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USA TODAY 3:21 p.m. ET Feb. 15, 2017

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Panama City Beach boasts 27 miles of sugar-white sand beaches bordering the clear, emerald-green waters of the Gulf of Mexico and St. Andrews Bay.(Photo: Panama City Beach CVB)

Home to Disney World, cosmopolitan Miami and the wild Everglades, Florida has much to offer before you even set foot on its 663 miles of world-class beaches. Get inspired for your next trip to the Sunshine State with the photo tour in the carousel above.

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Photo tour: Florida's best beaches - USA TODAY

Cape beaches bruised by winter weather – Cape Cod Times (subscription)

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Chris Lindahl @cmlindahlMary Ann Bragg @MaryAnnBraggCCT

SOUTH WELLFLEET Recent storms have once again eaten away at some of Cape Cod's vulnerable shoreline, tearing away sand, destabilizing dunes and eliminating at least one access point to the beach below.

Two sets of stairs to the beach within the Cape Cod National Seashore were closed Tuesday until further notice because of storm damage over the weekend.

At Marconi Beach, the bottom of the stairs was washed away, and the entire structure will need to be removed and replaced, said Karst Hoogeboom, chief of maintenance and facilities at theSeashore.

On Wednesday, Seashore staffers were assessing the stairs at Nauset Light Beach to determine if the structure could be stabilized and reopened, Hoogeboom said. An area of the bluff washed away under the stairs but the structure itself may be OK, he said.

We might be able to save them, he said.

At Herring Cove Beach in Provincetown, storm damage to the 208-space northern parking is continuing as it has in previous years, Hoogeboom said. On Wednesday, about 55 spaces were available for use, with the rest of the buckled and eroded lot blocked off to cars. Funding to move the northern parking lot back from the shoreline is expected to be available in 2018, he said.

Watch: Recent storms have damaged the stairs at Marconi Beach

Nauset Light Beach, in particular, is a hot spot for accelerated winter-storm erosion, according to Seashore officials. The federal agency spent about $130,000 to rebuild the stairs for the 2016 summer season but is working with consultants to evaluate options and costs for stairs that could be removed before winter each year and then reinstalled after the threat of winter storms has passed, according to an announcement from the Seashore last year.

In 2013, the National Park Service spent over $200,000 to repair the stairs at Nauset Light Beach and at Marconi Beach after they had been damaged by the previous winter's storms.

Erosion-prone Town Neck Beach in Sandwich also took a beating in Mondays storm, according to David DeConto, the towns assistant director of natural resources.

The worst effects were west of the Sandwich Boardwalk, near homes on Bay Beach Lane and White Cap Path. The storm also took down a portion of town fencing that protects dunes from foot traffic, he said.

DeConto said he suspects that damage was due to two factors: the northerly winds and the fact that some dunes were more square, rather than gently sloping, which makes them more susceptible to erosion. The squared-off dunes were a result of previous storms, he said.

Photo Gallery: Outer Cape erosion

Town officials dont yet have a precise answer on how much beach washed away, DeConto said. Hell need to closely study a series of photographs taken before and after the storm to gauge the exact damage, which varied depending on location, he said.

In a separate project, U.S. Geological Survey officials were at the beach this week taking measurements for a study of the wave action of Cape Cod Bay, which theyll use to create a model. That work and data, including photographs, will also help Sandwich officials with their erosion-control efforts, DeConto said.

Follow Mary Ann Bragg on Twitter: @MaryAnnBraggCCT. Follow Chris Lindahl on Twitter: @cmlindahl.

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Cape beaches bruised by winter weather - Cape Cod Times (subscription)

Beaches law enforcement combats recent auto burglary trend … – Florida Times-Union

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A recent trend of auto burglaries has police in Jacksonville Beach and Atlantic Beach on the offensive.

Jacksonville Beach saw a 34 percent increase in auto burglaries between 2015 and 2016, the highest increase the department has seen in recent years. They accounted for more than half of the 500 total burglaries recorded last year.

Atlantic Beach recorded 112 auto burglaries and 29 cases of car thefts in 2016. This year the department already has 21 reported auto burglaries and six reported car thefts. Interim Police Chief Victor Gualillo said auto burglaries usually spike around the winter holidays, but the department has seen a change in the past year.

It runs in just strange spurts, Gualillo said.

Jacksonville Beach Police Department spokesman Sgt. Thomas Crumley said the department started noticing this trend in September.

To the south, Ponte Vedra Beach has also experienced a spike in auto burglaries in the past two years. St. Johns County Sheriffs Office reports a 57 percent increase in Ponte Vedra Beach between 2015 and 2016. The number of reported auto burglaries spiked from 84 in 2015 to 132 in 2016.

Cmdr. Chuck Mulligan, spokesman for the St. Johns County Sheriffs Office, said car burglaries are the No. 1 crime in St. Johns County and among the most common crimes in Ponte Vedra Beach.

Authorities in all three areas report that unlocked cars and leaving valuables in unlocked cars are the top two causes of auto burglaries. Mulligan and Crumley said unlocked cars are an easy target for criminals, as it means easier access and less chance for them to set off car alarms.

Young adult men are the suspects of most auto burglaries. Often going to different areas in groups, two or three people in the group will pull on the door handles of cars and will quickly go through any cars that are unlocked. This can mean taking things from a few dollars in change to valuables such as laptops, wallets or guns. In Atlantic Beach and Ponte Vedra Beach, there have been some reported cases where cars have been left unlocked with the keys in the ignition or in the car.

If its an unlocked car, and all you get is the change, its two or three dollars out of every car, Crumley said.

The Jacksonville Beach Police Department restarted its Lock It or Lose It campaign in September in response to raising auto burglaries. Authorities urge people to lock their cars and take any valuables especially handguns with them to discourage potential criminals and help police curb this trend.

I think that the harder we make it on them, potentially theyll find another path and another area to look at, Mulligan said.

Tiffanie Reynolds: (904) 359-4450

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Beaches law enforcement combats recent auto burglary trend ... - Florida Times-Union

Another Gravitational Wave Detector Will Help Revolutionize Astronomy – Gizmodo

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Last year, the pair of LIGO experiments announced a discovery a hundred years in the making: gravitational waves, tiny ripples in space time from a pair of colliding black holes a billion light years away. You might wonder what scientists will do with two giant gravitational wave detectors now that theyve fulfilled their primary goal. Well, those ripples werent the end of the storythey were the start of a whole new saga in astronomy.

In the next few weeks, an upgraded version of an experiment very similar to the two LIGO experimentscalled Virgo near Pisa, Italywill go back online. The addition of Virgo will give scientists the ability to pinpoint where in the sky the gravitational waves are located. That detector (and hopefully more detectors to come), combined with observing power of some of the most advanced telescopes, could help astronomers learn about the wildest events that happen in our universe, like black holes colliding with neutron stars.

I think its going to be transformational, Julie McEnery, project scientist for NASAs Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, told Gizmodo. Theres no question.

But first, what are gravitational waves and gravitational wave detectors, and how do they work? Over a hundred years go, Albert Einstein penned his theory of general relativity, which included the tenet that gravity can warp the shape of spacetime itself. Observations of Mercurys orbit, and the way starlight bends around the sun during solar eclipses, proved general relativity early on. But one of the theorys predictions was that certain gravitational events could send light-speed waves through space, like ripples in a pond. That prediction was impossible to prove at the time, since the size of the spacetime ripples would be a tiny fraction of the diameter of a proton.

Eventually, scientists figured out a way to measure the ripples, and built a pair of detectors in Hanford, Washington and Livingston, Louisiana called LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatories. Both detectors became operational in 2002. Each experiment consists of a laser beam split in two, sent down four kilometer (2.5 mile) long perpendicular pipes that bounce off mirrors and meet again. A detector compares the beams. If a gravitational wave passes through our planet, one of the lasers moves in and out of phase with the other, creating a telltale wobble.

After over a decade without turning up any gravitational waves, the scientists upgraded the sensitivity of both LIGO detectors. Theyfinally measured that wobble for the first time almost immediately after the upgrade was completed, in September of 2015, and announced it last February. The shape of the wobble told LIGO researchers that over a billion light years away, two black holes 29 and 36 times the mass of our sun had spiraled into each other and collided.

Making discoveries requires multiple detectors. One detector measuring a wiggle could imply anythingmaybe a truck drove down the road a mile away. But if the two instruments measure the same exact signal almost two thousand miles apart, with a time delay equaling the exact speed of a gravitational wave, then we can say we actually found something.

Scientists ultimate goal is to see what makes these dang waves, and to study it. The wave information in the two detectors, combined with the time delay, gives scientists an enormous, hundreds of square degrees-ring in the sky to look, but not a precise location. The addition of the Virgo detector will associate gravitational waves with just a pair of points covering only tens of square degrees in the sky, Salvatore Vitale, assistant professor of physics and LIGO research scientist from MIT, told Gizmodo. Think about how you perceive sound with your eyes closedyour two ears can give you a general sense of where a sound came from based on the differing information each ear receives, but you cant really pinpoint the location until you open your eyes. Physicists have only heard gravitational waves with two detectors. Adding another will allow them to see, too.

Virgo isnt newits been taking data since 2007, but was receiving an upgrade when both LIGO experiments made their first gravitational wave detection. The Advanced Virgos inauguration will take place February 20, and it will begin doing science in the next few weeks, according to a Nature report. Its similar, but not the same as the LIGO detectors; its arms are only three kilometers (almost two miles) long, for example.

There are plenty of other benefits to an additional detector. Virgos arms are angled differently than each LIGOs experiments. The original pair of detectors intended to measure waves as soon as possible, explained Vitale, and had parallel arms to maximize the chance of a detection. They didnt think about extracting information out of the signal, he said. The additional offset detector will allow researchers to measure the polarizationsimply, the path the waves vibrations trace out as it travelswhich helps determine how far away the source was, along with other information.

Having multiple detectors also increases the amount of time during which detections can actually be made. Scientists inevitably need to temporarily shut down giant machines for maintenance. If you only have two detectors running, you cant confirm any discoveries when one is turned off. If you have three or more running, then you can shut one down and still make confident detections. Theres a smaller detector in Germany, and when two other detectors go online, one planned for India and the other under construction in Japan, scientists will almost always have their ears and eyes open for gravitational waves. A supernova happens once per hundred years in the galaxy, said Vitale. You want to make sure thats not the day that only one interferometer is taking data. Virgo will increase the time we have all three.

With an additional detector, the dozens of observatories who have signed so-called Memoranda of Understanding with the LIGO Scientific Collaboration will be able to actually do something with the data. In 2012, the collaboration approved a process for sharing data with these astronomy partners. When a signal triggers the detectors, scientists around the world receive an automated notification, then meet immediately and do basic sanity checks to ensure there werent any glitches. As soon as possible, they send a bulletin to all of the associated observatories, including information like the probability that the event was real, a timestamp and location in the sky, and what kind of event it might have beenfor instance, two black holes colliding, or a neutron star colliding with a black hole. It takes around a half hour from detection to release the bulletin, said Vitale, with most of the delay from human activity. The participating telescopes even have access to a platform allowing them to tell each other whether they plan on hunting for the source of the gravitational waves and where they plan to look.

Thats when the fun begins, said McEnery. We jump for joy... Every time we get a trigger people are really excited. You can smell the prospect of finding something really new. Some telescopes need to realign to look for the source, and must think carefully about whether its worth deviating from their schedule to turn toward some strange electromagnetic event in the sky, like a gamma ray burst. The Fermi telescope doesnt need to worry, since its scope already looks at around 65 percent of the sky simultaneouslythe other 35 percent is behind the Earth. But we do coordinate to check if we saw any gamma rays, have any new sources appeared, is anything unusual happening. We pay special attention to the region of the LIGO location uncertainty area, the area in the bulletin.

These telescopes cover a wide range of electromagnetic wavelengths, from radio wave to gamma rays, allowing scientists to glean all sorts of information about whatever the strange event might be. The electromagnetic signature can provide extra data on the nature of a black hole collision or black hole-neutron star collisionfor instance, gamma rays measured around the same time as last Februarys discovery suggests that the merging black holes started their lives inside a single, massive star.

And its not just electromagnetic waves you can combine with gravitational wave data. Other kinds of detectors, like those that measure the tiny, nearly massless neutrino particles, could offer lots of information about the source, explained Stefan Countryman, a Columbia physics graduate student. Theres all sorts of stuff we can do. And working with a less popular particle has its perks. Every time I run a joint analysis of neutrinos and gravitational waves, I might be the first person to see something, they said.

So, more gravitational wave detectors will hopefully revolutionize astronomy and allow us to see things stranger than weve ever spotted before. Its incredible that we might be able to see a merger of two neutron stars, for example, said McEnery. Combining the common electromagnetic observations with the gravitational wave observations will provide a huge amount of new insight and information The range of physics were going to be able to probe by having all of this information is extraordinary.

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Another Gravitational Wave Detector Will Help Revolutionize Astronomy - Gizmodo

High school students identify an ultra-rare star – Astronomy Magazine

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The stars shining in the night sky might seem steady and reliable, but in truth, they are constantly changing and evolving. Out of the 100 billion or so stars that inhabit the Milky Way, a little more than 400,900 are classified as variable, meaning they change in brightness over time.

Of those hundreds of thousands of variables catalogued in our galaxy, however, only seven belong to a class called Triple Mode high amplitude delta Scuti, or HADS(B), stars and that seventh was just recently discovered by a high school student during a summer astronomy program at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

The star, roughly the size of our Sun or possibly larger, is about 7,000 light-years away in the constellation Pegasus. It currently has only a catalog name: ROTSE1 J232056.45+345150.9. The name comes in part from the telescope used to discover it, the ROTSE-I telescope at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

While examining data from the telescope taken in September of 2000, Plano Senior High School student Derek Hornungnoticed the stars strange light curve, which shows the stars brightness over time. A non-variable stars light curve is simply a straight line, unchanging as the hours, days, and months go by. But a variable star exhibits periodic changes in brightness over the course of hours or days, creating a recognizable repeating pattern. Variable stars are classified by the patterns their light curves make, and named after the first star of each type discovered. Delta Scuti variables are thus named after the star delta Scuti.

But theres more to this story, still. The star is not only a delta Scuti variable, of which there are thousands known, but it is also a rare type within the delta Scuti class, a HADS(B) star. HADS(B) stars show asymmetric light curves that change brightness quickly over time. These stars are pulsating in two modes, which means the star is expanding in two directions at once. There are only 114 HADS(B) stars currently known. Rarer still are Triple Mode HADS(B) stars, of which there were only six previously identified in the Milky way. Triple Mode HADS(B) stars pulsate in not two, but three directions at once. For ROTSE1 J232056.45+345150.9, this process repeats itself every 2.5 hours.

Eric Guzman, a physics graduate student from the University of Texas at Dallas entering SMUs graduate program, helped to piece the puzzle together. In a press release announcing the findings, he said, After successfully finding the second mode, I noticed a third signal. After checking the results, I discovered the third signal coincided with what is predicted of a third pulsation mode.

Such intrinsically variable stars, which change in brightness due to physical changes in the star itself, contribute significantly to the understanding of stellar evolution, helping astronomers probe the mechanisms that power stars as they live and die. Variability due to pulsation, such as the process occurring in delta Scuti stars, is a short-lived phase of stellar evolution that occurs as the star begins to run out of available hydrogen to fuse in its core. Once the hydrogen is depleted, the star begins burning helium and stops pulsating.

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High school students identify an ultra-rare star - Astronomy Magazine

Scientists write a hypothetical Europa landing mission report – Astronomy Magazine

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A recent report highlights the amazing possibilities for a Europa lander in the quest for life on other worlds.

There are currently plans in process for a Europa flyby mission to launch in 2020, but a flyby cant directly test for life. By being on the surface, the lander could determine if the chemistry for life past, present, or future is on the moon

With proper equipment, such as imagers and specialized microscopes, a lander on Europa could search for organic molecules, possible cellular life, and study the general composition of the surface.

Another point of interest is the potential ocean hypothesized thanks to Voyager I and the Galileo spacecraft during its mission in the 1990s. More specifically, the team is interested in learning if the ocean has hydrothermal vents, a fissure typically found near volcanically active places. The cold seawater and the hot geothermal liquids combining together cause reactions that create fine-grained particles that, in turn, form columns. In the past, scientists found ecosystems, some that were deemed vital to lifes origins, near the vents.

As of right now, a landing mission on Europa is just a concept and the paper was just a way to bring the idea to NASAs attention. Should the mission be approved, it would still take about five years, with gravity assists from Earth and Jupiter, for a lander to make it to Europa.

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Scientists write a hypothetical Europa landing mission report - Astronomy Magazine

Astronomers observe black hole producing cold, star-making fuel – Astronomy Now Online

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This composite image shows powerful radio jets from the supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy in the Phoenix Cluster inflating huge bubbles in the hot, ionized gas surrounding the galaxy. The cavities inside the blue region were imaged by NASAs Chandra X-ray observatory. Hugging the outside of these bubbles, ALMA discovered an unexpected trove of cold gas, the fuel for star formation (red). The background image is from the Hubble Space Telescope. Image: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO) H.Russell, et al.; NASA/ESA Hubble; NASA/CXC/MIT/M.McDonald et al.; B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF)

The Phoenix cluster is an enormous accumulation of about 1,000 galaxies, located 5.7 billion light years from Earth. At its center lies a massive galaxy, which appears to be spitting out stars at a rate of about 1,000 per year. Most other galaxies in the universe are far less productive, squeaking out just a few stars each year, and scientists have wondered what has fueled the Phoenix clusters extreme stellar output.

Now scientists from MIT, the University of Cambridge, and elsewhere may have an answer. In a paper published today in theAstrophysical Journal, the team reports observing jets of hot, 10-million-degree gas blasting out from the central galaxys black hole and blowing large bubbles out into the surrounding plasma.

These jets normally act to quench star formation by blowing away cold gas the main fuel that a galaxy consumes to generate stars. However, the researchers found that the hot jets and bubbles emanating from the center of the Phoenix cluster may also have the opposite effect of producing cold gas, that in turn rains back onto the galaxy, fueling further starbursts. This suggests that the black hole has found a way to recycle some of its hot gas as cold, star-making fuel.

We have thought the role of black hole jets and bubbles was to regulate star formation and to keep cooling from happening, says Michael McDonald, assistant professor of physics in MITs Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. We kind of thought they were one-trick ponies, but now we see they can actually help cooling, and its not such a cut-and-dried picture.

The new findings help to explain the Phoenix clusters exceptional star-producing power. They may also provide new insight into how supermassive black holes and their host galaxies mutually grow and evolve.

McDonalds co-authors include lead author Helen Russell, an astronomer at Cambridge University; and others from the University of Waterloo, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the University of Illinois, and elsewhere.

Hot jets, cold filaments

The team analyzed observations of the Phoenix cluster gathered by the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), a collection of 66 large radio telescopes spread over the desert of northern Chile. In 2015, the group obtained permission to direct the telescopes at the Phoenix cluster to measure its radio emissions and to detect and map signs of cold gas.

The researchers looked through the data for signals of carbon monoxide, a gas that is present wherever there is cold hydrogen gas. They then converted the carbon monoxide emissions to hydrogen gas, to generate a map of cold gas near the center of the Phoenix cluster. The resulting picture was a puzzling surprise.

You would expect to see a knot of cold gas at the center, where star formation happens, McDonald says. But we saw these giant filaments of cold gas that extend 20,000 light years from the central black hole, beyond the central galaxy itself. Its kind of beautiful to see.

The team had previously used NASAs Chandra X-Ray Observatory to map the clusters hot gas. These observations produced a picture in which powerful jets flew out from the black hole at close to the speed of light. Further out, the researchers saw that the jets inflated giant bubbles in the hot gas.

When the team superimposed its picture of the Phoenix clusters cold gas onto the map of hot gas, they found a perfect spatial correspondence: The long filaments of frigid, 10-kelvins gas appeared to be draped over the bubbles of hot gas.

This may be the best picture we have of black holes influencing the cold gas, McDonald says.

Feeding the black hole

What the researchers believe to be happening is that, as jet inflate bubbles of hot, 10-million-degree gas near the black hole, they drag behind them a wake of slightly cooler, 1-million-degree gas. The bubbles eventually detach from the jets and float further out into the galaxy cluster, where each bubbles trail of gas cools, forming long filaments of extremely cold gas that condense and rain back onto the black hole as fuel for star formation.

Its a very new idea that the bubbles and jets can actually influence the distribution of cold gas in any way, McDonald says.

Scientists have estimated that there is enough cold gas near the center of the Phoenix cluster to keep producing stars at a high rate for another 30 to 40 million years. Now that the researchers have identified a new feedback mechanism that may supply the black hole with even more cold gas, the clusters stellar output may continue for much longer.

As long as theres cold gas feeding it, the black hole will keep burping out these jets, McDonald says. But now weve found that these jets are making more food, or cold gas. So youre in this cycle that, in theory, could go on for a very long time.

He suspects the reason the black hole is able to generate fuel for itself might have something to do with its size. If the black hole is relatively small, it may produce jets that are too weak to completely blast cold gas away from the cluster.

Right now [the black hole] may be pretty small, and itd be like putting a civilian in the ring with Mike Tyson, McDonald says. Its just not up to the task of blowing this cold gas far enough away that it would never come back.

The team is hoping to determine the mass of the black hole, as well as identify other, similarly extreme starmakers in the universe.

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Astronomers observe black hole producing cold, star-making fuel - Astronomy Now Online

Scientists narrow down list of landing sites for Mars 2020 – Astronomy Magazine

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NASAs Mars 2020 rover is the next major interplanetary mission that will be sent to the Red Planet to look for signs of past habitability, martian life, and will collect samples to return to Earth. The rover is set to land in February 2021, but where it will land no one yet knows.

Astronomers working on the mission have met a few times to narrow down the list of landing sites, and will meet a fourth time in mid-2018 to pick the final destination.

The final three candidates on that list, which was narrowed down from the previous list of eight sites, include Northeast Syrtis Major, Jezero Crater, and Columbia Hills/Gusev Crater.

Jezero Crater is of interest because of its dried-up lake that could potentially provide evidence of a previous microbial life form. Northeast Syrtis Major is in an area that astronomers thought was warm and wet at one point but now hosts a shield volcano near an impact crater. The area with the most mixed responses was Columbia Hills, where the Spirit rover had previously found volcanic ash, suggesting an old active hot spring and a chance to find past life on Mars.

Mars 2020 is not a life-detection mission, but I think targeted to the right place we can make great strides toward finally answering the question about life on Mars, John Grant, geologist at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and co-chair of the Mars 2020 Landing Site Steering Committee, told Scientific American. It gets us down the road [to find out].

Though this rover is very similar to the Curiosity, its software upgrades with make it operate quicker, more efficiently, and more independently.

Due to funding, Mars 2020 is currently NASAs last confirmed mission heading to Mars. The lack of funding may have an impact on research on the Red Planet, but researchers are remaining optimistic.

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Scientists narrow down list of landing sites for Mars 2020 - Astronomy Magazine

Are Artificial Intelligence Companies Obliged To Retrain Technologically Displaced Workers? – Forbes

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Are Artificial Intelligence Companies Obliged To Retrain Technologically Displaced Workers?
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Don't technology companies who promote AI as the way forward also have an obligation to retrain our workforce to deal with the coming job disruption? originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from ...

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Are Artificial Intelligence Companies Obliged To Retrain Technologically Displaced Workers? - Forbes

China’s Artificial-Intelligence Boom – The Atlantic

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Each winter, hundreds of AI researchers from around the world convene at the annual meeting of the Association of the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. Last year, a minor crisis erupted over the schedule, when AAAI announced that 2017s meeting would take place in New Orleans in late January. The location was fine. The dates happened to conflict with Chinese New Year.

The holiday might not have been a deal breaker in the past, but Chinese researchers have become so integral to the meeting, it could not go on without them. They had to reschedule. Nobody would have put AAAI on Christmas day, says current AAAI president Subbarao Kambhampati. Our organization had to almost turn on a dime and change the conference venue to hold it a week later.

The 2017 AAAI meetingwhich ultimately relocated to San Franciscowrapped up just last week. And as expected, Chinese researchers had a strong showing in the historically U.S.-dominated conference. A nearly equal number of accepted papers came from researchers based in China and the U.S. This is pretty surprising and impressive given how different it was even three, four years back, says Rao.

Chinas rapid rise up the ranks of AI research has people taking notice. In October, the Obama White House released a strategic plan for AI research, which noted that the U.S. no longer leads the world in journal articles on deep learning, a particularly hot subset of AI research right now. The country that had overtaken the U.S.? China, of course.

Its not just academic research. Chinese tech companies are betting on AI, too. Baidu (a Chinese search-engine company often likened to Google), Didi (often likened to Uber), and Tencent (maker of the mega-popular messaging app WeChat) have all set up their own AI research labs. With millions of customers, these companies have access to the huge amount of data that training AI to detect patterns requires.

Like the Microsofts and Googles of the world, Chinese tech companies see enormous potential in AI. It could undergird a whole set of transformative technologies in the coming decades, from facial recognition to autonomous cars.I have a hard time thinking of an industry we cannot transform with AI, says Andrew Ng, chief scientist at Baidu. Ng previously cofounded Coursera and Google Brain, the companys deep learning project. Now he directs Baidus AI research out of Sunnyvale, California, right in Silicon Valley.

* * *

Chinas success in AI has been partly fueled by the governments overall investment in scientific research at its universities. Over the past decade, government spending on research has grown by double digits on average every year. Funding of science and technology research continues to be a major priority, as outlined by the the Five-Year Plan unveiled this past March.

When Rao first started seeing Chinese researchers at international AI meetings, he recalls they were usually from Tsinghua and Peking University, considered the MIT and Harvard of China. Now, he sees papers from researchers all over the country, not just the most elite schools. Machine learningwhich includes deep learninghas been an especially popular topic lately. The number of people who got interested in applied machine learning has tremendously increased across China, says Rao. This is the same uptick that the White House noticed in its report on a strategic plan for AI research.

Chinese tech companies are part of the infusion of research dollars to universities, too. At Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, computer scientist Qiang Yang collaborates with Tencent, which sponsors scholarships for students in his lab.

The students get access to mountains of data from WeChat, the messaging app from Tencent that is akin to Facebook, iMessage, and Venmo all rolled into one. (With AI, they cant do it without a lot of data and a platform to test it on, says Yang, which is why industry collaboration is so key.) In return, Tencent gets a direct line to some of the most innovative research coming out of academic labs. And of course, some of these students end up working at Tencent when they graduate.

The quantity of Chinese AI research has grown dramatically, but researchers in the U.S. are still responsible for a lot of the most fundamental groundbreaking work. The very clever ideas on changing network architecture, I see those in the U.S., says Ng. What Chinese researchers have been very good at doing is seizing on an idealike machine learningand cranking out papers on its different applications.

Yet as the research matures in China, Ng says, it is also becoming its own distinct community. After a recent international meeting in Barcelona, he recalls seeing Chinese language write-ups of the talks circulate right way. He never found any in English. The language issue creates a kind of asymmetry: Chinese researchers usually speak English so they have the benefit of access to all the work disseminated in English. The English-speaking community, on the other hand, is much less likely to have access to work within the Chinese AI community.

China has a fairly deep awareness of whats happening in the English-speaking world, but the opposite is not true, says Ng. He points out that Baidu has rolled out machine translation and voice recognition services powered by AIbut when Google and Microsoft, respectively, did so later, the American companies got a lot more publicity.

And when it comes to actually shipping new features, China companies can move more quickly. The velocity of work is much faster in China than in most of Silicon Valley, says Ng. When you spot a business opportunity in China, the window of time you have to respond usually very shortshorter in China than the United States.

Yang chalks it up to Chinas highly competitive ecosystem. WeChat, for example, has built a set of features around QR codes (yes, really), chat, payments, and friend discovery that make it indispensable to daily life in China. American social media companies only wish they had that kind of loyalty. Product managers at Tencent have good sense of what customers want, and they can can quickly turn technology into reality, says Yang. This cycle is very short. And to stay competitive, theyre primed to integrate AI to improve their products. Whether Chinese tech companies use the AI wave to break into the international market remains to be seenbut theyre already using AI to compete for customers in China.

In the academic world, AAAI has now taken steps to make sure Chinese researchers have input on the meetings. The exact date of Chinese New Year changes every year, but its always in January or February, when the AAAI meeting usually takes place. Cant have them conflicting again.

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China's Artificial-Intelligence Boom - The Atlantic

MEPs in ‘urgent’ call for new laws on artificial intelligence and robotics – The Register

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The European Parliament today called for EU-wide liability laws to cover robotics and artificial intelligence. MEPs also want researchers to adopt ethical standards that "respect human dignity".

In a resolution today MEPs noted that several countries are planning robotics regulations and that the EU needs to take the lead on setting these standards, so as not to be forced to follow those set by third countries.

According to a European Parliamentary press release, MEPs said draft legislation was urgently needed to clarify liability in accidents involving self-driving cars.

Although manufacturers including Volvo, Google, and Mercedes say they will accept full liability if their autonomous vehicles cause a collision, this is not currently a legal requirement.

MEPs recommended a mandatory insurance scheme and a supplementary fund to ensure that victims of accidents involving driverless cars are fully compensated.

Additionally, they propose a voluntary ethical code of conduct for robotics researchers and designers to ensure that the machines operate in accordance with legal and ethical standards and that robot design and their use respect human dignity.

The resolution arises from a report by Mady Delvaux MEP, which was adopted by the European Parliaments committee on legal affairs in January.

Several of its clauses regarding the potential introduction of a basic income to deal with the effect that robotics and artificial intelligence may have on the jobs market were removed, prompting Delvaux to complain: Although I am pleased that the plenary adopted my report on robotics, I am also disappointed that the right-wing coalition of ALDE, EPP and ECR refused to take account of possible negative consequences on the job market. They rejected an open-minded and forward-looking debate and thus disregarded the concerns of our citizens.

MEPs also asked the Commission to consider creating a European agency for robotics and artificial intelligence, which would be available to supply public authorities with technical, ethical and regulatory expertise.

The European Parliament resolution will now be answered by the European Commission, which alone has legislative initiative in the EU. The Commission is not obliged to draft new laws but must explain its rationale for rejecting Parliamentary resolutions.

Therese Comodini Cachia MEP, of the Maltese centre-right Nationalist Party and Parliament's rapporteur for robotics, said: Despite the sensations reported in the past months, I wish to make one thing clear: Robots are not humans and never will be," EU Reporter reports. "No matter how autonomous and self-learning they become they do not attain the characteristics of a living human being. Robots will not enjoy the same legal physical personality.

"However for the purposes of the liability for damages caused by robots, the various legal possibilities need to be explored. Who will bear responsibility in case of an accident of an automated car? How will any legal solution affect the development of robotics, those who own them and victims of the damage?

We invite the European Commission to consider the impact of different solutions to make sure that harm caused to persons and to our environment is properly addressed, she concluded.

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MEPs in 'urgent' call for new laws on artificial intelligence and robotics - The Register

Alphabet’s Eric Schmidt: ‘I Was Proven Completely Wrong’ About Artificial Intelligence – Fortune

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While leading Google through the aughts, Eric Schmidt made a miscalculation.

"I was proven completely wrong" about artificial intelligence, Alphabet's executive chairman said at the RSA security conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.

Schmidt has initially skeptical about the technology, and he's since acknowledged how vital it is to both the company's mission and to the global economy.

Indeed, Google ( goog ) CEO Sundar Pichai has described the world as having entered an "AI-first" era. The preceding phase was a focus on all things mobile- and smartphone-first (see: Android), according to Pichai, who succeeded Schmidt after a second CEO stint by Google co-founder Larry Page.

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Schmidt's assessment back then was that artificial intelligence research faced tremendous obstacles that inhibited its progress. He "didn't think it would scale," he said of the machine learning tech.

And he said he also didn't think it would "generalize," meaning becoming more flexible and elastic, like the human mind, rather than remaining a specialized tool suited only to specific tasks.

Schmidt had underestimated the power of simple algorithms to "emulate very complex things," he said, while qualifying that "we're still in the baby stages of doing conceptual learning."

Read more: Forget Artificial Intelligence. Why 'Artificial Stupidity' Is the Real Threat

In other words, computer scientists are still teaching machines to heuristically categorize basic elements of the world: building representations of "things" and "actions" by parsing the components of images (like colors, shapes, and lines), as well as sounds (like tones, pitches, and phonemes).

"General AI," or mimicking the elasticity of human thought, is still decades away from reality, by Schmidt's estimation. But he has become more bullish about the prospect in recent years.

For more on artificial intelligence, watch Fortune' s video:

The moment that changed everything, he said, was the success of a particular Google experiment involving neural networks in 2012. Ironically, Schmidt said, the team's creation didn't uncover some major mathematical breakthrough. Rather, it found something far more mundane.

"You'd think it would have been the discovery of basic set theory," Schmidt said, referring to an esoteric realm of mathematics. "Instead, it was the discovery of cats on YouTube."

Indeed, the Google Brain team had tasked thousands of computer processors with recognizing objects in YouTube video thumbnail images. The resultan ability to distinguish catshelped launch a wave of renewed interest in the field of deep learning. (For more on that tech revolution, read this recent Fortune feature .)

As far as questions about apocalyptic scenarios, like a robot uprising, Schmidt echoed statements he has made in the past by throwing water on the alarmists. "These are important philosophical questions, but ones that we're not facing right now," he said.

In Schmidt's view, the positives far outweigh the negatives for AI. "Things that bedevil us, like traffic accidents and medical diagnoses will get better," he said.

"I will stake my reputation that that will be the real narrative over the next five years."

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Alphabet's Eric Schmidt: 'I Was Proven Completely Wrong' About Artificial Intelligence - Fortune

Artificial intelligence doesn’t have to be a job killer – ZDNet

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What impact will artificial intelligence (AI) have on the workforce? Will smart machines really replace a large number of people in a variety of jobs?

10 types of enterprise deployments

As businesses continue to experiment with the Internet of Things, interesting use cases are emerging. Here are some of the most common ways IoT is deployed in the enterprise.

These questions have been on the minds of a lot of people of late -- especially as AI becomes even more advanced. Clearly the technology will take away the need for some functions that are now performed by humans. But there's good reason to believe that AI will actually create a lot of new jobs as well -- at least in some areas of the economy.

"For information workers, the near-term opportunity is to leverage machine learning and natural language processing to make sense of a disconnected and cacophonic set of information sources, so people can focus on what matters most to them," said David Lavenda, vice president of product strategy at mobile-enterprise collaboration company Harmon.ie, who does academic research on information overload in organizations.

AI automation now is best geared toward specific, highly-contextual tasks, Lavenda said. "In the consumer world, we are seeing things like customer service bots," he said. "But information workers typically operate in a broad range of tasks and responsibilities. Without a definite context, AI will struggle to make decisions independently."

For example, IBM is focusing Watson's AI capabilities on highly-contextual business cases such as evaluating health studies and helping doctors make decisions.

Still, organizations and individuals need to prepare for the growing role of AI in the workplace.

"The trick is to make it easier for workers to consume the increasing amount of disconnected information, not make them learn new skills," Lavenda said. "People want to focus on the business, not on learning new technology. If anything, the promise of AI is that people won't have to know more IT skills to be effective."

The focus on AI in the enterprise should be on making workers' lives simpler, not more difficult, Lavenda said. "People are already inundated by continuous new software and gadgets," he said. "They just can't keep up. The future lies in hiding complexity, not introducing new complexity."

Some industries are feeling the impact of AI sooner than others. For instance, healthcare is already seeing an impact from IBM's AI-based Watson technology, Lavenda said. "Since AI is a horizontal technology, it will appear first in industries where suppliers identify key use cases," he said.

One promising use case Lavenda cites is helping salespeople close more business by connecting disconnected information from sources such as Salesforce, Zendesk, SharePoint, email, Yammer, and Chatter into one coherent picture of what's happening with their business. "Without having to learn any new skills or install new apps, AI-based solutions can present this information in a coherent fashion right within email or within a document window, so that salespeople can focus on closing business, not using technology," he said.

Long term, there is no doubt that AI will impact jobs. "Like in the past, all new technology displaces professions," Lavenda said. "We don't have many telegraph or telephone operators today, to say nothing of keypunch data entry clerks. Yet new technologies bring new opportunities, and at least so far the new technologies increase the number of job opportunities, not lessen them."

How artificial intelligence is changing the data center:

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Artificial intelligence doesn't have to be a job killer - ZDNet

Artificial intelligence has brought doubt and suspicion to the ancient world of Japanese chess – Quartz

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Artificial intelligence has brought doubt and suspicion to the ancient world of Japanese chess
Quartz
Japan's embrace of modern technology has never been fully comfortable or all-encompassing. Robot animals keep nonagenarians company in nursing homes, even as banking remains firmly stuck in the past. Robot dinosaurs tend to guests at a hotel, while ...

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Artificial intelligence has brought doubt and suspicion to the ancient world of Japanese chess - Quartz

Could artificial intelligence hold the key to predicting earthquakes? – CBS News

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Women cry in front of damaged houses in a street in the central Italian village of Illica on August 24, 2016, following a powerful earthquake.

Mario Laporta/AFP/Getty Images

Can artificial intelligence, or machine learning, be deployed to predict earthquakes, potentially saving thousands of lives around the world? Some seismologists are working to find out. But they know such efforts are eyed with suspicion in the field.

Youre viewed as a nutcase if you say you think youre going to make progress on predicting earthquakes, Paul Johnson, a geophysicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, told Scientific American.

In the past, scientists have used various criteria to try to predict earthquakes, including foreshocks, electromagnetic disturbances, changes in groundwater chemistry. Slow slip events that is, tectonic motion that unfolds over weeks or months have also been placed under the microscope for clues to certain earthquakes.

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Scientists have discovered that two fault lines link together north of San Francisco, creating a new risk for the nearly seven million people liv...

But no approach thus far has made a significant difference.

Johnson and his colleagues are now trying a new approach: They are applying machine learning algorithms to massive data sets of measurements taken continuously before, during and after lab-simulated earthquake events to try to discover hidden patterns that can illuminate when future artificial quakes are most likely to happen. The team is also applying machine learning analysis to raw data from real earthquake temblors.

The research has already produced interesting results.

The researchers found the computer algorithm picked up on a reliable signal in acoustical datacreaking and grinding noises that continuously occur as the lab-simulated tectonic plates move over time, Scientific American reported. The algorithm revealed these noises change in a very specific way as the artificial tectonic system gets closer to a simulated earthquakewhich means Johnson can look at this acoustical signal at any point in time, and put tight bounds on when a quake might strike.

This is just the beginning, Johnson told the magazine. I predict, within the next five to 10 years machine learning will transform the way we do science.

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Could artificial intelligence hold the key to predicting earthquakes? - CBS News

Artificial Intelligence Is Becoming A Major Disruptive Force In Banks’ Finance Departments – Forbes

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Artificial Intelligence Is Becoming A Major Disruptive Force In Banks' Finance Departments
Forbes
A combination of elements including massive distributed computing power, the decreasing cost of data storage, and the rise of open source frameworks is helping to accelerate the application of artificial intelligence (AI). Our own research indicates ...

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Artificial Intelligence Is Becoming A Major Disruptive Force In Banks' Finance Departments - Forbes

Aerospace can make America great again – Sonoran News

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SpaceX just launched ten Iridium Communications satellites into low-Earth orbit. These satellites will beam phone and data service to tens of thousands of Americans who live or work in areas too remote for regular coverage.

Until recently, blasting bus-sized satellites into space using rockets that can be reused belonged in the realm of science fiction. Now, such activities seem routine.

Policymakers should take note. Americans are set to reap the benefits of aerospace firms race to tame the Final Frontier and the industrys investments in manufacturing will create new jobs and wealth in the United States, not just shuffle around current jobs by moving around government dollars.

Since its inception, the aerospace industry has produced technologies that improve Americans quality of life. NASA helped invent memory foam, scratch-resistant glasses, insulin pumps and hundreds of other products we use every day.

Now, private companies are driving aerospace innovation. Thanks to satellite Internet firms, airplane passengers can enjoy Wi-Fi while cruising at 30,000 feet. That has made flying more enjoyable and far more productive. The technology also makes it possible for Americans in remote areas to access high-speed Internet.

Satellite internet has yet to reach its full potential. The satellite internet of things market is expected to grow nearly 20 percent each year through 2022. Improved connectivity made possible by new satellites will improve the efficiency of a wide range of appliances, not just computers and smartphones.

Launching new satellites to support this increased connectivity would have been far too expensive a few years ago. But today, thanks to California-based SpaceX and Washington-based Blue Origins advances in rocket manufacturing, the cost of launches has plummeted. The Air Force is showing interest in ultra-low cost access to space, where reusable launch technologies stimulate tactical innovation in space operations.

Next-generation rockets have even made space-based businesses look viable.

Made in Space, a California startup, recently sent a 3D printer to the International Space Station, laying the groundwork for manufacturing in zero gravity. The firm plans to produce optical fiber in space, which would eliminate the microscopic imperfections caused by gravity. This high quality fiber could revolutionize everything from medical devices to telecommunications.

Aerospace firms arent just spurring technological progress; theyre supporting millions of jobs. Americas aerospace sector employs over 1.2 million people and indirectly supports an additional 3.2 million jobs.

These jobs are helping to replace losses weve seen in the broader manufacturing sector. While the number of overall American manufacturing jobs dropped 22 percent from 2002 to 2012, jobs in the aerospace industry grew 7 percent. Aerospace exports also generated a trade surplus of over $80 billion in 2015 the highest in the manufacturing sector.

Aerospace companies are even leading the charge to revitalize the manufacturing workforce.

Firms are designing their own educational programs, often at community colleges, to train workers. Northrop Grumman, for instance, has partnered with Antelope Valley College in Lancaster, California to create a sixteen-week vocational program in aircraft manufacturing. The firm recruits many of the students upon graduation. Such public-private partnerships could serve as a model for manufacturers in other sectors.

Private aerospace companies are strengthening the labor force and pouring billions of dollars into new technologies that will improve Americans lives. Thats a reason to cheer every liftoff.

Rebecca Grant, Ph.D., is president of IRIS Independent Research, a public-policy research organization, and director of the Washington Security Forum. She is the former director of the General Billy Mitchell Institute for Airpower Studies at the Air Force Association.

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Aerospace can make America great again - Sonoran News

Boom period for Boeing is over, leading analyst tells aerospace suppliers – The Seattle Times

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Industry analyst Richard Aboulafia predicts tough years ahead, with Boeing depending heavily on increased 737 production as demand for its Everett-built twin-aisle jets slows and it struggles to fund development of the next airplane.

The great boom in the aerospace industry is over, and in the next few years Boeing will have to make even bigger cuts to large jet production in Everett than it has publicly announced, aviation-industry guru Richard Aboulafia predicted Wednesday.

His analysis for the Teal Group aviation-consulting firm predicts just 34 large twin-aisle 777s being delivered in 2020, less than three per month, compared with the lowest projection from Boeing of 42 deliveries per year, or 3.5 per month.

As for Boeings hope to raise production of the 787 Dreamliner from the current rate of 12 per month up to 14 per month, Aboulafia declared himself a serious nonbeliever.

Demand just isnt there in a twin-aisle-jet market that is flooded with way too many airplanes, he said.

In a downbeat speech to an audience of local suppliers and local government officials at the Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance (PNAA) conference in Lynnwood, Aboulafia also said Boeing faces a real dilemma in how to make its next move against Airbus.

And he spoke of a risk that the industry could slide from the current growth pause into outright recession if anti-trade and anti-globalization measures take hold around the world.

While a gentle dip for the airliner market is most likely, Aboulafia said, the building of walls and trade barriers could take this rather fragile industry into bust-cycle territory that would hurt Boeing more than any other company.

Referring to President Donald Trumps suggestion that the U.S. might slap a 45percent tariff on imports from China, Aboulafia said, Thats toxic.

The easiest place for China to retaliate is Boeing jetliners, switching to Airbus, he said.

A 12-yearlong boom in airliner-market growth came to an abrupt halt last year. The boom was driven by the high cost of oil, making new and more efficient planes more attractive, and the low cost of borrowing money to buy new aircraft.

The price of oil fell. The cost of financing has crept up and looks likely to go higher. And meanwhile both Airbus and Boeing pumped out record numbers of airplanes, creating a glut in the widebody-jet market.

Even the big, expansionist Gulf airlines have seen their revenue per passenger slump. When the Gulf carriers start to soften, you know you have an overcapacity issue, Aboulafia said.

Luckily for Boeing, demand for single-aisle jets remains very strong, so Renton will continue to increase production between now and 2019, he predicted.

As Boeing copes with the challenges of cutting production in Everett and raising it in Renton, it must also worry about its future competitive position against Airbus, Aboulafia said.

He said Boeing will likely have to develop a new middle-of-the-market (MOM) twin-aisle jet sized between the largest 737 and the smallest 787 and also develop a larger 737, the MAX 10, to stall the runaway sales of the Airbus A321neo.

The problem is, Boeing wont have the money to pour into a MOM development project until early next decade, Aboulafia said. All of Boeings research and development money is already earmarked through 2019 for its 737 MAX, 787-10 and 777X projects.

In contrast, he said, Airbus is free of all major development spending from 2018 on, and may well choose to move ahead of Boeing with a MOM development project.

Also holding Boeing back from new airplane development is the $27 billion overhang it still has in deferred production costs from its last new airplane project, the 787 Dreamliner.

In the aftermath of this major money-losing effort, Aboulafia suggested Boeing corporate in Chicago could be gun-shy about doing something all-new and potentially loss-making.

Always fluent and funny in his exposition, Aboulafia came up with a novel metaphor for Boeings pushing out nearly $30 billion in 787 production costs to be paid back from future revenue.

Its like, We cant save the patient, but we can put his head in a jar and hope future generations can revive him, Aboulafia said.

In the tough years ahead, he sees Boeing depending heavily on increased 737 production and further cost-squeezing.

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Boom period for Boeing is over, leading analyst tells aerospace suppliers - The Seattle Times

Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance names Orion’s Theisen Executive of the Year – Auburn Reporter

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Orion President and CEO John Theisen is Aerospace Executive of the Year. COURTESY PHOTO

The Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance (PNAA) has selected Orion President and CEO John Theisen as Aerospace Executive of the Year in recognition of his leadership over the past 16 years in growing Orion Industries.

Orion has advanced from a small sheet metal fabricator into a world-class organization with operations in the aerospace and tele-services industries, according to a company news release. Orion has achieved 20 percent annual average sales increases for the past 13 years, growing to become the 10th largest aerospace employer in the state of Washington, with more than 400 employees. Orion has locations in Auburn, Mukilteo and Fort Eustis, Va.

Orion Industries is a social enterprise with a mission of helping those with barriers to employment, such as learning disabilities, low income and mental health barriers. Orion uses operations in its aerospace manufacturing division and in its award-winning contact center services division as platforms to teach people job skills through a combination of classroom instruction and on-the-job training, including mentoring and internship programs.

Orions manufacturing capabilities have grown to include sheet metal fabrication, complex machined parts, hydraulic assembly, metal finishing and a wire shop, serving a broad customer base in commercial aerospace, general aviation and defense.

Orions Contact Center is certified HIPAA, PCI, and ISO 27001 compliant, and provides support for companies including MultiCare, Microsoft, the U.S. Army, and the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife.

In addition to the PNAA award, Orion has been recognized as a Boeing Global Supplier of the Year twice, as the Governors Aerospace Company of the Year, and as a Seattle Business Magazine Manufacturer of the Year. Orion has also recently received the Globe award from the World Trade Center Tacoma, and an Innovation award from the Puget Sound Business Journal.

To learn more, visit orionworks.org.

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Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance names Orion's Theisen Executive of the Year - Auburn Reporter