in Florida.

Not everybody hits the beach for spring break and not every family heads to theme parks. Wendy Perrin, founder of the travel planning site WendyPerrin.com, says her best spring vacations with two boys have been to Colonial Williamsburg in Williamsburg, Virginia; Paris; and a Panama Canal cruise. This year, she's taking the family to Morocco, "to introduce the kids to a completely different culture."

If you like visiting museums, note two important openings this spring: the American Writers Museum in Chicago on May 16 and the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia on April 19.

Other noteworthy events include the Whitney Museum of American Art's Biennial 2017 in New York, a contemporary art survey opening March 17; in Kansas City, Missouri, special exhibitions at the National World War I Museum and an April 6 commemoration of the centennial of America's 1917 entry into the war; and at the Dallas Museum of Art, opening March 12, a survey of 200 works of Mexican modern art by Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and others. A new attraction opens at Graceland in early March, "Elvis Presley's Memphis," with museum exhibits, a stage and more.

Finally, spring means flowers. In Washington, D.C., the National Cherry Blossom Festival runs March 20-April 16 with various Japanese-themed events, though bloom times vary depending on the weather. And at Walt Disney World in Florida, the Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival runs March 1-May 29.

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Hundreds of whales stranded on New Zealand’s beaches – CMU The Tartan Online

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Two weeks ago, Farewell Spit in northern New Zealand saw one of its largest whale strandings ever. More than 650 pilot whales became stuck on a beach, leading to 400 of them dying. Whale strandings are common at Farewell Spit, and residents see trapped whales every year. Nonetheless, the numbers this year were unprecedented and shocked conservation officials. Whale strandings are caused by their navigational mistakes. They may follow the wrong currents that push them into shallow waters or make directional mistakes while chasing prey or escaping predators. 250 of the whales successfully made it back into the deep waters, refloated by locals and officials.

Unfortunately, many more could not be saved and had to be euthanized. Others became stranded again after returning to the beach; officials monitored the saved whales swimming nearby the beach. Large trucks transported about 200 of the whale carcasses to dunes a mile away, where they will rot. Unfortunately, the trucks could not reach some parts of the beach. The inaccessible carcasses will simply be left.

Andrew Lamason, an operations manager for the Depart of Conservation, admitted that leaving the whales in the water would make them rot faster, but would also place visitors of the beach in danger. Lamason said in a New York Times article There is nothing attractive about these whales after they have been on the beach for a few days. All their internal organs have exploded, the skin has peeled off, the smell is unbelievable...unbelievable. Since internal gas can cause the whale organs and bodies to explode, officials punctured the whales to let the gas out. Pathologists at Massey University in New Zealand will study how exactly the whales died and organic processes that occur after their deaths.

Locals and tourists came in large numbers to help with the excavation and re-floating of the whales. They were warned about the dangers of dealing with whales. When they become agitated, they can easily injure of kill a human with the flick of a tail or fin. As unfortunate as this stranding is, pilot whales are not considered endangered.

There are about one million long-finned and 200,000 short-finned pilot whales worldwide. Short-finned pilot whales, the type that ended up on New Zealands beaches, inhabit the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Longfinned pilot whales prefer much cooler waters and can be found in the Northern Atlantic. The large-scale death of so many pilot whales is reminiscent of the Faroe Island whaling tradition. The thousand-year-old tradition involves driving pilot whales into a bay where participants kill them in the water, often turning the entire bay red with blood. The tradition has come under fire and public outrage time and time again.

Locals defend the practice,saying it is primarily for food. Pilot whales are protected under the MMPA (Marine Mammal Protection Act) worldwide. Unlike the Faroe Island tradition, the whale stranding was not caused by humans and was much less bloody. New Zealand currently has no method to stop strandings.

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Why the new Coastal Commission chief is a good bet to defend … – Los Angeles Times

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Jack Ainsworth talks about the trips as if they happened last week, nine kids piling into the car with Mom and Dad.

Starting point: Their home in San Bernardino.

Destination: The beach.

It was a big standard station wagon with an extra seat that folded up, said Ainsworth. And it was funny because there was always some horrible disastrous thing that happened.

Like one of his brothers or sisters getting sick. Or the time one of the kidscouldnt wait for a bathroom stop, used a container as a commode, and tried to pour it out the window of the moving car.

It created a suction, said Ainsworth.

Ill leave the rest to your imagination.

The Ainsworths traveled from 98 degrees to 78, and whenthey ran out of land, the 18-footed brood hauled out the sandwiches and footballs and the skimboards theyd fashionedthemselves. They had to hike a ways because dear old Dad refused to pay for parking, but eventually their toes sankinto sand.

It hit all your senses, the sights, the sounds, the smells. It just embraced me, said Ainsworth. Wow! That love of the beach, and the power of it all. To see the forces of nature at work, it was so cool to me.

Ainsworth is no kid today, but as we strolled the promenade near the Ventura Pier last week, he took in the scenery with a boyish grin. And why not?The kid who grew up loving Huntington Beach, Laguna, Newport and San Clemente is the new man in charge of defending an unparalleled treasure: the glorious 1,100-mile California coast.

I have to pinch myself, said Ainsworth, who beat out two other finalists and got the job Feb. 10.

The year 2016, you may recall,was disastrous for the California Coastal Commission, beginning with the firing of beloved Executive Director Charles Lester by the politically appointed commissioners just as some huge development proposals were coming up for review. Lesters staff was demoralized, coastal stewards were frosted, and many believed several commissioners were way too chummy with developers.

It was a crummy way to mark the 40th anniversary of the Coastal Act, a citizen-inspired mandatefor limited development, coastal protection and public access to beaches. The Times exposed commissioners who skirted rules governing private meetings, among other ethical lapses. Lawsuits followed and are still in play.

The man who was asked to step up and be interim leader of the agency, in the midst of this drama, was Ainsworth, a steady hand and loyal soldier who had started at the bottom rung of the Coastal Commission staff in 1988. As the commissioners began their long search for a permanent executive director, Ainsworth wasnt particularly interested in a job that had become so politicized.

But he had a change of heart. Ainsworth, whose entire family works in public service or once did, felt a sense of duty to the staff, to California, to the coast itself.

I came to the realization that I had to take this position. Its everything Ive worked for my entire career and it would have been a betrayal to not step up and serve, said Ainsworth.

Its still not clear to me why Lester was thrown overboard, although it seems some commissioners thought they were doing what the Brown administration wanted.

We were given flimsy claims that Lesterwasnt a good manager and didnt respond quickly enough to requests. We also weretold, unconvincingly, that he didnt hire enough minoritiesor work hard enough on coastal access for people of color. The commissioners who made those charges were and continue to be, for the most part, missing in action themselves.

But the sloppy and brutal nature of Lestersdismissal was a blessing in disguise, because it made clear that the problem wasnt the staff, but the commission. Now that the rot has been exposed, theres hope for improvement.

Ainsworth, a no-nonsense guy who speaks his mind, may have just the right mix of leadership ability, scientific knowledge, staff support and political skill to maintain the staffs all-importantindependence from outside forces. The executive director serves at the pleasure of the commissioners, and Ainsworth said hes ready to collaborate.But he said he made clear to his bosses that he will manage the staff and be faithful to the Coastal Act, and he needs the commission to trust him in that role.

His job is likely to be made easier by the fact that Dayna Bochco is now the commission chair, and she doesnt put up with much nonsense fromgasbagcommissioners. Gone is Commissioner Martha McClure, who thought it was perfectly ethicalto stay at the home of a lobbyist who does business before the commission. Gone, too, is Janelle Beland, the Brown administration front person who was like a den mother to all the commissioners with the worst instincts.

And last but not least, Ainsworth wont have to deal with Wendy Mitchell, who didnt know a vernal pool from a ditch, and whose gift to California was her recent resignation from the commission.

Not that there arent still a few stiffs on the dais. But Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders have a chance this year to make better appointments, and the pressure is on to get it right, because the media and the public will be eyeballing every move.

Ainsworth has nothing to do with any of that; all he wants to do is get to work. He wants to defend the coast from any more offshore drilling or meddling by the new administration. He wants to push counties and cities to develop coastal protection plans. He wants to join efforts to create more low-cost accommodations near the beach, especially for families with nine kids who travel by station wagon. And hed like monthly meetings to be held at universities instead of hotels, so students might develop greater interest in coastal issues and possibly pursue careers in the field.

And he wants todevelop relationships with the governor and legislative leaders. Youve gotta collaborate, he said, and hed appreciatethe chance to make apitch for more funding. With thousands of permit applications to handle, he said the agency has just one geologist, one engineer and three ecologists for the entire state. And salaries are so low, its hard to hold on to good people.

Ainsworth has had a long apprenticeship for a job that wont be easy. But it seems that this is where he was supposed to end up, going all the way back to when the station wagon pulled out ofSan Bernardino.

Get more of Steve Lopez's work and follow him on Twitter @LATstevelopez

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Scientists are months away from peering into black holes for the first time – Astronomy Magazine

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The Event Horizon Telescope Array is almost certainly one of the most geographically widespread array telescopes ever built: spanning four continents, including Antarctica, the array taps into the potential of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array along with around a dozen other telescopes.

The goal? To image a black hole for the first time.

Scientists have discovered plenty of black holes, but the evidence has always been indirect. For instance, Cygnus X-1, the first discovered stellar mass black hole, gives away its presence by cannibalizing a nearby star and firing back hot jets of gas visible in X-ray, and many supermassive black holes are inferred either through gravitational influence or unlikely stars getting sucked into tidal disruption events. Its sort of like watching a small ship sink without being able to see the whirlpool in the ocean taking it down.

But by enlisting an array of telescopes, the Event Horizon Telescope will utilize very long baseline array interferometry to measure perturbations in gas around Sagittarius A (Sag A), the black hole at the center of our galaxy. In very long baseline array interferometry, the arrival of photons from Sag A will come at different times, with each telescope measuring the same event. By reconstructing what each telescope sees, a picture can emerge of whatever is happening at the center of our galaxy.

And then, for the first time, well see inside a black hole instead of witnessing its effects, which will help astronomers answer questions about behaviors of these voracious beasts. While the campaign begins in April, the first finalized image may not come out until April.

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How a celestial emu inspired Kirsten Banks – Cosmos

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Kirsten Banks plans to complete a PhD in astrophysics.

Justin Banks (Grigori Films)

Kirsten Banks grew up in Sydneys Northern Beaches with a fascination for weather and meteorology.

With encouragement from her engineer grandfather, she became interested in aerospace engineering. But when the time came to choose a degree course at the University of New South Wales, she opted for physics, using the discipline to expand her interests beyond Earths atmosphere and into the deeper reaches of space.

Theres just so much out there that we dont know its fascinating, the 19-year-old says. We dont know what we dont know and I find that amazing.

Now in her third year of study, Banks interests are focused on star formation and planetary geology. Her motivation is to explore places humans might one day live.

But a fascination with astrophysics isnt the only thing fuelling her interest in the night sky. Another factor, just as important, became evident after she completed high school.

I always knew I had Aboriginal heritage on my fathers side, but I didnt know much about it, she explains.

When I examined my family history more closely, I discovered my ancestors are Wiradjuri. I was given the contact number of an elder to learn more, who turns out is my great aunty.

Wiradjuri is one of the largest language groups in Australia, spread across communities throughout central New South Wales. Research reveals a wealth of traditional star knowledge stretching back thousands of years.

The Wiradjuri share similar traditions with the nearby Kamilaroi of northern New South Wales. In Kamilaroi traditions, the rising of the celestial emu, known as Gawarrgay, at dusk signals the time the female birds begin laying eggs.

Later, when Gawarrgay is high in the sky, it means male emus are sitting on the nests incubating them. When the celestial emu is perpendicular to the horizon, the chicks begin hatching.

As a child, Banks had learnt a few Dreaming stories, but not in any real depth. When she learnt about the Emu in the Sky, she became fascinated. This inspired a new quest for Banks to share the astronomical knowledge of her ancestors.

For tens of thousands of years, Aboriginal people have been using the stars for so many cool things, she says. It blows my mind. I love sharing that knowledge with other people.

Her passion for astronomy and pride in her heritage enabled her to take a position at Sydney Observatory as a guide, where she leads public tours for mainstream and Aboriginal astronomy programs.

Banks plans to complete a PhD and says learning more about the universe is the driving force behind her desire to pursue a career in science communication. She especially enjoys cultivating interests in astronomy among young girls.

I love to see their eyes light up and say Wow! she laughs. Theres no feeling quite like it.

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How a celestial emu inspired Kirsten Banks - Cosmos

Artificial intelligence grows a nose | Science | AAAS – Science Magazine

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Computer programs odor predictions are on the nose.

Image Source/Alamy Stock Photo

By Robert F. ServiceFeb. 19, 2017 , 8:15 PM

Predicting color is easy: Shine a light with a wavelength of 510 nanometers, and most people will say it looks green. Yet figuring out exactly how a particular molecule will smell is much tougher. Now, 22 teams of computer scientists have unveiled a set of algorithms able to predict the odor of different molecules based on their chemical structure. It remains to be seen how broadly useful such programs will be, but one hope is that such algorithms may help fragrancemakers and food producers design new odorants with precisely tailored scents.

This latest smell prediction effort began with a recent study by olfactory researcher Leslie Vosshall and colleagues at The Rockefeller University in New York City, in which 49 volunteers rated the smell of 476 vials of pure odorants. For each one, the volunteers labeled the smell with one of 19 descriptors, including fish, garlic, sweet, or burnt. They also rated each odors pleasantness and intensity, creating a massive database of more than 1 million data points for all the odorant molecules in their study.

When computational biologist Pablo Meyer learned of the Rockefeller study 2 years ago, he saw an opportunity to test whethercomputer scientists could use it to predict how people would assess smells. Besides working at IBMs Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, Meyer heads something called the DREAM challenges, contests that ask teams of computer scientists to solve outstanding biomedical problems, such as predicting the outcome of prostate cancer treatment based on clinical variables or detecting breast cancer from mammogram data. I knew from graduate school that olfaction was still one of the big unknowns, Meyer says. Even though researchers have discovered some 400 separate odor receptors in humans, he adds, just how they work together to distinguish different smells remains largely a mystery.

In 2015, Meyer and his colleagues set up theDREAM Olfaction Prediction Challenge. They divided the Rockefeller groups data set into three parts. Participants were given the volunteer ratings for two-thirds of the odors, along with the chemical structure of the molecules that produced them. They were also given more than 4800 descriptors for each molecule, such as the atoms included, their arrangement, and geometry, which constituted a separate set of more than 2 million data points. These data were then used to train their computer models in predicting smells from chemical structural information. The remaining groups of datatwo sets of 69 ratings and their corresponding chemical informationwere used to test how well the models predicted both how an average person would rate an odor and how each of the 49 individuals would rate them.

Twenty-two teams from around the globe took up the challenge. Many did well, but two stood out. A team led by Yuanfang Guan, a computer scientist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, scored best at predicting how individual subjects rate smells. Another team led by Richard Gerkin at Arizona State University in Tempe best predicted how all the participants on average would rate smells, Meyer and his colleagues report today in Science.

We learned that we can very specifically assign structural features to descriptions of the odor, Meyer says. For example, molecules with sulfur groups tend to produce a garlicky smell, and molecules with a similar chemical structure to vanillin, from vanilla beans, predicts whether subjects will perceive a bakery smell.

Meyer suggests such models may help fragrance and flavor companies come up with new molecules tuned to trigger particular smells, such as sandalwood or citrus. But Avery Gilbert, a biological psychologist at Synesthetics in Fort Collins, Colorado, and a longtime veteran of the fragrance and flavor industry, says hes not so sure. Gilbert says the new work is useful in that it provides such a large data set. But the 19 different verbal descriptors of different scents, he says, is too limited. Thats really a slim number of attributes, he says. Alternative studies have had volunteers use 80 or more categories to rate different smells.

The upshot is that even though the current study showed computers can predict which of 19 words people will use to describe this set of odors, its not clear whetherthe same artificial intelligence programs would rise to the challenge if there were more categories. If you had different descriptors, you might have had different models predict them best. So Im not sure where that leaves us, Gilbert says. Perhaps it serves mostly as a reminder that odor perception remains a challenge both for human scientists and artificial intelligence.

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Alan Turing Predicts Machine Learning And The Impact Of Artificial Intelligence On Jobs – Forbes

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Alan Turing Predicts Machine Learning And The Impact Of Artificial Intelligence On Jobs
Forbes
This week's milestones in the history of technology include Alan Turing anticipating today's deep learning by intelligent machines and concerns about the impact of AI on jobs, Clifford Stoll anticipating Mark Zuckerberg, and establishing the FCC and NPR.

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Alan Turing Predicts Machine Learning And The Impact Of Artificial Intelligence On Jobs - Forbes

MD Anderson Benches IBM Watson In Setback For Artificial – Forbes – Forbes

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MD Anderson Benches IBM Watson In Setback For Artificial - Forbes
Forbes
MD Anderson has placed a much-ballyhooed 'Watson for cancer' product it was developing with IBM on hold -- and is looking for a new partner.
IBM sees Watson as a primary care provider's assistantZDNet

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Artificial intelligence helps schedule service appointments – Automotive News (subscription) (blog)

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"Mandy Monroe" works relentlessly to reach out to customers of Lee Kia of Greenville in North Carolina to schedule service appointments.

A consistent revenue generator, Mandy doesn't complain, gossip, make personal phone calls on company time or pop chewing gum. Mandy doesn't even take bathroom breaks.

That's because Mandy is a cyberstaffer driven by artificial intelligence. The virtual assistant, created by the software provider Conversica, conducts email conversations with dealership service customers.

In a typical exchange, a Lee Kia customer gets an email that greets him or her by name and continues: "My name is Mandy Monroe and I wanted to make sure you got in touch with the Service Department about the first service on your Sportage. Would you like to schedule a service appointment?"

If the response is positive, the program forwards the lead to a service adviser or directs the customer to a scheduling tool on the dealership's website.

Lee Kia began using Conversica's software in mid-2016, says Chad Miller, the dealership's Internet director. The program sent email solicitations to 4,235 service customers last year, he says, and 18 percent responded favorably.

"Before Conversica, we had no way of determining actual engagement with a customer unless each representative kept a sheet of how many calls they made, if they talked to someone, if they left a message," Miller told Fixed Ops Journal.

The average Lee Kia service customer spends $130 per visit, Miller says. "For every 100 customers, if 18 of them are from Conversica, you could see about $2,340 in service from customer pay," he says.

The virtual assistant also enables Lee Kia's service appointment coordinator to handle tasks that require human contact and judgment, such as helping customers get rides home or to work on the dealership's shuttle, Miller says.

Mandy, meet Tiffany

About 45 dealerships have bought the virtual service product since its introduction last year, says Conversica CEO Alex Terry. For dealerships that also use the company's sales platform, the service assistant software costs $499 a month. Dealerships that buy the service software by itself pay $1,500 a month.

Mercedes-Benz of Plano, a Dallas area dealership, uses the Conversica sales platform and plans to add its virtual service assistant by midyear.

Joseph Davis, the dealership's Internet director and an adviser to Conversica, says he's eager to get started.

Davis says the sales tool helps keep the dealership's sales representatives and lead-generation vendors accountable. The dealership calls its virtual sales assistant "Tiffany Ava."

"The [tool] will send me an alert as to how the lead was handled," he says. "Within minutes of the client saying, "No, I haven't gotten what I need,' I am automatically alerted and so are all the team members."

Davis says he expects similar benefits from the service tool.

Other vendors that provide or are developing service, sales, and finance and insurance technology driven by artificial intelligence include CarLabs, ELEAD1ONE, Edmunds.com and Facebook.

Artificial sweetener

Artificial-intelligence assistants and service managers make great teams, Conversica's Terry says.

"Who's the busiest person in the dealership? It's usually the manager of the service department," he says. "Service managers would like to provide a great, engaging experience to the customer, but in real life they don't always respond right away or at all. And it's even more work to do it in a polite and consistent way."

A sample email from a virtual assistant to a potential service customer

The service assistant software uses algorithms that interpret customers' messages and can improve over time as the dealership collects more information, Terry says.

"Over a dozen dealerships told us, "Where I make all my money is the service side of the business,'" Terry says. "We worked collaboratively with the customers and found out what specific challenges they would like the assistant to tackle."

Dealers configure the software, which can work with more than 40 customer relationship management systems, during a setup process that typically takes three or four days.

Terry concedes that artificial intelligence "is not perfect. It also knows when it's not confident in analyzing the message and gets a human involved."

He says that Conversica has refined the service assistant software to "train the artificial intelligence to know what to say on the outbound message and to understand what people say on their return back."

An industry analyst cautions dealers to tread carefully when they bring artificial intelligence into their service operations.

"The key difference from sales is that the vehicle is driving the action," says Ian Mason, senior director of marketing solutions for the information and analytics provider IHS Markit. "The owner doesn't have to go to the selling dealership."

Mason says an artificial intelligence tool can boost a dealership's service business but warns that service department capacity doesn't necessarily scale well. That can mean longer lines in the service drive, he adds.

"Long waits aren't a good thing for the dealership," he says. When dissatisfied customers use social media, he notes, "Word of mouth is a lot faster and gets out very quickly. It's almost uncontrollable."

Even as dealerships' use of artificial intelligence software grows, some responses remain best left to humans.

Davis says that Tiffany, his dealership's virtual sales assistant, is evidently so gifted at email conversation that at least two would-be suitors have shown up at the store with candy and flowers, hoping to meet her and ask her for a date.

"We just tell them she's an outside assistant on the Internet team," he says.

AI, A to Z

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Why are Indian engineers so afraid of ‘artificial intelligence’? – Scroll.in

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Artificial intelligence is being counted among the hottest startup sectors in India this year, but the highly specialised space is struggling to grow due to the lack of a primary input: engineers.

Forget getting people of our choice, we dont even get applications when we advertise for positions for our AI team, said 25-year-old Tushar Chhabra, co-founder of Cron Systems, which builds internet of things-related solutions for the defence sector. Its as if people are scared of the words artificial intelligence. They start freaking out when we ask them questions about AI.

India has over 170 startups focused purely on AI, which have together raised over $36 million. The sector has received validation from marquee investors like Sequoia Capital, Kalaari Capital, and business icon Ratan Tata. But entrepreneurs are struggling to expand due to a shortage of engineers with skills related to robotics, machine learning, analytics, and automation.

Racetrack.ai co-founders Subrat Parida and Navneet Gupta said that around 40% of their working time is spent searching for the right talent. The organisation, which operates out of Bengaluru, has built an AI-driven communication bot called Marvin. People are the core strength of a startup, Parida, also the CEO, told Quartz. So hiring for a startup is very challenging. We are not looking for the regular tech talent and, since AI is a relatively new field in India, you dont get people with past experience in working on those technologies.

Only 4% of AI professionals in India have actually worked on cutting-edge technologies like deep learning and neural networks, which are the key ingredients for building advanced AI-related solutions, according to recruitment startup Belong, which often helps its clients discover and recruit AI professionals.

Also, many such companies require candidates with PhD degrees in AI-related technologies, which is rare in India.

While it takes a company just a month to find a good app developer, it could take up to three months to fill up a position in the AI space, said Harishankaran K, co-founder and CTO of HackerRank, which helps companies hire tech talent through coding challenges.

India is among the top countries in terms of the number of engineers graduating every year. But the engineering talent here has traditionally been largely focused on IT and not research and innovation.

Fields like AI require a mindset of research and experimentation, said PK Viswanathan, professor of business intelligence at the Great Lakes Institute of Management in Chennai. But most aspiring engineers in India follow a pattern: finish school, go to IIT, do an MBA, and then take up a job. To work on AI, you need people who not only have a strong technology background, but also have analytical thinking, puzzle-solving skills, and they should not be scared of numbers.

Ironically, the subject has been a part of the curriculum at some engineering schools for almost a decade. However, what is taught there is mostly irrelevant to the real world.

Sachin Jaiswal, who graduated from IIT Kharagpur in 2011, studied some aspects of AI back in college. But whatever he is doing at his two-year-old startup Niki.ai it has built a bot that lets users order anything through a chat interface is based on what he learned in his earlier jobs, he said.

A lot of people are disillusioned when they come out of college and begin their first jobs, said Jaiswal, whose startup is backed by Ratan Tata.

In fact, even now, when he interacts with graduates from elite institutes to hire them, he sees a glaring gap between what these youngsters have learned and what is needed on the work floor.

Given the shortage of AI-related talent in India, several startups aspire to tap Silicon Valley. But thats not a feasible solution for young teams.

A few months back, Chhabra of Cron Systems was in talks with a US-based engineer, an IIT-Delhi alumnus working on AI for seven years. The guy asked for Rs 2.5 crore per annum as salary, said Chhabra. As a startup you cannot afford that price.

Cron Systems has found a jugaad to solve their problem, Chhabra said. Late last year, the company hired a bunch of engineers with basic skills needed to create AI-related solutions and trained them.

We broke down AI into smaller pieces and hired six tech professionals who understood those basic skills well, Chhabra said. Then we conducted a three-month training for these people and brought them onboard with what we do.

Niki.ai, too, is following this hire-and-train model. Training takes time and investment but we have no option because we need the talent, Jaiswal of Niki.ai told Quartz. If we had better access to talent, things would have been better.

Gurugram-based AI startup Staqu has started partnering with academic institutions to build a steady pipeline of engineers and researchers.

Despite this struggle, entrepreneurs and investors in India feel bullish.

In an ecosystem where e-commerce and food delivery hog the limelight, a recent report by venture lending firm InnoVen Capital named AI one of the most under-hyped sectors. But that is set to change, said London-based angel investor Sanjay Choudhary.

In September, Choudhary invested in Delhi-based AI startup Corseco Technologies. He regularly interacts with the companys team and the genuine issue of finding talent comes up frequently, he told Quartz.

India is a late entrant into the AI space and talent crunch will be a challenge for the industry for some time to come, he said. But I plan to continue investing in AI in India because I feel that the space has a lot of potential and needs to be supported.

While there seems no end to the struggle, Jaiswal of Niki.ai sees a silver lining: Talent crunch ensures that companies cant enter the field easily. So we have a competitive edge.

This article first appeared on Quartz.

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Utah Aerospace Pathways Program expands to Ogden School District – fox13now.com

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OGDEN, Utah The Utah Aerospace Pathways Program is expanding to one more school district.

Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox made the special announcement during this years Aerospace Day at Utahs Capitol Hill.

We are excited to continue to talk about the Aerospace Pathways Program, Cox said.

The Utah Aerospace Pathways program is expanding to the Ogden School District. Its already available for high school seniors in Granite, Davis and Iron County school districts.

Aerospace is one of our fastest growing sectors of the economy, Cox said. And the great news is they bring really good paying jobs to the state of Utah, with great benefits.

The students, like Annika Kiedaisch at Ben Lomond High School, spend parts of their days working with aerospace companies and eventually graduate with a certificate in aerospace manufacturing.

I do a lot of repair right now is what Im working on, Kiedaisch said. I just finished the employability skills, I'm just trying to get the prerequisite courses out of the way, so that I can participate in the internship.

Once they graduate, students can choose whether they want to go to college or get a job right out of high school.

I do think it is going to prepare me a lot, it gives me a lot of the hands-on skills that I know Im going to be using within the manufacturing industry, Kiedaisch said.

State leaders say Utah is taking the lead when it comes to aerospace technology.

Some of the biggest airplane manufacturers in the country, Boeing for example is right here in the state of Utah, Cox said. They participate in this, where they make parts for these big jets we see flying over the country.

Students can only sign up where the program is available, but there are other opportunities statewide.

For students across the state, the Talent Ready Utah programthat they can find at talentreadyutah.comis going to start providing opportunities like this, not just in aerospace, but in different industries across the state," Cox said.

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Utah Aerospace Pathways Program expands to Ogden School District - fox13now.com

KSSL, Israel Aerospace Industries sign pact on air defence systems – The Indian Express

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By: Express News Service | Pune | Published:February 20, 2017 6:16 am

Kalyani Strategic Systems Ltd (KSSL) and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) have entered into an MoU to strengthen the air defence systems. Under the Make in India initiative, the MoU, which was signed in Bengaluru last week, aims at setting up a Joint Venture Company (JVC) in India.

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The joint venture will provide indigenously manufactured solutions in niche technology areas of defense sector, thereby furthering the Make in India initiative of the government, said Baba Kalyani, chairman, Kalyani Group. Even though IAIs defence wing has a long-standing relation with India, this will be a different area of focus.

This collaboration brings together the manufacturing and technology excellence of two leading companies. We are hopeful of continuing partnership at KSSL and spread our footprint in India, said Joseph Weiss, IAIs President and CEO.

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KSSL, Israel Aerospace Industries sign pact on air defence systems - The Indian Express

McDonald’s designs ‘utterly frivolous’ straw with help of aerospace … – 11alive.com

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Christopher Buchanan, WXIA 7:49 PM. EST February 18, 2017

(Photo: Courtesy of McDonald's)

ATLANTA -- Drinking a milkshake can sometimes be an arduous task with a straw - especially when trying to get an even mix of two flavors. So if you're a multi-national fast food giant, what do you do to solve such an annoyance?

You bring on some of the most brilliant minds in tech and aerospace science to end the problem once and for all - or at least of a limited time.

McDonald's has introduced a reinvented straw ahead of the introduction of the Chocolate Shamrock Shake - a variant on their seasonal favorite.

The straw is actually designed as a joint venture between McDonald's and engineering firms NK Labs and JACE to help milkshake drinkers get an even mix of chocolate and mint.

It was a puzzling assignment but one with an ambitious goal, said Seth Newburg, principal engineer and managing partner at NK Labs. From a physics perspective, its actually quite difficult to deliver a proportional amount of both chocolate and mint flavors with each sip. But thats exactly what we did. Its a marvel of fluid dynamics. Thanks Fibonacci sequence.

Sound like overkill? To some extent, McDonald's appears to agree calling the limited-edition straw "utterly frivolous" in their own press release.

But McDonald's says the invention is also a hallmark of its customer focus.

"We're always listening to what our customers want and reinventing our menu in response," said Darci Forrest, senior director of menu innovation at McDonald's. "And though it might sound silly to some, putting our guests first sometimes means re-thinking even the humble straw."

Symbolic gesture or not, the "J" shaped straw is actually quite real. But the company is only releasing 2,000 - a limited production strategy recently implemented with the bottling of the company's Big Mac sauce.

The company released limited quantities of the sauce, as well, to promote its new Big Mac sizes - and the public definitely took the bait with some immediately putting it on eBay for prices ranging from $50 to $100,000.

Just like the sauce, the straw announcement precedes the introduction of four new seasonal McCafe drinks along with the famed Shamrock Shake. The limited production straw will also be limited release. So fans will have to head here to find out when and where they will pop up.

At this point, it looks like one Atlanta location will receive the item.

As for sales of the drink to which it will be paired, McDonald's vows to donate 25 cents from each Shamrock Chocolate beverage to Ronald McDonald House between March 11 and 17.

( 2017 WXIA)

WXIA

Hey burger fans! This ATM dispenses McDonald's Big Macs

WXIA

Yup, McDonald's is giving away big bottles of Big Mac sauce

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McDonald's designs 'utterly frivolous' straw with help of aerospace ... - 11alive.com

Excellent weapon in war on aging – Palm Beach Post

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Question: What is the latest skin tightening technology?

Answer: Ultherapy is a treatment based on ultrasound technology. It works by using ultrasound-guided technology to actually view the underlying tissue that is being treated.

We are able to reach below the dermal layer, sending ultrasound energy penetrating deeper to the fibro-muscular tissue, promoting collagen production. If you have weakened collagen in the deeper connective tissue, it can cause the skin to become prone to gravitational forces and begins to stretch, sag and shift downward a process we call aging.

This is where Ultherapy plays a role. It is FDA approved for the forehead, face and neck.

The Ultherapy treatment begins with marking the area on the face to be treated. This is the same target area that is addressed in cosmetic surgery for skin tightening.

Once the skin is marked for treatment, a mild sedative is given. A full face treatment can take anywhere from 45 to 60 minutes. You may return to normal activities and can experience flushing or redness that should resolve within a few hours.

The regenerative process is initiated at the first treatment, however, results may take up to six months since you are relying on the bodys own healing process to repair and rebuild your skins foundation.

For more information, visitwww.MDBeautyLabs.com, or call (561) 655-6325 to schedule a complimentary consultation.

Daniela Dadurian, M.D., specializes in anti-aging medicine and is an expert in non-surgical body-contouring techniques. She received her medical degree from the University of Miami School of Medicine and has traveled the world researching the safest and latest technologies on the market.

______________________________________

MD Beauty Labs Medical Spa and Wellness Center

320 S. Quadrille Blvd. West Palm Beach

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Excellent weapon in war on aging - Palm Beach Post

How fat could lead to more effective anti-aging treatments – PhillyVoice.com

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Human fat could be the answer to more effective anti-aging treatments, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania say.

The researchers at Penn's Perelman School of Medicine said Friday they discovered adult stem cells from fat are more stable than other stem cells, such as those taken from skin, that are currently used in a variety of anti-aging treatments.

The cells from fat, called adipose-derived stem cells (ASCs), have the ability to make more protein that originally thought, therefore allowing them to replicate and maintain their stability.

Our study shows these cells are very robust, even when they are collected from older patients, said lead author Ivona Percec, MD.

The discovery "can potentially open the door" for new treatments and therapies to address aging-related diseases.

The researchers noted that ASCs are not currently approved for direct use by the Food and Drug Administration. They said more research is needed before potential implementation of their finding.

The finding was published in the February edition of the "Stem Cells" medical journal.

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How fat could lead to more effective anti-aging treatments - PhillyVoice.com

Terrorist resurgence – Daily Times

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With almost a dozen terrorist attacks from Lahore to Sehwan and Peshawar to Balochistan this week, the terrorists have yet again struck Pakistan with a vengeance. Hundreds perished while many more have been maimed. The resurgence of this orgy of dreadful slaughter and mayhem by the forces of black reaction has shaken both the state and the society.

The shock and grief for the already traumatised masses aggravated their suffering, being inflicted through class oppression. For the ruling elites, it was the usual response of condemnations and the impotent rage to eradicate terrorism. The tragedy would soon pass into oblivion while the nauseating routine of hurling corruption allegations, scandals and bickering of the ruling elites warring factions captures the media and the social psyche in this period of social inertia. The surge of terrorist acts is not due to changes in the militarys high command as depicted by some media analysts but is the manifestation of a deeper socio-economic malaise.

The intrusion of religious fanaticism by General Zia at the behest of US imperialists to destroy the Afghanistans 1978 Saur Revolution has come back to haunt the imperialists and the Pakistani state. However, the official ideology indoctrinated in the states institutions, agencies and intrusions, in the constitutional clauses continues to be practised even today. The policies based on religious sectarian doctrines of Zias dictatorship have been pursued even by the secular and liberal democratic regimes, leading to the disastrous ramifications that are ravaging Pakistan.

These reactionary ethics are embedded in the attitudes of mainly the upper and middle rungs of the states institutions. There is a palpable reluctance in the sections of officials in taking any decisive action against these fundamentalist citadels indoctrinating hatred to the level of inculcating terrorist impulses in raw minds. These are run by obscenely rich Mullahs through the massive influx of black capital generated through crime and terror. The intrusion of dirty money in the structures of the state gives a material basis to this mindset and reactionary thinking. Nobody can predict when the so-called moderate clergy would morph into his terrorist version and vice-versa. For almost 40 years, the educational syllabi, and the societys morality and ethics have been shackled into these bigoted fetters. It is this sectarian hatred that provokes acts of terror and mayhem. Serious sections of the state and the ruling elite now feel threatened by the catastrophic devastation being perpetrated by these once compliant elements. The top echelons of state desperately want to eliminate this menace but not so hidden hands within the executive structures always succeed only in attacking selected targets during the states operations.

In the name of the national ideology of political Islam, the black mafia bosses heavily invest in the political parties, institutions and echelons of state power. They have eroded the discipline of the state structure and are now posing a threat to the civic existence of society. The desire for a substantial policy change by stakeholders of state and political power is a pipedream as they are compelled to continue the Zia-era policies benefitting the vested interests of the reactionary, corrupt, upstarts and crime infested ruling classes. It is this economic character of the present system that these political and state actors are destined to serve.

Proxy wars are strategies by the new states in a period where the national and world wars are unaffordable, unsustainable and could end up in the mutual destruction of the adversary elites. The involvement of a foreign hand cannot be excluded in this terrorist wave but laying all the blame on external factors actually conceals the failure of the state to eliminate terror and the complicity of certain official elements in the protection and nurturing of these reactionary forces for their vested interests. Now the successors of the mentors of these Frankenstein monsters are faced with the retribution of history. The mingling of these terrorists in the thickly populated cities and suburban towns makes it a herculean task to find and surgically remove them out of the population in general. Even though these religious bigots have a meagre support base amongst the masses, they have organised structures and an abundant capital. They can launch small demonstrations to pressurise the corrupt rulers with hundreds of destitute children seeking shelters from the socio-economic onslaught of capitalism in their seminaries. Such sectarian bastions exist in the hearts of Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi and other cities and towns across the country indoctrinating sectarian hatreds. They defy the laws by bribing state officials and threatening the judiciary. Above all, they exploit the religious and sectarian sentiments of the states petit bourgeois functionaries.

But these policies of proxy conflicts and the exacerbating infightings of the varied capitalist interests are tearing apart the social fabric of the country. The collapse of the left and betrayals of traditional parties and leaders have further added to this apathy. The ultimate weapon to eradicate terrorism the peoples mobilisation is crucial to crushing these forces of black reaction. With no real revolutionary alternative in the political spectrum has blunted this revolutionary weapon of the class struggle. In the present state of inertia temporarily blanketing society, lumpen sections of the petit bourgeois youth despaired with the prospect of a bleak future can move towards such outfits in sheer frustration and commit such harrowing acts.

The neoliberal economics that replaced the failed Keynesianism model is rapidly intensifying inequality and social turbulence. The crisis of the capitalist system is so acute that its historical obsoleteness and economic bankruptcy has not only debilitated the state structures but also the surge of Islamic fundamentalist terror is a manifestation of this crisis. Terrorism can neither be eliminated through peace deals and agreements with these bestial creatures nor can it be crushed by the states that cast them as proxy options.

Without transforming the socio-economic material basis of these vile outfits the scourge of terrorism cannot be eliminated. This social, economic, political and administrative system is obsolete and beyond repair in its terminal decay. Only the mobilisations of the toiling classes can fight and vanquish religious terrorism and reactionary socio- cultural onslaught upon society by putting end to the system that needs these evils for its exploitation and ruler ship.

The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and International Secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at ptudc@hotmail

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Terrorist resurgence - Daily Times

Who We Play For saving lives through athlete heart screenings – Tallahassee.com

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One day, Cocoa Beach High soccer forward Rafe Maccarone was scoring a game-winning goal against nearby rival Titusville High.

The next day Friday, Nov. 30, 2007 the 15-year-old collapsed during a casual two-lap jog around the practice field.

Cocoa Beach soccer player Rafe Maccarone, 15, collapsed during a practice in 2007 and died the next day from a genetic heart condition. Many of his teammates later founded non-profit Who We Play For while students at FSU in an effort to screen student-athletes hearts while in youth sports. (Photo: Submitted photo/Florida Today)

He died later the next day, one week shy of his 16th birthday.

For Evan Ernst, a 2014 Florida State grad who was a senior on the Minutemens team at the time, it was a startling scene. His younger brother, Zack, was best friends with Maccarone.

That week and the weeks after have forever shaped Ernsts life.

We lost a couple state championships, we traveled the country and we had one of the best teams in the state, if not the country, said Ernst, 25. Its unexplainable, to be a 15-, 16-year-old kid and to be among your best friends and watch a kid just collapse and die in front of you. Its something pretty shocking.

But theres nothing more shocking than learning it was a detectable heart condition, it was preventable, and it represented thousands of people.

Maccarone never had a symptom. Doctors believe he had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

It took two years before everyone learned that HCM, a genetic condition which thickens heart muscle and blocks normal blood flow was preventable.

Both Merritt Island and Cocoa Beachs soccer teams wore Rafe Maccarone's number along with the words "Brevard's Finest" on their jerseys during Merritt Island's match at Cocoa Beach on Dec. 13, 2007. Maccarone collapsed at soccer practice and died on Dec. 1. (Photo: Amanda Stratford/Florida Today)

That moment, like Maccarones death, hit Ernst hard.

Bringing together all his best friends in Room 114 of their Phi Kappa Tau fraternity house at FSU, Ernst and 10 other kids hed known his whole life tossed around an idea.

We asked the crazy question Can we create a national movement to protect the hearts of student-athletes? Ernst said. And weve been working every single day for about five years to be able to do that.

Ernst, former Cocoa teammate Zane Schultz and his friends initially took up a fundraising cause, creating the Play for Rafe Foundation.

I knew pretty much exactly what I wanted to do, said Ernst, who majored in entrepreneurship, business management and marketing. I took classes that taught me how.

Who We Play For voluteered its time at Godby High School in December 2016 to provide heart screenings for student-athletes. From left: Christi Gao, Andre Walsh, Angela Byrne, Carmen Araujo, Kathryn Kaspar, Samantha Sexton, Evan Ernst, Quinn Rainer and Anthony Haddad. (Photo: Brian Miller/Democrat)

From the effort, they were able to provide automated external defibrillators for Cocoa Beach High and a Brevard County park to have onsite.

Out of that first incarnation, however, came the desire to do more than treat a condition as it occurred.

Who We Play For was born.

We realized that we talked everyday about Rafe and what he represents, Ernst said. And thats who we play for. Theres thousands of kids like him from Godby to FAMU to FSU that have lost their lives from detectable heart conditions.

Added Ernst: We were young, creative and felt undeterred. Because if we asked that question now, wed probably say its not possible. But we believed it, we were all in, and we committed to it.

And now weve built the biggest non-profit heart screening in the country, and it all started in that room.

The summer after that first meeting was spent in development. Three programs arose AEDs, CPR and heart screenings.

People were already making millions off AEDs; Ernst saw that need as checked off. CPR was also being taught everywhere by the American Heart Association.

But prevention was lacking. Ernst viewed it as the key.

In Rafes case and in most peoples case, if you had an AED or CPR on the spot, you only have a 38 percent chance of saving that persons life, Ernst said. Thats better than nothing, but on the flip side, if we deliver whats asked in the fine print on the physical form for high school or middle school athletes, then theres a 90 percent chance youre going to catch that condition before its even a problem.

Evan Ernst, an assistant soccer coach at Leon High School, works with the team on Thursday, Dec. 1, 2016. Nine years ago, a teammate of Ernst died of a heart condition that if detected could have saved his life. Now, Ernst works to screen students for heart conditions in hopes of preventing the next generation from falling to the same fate. (Photo: Joe Rondone/Democrat)

Calling every single heart-screening group in the country, he asked how they do what they do. He tried to position Who We Play For to be more than just another well-intentioned nonprofit.

Florida State student-athletes and many at NCAA athletic programs get their hearts checked, as do pro athletes.

But for middle school and high school athletes, required physicals required dont go far enough in prevention. Much of that revolved around the cost for an electrocardiogram, which at the hospital would cost $150.

It can literally reduce sudden cardiac arrest in athletes by 94 percent, said Ernst, who found a group in Texas called Cypress ECG Project, which provided him a cost-efficient model.

The biggest cost associated was getting a pediatric cardiologist to read the screenings. By building a volunteer doctor network and using telemedicine, Who We Play For was able to drop the cost considerably.

Then Ernst and his group experimented with taking the heart screenings to schools during the school day.

We give every kid the opportunity to check their heart, whether they can afford the $15 or not, Ernst said. It has to be affordable. If this is ever to become standard, it has to be proven that we delivered dirt cheap.

Who We Play For has now screened middle and high school athletes in six states and over 300 schools. During this 2016-17 school year, it has screened 12,174 hearts. The overall total is now at 86,088 hearts.

Lives saved to date: 66.

Finding one heart condition, its as unexplainable as losing Rafe. There are no words, Ernst said. Its hard to believe every time.

On Jan. 14, 2014 just one week before Who We Play For provided its first Tallahassee screening Godby High School freshman Tariq Barfield was warming up for a track and field practice.

Suddenly, Barfield was dehydrated and woozy. Athletic trainer Jackie Burkette was on hand next to Cougars head coach Jesse Forbes.

Tariq Barfield, a freshman, was warming up for track practice at Godby High School when he collapsed suddenly and later died on Jan. 14, 2014. Barfield was determined to have a genetic heart condition that might have been detected with a simple five-minute heart screening. (Photo: Courtesy of the Barfield family/Democrat files)

The 14-year-old became more and more unresponsive. Burkette looked Barfield in the eye and asked if hed like her to call 9-1-1. He said yes.

An ambulance arrived and the EMS responders took him into its bay, sitting in the parking lot alongside the track before suddenly pulling out, lights on and siren blaring.

Barfield died that day.

The Leon County Medical Examiners Office gave the official cause of death: Sudden cardiac death with abridged left anterior descending coronary artery.

It was a detectable heart condition.

That was the worst day of my professional career, Burkette said. The worst thing that can happen as an athletic trainer is losing a kid like that. We didnt even find out until a couple days later that it was a congenital heart defect and theres nothing you can do for a situation like that.

When Ernst and Who We Play For did their first screening the week after the death, Barfields mother was there. They walked and talked and comforted each other.

That day, no Godby athletes came to the screening. It hurt Ernst deeply.

Godby athletic director Jackie Burkette was previously the schools athletic trainer. On Jan. 14, 2014, she witnessed the death of freshman student Tariq Barfield, who suffered cardiac arrest during a track workout. (Photo: Brian Miller/Democrat)

We realized Saturday screenings are great, but theyre catered around parents that have the resources to get their kids there, said Ernst, an assistant coach for Leon Highs boys soccer team. Its still an issue at hand that socio-economic status determines whether you get your heart checked or not. And thats a problem.

Thats when he decided to take the ECGs directly to schools.

In 2015, Burkette worked with athletic director Joy Becker to provide the first heart screening for Godby student-athletes.

Burkette, now the schools athletic director, had 70 athletes screened in December. They paid nothing thanks to Who We Play Fors search for grants and donations.

She keeps a picture of Barfield on the wall above her computer. It serves as a daily motivation to ensure her student-athletes are safe and protected. A simple heart screening could have saved Barfields life.

But at a Title-I school like Godby where 70 percent of students live below the poverty line, day-to-day survival often takes priority.

To have something like Who We Play For, which goes out on its own time to get grants to pay for my kids, its invaluable, Burkette said. Were able to test them for something they might not have had the opportunity to get before.

Andre Walsh was an energetic kid, running around St. Catherine, Jamaica, without a care in the world. By high school, Walsh had developed into one of his countrys top sprinters and hurdlers. He later competed for two years in the U.S. at the University of Maryland-Eastern Shore.

He transferred to FSU in 2013. That triggered an automatic heart screening.

Walsh was diagnosed with acute viral respiratory disease. He underwent surgery for an implantable cardiac defibrillator. His doctor prescribed beta-blockers to keep his heart rate down. But there was a bigger blow.

Andre Walsh runs an ECG machine at Godby High School as part of screenings with non-profit Who We Play For. Walsh, who transferred in 2013 to FSU as top track runner, was diagnosed with a heart condition that ended his running career. (Photo: Brian Miller/Democrat)

Not yet 25, Walsh was forced into retirement. He could never race again.

Its scary to know that something could have happened during that whole time, but thankfully nothing did, said Walsh, now 27. Coming out of the blue, thinking about FSU and a possible career in track to having all that stripped away, it was hard.

Walshs depression lasted two years as he struggled to adjust to losing his livelihood. Without the structure of class and practice, he became less productive in school and in life. Eventually, he sought the help of a counselor to deal with the psychological effects

Given a chance at a normal life, Walsh started volunteering with Who We Play For. Slowly, he realized that having his dreams snatched away was not the worst thing in the world.

I was distraught and shocked, but then I realized the chance I got, said Walsh, who still cannot exercise or risk elevating his heart rate to dangerous levels. Speaking to Evan, I realized what was really going on and could see there were a lot of people who didnt survive it. That helped me a lot, to go out and speak to others about what would happen.

As one of many who have volunteered with Who We Play For, he was able to visit the Parent Heart Watch conference.

He saw parents who had lost their child to detectable heart conditions. His own parents could have easily been among them.

I saw and felt the immense pain, Walsh said. For Evan and Who We Play For putting in this initiative, it helps a lot to know we can catch this so that a tragic thing doesnt happen to another family.

Walsh is a success story.

Other FSU athletes, such as Harry Mulenga (track) and Leyla Erkan (tennis), have had heart conditions discovered by screenings.

There are those who survived through good fortune. Former Chiles High cheerleader Brittany Williams passed yearly physicals only to have her condition discovered at age 24.

Theres no registry, so we have no idea how many kids die from this and we have no idea how many kids been caught.

There are those who have died. Florida A&M student Antwan Ivey in 2014 seven years after rushing for a state-best 2,345 yards and 31 touchdowns during Newberry Highs state championship season.

Concussions, which are widely discussed as a major prep sports area of concern, didnt cause a single death last year. But not much is known about how many die from detectable heart conditions.

Sudden cardiac arrest, however, affects 9,500 youths annually and is the leading cause of death on campuses, according to Parent Heart Watch.

Doctors believe the most vulnerable age is between 15-16, influenced by puberty and strenuous exercise.

Who We Play For co-founder Evan Ernst runs a heart screening for Godby High School student-athletes in December 2016 (Photo: Brian Miller/Democrat)

One controlled-population study of NCAA athletes from a doctor in Washington on Who We Play Fors team determined an African-American Division-I basketball players rate of having a heart condition is 1 in 3,200. In total for NCAA student-athletes, it is 1 in 40,000.

Thats really the biggest question to what we do, Ernst said. Theres no registry, so we have no idea how many kids die from this and we have no idea how many kids been caught.

Ernst has no visions of fame and fortune. He just wants to spread his message of awareness from Cocoa Beach and Tallahassee to the far reaches of the nation.

I cover my bare minimum expenses, but Im definitely not making money, Ernst said. From the start, we wanted to be a non-profit because we never wanted anyone to question our incentives behind this. There will come a time in our lives when we can make money, but wed love to do this first.

Transforming from grassroots effort into global mission, Who We Play For is honoring Maccarones memory and saving lives along the way.

Our goal will be met when every student-athlete has a chance to check their heart, Ernst said. Were done when its not in the fine print, but when it is delivered.

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Biopreparat – Wikipedia

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Biopreparat (Russian: , "Biological substance preparation") was the Soviet Union's major biological warfare agency from the 1970s on. It was a vast, ostensibly civilian, network of secret laboratories, each of which focused on a different deadly bioagent. Its 30,000 employees researched and produced pathogenic weapons for use in a major war.

Biopreparat was established in 1973 as a "civilian" continuation of earlier Soviet bio-warfare programs (see Soviet biological weapons program). The project was reportedly initiated by academician Yuri Ovchinnikov who convinced General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev that development of biological weapons was necessary.[1] The research at Biopreparat constituted a blatant violation by the Soviet Union of the terms of the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972 which outlawed biological weapons. Its existence was steadfastly denied by Soviet officials for decades.

In April 1979, a major outbreak of pulmonary anthrax in the city of Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) caused the deaths of 105 or more Soviet citizens. Sverdlovsk contained a Biopreparat facility. The Soviet Union attempted to cover up reports of the incident, but details leaked out to the West in 1980 when the German newspaper Bild Zeitung carried a story about the incident. Moscow described allegations that the epidemic was an accident at a biological warfare facility as "slanderous propaganda" and insisted the anthrax outbreak had been caused by tainted meat.

The first senior Soviet biological weapons engineer to defect to the West was Vladimir Pasechnik (19372001) who alerted Western intelligence in 1989 to the vast scope of Moscow's clandestine program. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and U.S. President George H. W. Bush put pressure on Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to open up Russia's germ warfare facilities to a team of outside inspectors. When the inspectors toured four of the sites in 1991, they were met with denials and evasions. Production tanks, the purpose of which seemed to be to manufacture large quantities of hazardous materials, were clean and sterile when presented to inspectors. Laboratories had been stripped of equipment before being presented to inspectors.

Pasechnik's revelations that the program was much greater in scope than previously suspected were confirmed in 1992 with the defection to the United States of Colonel Kanatjan Alibekov (b. 1950), the First Deputy Director of Biopreparat. Alibekov (now known as Ken Alibek) held his role in Biopreparat from 1988 to 1992. He claimed that development of new strains of genetically engineered weapons was still continuing.

Alibekov later wrote the book Biohazard (1999) detailing publicly his extensive inside knowledge of the structure, goals, operations and achievements of Biopreparat. He was also featured in the October 13, 1998 episode of Frontline (PBS TV series).

The Biopreparat complex suffered with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since then several large bioweapons production lines have been officially closed. Its current state is unknown, however it is likely that Biopreparat and successor entities continued bioweapons research and development at least through the 1990s.[1]

Biopreparat was a system of 18, nominally civilian, research laboratories and centers scattered chiefly around European Russia, in which a small army of scientists and technicians developed biological weapons such as anthrax, Ebola, Marburg virus, plague, Q fever, Junin virus, glanders, and smallpox. It was the largest producer of weaponized anthrax in the Soviet Union and was a leader in the development of new bioweapons technologies.

The project had 18 major labs and production centers:

Pathogens that were successfully weaponized by the organization included (in order of completion):

Annual production capacities for many of the above listed pathogens were in the tens of tons, typically with redundant production facilities located throughout the Soviet Union.

[1]

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Biopreparat - Wikipedia

Deadly global pandemic to kill tens of millions: Bill Gates – Press TV

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Microsoft founder Bill Gates speaks at the second day of the 53rd Munich Security Conference (MSC) on February 18, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has warned that tens of millions of people could be killed in a deadly global pandemic in the next 10 to 15 years.

Making his first appearance at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Gates warned the international community about the threat of biological warfare, which according to him, is not being taken seriously enough.

The next epidemic could originate on the computer screen of a terrorist intent on using genetic engineering to create a synthetic version of the smallpox virus ... or a super contagious and deadly strain of the flu, said the American genius.

He said that getting ready for the deadly pandemic is every bit as important as nuclear deterrence.

With nuclear weapons, youd think you would probably stop after killing 100 million. Smallpox wont stop. Because the population is naive, and there are no real preparations. That, if it got out and spread, would be a larger number, he argued.

Whether it occurs by a quirk of nature or at the hand of terrorist, epidemiologists say a fast-moving airborne pathogen could kill more than 30 million people in less than a year, Gates told the Munich gathering. And they say there is a reasonable probability the world will experience such an outbreak in the next 10 to 15 years.

Gates, who has spent much of the last 20 years funding a global health campaign, said advances in biotechnology, new vaccines and drugs could help prevent epidemics spreading out of control.

Most of the things we need to do to protect against a naturally occurring pandemic are the same things we must prepare for an intentional biological attack, he explained, calling on the international community to get prepared for the epidemics the way the military prepared for war.

This includes germ games and other preparedness exercises so we can better understand how diseases will spread, how people will respond in a panic and how to deal with things like overloaded highways and communications systems, he added.

He said last years Zika virus outbreak and the 2014 catastrophe of Ebola epidemic showed the governments are still not strong enough for responding to emergencies.

Gates, whose foundation invests in improving global healthcare, said that breakthroughs in genetic engineering will make it easier for terrorists to plot attacks on a massive scale.

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Deadly global pandemic to kill tens of millions: Bill Gates - Press TV

AzaadiFreedom from Indian Oppression – Economic and Political Weekly

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The bitter cold in the Kashmir Valley cuts through the bones, but yet it fails to chill the publics spirit. Right through the winter, when hundreds of Indian security forces come to a locality to kill less than a handful of militants taking shelter in a house, the local population come out in support of the militants to prevent the security forces from conducting their operations, at times even managing to help the militants escape. For the security forces, of course, the local population supporting the militants are anti-national and they have no qualms in dealing severely with the civilians.

The fact is that many in the local population readily risk their very lives to save the militants. The killing of every militantand they are all Kashmiris, mostly from East Kashmir, administered by India, with a few from West Kashmir, administered by Pakistanis deeply resented. Each encounter killing of a militant or militants, and especially when civilians are killed, sparks public protests, despite the bitter cold outside. And when such protests gain momentum, the security forces fire into the crowds, triggering a wave of further protests.

The Kashmiri people have now faced what is akin to military rule for 27 years; practically the whole area is claimed to have remained disturbed, with the armed forces enjoying immunity from prosecution for harm done to civilians, whether of rape, torture, disappearance, or killing. According to a statement dated 10 January 2017 of the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), in the ongoing uprising from 8 July last year, more than a hundred civilians have so far been killed. More than one thousand civilians have either been blinded or have sustained serious eye injuries as a result of the firing of pellets by the security forces. There have been mass arrests and detentions under the draconian Public Safety Act, 1978. Official government figures put the number of arrests under different criminal charges at around 8,000. Prolonged curfews, media and internet blackouts, suspension of the fundamental rights to freedom of speech and expression and of peaceful assembly, have been the order of the day.

Indeed, one can sense the agony of the parents and other loved ones of the disappeared persons. For the period from 1989 onwards, the APDP has estimated that 8,000 to 10,000 Kashmiristhe earlier Omar Abdullah-headed Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) government had admitted to a figure of 3,744 in the J&K legislative assemblywere subjected to enforced disappearance and subsequently killed in fake encounters. But the Indian state and the establishment have been in a state of denial of the enforced disappearances and subsequent killings, blaming the very victims of the violence for the violence. On the 10th of every month, the APDP stages silent sit-in protests against the enforced disappearances in J&K, and has been bringing out a memory calendar. It has taken on the responsibility of not allowing the memories of the sufferings of (the) families (of the disappeared persons) to pass into oblivion. Indeed, the callousness of successive state governments in J&K is also evident in the fact that the state assembly is yet to pass a law on protection from enforced disappearances. Successive central governments have also been utterly insensitive in not ratifying the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.

Basically for 27 years, India has been using military force against the people of the Kashmir Valley many of whom do not want to be part of India. New Delhi justifies all of this in the name of territorial integrity and secularism. It blames Pakistan for what is happening in the Kashmir Valleyall the mass protests and the militancy are supposed to be Pakistan-sponsored. Yet, the nationalism of the present union government is not even all-Indian; it is a communal Hindutvavadi nationalism representing a section of the Indian population. The Hindutvavadi nationalists in power currently have no qualms in forcing their rule on the Kashmiri Muslims in the name of secularism. Needless to say, the Congress version of nationalism was no less in this respect. Not that Pakistani nationalism is any better. Now the Hindutvavadi nationalists, clearly not out of any real solidarity, have claimed that they support the Balochi national liberation movement in Pakistan; the Pakistani nationalists, on their part, claim that they are for Kashmiri azaadi from India, even as they have made of Azad Kashmir a virtual colony. But given New Delhis use of military force in the Kashmir Valley over the last 27 years, Kashmiri azaadi is, indeed, among other things, principally a cry from the heart of the Kashmiri people for freedom from Indian oppression.

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AzaadiFreedom from Indian Oppression - Economic and Political Weekly