West Ridge robotics team maneuvers into national championship – Austin American-Statesman

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Four West Ridge Middle School seventh-graders are going to the U.S. Robotics Championship for VEX robotics in Council Bluff, Iowa, in April after their team Over the Hedge mentored by parent Larry Knipp and robotics coach Jason Spodick won a regional competition at Hill Country Middle School on Jan. 28.

Both Hill Country and West Ridge fielded other teams in the competition, but only the one composed of Mitchell Knipp, Kusal Pedarla, Major Ritchie and Raghav Sharma advanced.

The winning team learn robotics every day from Coach Spodick, and they also practice about six hours a week in Sharmas garage, which includes a rudimentary practice field. Together they designed, developed and programmed their VEX EDR robot.

We have about 120 kids in six robotics classes, Spodick said. All of these boys have been in them at West Ridge.

Students can take this elective once, but teams like Over the Hedge continue building and practicing on their own with the help of parent mentors.

Twenty-six teams competed, and Over the Hedge scored winning points when their robot lifted many yellow stars that look like jacks and threw them over a fence, clearing the field of play. Extra points were earned for the high hang, each time their robot lifted itself a foot off the ground by attaching to a single post during the competition.

Larry Knipp proudly said many teams were unable to do this trick.

Team members said they made many adjustments to their robot before it was ready to compete, because they realized it could be easily tipped over. After their changes, the robot was stabilized and up to the challenge.

Sharma said it took the team between three to four months to build the robot. He pointed out that the design evolves over time. Since their robot is made of metal, the team can strategically cut parts down to a size they need.

I like the adventure in building the robot, testing new ideas to see where we might want to go, Sharma said. The fun is in using it.

Though Sharma loves building robots, his goal for now is to be a great soccer player.

Knipp noted that a key was planning ahead.

The team started designing in September for the competition in January, Knipp said.

Knipp and teammate Kusal Pedarla, are thinking of engineering careers.

Ritchie says, for now, he wants to be a mechanic.

Knipp said of the win, his greatest pleasure was actually seeing something we made, accomplish something.

Im looking forward to seeing snow when we go to Iowa for the championship, Sharma said.

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West Ridge robotics team maneuvers into national championship - Austin American-Statesman

Makeblock’s Lego-like ‘Neuron’ teaches kids robotics and code – Engadget

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There are six kits available: Explorer, Explorer Pro, Light Wizard, Science Lab, Smart Life and All-in-One. Each is equipped with basic blocks like a light sensor and adjustment knob, with the different kits featuring specialized blocks geared toward a child's interests, like cold cathode, WiFi and camera blocks. Others include a voice sensor, Bluetooth, ultrasonic and display module.

Once your kit is set up, you can program it using Makeblock's mBlock, a graphical and flow-based programming system, with "no prior coding knowledge necessary," the company says. It also promises steady updates to allow for new projects and capabilities. mBlock is based on Scratch 2.0, a code teaching program, so it should be easy for kids who've done some Arduino programming to pick up.

Other features include remote control via WiFi (letting kids water plants or feed pets via a smartphone), high durability, third-party software (including Microsoft's Cognitive Services AI platform) and Lego compatibility, presumably letting you marry Neuron with Mindstorms, or at least use Lego blocks as structural elements in projects.

The Makebot Neuron project is launching on Kickstarter starting at $69, meaning you're taking a mild risk ordering it. However, the Shenzhen, China-based company says its products are in over 25,000 schools, and it has done a bunch of successful Kickstarter campaigns, including the mBot robot building kit (above), Codeybot code-teaching robot and Airblock drone-cum-hovercraft, which garnered $830,000 by itself.

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Makeblock's Lego-like 'Neuron' teaches kids robotics and code - Engadget

Microsoft lets you crash drones and robots in its new real world simulator – The Verge

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Microsoft is sharing some interesting tools with the open source community today. Developers and researchers will be able to take advantage of a new simulator that will let people test and train robots and drones in a virtual environment to prepare them for moving around the real world. A beta version of Microsofts research tool is being made available free of charge on GitHub today through an open source license. Its just the latest in a line of tools and software that Microsoft has made available to the open source community in recent years.

While some simulators have existed to help test drone paths and prepare devices for autonomous operations, Microsoft claims its latest tool is far more advanced, and more accurately reflects the navigation challenges of the real world. Engineers are already exploring the possibility of training real-life action in virtual worlds, retrofitting games like GTA for this task. You can even test AI creations in Minecraft. Microsoft is using the latest photorealistic technologies, so its simulator will let you guide a drone over a realistic setting with shadows and reflections.

You can do a lot of experiments, and even if those experiments fail they have very little cost in real life, explains Ashish Kapoor, the Microsoft researcher in charge of the project, in an interview with The Verge. In the real world it's extremely hard to explore all possible things, however in simulation we have the luxury of trying out many different things.

It's more than just crashing drones

Developers will be able to generate random environments and crash drones accordingly, but Microsoft isnt going to limit this to just autonomous vehicles. The initial release of the tool, that Kapoor admits is in its early days, will be geared towards any kind of autonomous vehicles, but Kapoor believes it will even be able to help with computer vision or even other data-driven machine learning systems in the future.

You can think of this as being a data generator, explains Kapoo. If you have any kind of sensor, like a barometer or even maybe say a laser or a radar, you can generate a lot of training data for any of these sensing modalities. You can generate data that you can in turn use to train.

This idea of gathering training data is essential for researchers to build the algorithms required for autonomous vehicles to respond the correct way. This simulator isnt designed to replace real-world testing, but it will be used alongside that testing to replicate scenarios hundreds or thousands of times.

Microsofts Aerial Informatics and Robotics Platform includes support for DJI and MavLink drones, so developers dont have to write separate code to control these drones. Microsoft is planning to add more tools to the platform in the future to help developers build perception abilities and progress the safety of AI-powered autonomous vehicles. You can find Microsofts simulator and tools over at the companys GitHub repository.

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Microsoft lets you crash drones and robots in its new real world simulator - The Verge

Richmond robotics team gears up for districts – New Baltimore Voice Newspapers

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Members of the Richmond High School robotics team are staying busy this winter as they prepare to face off with area schools at this years district competitions.

The team, which comprises nearly two dozen members, is set to take part in the 2017 FIRST Robotics district competitions this spring. Events are set to take place March 17 and 18 at Waterford High School and April 7 and 8 at Marysville High School.

If the team gains enough success and earns enough points at the district level, it will be able to attend the state and world competitions later this year.

FIRST Robotics, an international high school robotics competition, challenges high school teams coached by mentors to build robots that are able to complete tasks within a game. Because the challenge is different each year, teams must build new robots, encouraging them to be innovative and learn new skills.

The mission of FIRST Robotics is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication and leadership, the organizations website states.

Students have just six weeks to design, build and program the robots. Participating can be expensive, so teams must fundraise during the non-competition season and come up with a business plan, reaching out to the community to gain support.

On Jan. 7, the team at Richmond High School received the name of this years game: FIRST Steamworks. The steampunk-themed challenge is based on steam and focuses on powering an airship.

This is the first year humans will be on the field with their robots.

Robots built by the team or alliance as it is called in competition can shoot fuel, consisting of small yellow balls, into a boiler and put gears on pedestals to turn rotors, said Nicholas Matthes, a third-year member of the Richmond team. By shooting the fuel into the boiler, it earns points and kPa, or kilopascals, for the alliance. The kilopascals are steam to prepare the airship for takeoff.

Every rotor that is turning by putting gears together earns 50 points, he added. If robots are hanging by a rope off of the airship at the end of the round, the alliance gains another 50-point bonus.

Matthes, a junior at Richmond High who currently serves on the team as a co-mechanical lead, said the squad has continued to grow and improve since he joined in 2015.

To see the team grow as much as it has is tremendous, he said. Were now at 22 members and striving further and further.

For more information about FIRST Robotics, visit firstinspires.org.

Emily Pauling is an editorial assistant at The Voice. She can be contacted at 586-273-6200 or epauling@digitalfirstmedia.com.

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Richmond robotics team gears up for districts - New Baltimore Voice Newspapers

Intuition Robotics raised $6 million for its ElliQ elder care assistant robot – TechCrunch

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Intuition Robotics, maker of elder care assistant ElliQ, announced today that it has raised $6 million in funding from iRobot and equity crowdfunding platform OurCrowd. With the funding, the Jerusalem-based company plans to open an office in the Bay Area and begin testingElliQ with senior citizens in San Francisco.

ElliQ is what the Intuition Robotics team likes to call an autonomous active aging companion. The device, which is made up of an interactive robot attached to a tablet, was built to help older adults age in place, while keeping them engaged, active, and connected to the outside world.

The idea is to assistolder adults in two main ways: First, ElliQhelps families keep in contact with their older relatives through video chats on the tablet interface. When theyre not around or available, the ElliQ robot also acts as a companion to suggest activities and remind elderly users to take their medicine.

We all have parents that are aging, Intuition Robotics CEO Dor Skuler told me. 30 percent of the population is made up of older adults. Many of them deal with loneliness and social isolation, which has a direct effect on health degradation.

As opposed to assistants like Siri or Alexa, which respond to voice commands, ElliQ uses cognitive computing to proactively monitor a users wellness and keep them active. And instead of just using a detached voice, Intuition Robotics hired Yves Behar for industrial design to make sure the ElliQ robot is highly interactive.

Shes extremely emotive, Skuler told TechCrunch. She has different gestures that can show happiness or signal confusion if she doesnt understand you.

Bloomberg Beta partner Shivon Zilis, who was an early investor in Intuition Robotics, said ElliQ isa very respectful and approachable piece of technology for the person whos still trying to live a fulfilling life.

While her firm usually invests in companies focused on the future of work, Zilis sees anopportunity formore empathetic AIto emerge fromelder assistants first and then find their way back to the enterprise.

Ihonestly think we will see a revolution in computer-voice interfaces, she said.My best guess is well see the bleeding edge of [machine intelligence]helping people who are aging in place first.

To grow its team and move ElliQ further along in its user testing, Intuition Robotics has raised a total of $6 million, with investors that include Roomba maker iRobot, Terra Venture Partners, Bloomberg Beta and Maniv Mobility. The company was also able to raise money through crowdfunding platform OurCrowd.

We really liked the problem they were trying to solve, Hanns Anders, investment manager for iRobot Ventures, told me.What intuition has done is taken a practical approach to solving the problem of aging in place.

iRobot makes investments in early-stage companies using machine intelligence and robotics in areas that it wants to learn more about. Companies also get the benefit of iRobots scale in helping to navigate manufacturing, supply chain, and distribution.

They have vast experience and insights in the home robotics market that is unmatched due to their scale and experience in the field, Skuler said about iRobot. In addition, he added, they are offering to help us navigate manufacturing and some design items.

Thatll be a huge help to Intuition Robotics as ElliQ moves beyond the prototype and trial stage and into production. In the meantime, theres still a lot of work to do.

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Intuition Robotics raised $6 million for its ElliQ elder care assistant robot - TechCrunch

Girl Scouts of Southern Illinois robotics team makes state tournament – Alton Telegraph

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The OOPS! Robotics team with the Connect Award. Pictured are, back row from left, Mackenzie Butchee, Kailee Schlosser, Megan Zaiz, Kimberly Melton, Katherine Buchanan, Mary Buchanan; and, front row from left, Amber Smith, Leah Walton, Allison Zaiz, Chloe Schlosser, Allie Huller.

GLEN CARBON Girl Scouts of Southern Illinois robotics team, OOPS! Robotics, won the Connect Award and was a finalist for the Motivate Award at the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) regional qualifying tournament at Decatur Hope Academy on Feb. 11. The team also advanced to the FTC Illinois State tournament, which will be held Feb. 24-25 at Elgin Community College in Elgin.

FTC is designed for students in grades 7-12 to compete head to head, in an alliance format against other teams. Teams design, build and program their robot using a variety of programming languages and sound engineering principles, then plan strategies for competition. Awards are given for competitive performance as well as for community outreach, design, and other real-world accomplishments.

The Connect Award is presented to the team that most connects with their local STEM community. To win, a team must submit an engineering notebook with a strategic plan which highlights the teams goals and the steps they will take to reach those goals. The team must also provide clear examples of the connections they have been developing within engineering, science and technology communities.

The Motivate Award is given to the team that best exemplifies the essence of FTC competition through team building, team spirit and enthusiasm. The team must demonstrate respect and gracious professionalism throughout the tournament and be able to articulate the individual contributions of each team member.

In addition to their achievements at the Decatur regional, OOPS! also qualified for the Missouri State Tournament earlier this season. That tournament will be held March 4 at Missouri S&T University in Rolla.

GSSIs Oops! Robotics team is coached by Kristi Smith and Mary Buchanan of OFallon and consists of middle and high school girls from Belleville, Granite City and OFallon. Team members are Katherine Buchanan, Mary Buchanan, Mackenzie Butchee, Allie Huller, Kimberly Melton, Chloe Schlosser, Kailee Schlosser, Amber Smith, Leah Walton, Allison Zaiz and Megan Zaiz.

OOPS! Robotics receives funding from Afton Chemical, Christone Enterrpises, Best Buy, Boeing, The Monsanto Fund and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC).

Science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programming is an important component of the Girl Scout Leadership Experience. GSSI provides girls of all age levels with the opportunity to participate in engaging STEM activities that include writing code, wiring circuits, conducting physics and chemistry experiments and more. The organization is always looking for community and business partners to help girls gain exposure to and experience with these growing fields. For more information about GSSIs STEM Program, please contact Program Manager Emily Stanley at 800-345-6858, ext. 1111 or [emailprotected]

Girl Scouting has inspired more than 50 million girls and women since its founding in 1912. The mission of Girl Scouting states: Girl Scouting builds girls of courage, confidence, and character who make the world a better place. Todays Girl Scouts not only enjoy camping and crafts, but they also explore math and science and learn about diversity, good citizenship, leadership and teamwork. Girl Scouting is the place where girls experience the fun, friendship and power of girls together.

Girl Scouts of Southern Illinois is a not-for-profit organization supported by various United Ways throughout the region. Girl Scouts is a Proud Partner of United Way. For more information, please contact Erin Johnson at 800-345-6858 or e-mail [emailprotected]

The OOPS! Robotics team with the Connect Award. Pictured are, back row from left, Mackenzie Butchee, Kailee Schlosser, Megan Zaiz, Kimberly Melton, Katherine Buchanan, Mary Buchanan; and, front row from left, Amber Smith, Leah Walton, Allison Zaiz, Chloe Schlosser, Allie Huller.

http://thetelegraph.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/web1_2017-OOPS-at-Decatur-Regional.jpgThe OOPS! Robotics team with the Connect Award. Pictured are, back row from left, Mackenzie Butchee, Kailee Schlosser, Megan Zaiz, Kimberly Melton, Katherine Buchanan, Mary Buchanan; and, front row from left, Amber Smith, Leah Walton, Allison Zaiz, Chloe Schlosser, Allie Huller.

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Girl Scouts of Southern Illinois robotics team makes state tournament - Alton Telegraph

Are there enough robots? – Robotics Tomorrow (press release)

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Future trends indicate that there will be a concentration on the collaboration of human and machine, simplified applications, and light-weight robots. We will also see an increased focus on modular robots and robotic systems, which will be marketed at exceptionally alluring prices.

Len Calderone for | RoboticsTomorrow

It is anticipated that our economy will need to generate about a million jobs a year just to keep up with future growth. Because of the digital revolution, many new jobs have been created, but they are not labor intensive. This is where robots come into play. As the economy expands, we will need both humans for the mental tasks, and robots to handle the tedious and dangerous work.

Automation is extending beyond factories and distribution centers. White collar jobs are starting to be replaced by artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence has already replaced various human jobs in music, journalism, teaching, research and other typical human careers. Attorneys are replacing paralegals with search engines, which are more efficient in finding topics than any human. Medical devices are assisting doctors in analyzing a patients symptoms with suggested solutions.

There will be a time when robots will make our goods and handle the services to support those goods. China is already aware that they do not have enough robots in the workforce. China is now the fastest growing and largest robotics market in the world, due mainly to an aging population, something that the U.S. is also facing. By next year, the robot population in China will explode. A third of all robots manufactured will be sold in China.

We are going through an industrial revolution, and it is accelerating. In the next few years, around 1.4 million industrial robots will be entering service in factories around the world. In the high-revenue automotive sector, global investments in industrial robots increased by a record-breaking 43 percent in just one year. The international market value for robotic systems is now about $32 billion. In the race for automation in manufacturing, the European Union is currently one of the global frontrunners with 65 percent of the EU countries having an above-average number of industrial robots per 10,000 employees. Still, the strongest growth for robots will be found in China with 40 percent of the worldwide market volume of industrial robots will be sold there alone in 2019. (World Robot Statistics, issued by the International Federation of Robotics).

There doesnt seem to be a shortage of industrial robots, as the number of robots deployed worldwide will increase to around 2.6 million units by 2019. 70 percent of the industrial robots are presently working in the automotive, electronics, metal and machinery industries.

At present, the U.S. is the fourth largest single market for industrial robots in the world. Within the U.S., Canada and Mexico, newly installed industrial robots rose by 17 percent. The U.S. accounts for three-quarters of all units sold at a 5 percent growth. The demand in Canada rose by 49 percent, while Mexico grew by 119 percent. If the economic situation can last, we might see an average annual growth of 5 to 10 percent in sales of robots from 2017 to 2019. Right now, NAFTA is on an unsteady course, so these figures might change.

HIT Robot Group, a Chinese company associated with the Harbin Institute of Technology, created an automated production line for lithium ion batteries that appears to be one giant robot. Robotic vehicles carry components between several manufacturing machines. The only place where you can find humans is inside a control room in the center. HIT estimates the new factory could reduce human labor by as much as 85 percent while manufacturing 150,000 batteries a day.

Patents for robotics and autonomous systems have jumped double-digit year-on-year for the last three years. According to a report published by the UK Intellectual Property Office, the number of global published patents for these technologies increased 9 percent of all of the global patents with Japan, Germany and the U.S. accounting for most of the patents.

In North America, robot orders were up 10 percent in 2016 compared to 2015, according to the Robotics Industry Association. 34,606 robots were ordered in North America with a total market value of $1.9 billion. For the fourth quarter, robot orders hit 10,621 valued at $561 million, up 21 percent from a year ago, which is a good indicator for 2017. The global industrial robotics market is expected to reach $79.58 billion by 2022, growing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 11.92% between 2016 and 2022.

The food and consumer goods industries ordered 32% more robots in 2016 than the previous year with food safety inspections, packaging, picking, handling and palletizing being among the highest applications for these robots.

Capping its most successful year in history, the robotics, vision and motion control industries are preparing to come together for Automate 2017, North Americas largest automation exhibition and conference April 3-6 in Chicago. Over 300 exhibitors and a record 20,000 attendees are expected to gather.

How will the robot manufacturers keep up? Venture capital investments in robotics technology start-ups are on the rise. Capital investments by U.S. venture capital firms escalated to about $172 million. This increase in investments is an especially meaningful signal that the robotics industry could see an accelerated growth as these VC-backed companies grow. It provides a window into the future as to what the investment community believes will be promising and profitable.

The robotic industry is booming in China, there are thousands of local robotic companies jumping into the market, manufacturing both industrial robots and service robots. China is not only a large supplier of low-wage workers, but also a source of high technology with robotics manufacturing being one of the hottest trends. The Robot Report and the research team at Robo-STOX have been able to identify 194 companies that make or are directly involved in making robots in China.

Future trends indicate that there will be a concentration on the collaboration of human and machine, simplified applications, and light-weight robots. We will also see an increased focus on modular robots and robotic systems, which will be marketed at exceptionally alluring prices.

The request for industrial robots will also be driven by an assortment of factors, which include the processing of new materials, energy efficiency, and improved automation concepts.

The one thing that is certain is that the manufacturers of robots are building an army of robots ready to step in and handle the tasks of the future.

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BitFlow has offered a Camera Link frame grabbers for almost 15 years. This latest offering, our 6th generation combines the power of CoaXPress with the requirements of Camera Link 2.0. Enabling a single or two camera system to operate at up to 850 MB/S per camera, the Axion-CL family is the best choice for CL frame grabber. Like the Cyton-CXP frame grabber, the Axion-CL leverages features such as the new StreamSync system, a highly optimized DMA engine, and expanded I/O capabilities that provide unprecedented flexibility in routing. There are two options available; Axion 1xE & Axion 2xE. The Axion 1xE is compatible with one base, medium, full or 80-bit camera offering PoCL, Power over Camera Link, on both connectors. The Axion 2xE is compatible with two base, medium, full or 80-bit cameras offering PoCL on both connectors for both cameras. The Axion-CL is a culmination of the continuous improvements and updates BitFlow has made to Camera Link frame grabbers.

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Are there enough robots? - Robotics Tomorrow (press release)

Issa Rae New Series Giants Is A Must Watch – CampusLATELY (blog)

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The first time I heard about Issa Rae was when I found her largely successful YouTube series The Misadventures of [an] Awkward Black Girl and it took me all of five seconds to become hooked on her and her craft. My friends and I would spend hours watching and then re-watching every single episode Issa would upload to her YouTube channel. We were excited to finally have a show about a black girl who was not a slave, the token black best friend, or that followed the stereotypical angry black girl agenda. Here we were, young girls of color, simply excited over having true representation.

Issa Rae has come a long way since the uploading of the first episode of The Misadventures of [an] Awkward Black Girl. For starters, her YouTube channel currently has over twenty-six million views and more than two-hundred thousand subscribers. Issa Raes success doesnt stop at YouTube however; and she now has a hit show called Insecure on HBO, along with countless writing and producing credits, and a 2016 Golden Globe nomination. Even throughout all of her prosperity, Issa has never turned her back on her YouTube family and has just recently premiered a new digital series on her channel called Giants (executive produced by Jussie Smollett, written and directed by James Bland).

From watching the trailer, I quickly gathered that Giants was going to focus around three black millennials who are simply trying to make their dreams a reality, despite everything life throws at them. Even though the trailer is appealing, and I have a strong love for Issa, I was still a little bit skeptical to give Giants a try. Mainly because the trailer made me a little worried that the show was going to be overly heavy, filled with too many triggering issues that I already have to deal with in the real world.

However, after watching all the currently aired episodes I can honestly say Im happy I gave the show a chance. The first episode waste no time in pulling you in and by the end of the most recent episode you will find yourself naturally craving more.

Malachi acts as the anchor of the show, holding those around him down, while he is desperately looking for a way to keep himself afloat. Even though the show is only a few episodes in you can tell that there is something bothering him deeply, and as more episodes come out I look forward to finding out what that might be. The other two characters that the show follows are Ade and Journee. Ade I think is a character many people will be able to relate too. I feel as if though hes currently standing at a few crossroads in his life that we will all eventually have to face on our own. Ade is also someone who you will find yourself rooting for the very moment he becomes a part of the story-line. Then there is Journee, and when I think about her the saying the funniest people are often the saddest comes to mind. She is definitely is one of the comedic reliefs of the show, however, she is also dealing with a very deep depression. Journee is the character who I am most looking forward to following and see how she develops as someone dealing with mental health issues.

No matter your preferred genre, Giants is a show that will give you everything and more. There is excitement, action, mystery, comedy, and romance. Yes, Giants does deal with many hard-hitting issues that black people are faced with. However, while watching this show, those issues are portrayed in a way that doesnt seem triggering but instead intriguing. You will find yourself getting lost in these characters, their world, and the hurdles they are trying to jump over.

New episodes of Giants are uploaded to Issa Raes YouTube channel every Wednesday and trust me; this is a show you dont want to miss. The first episode is linked below, be sure to watch it, and I promise by the end of it you too will be a believer in Giants.

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Issa Rae New Series Giants Is A Must Watch - CampusLATELY (blog)

Happy Healthy YOU – Tillsonburg News

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(A wellness column by Kelly Spencer: writer, life coach, yoga & meditation teacher, holistic healer and a mindful life enthusiast!)

Part 3

There seems to be a large body of evidence showing the lack of efficacy with conventional treatment options for cancer.

The data shows billions and billions of dollars are profited each year by the pharmaceutical companies. There also seems to conspiracy theories of alternative medicine being squashed, minimized and suppressed.

In the early 1970s, the War on Cancer was in full swing, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York was one of the worlds leading cancer research centers. Dr. Kanematsu Sugiura, a leading researcher, spent most of his career at Sloan Kettering, authoring more than 250 papers and receiving numerous awards, including the highest honors from the Japan Medical Association for outstanding contributions in cancer research.

While studying a drug called Laetrile, which was previously written off as quack medicine, Dr. Sugiura discovered Laetrile to have very positive effects in preventing the spread of malignant lung tumors in laboratory mice.

In control groups, which received only plain saline, the lung tumors spread in 80-90 per cent of the animals. But in those given Laetrile, the tumors spread in only 10-20 per cent.

In 1974, the findings were so positive that Sloan Kettering had signed off on clinical trials and praising its use. Then suddenly everything changed. The center began shifting their Laetrile experiments away from Dr. Sugiura to other scientists. But every time new experiments even hinted at a positive outcome, the research was scrapped.

But it appears that Sloan Ketterings Board of Directors may have knowingly hid positive findings about Laetrile, also known as Amygdalin or Vitamin B-17 (not a real vitamin).

In 1974, Ralph Moss, a science writer, had just acquired his first big time writing job at Sloan Ketterings public relations department. He soon found himself in the middle of the Amygdalin controversy and was not willing to hide the truth that his employer was veiling. He held a large and public press conference, then the next day he was fired and escorted to the door by armed personnel.

In 2013, Dr. Evengelos Michelakis, associate chair and medical researcher at the University of Albertas faculty of medicine and his team of researchers claimed to have discovered a cure for cancer, long after publishing his first findings on DCA in 2007 (results of a study about DCA (Dichloroacetate), stating that the agent showed promise in shrinking tumours in laboratory rats and human cell lines - human cells grown in a petri dish.) The University of Albertas research team did not receive any support from the medical industry.

It turns out that the rights to the DCA compound are not owned by any pharmaceutical company. This is a problem, as most of UAs research on this issue has been publicly funded. They are currently working to secure more funding to continue their research and ongoing DCA clinical trials. Without industry support, its almost impossible to do anything with this research and infiltrate the health industry. Drug companies are not interested in drugs that wont make them a profit and therefore this is not a prescribed option.

Even "The Canadian Cancer Society has concerns about Canadians with cancer seeking DCA because we dont know enough about its risks and benefits. (www.cancer.ca - News National 2013)

But they are okay with the risks and statistics of chemotherapy? Doesnt really make sense to me.

There are ineffective conventional options and discouraged and seemingly inaccessible alternative options; so what is one to do?

Well there are ways to get holistic options if you look long enough and hard enough. The internet is a wonderful thing.

One example, Ontario Nurse Rene Caisse spent most of her career defending herself against the medical and government establishment. Essiac tea, given its name by Rene Caisse ("Caisse" spelt backwards), consists of four main herbs that grow in the wilderness of Ontario. The original formula is believed to have its roots from the native Canadian Ojibway Indians.

The four main herbs that make up Essiac are Burdock Root, Slippery Elm Inner Bark, Sheep Sorrel and Indian Rhubarb Root. Each herb, having powerful plant medicine such as Burdock Root (Arctium lappa), used traditionally to help reduce mucus, maintains a healthy gastrointestinal tract and stimulates a healthy immune response as a diuretic for water retention and to sweat out toxins through the skin. It has vitamin A and selenium to help reduce free radicals and its chromium content helps maintain normal blood sugar levels.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Nurse Caisse had the support of several doctors in both Canada and the USA and treated thousands with success, according to her notes. She was shut down by government several times over and believes the only reason she wasnt thrown in jail, was her popularity and notoriety.

But lets get to the preventative part. With statistics of one in three getting some form of cancer, prevention is the absolutely key, in my opinion.

Since changing my life drastically over the last 15 years, I can say with complete transparency that I have no illness or disease, I take zero medication and I have not had to go to a doctor or hospital as long as I can remember.

Here are some of my tips for holistic disease prevention:

Reduce / eliminate chemicals and toxins from your diet, personal products and home.

Reduce / eliminate processed sugar / artificial sweeteners. Sweeten foods with natural sources ie. local honey, maple syrup, stevia, cane sugar, coconut sugar.

Reduce / eliminate stress, worry and F.O.G. (fear, obligation, guilt).

Reduce / eliminate processed and prepared foods. Eat closest to source, natural foods and raw when possible.

Eat only foods that will spoil and eat them before they do.

Reduce dairy and meat quantity. Eliminate processed meats.

Eat chemical free meat & free-range/wild from sustainable, compassionate sources.

Eat organic and NON-GMO (non-genetically modified) whenever possible.

Meditate, practice mindfulness and mindful breathing.

Move your body, get in nature, take a class.

Deal with old hurts, forgive and heal.

Pay attention to your body, there is great wisdom within it.

Make your food or get from source your trust.

Grow your own organic vegetable and herb garden.

Eat more plant based: organic herbs, grains, lentils, beans, nuts, seeds, vegetables, fruit. Eat at least 8 - cups of produce a day and make sure one serving a day is cruciferous vegetables (cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, brussel sprouts, kale, radish).

The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison.- Ann Wigmore

Each and every one of us has pre-cancerous cells in our body. These cells are eliminated by the natural processes of our immune system and body. How we live our life and the lifestyle choices we make can play a leading role in what those pre-cancerous cells do, what diseases advance or diminish and how healthy and happy our lives are lived.

There will be a Cancer and Alternative Options seminar and discussion open to the public Saturday, February 18th 2-4 p.m. If you would like to hear a different perspective for you or someone you love and hear about alternative options for prevention and treatment, please feel free to attend. Guest speaker is John MacDonald, a man that said no thank you to conventional treatment and 18 months later, his cancer is gone. To book a seat at any of these seminars, please call 519-688-1188 or email info@indigolounge.ca.

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Happy Healthy YOU - Tillsonburg News

The Next Pseudoscience Health Craze Is All About Genetics – Gizmodo

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Illustration: Angelica Alzona/Gizmodo

Recently, Vitaliy Husar received results from a DNA screening that changed his life. It wasnt a gene that suggested a high likelihood of cancer or a shocking revelation about his family tree. It was his diet. It was all wrong.

That was, at least, according to DNA Lifestyle Coach, a startup that offers consumers advice on diet, exercise and other aspects of daily life based on genetics alone. Husar, a 38-year-old telecom salesman, had spent most of his life eating the sort of Eastern European fare typical of his native Ukraine: lots of meat, potatoes, salt and saturated fats. DNA Lifestyle Coach suggested his body might appreciate a more Mediterranean diet instead.

They show you which genes are linked to what traits, and link you to the research, Husar told Gizmodo. There is science behind it.

DNA Lifestyle Coach isnt the only company hoping to turn our genetics into a lifestyle product. In the past decade, DNA sequencing has gotten really, really cheap, positioning genetics to become the next big consumer health craze. The sales pitcha roadmap for life encoded in your very own DNAcan be hard to resist. But scientists are skeptical that weve decrypted enough about the human genome to turn strings of As, Ts, Cs and Gs into useful personalized lifestyle advice.

Indeed, that lifestyle advice has a tendency to sound more like it was divined from a health-conscious oracle than from actual science. Take, for instance, DNA Lifestyle Coachs recommendation that one client drink 750ml of cloudy apple juice everyday to lose body fat.

Millions of people have had genotyping done, but few people have had their whole genome sequenced, Eric Topol, a geneticist at Scripps in San Diego, told Gizmodo. Most consumer DNA testing companies, like 23andMe, offer genotyping, which examines small snippets of DNA for well-studied variations. Genome sequencing, on the other hand, decodes a persons entire genetic makeup. In many cases, there just isnt enough science concerning the genes in question to accurately predict, say, whether you should steer clear of carbs.

We need billions of people to get their genome sequenced to be able to give people information like what kind of diet to follow, Topol said.

Husar stumbled upon the Kickstarter page for DNA Lifestyle Coach after getting his DNA tested via 23andMe a few years earlier. He wondered whether there was more information to be gleaned from his results. So six months ago, he downloaded his 23andMe data and uploaded it to DNA Lifestyle Coach. Each test costs between $60 and $70.

Im always looking for some ways to learn about my health, myself, my body, said Husar, who contributed to the companys Kickstarter back in 2015.

The advice he got back was incredibly specific. According to DNA Lifestyle Coach, he needed to start taking supplements of vitamins B12, D and E. He needed more iodine in his diet, and a lot less sodium. DNA Lifestyle Coach recommended that 55 percent of his fat consumption come from monounsaturated fats like olive oil, rather than the sunflower oil popular in Ukraine. Oh, and he needed to change his workout to focus more on endurance and less on speed and power.

He switched up his workout and his diet, and added vitamin supplements to his daily routine. The results, he found, were hard to dispute: He lost six pounds, and for the first time in memory didnt spend Kievs long harsh winter stuck with a bad case of the winter blues.

For now, DNA Lifestyle Coachs interpretation engine only offers consumers advice on diet and exercise, but in the coming months it plans to roll out genetics-based guidance on skin care, dental care and stress management. The company wants to tell you what SPF of sunscreen to use to decrease your risk of cancer, and which beauty products to use to delay the visible effects of aging. Its founders told Gizmodo that eventually they envision being able to offer their customers recipes for specific meals to whip up for dinner, optimized for their genetic makeup.

DNA Lifestyle Coach joins a growing list of technology companies attempting to spin DNA testing results into a must-have product. The DNA sequencing company Helix plans to launch an app store for genetics later this year. One of its partners is Vinome, a wine club that for $149 a quarter sends you wine selected based on your DNA. Orig3n offers genetics-based assessments of fitness, mental health, skin, nutrition and evenobviously unscientificwhich superpower you are most likely to have. The CEO of the health-focused Veritas Genetics told Gizmodo that the company hopes to create a Netflix for genetics, where consumers pay for a subscription to receive updated information on their genome for the rest of their life.

Its not going to happen overnight, but we believe that DNA will become an integrated part of everyday life, Helix co-founder Justin Kao told Gizmodo. The same way people use data to determine which movie to see or which restaurant to eat at, people will one day use their own DNA data to help guide everyday experiences.

Few would debate that our capability to decipher information from our genetic code is getting a lot more sophisticated. Just a decade ago, a bargain-basement deal on whole genome sequencing would run you $300,000. Recently, DNA sequencing company Illumina announced plans do it for just $100 within the next decade. Every day, researchers discover new links between our health, our environment, and our genetics.

But much of this research is still preliminary, and many of the studies are small. DNA Lifestyle Coachs advice to drink 750ml of cloudy apple juice for fat loss, for instance, stemmed from a study of just 68 non-smoking men. Those results, while promising, still require much larger studies to confirm. Suggesting that the same regiment might work for consumers is a little like reading the leaves at the bottom of a tea cupextracting meaning from patterns that arent necessarily there.

Not to mention that the information our genes offer up is probabilistic, not deterministic. You may have run into this if youve done an ancestry DNA test and received results indicating that your parents are only very likely your parents. More often than not, many genes contribute to a specific traitlike tasteand how those genes all interact is complex and poorly understood web. To complicate matters further, the expression of genes is often impacted by our behavior and the environment. If you have a gene that raises the risk for skin cancer, but live in overcast Seattle and dont ever go outside, your chances of getting cancer are probably slimmer than someone who lives in Los Angeles and spends every day in the sun without slapping on some sunblock.

DNA Lifestyle Coach, though, wants to offer its customers simple, actionable advice, and so omits all this confusing gray area from its results. Instead, the recommendations are clear and specific, from how much Vitamin A to take to how many cups of coffee a day are most beneficial. Its a bit reminiscent of a long-term weather forecast spitting out predictions for sunshine or rain 30 days in advanceyes, such predictions can be made, but most meteorologists will tell you theyre borderline useless.

We use a series of algorithms which rank studies by reliability of results, the company website explains. Studies are then analyzed for their relation to real-world dietary and nutritional needs, and the user is given straightforward recommendations.

Pressed on the questionable nature of that apple juice study, DNA Lifestyle Coachs founders responded that the data is not as strong as the the other studies it pulls from. But it is a harmless recommendation, the company said.

When asked whether it was possible that DNA Lifestyle Coachs claims might have any validity, Topol laughed.

One day, he said, its likely well have some genomic insight into what types of diets are better suited for certain people. But, he added, its unlikely that we will ever accurately predict the sort of granular details DNA Lifestyle Coach hopes to, like exactly what SPF of sunscreen you should be using on your skin.

There are limits, he said.

DNA Lifestyle Coach was founded by a chemist and a business consultant who met over an interest in the biohacker scene, a subculture focused on ideas like DIY life extension. The company that runs DNA Lifestyle Coach, Titanovo, actually started as a blog. The name is meant to invoke superhumans. Its like the rise of the titans, said Corey McCarren, the business side of the duo, when Gizmodo met with him at a health moonshots conference last month.

Their first foray into genetics was a home telomere length test, which launched in 2015 with help of $10,000 raised on Indiegogo. Telomeres are little bits of DNA at the end of chromosomes. Each time a cell divides, its telomeres get shorter, and so they provide some insight into our biological age. Titanovo wanted to develop an easy test to tell consumers how long or short their telomeres were. The company initially pitched the test as a way to measure both longevity and health, but eventually was forced to clarify for customers that it is not at present possible to discern biological age from telomeres alone, after receiving emails from customers panicked about their own short telomeres.

Instead, they suggest, the $150 telomere testing kit is a way to discern information about health. One finding from their data: vegetarians and vegans who use the service have, on average, longer telomeres. The company recommends going veg if you find your telomeres are in need of a boost. Even this, however, seems like a stretch: data on telomere length, like genomics, is not quite ready for public consumption. For every paper that finds a potential cause of telomere shorting, theres one that finds the opposite effect.

Undaunted by the rocky rollout of its telomere testing kit, Titanovo is now pressing forward into genomics. The Kickstarter campaign for DNA Lifestyle Coach wound up raising more than $30,000. The company says it now has more than 1,000 customers who either pay $215 for the full DNA testing kit along with one panel, or the $60 to $70 to run panels with data from services like 23andMe.

While it might seem harmless to take part in a little science-based superstition and find out whether youre more Batman or Superman, such indulgence can have serious side effects. For years, weve been sold on DNA as the answer to almost everything. Decode the human genome, and decode the mysteries of the human spirit. This gives companies like DNA Lifestyle Coach dangerous authority. If your DNA testing results say youre prone to obesity, why spend time exercising and eating right when your health seems beyond your control?

Joshua Knowles, a Stanford Cardiologist who studies applied genetics, told Gizmodo that he recently had a patient who was unwilling to try a certain class of drug based on their genotyping, even though they had a high risk of heart disease that might be drastically reduced by use of those medications.

Were doing a poor job of educating patients on risk-benefit analysis, Knowles said. In some cases, when it comes to genetics, were placing a lot of weight on some things that have very small overall effects.

In 2008, an European Journal of Human Geneticsarticleargued for better regulatory control of direct-to-consumer genetic testing, asking whether in the end, tests ran the risk of being little better than horoscopes that told people information they were already predisposed to believe.

It was these kinds of concerns that moved the Food and Drug Administration to crack down on 23andMe in 2013, ordering the company to cease providing analyses of peoples risk factors for disease until the tests accuracy could be validated. The company now provides assessments on a small fraction of 254 diseases and conditions it once scanned forit still processes the same information, but is restricted in what it can tell consumers. Where it once reported health risks alongside specific tips and guidance on how to reduce them, it now reports on your carrier status, framing the results in terms of whether you might pass down a specific genetic variant to your offspring rather that whether you might develop the condition yourself.

Companies like DNA Lifestyle Coach have moved in offer the sort of tips 23andMe no longer can.

We have much too many companies doing nutrigenomics and other unproven things like that, said Topol. That can give consumer genomics a really bad name. Thats unfortunate.

Kao, of Helix, said that educating consumers on what these results really mean alongside actionable information will be the industrys greatest challengeand what distinguishes it from just another pseudoscientific health fad.

Its typically been very hard to interpret DNA information, Kao said. DNA is most valuable with context, rather than as the only piece of the puzzle.

The industry, he argues, is young, but will get more accurate the more consumers use DNA-testing products. Just as Netflix improves the more you rate shows you watch, so would many DNA-based products, he said.

Husar told Gizmodo that he got blood work done to confirm what he could about his DNA Lifestyle Coach results. The tests indeed confirmed that he was low on vitamins B12, D and E, as DNA Lifestyle Coach had suggested. Of course, Hussar still cant be sure his genes are responsible. It could be that hes simply not eating enough meat or cheese. Still, the blood work was enough to convince Husar that DNA Lifestyle Coachs analysis was worth taking seriously. And, for the most part, the results felt rightit made sense that a boost of vitamin B12 might counteract the emotional toll of winter, and that cutting out potatoes and saturated fats might be benefical.

The testss fitness results though, he did find a tad shocking.

I was really surprised to learn that Im not fast or powerful, but I have a high endurance, he said. I can do Iron Man. This is what my genetics say. Im trying to change my workout to see if thats true.

Husar may never be sure whether the advice divined from his genetics was really helpful. He can only hope it doesnt hurt.

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The Next Pseudoscience Health Craze Is All About Genetics - Gizmodo

SRS’s Melter 2 to be replaced | News | northaugustastar.com – The Star

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Savannah River Sites Melter 2, a key component in the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF), will be replaced after nearly 14 years of record-breaking operational performance. A heater inside Melter 2 failed on Feb. 1 and is deemed not repairable.

Melter 2 is only the second melter in the 20-year history of DWPF. It has been operating nearly 14 years, approximately 12 years beyond its design life expectancy. Melter 1 ran for about six years of radioactive service and another two years of non-radioactive simulant processing.

The operational concept for DWPF is to use a melter until it is no longer operational and then replace it with a new melter. There are no risks to the public, workers or the environment during melter replacement. The replacement melter, the third melter to be installed in DWPF, known as Melter 3, has been ready for years. Work to install it will begin shortly, and will require approximately six months.

Melter 2 has poured 2,819 canisters during its life, more than double what Melter 1 produced in its life span, which was 1,339 canisters. Melter 1 was placed into radioactive operation in March 1996, following approximately two years of non-radioactive simulant operations. Melter 2 began operating in 2003. Together, Melters 1 and 2 have poured 4,158 canisters through January 31, 2017. The predicted number of canisters needed to dispose of SRS high-level tank waste is 8,170, according to the SRS Liquid Waste System Plan Rev. 20.

Since beginning operations, DWPF has poured more than 16 million pounds of glass and has immobilized about 61 million curies of radioactivity.

Savannah River Remediation (SRR) operates DWPF, as well as other liquid waste facilities at SRS, as part of its contract with DOE. Operations are expected to continue at DWPF for approximately 20 more years.

SRR keeps one melter in storage in case the working melter needs to be replaced.

Melter life extension is the product of work by engineers and scientists. The increased Melter 2 operational life resulted from the following:

Incorporating an improved insert in the melter, used from the beginning of this melters operation, ensures glass waste doesnt cause the melters pour spout to erode;

Heating the internal area where the glass flows into a canister to ensure it does not stick;

Adjusting electrical current to the electrode heaters inside the melter to increase its heating capacity; and

Installing agitation bubblers that are used to improve the heat distribution in the waste glass pool in the melter to achieve a better pour rate.

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SRS's Melter 2 to be replaced | News | northaugustastar.com - The Star

How wellness trends may shape health industry in 2017 – Fox News

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Well-being is becoming nothing short of a global movement, as consumers seek to ensure healthy lives for as long as possibleparticularly as average life-spans continue to rise. The Global Wellness Institute estimates that the worldwide wellness industry grew by 10.6 percent to $3.72 trillion between 2013 and 2015, while the global economy shrank -3.6 percentmaking it one of the worlds fastest-growing markets.

In 2017 the Well Economy shows no signs of slowing. Theres an ever-growing connectivity in the minds of consumers between the various aspects of their lives. Sleep is linked to productivity, beauty, and mental health. Food is linked to aging, healthy guts, cognitive abilities and stress. Fitness is about mental agility, neuroplasticity and experiencenot just firm buttocks. Equinox gyms even offer a mind-body HeadStrong exercise class.

Meanwhile, brands in every category from real estate to hotels are framing themselves in wellness terms.

So whats new?

Hyper-personalized healthcare

The rise of at-home blood testing is bringing entirely new dimensions to the tracking of personal health. Once the preserve of elite athletes, custom blood panels have received a wellness-themed makeover rooted in taking control of ones own health and longevity. This follows the launch of gene-testing services such as 23andMe, offering DNA-based health assessments and machine-learning personal health and insurance programs from Silicon Valley.

InsideTracker, one of todays most popular options, analyzes up to 30 different biomarkers, including vitamin levels and cholesterol, from a vial of blood. The InsideTracker platform offers users specific sleep and diet advice to address any deficiencies. InsideTrackers biggest competitor, WellnessFX, runs a similar service. In November 2016, WellnessFX launched its first at-home testing kit, the $111 Lifelong Vitality package, which monitors key markers of womens health.

Healthtopias

As consumers seek 360-degree wellness, were seeing enterprising new players reposition themselves with a wellness angle. There are wellness holidays, wellness hotels, wellness hotel showers. Next on the list is wellness real estate.

Lake Nona, a development on the edge of Orlando, Florida, has been designed with its residents health and wellness in mind. A cluster of medical and research facilities known as Medical City provides employment to many of the towns 11,000 residents, expected to grow to 25,000 before long. The medical centers will soon be joined by a 63-acre home to the United States Tennis Association, with 100 courts on site. Residents of Lake Nona participate in health studies, have access to free activities including tai chi, bike races and yoga, and can stroll along a network of trails that will eventually total 44 miles.

Fitness festivals

With big-name Instagram fitness trainers selling out rock star-sized arenas around the country, could the next extension of the rock-star model be a fitness Coachella? Already, outdoor mass yoga classes draw big crowds at Burning Man. Nike, one of the biggest names in athletics, is exploring ways to meld the fitness zeitgeist with todays demand for experience culture. In August 2016, the brand held a three-day immersive fitness event in London that was part-music festival, part-endorphin extravaganza, thanks to its exercise classes. Guests could participate in high-intensity workouts from company trainers or guest celebrity fitness gurus, while visual displays were put on and an electronic soundtrack was supplied by electronic duo Hot Chip.

Marijuana for well-being

With this rising holistic view of well-being, were seeing new lifestyle products connecting themselves to wellness. Marijuana is being repositioned for a female audience, not only as aspirational, but also as a form of complementary therapy that can soothe muscle pain, be taken with botanicals as a relaxing bath product, or used as a massage oil ingredient.

Whoopi & Maya, a collaboration between Whoopi Goldberg and Maya Elisabeth, is a line of cannabis-infused edibles designed to treat menstrual cramps. It comes as part of a suite of luxuriously packaged products, which includes Soak, which contains Epsom salts, essential oils and medical marijuana to create the ultimate relaxing bath. Theres also Rub, a medical cannabis body balm with healing herbs and nourishing oils to ease muscle pain.

In fact, marijuana may be on its way to overtaking wine as the hip indulgence of choice. In West Hollywood, White Rabbit High Tea hosts a chic tea party for women, with a focus on vaporizers rather than hot drinks. Gourmet edibles, including Dfonc dark chocolate bars and Angel Haus cannabis ice cream, mean you can also bring the party home. Marijuana accessories are even getting a high-end feminine makeover from brands such as AnnaBs, who designed a chic handbag with concealed pockets for lighters or vapes.

These trends come from J. Walter Thompsons Future 100: Trends and Change to Watch in 2017. The full report, which includes 100 trends, can be found at jwtintelligence.com

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How wellness trends may shape health industry in 2017 - Fox News

Britpop songs 10 of the best – The Guardian (blog)

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Flying the flag Noel Gallagher of Oasis in 1996. Photograph: Patrick Ford/Redferns

This year is the 20th anniversary of Oasiss Be Here Now, an album ripe for sympathetic reappraisal, if only because any record that attracts so much rancour cant be all bad. Along with marking the moment Oasiss creative well ran dry, it turned out to be Britpops endgame, sweeping the whole genre into the dustbin. And thats how many remember Britpop today: a backward-looking bubble of we-are-the-champions triumphalism. But it wasnt always the embarrassing uncle that nobody wants to acknowledge. Before the fatal hubris of the Cool Britannia phase, which generated an NME article proclaiming Noel Gallagher the most influential person in Britain, Britpops bands were clever and observant, or at least interesting. The Auteurs were all three. Leader Luke Haines hated many things, not least the classifying of his arty indie band under the Britpop umbrella. In fairness to him, the Auteurs 1993 debut, New Wave, shared more DNA with groups like the House of Love than Oasis, but unfortunately for Haines the Auteurs simply happened to be in the right (or wrong) place just as Britpop gained momentum. New Waves loveliest track, Starstruck, is shot through with the bittersweet Kinks influence that was a Britpop cornerstone, while its lyric a fictitious memoir of a child star whose career took its first nosedive when he was five is as Brit as it comes.

Saint Etienne were fellow purveyors of small details and fleeting impressions. Toast is burned and the coffees cold / And you leave all the post cos its nothing but bills again are Youre in a Bad Ways opening lines, establishing the quiet despair that counterpoints the songs cascading 60s arrangement. Home from work, put the TV on / Get your kicks watching Bruce on the old Generation Game, it continues you get the idea. Singer Sarah Cracknell, one of Britpops great voices, airily sketches a picture of everyday drabness before the chorus bursts into anthemic life. In Saint Etiennes world, there was nothing that couldnt be sorted out by a visit to the local caff (never caf), and that was probably where the songs protagonist ended up, regaining the will to live over a cup of tea at a Formica table. As with Starstruck, this 1993 single had the retro flavourings that would come to typify Britpop, but existed in a different universe to the genres TFI Friday bullishness.

To appreciate how outre Suede first seemed, watch their performance of Animal Nitrate at the 1993 Brit awards. Six months earlier, before theyd released so much as a single, Suede had featured on a Melody Maker front cover under the headline The best new band in Britain. But that kind of overhyping was standard music-press flummery what got them out of the indie hinterland was their three minutes at the Brits. Who was that? was the reaction of both the TV audience and much of the crowd at the actual event, as well it might even if that nights other acts hadnt been textbook-staid, Suede would still have been a glam hurricane. Introduced with a sardonic: Please welcome the already legendary Suede (at that point, their career consisted of two singles and that Melody Maker cover), they spent their slot burning themselves into the ears and retinas of everyone watching. Bernard Butlers opening riff is one of the most undeniable in pop, and Brett Anderson pirouetting in a lace blouse as he yowled: Like his dad / you know that he had animal nitrate in mind imprinted himself on those viewers hungry for something different. The songs dark dysfunctionality complemented the bands sleazy glamour, and a sensation was born.

Though Blur ambitiously viewed the Parklife LP as a loosely linked concept album, they probably hadnt anticipated the cultural significance its title track would have. This was the song around which Britpop coalesced, giving form to what had been vague ideas about UK popular culture and turning it into the zeitgeist. It didnt hurt that the track had a magnetism that made it fit in everywhere, from the Radio 1 breakfast show to the Evening Session to Spanish dancefloors. Phil Daniels key narrator role had originally been written for Damon Albarn, who found it impossible to get into character and suggested Daniels for the part. Daniels acerbic Cockney patter, coupled with the unshakeable chorus, instantly created a new archetype: the resurgent working-class young Londoner with money in his pocket. Pressing the point home further, the video offers the sight of Alex James pushing Graham Coxon in a supermarket trolley, and a recreation of the Abbey Road cover, but with the zebra crossing relocated to East London.

When a band launch their career with their best song, the only way should be down, and thus it proved, eventually. Though Oasis had a decent run of memorable early singles, none quite equalled Supersonic hearing it now, its uncluttered perfection still startles. As a calling card, the song was incredibly effective raw, unapologetic and burning with confidence. Though it was about Oasiss yearning for fame, Liam Gallagher swaggered as if success were a done deal, and from that point it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Fortuitously, it came out the same month April 1994 as the Parklife album, and rumblings of a north/south rivalry began almost immediately, to the advantage of both bands.

Britpop could be surprisingly malleable, as shown by this 1995 single. The Boo Radleys had the wrong hair and clothes, and had done time as shoegazers but a change of direction, and bang! they were adopted by Britpop overlord Chris Evans, and lauded as the next shiny thing. For a tune about fundamental incompatibility in a relationship, Wake Up Boo! is insanely peppy; at the time it embodied better than any other song the thread of optimism running through the mid-90s. The bands performance on the quintessential 90s youth show The Word pushes every giddy neon button.

Pulps breakthrough came when they stepped in as last-minute substitutes for the Stone Roses at Glastonbury in 1995. Common People was the last song of their set, and by the time it finished, the group had palpably crossed the line to bona-fide stardom. Though synonymous with Britpop, Common People has the qualities that make a song timeless: theres Cockers fabulously louche delivery and the massive uplift into the chorus, obviously, but also the lyric. Addressed to a long-ago acquaintance who wanted Cocker to show her the world of common people in the hope that their supposed credibility would rub off, it resonates to this day.

The fourth and least remembered single from Pulps Different Class, Something Changed is rarely mentioned in the same breath as the game-changing first three, Common People, Sorted for Es and Wizz and Disco 2000. As a lesson in what Pulp were about, however, its unsurpassable. While the first three singles set out their stall as observers of social and class mores, Something Changed is a love song, but one defined by Pulps intrinsic pathos and vulnerability. Cockers lyric considers the role that chance plays in relationships: what if hed gone to see a film that day instead? What if shed visited friends? When they woke that morning, they didnt know they were about to meet: Life could have been very different then / but something changed. Cockers partiality to hammy vocal flourishes is absent; this is his most unadorned performance, and by a long way Pulps most moving song.

From their 1995 debut, Elasticas finest hour starts with the sound of energetic vomiting an aural tribute, perhaps, to the Good Mixer pub in Camden Town, where thousands of Britpop hangovers were created. It resolves into a tirade against a groupie called Drivelhead, who hangs around the Camden gig scene in the hope of bedding some lunk whose band has just been third on the bill at the Dublin Castle. Drivelhead wears her glad-rags / Shes got her keys, money and fags / I know her minds made up / To get rocked, sings leader Justine Frischmann, though by the third verse, shes dropped the subtlety: Drivelhead knows all the stars / Loves to suck their shining guitars / Theyve all been right up her stairs / Do you care? Line Up isnt just three surging minutes, its also a screen-grab of a moment in time, when Camden was the epicentre of a movement that felt like something big. Its rare for a woman to sing about groupies Delaney & Bonnies Groupie (Superstar) is the only other song that comes to mind - but Frischmann, who was dating Damon Albarn at the time, had presumably seen her share of Drivelheads and wanted to vent.

Mansun happened to be playing catchy guitar music at a time when every such group was labelled Britpop, but in their case it was a misnomer. Leader Paul Draper was a fan of Prince and John Barry rather than the Beatles, and his bands 1997 debut album, Attack of the Grey Lantern, was a theatrical concept affair leagues removed from the breezy simplicity of contemporaries such as Cast and Dodgy. Along with a musical vision, Draper had a strong grasp of melody, yielding an album engaging enough to hit No 1. Wide Open Space was one of its singles, and compelling and hugely anthemic as close to Britpop as the band ever got. One got the impression that Draper had written it just to prove he could the paranoia at its centre (Im in a wide open space / its freezing) marked it as an outlier.

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Britpop songs 10 of the best - The Guardian (blog)

Our president is a TV addict. It’s going to get the best of him, but he’ll never get the best of it. – Washington Post

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Theres a case building that television more than wealth or family or real estate, certainly more than politics is what President Trump loves most. The evidence was there all along. A camera in the room is the only thing that seems to truly animate him, for it brings with it the promise of big (or easily inflatable) ratings. A television show is the only thing that ever offered Trump, briefly, a unanimous and undisputed success. Absent the camera, he is an even bigger fan of watching TV, much like his fellow Americans who harbor a hard addiction to watching cable-news shows morning, noon and night.

There have been reports (usually anonymously sourced) that some of Trumps staff members wish he didnt watch so much, but why would he stop? The long-offered promise of truly interactive TV has arrived for at least one American: him. Cable news hangs on his every word, while he returns the favor by mimicking some of its worst talking points, often within enough minutes to create an unsettling semblance of harmony.

Sad! As HBOs John Oliver showed in a clip Sunday night on the long-awaited return of his satirical politics show, Last Week Tonight, Trump is so addicted to cable news that the cabin of Air Force One now echoes with the cheapo commercials that accompany his all-day diet of noise, including the Empire flooring jingle (Eight-hundred, five-eight-eight ...) Our president, Oliver joked, is like the septuagenarian who has collapsed and died alone in a house with the TV blaring; it takes neighbors days to notice anything amiss.

Thus, Oliver concluded, the only way to get a factual argument across to the president is to make a set of catheter ads to air during cable news, featuring a folksy ol cowboy who subliminally explains such necessary concepts as the nuclear triad. Olivers ads began airing in the Washington market on Monday morning on Fox, CNN and MSNBC. Maybe just maybe Trump noticed.

Meanwhile, a fomenting Trump resistance movement has seen that televised mockery might be effective in creating the sort of tiny cracks that eventually cause meaningful collapse. The mockery required for this job is not the kind of whip-smart, fact-based, ironic criticism inherited from Jon Stewarts Daily Show and still practiced with dedicated verve by TBSs Samantha Bee, NBCs Seth Meyers, CBSs Stephen Colbert and Oliver (who spent 24 minutes Sunday night on a segment devoted to the preservation of the concept of facts.)

Rather its the plain, old-fashioned, over-the-top mockery that shows a White House hopelessly out of control, compromised, flaccid from the get-go and comically inept. This was best displayed by none other than Melissa McCarthy, a comedic film and TV star recruited by her pals at NBCs Saturday Night Live to lampoon White House press secretary Sean Spicer on the shows Feb. 4 episode and again a week later.

The sketches were so brutally effective starting from their obvious top layer of derision for Spicers bellicose, combative style, all the way down to the more ingeniously subliminal dig of having women portray the innumerable men who surround and advise the president that they set off a wave of excitement on the left: Can it really be as easy as dishing up the most basic form of insult humor and then broadcasting it far and wide? Does electoral revenge reside in a barrage of unsophisticated, easy-to-write tiny-hands jokes (or, in a supercut from Olivers show, the insultingly spot-on Donald Trump doesnt know how to shake hands), rather than a clever, humorously but laboriously spun counterpoint of wonky facts?

Perhaps. In anticipation of SNLs Feb. 11 episode hosted for the 17th time by actor Alec Baldwin, who has found some always-needed career rejuvenation as the shows go-to Trump impersonator since last falls campaign Americas TV addicts and critics (who now include most of the political press corps) rubbed their hands together in anticipatory glee: Would the episode be just mildly devastating or completely annihilating?

That the episode was found a tad wanting is nothing new to lifetime SNL watchers. The show is nothing if not a decades-long study in demand-resistance, causing its viewers to always desire more than it actually delivers. Lorne Michaels, who now controls far more of the TV comedy realm than a mere 90 minutes on Saturday nights, wisely avoids taking requests from his audience, because we tend, as a voting bloc, to suggest the easiest and least original premises and jokes.

Yet, sensing the desires of the Internet zeitgeist, SNL featured a short, melancholy film in which cast member Leslie Jones floated the idea that she, not Baldwin, should step into the role of Trump. Her fellow cast members interrogated her intent as Jones sat in a makeup chair acquiring an orange comb-over, wondering whether theres a workable shtick here: Could having a black woman play Trump be an effective weapon against the watcher-in-chief? The ultimate insult, as it were?

This assumes that Trump still watches SNL. He may profess not to but honestly, come on. Its hard to believe that hed be able to resist looking at anything thats about him, or even, perhaps, taking credit for the shows impressive jump in ratings. SNL is now enjoying its highest-rated season in 22 years, according to Variety.

Lest anyone forget, many viewers of SNL still hold the show culpable in providing some of the crucial hot air that floated Trump to his many victories, by allowing him to host while he was a serious contender for the presidential race. The time for truly effective mockery came and went while SNL and the rest of the comedy world dilly-dallied with Trump.

All presidents have watched more than their share of TV. One thinks of LBJs custom array of TV sets in the Oval Office to track all three networks in breaking-news situations, or the Reagans enjoying a night in front of the tube with their TV dinner tray tables. Even the Obamas made sure to get on the inside track with HBO, having Game of Thrones screeners delivered before they aired.

As we continue to ask ourselves what Trump watches, and how or whether it shapes his decisions, its probably worth noting that theres a lot he doesnt watch or at least, weve never been told of anything remotely interesting in his DVR queue.

If insider accounts are to be believed, its all news, all the time and perhaps still looking in on NBCs Celebrity Apprentice, the show that still credits him as an executive producer even though he goes out of his way to pooh-pooh its current iteration. (About this, hes not wrong. The only reason left to watch Celebrity Apprentice might be if youre in a Nielsen family and want to irritate the president.)

In other words, hes missing so much some of the greatest television ever made, much of it rich in instructive, metaphorical storytelling about power and moral consequence.

Even though Trump appears to lack the necessary attention span, I still find myself wishing that he had joined me and the 10 or so other Americans who were transfixed by HBOs The Young Pope, a befuddlingly beautiful 10-episode series that just concluded. Its about a new pope, Pius XIII (Jude Law), who is determined to drain the swamp that is Vatican City. He is steadfast in his conservative beliefs and unconcerned with alienating the churchs liberal side. He loathes the press. He wont travel. He is consumed by a sort of divine narcissism and he can deliver a real scorcher of a sermon to his underlings.

Yet, not only did Pius win over the cardinals with his agenda, he also, finally, convinced the rest of us that his aim was true. In 10 hours, he went from a horrifying firebrand to a persuasive messenger, maybe even a pope for the ages.

In this way, TV always has something to tell us, even when were the president. And the president might seem more human if he would very publicly pick up a few, well-made scripted shows and tell us what he thought about them. The first step is learning how to change the channel and break some bad viewing habits.

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Our president is a TV addict. It's going to get the best of him, but he'll never get the best of it. - Washington Post

Jessica Wright: Well-managed farmland benefits community, watershed – Conway Daily Sun

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To the editor:

Maynard Thomsons thoughts on the county farm continue to concern me. His letter to The Conway Daily Sun on Feb. 3 detailed, yet again, his thoughts on why the farm should be sold to the highest bidder, ideally for development.

Mr. Thomsons articulate letters to the editor indicate that he has spent a good amount of time pondering this subject but still, I feel the need to offer another viewpoint: conservation.

The county farm and lands represent 894 acres of farm and forest land owned by the great taxpayers of Carroll County. It is something that I, as one of those taxpayers, take great pride in. Not only do these lands hold great potential to be central to a burgeoning local foods movement, they offer much more to the area ecologically.

Well-managed farmland and forests are some of the best ways we can protect our watershed, sequester carbon, and maintain viable wildlife populations. These open spaces act as natures wastewater treatment plants, soaking up excess nutrients and sediment before they become an issue in our waterways. They offer prime habitat for grassland birds and other species that help pollinate our plants and control pests. There has been much research on how to quantify the value of such ecosystem services. The USDA Forest Services Payments for Watershed Services is a great example of how we can give monetary value to the services that forests and wetlands provide. Though I am not suggesting that implementation of such a program should be on the agenda for the Carroll County Commissioners, I do suggest that taking into account how the taxpayer benefits from undeveloped land is critical when trying to achieve the actual opportunity costs Mr. Thomson is concerned about.

From another angle, open spaces such as farms and forests here in Carroll County not only help maintain water and air quality, they are the backbone to our tourism-based economy. These spaces are so important that many of our regions economic development plans have specifically included the preservation of farm and forest lands within their strategies.

The North Country Councils Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy notes that the North Country is a working landscape of successful farms and actively managed and productive forestland in which soil, water, and related natural resources are conserved using sustainable practices and notes that a working landscape reflects the preservation of open space through support of natural resource industries and is one essence of rural character. In a natural resource dependent economy, it is especially important to manage resources for long-term gains.

While Ossipee is not identified as part of the North Country, I think its message is quite applicable to the county farm.

We would be wise to carefully consider the impacts of our land use decisions on the ecological health of our natural resources, and therefore, our economy.

Jessica Wright

Conway

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Jessica Wright: Well-managed farmland benefits community, watershed - Conway Daily Sun

The pathologies of redistributive resource transfers – Livemint

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In Aravind Adigas The White Tiger, the narrator makes an insightful comment about the role of geography in development: Please understand, Your Excellency, that India is two countries: an India of Light, and an India of Darkness. The ocean brings light to my country. Every place on the map of India near the ocean is well-off. But the river brings darkness to India.

The Indian growth take-off since 1980 is associated with Peninsular India, the states that the narrator in astutely associated with better geographybeing close to the oceanwhich development experience has long confirmed as conferring special advantages. These statesGujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradeshhave indeed grown faster and advanced more rapidly economically vis--vis others.

As a result, they have also been a greater focus of research attention in comparison to other statesthe Other Indias, the India of forests, of natural resources, and of special category status. They are interesting in their own right because they have conformed to other models of development. One such is the model based on aid, most applicable to the special category states in the North-East, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

In the international context, foreign aid has been shown to create a number of adverse effects. Aid perpetuates resource dependency, in the sense that since revenues are being provided from outside, recipient countries may fail to or have little incentive to develop their own tax bases or their institutions. And it is institutions that have been found to be critical for growth, much more than overall resource availability.

Another potential downside of aid is that it could trigger the Dutch disease, named after the impact that discovery of natural gas in the North Sea had on the domestic economy in the Netherlands. This windfall caused the real exchange rate to appreciate as the extra income was spent domestically, pushing up the price of non-tradeables, such as services geared to the local economy. The higher prices for services then eroded profitability in export and import-competing industries, de-industrializing the economy, with the share of manufacturing in the economy falling. Do we see similar consequences within India?

To attempt an answer, the first task is to define a concept akin to aid in the Indian context. State governments have received funds from the Centregross devolution which is the sum of: (i) share of Central taxes, as stipulated by finance commissions; (ii) Plan and non-Plan grants; and (iii) Plan and non-Plan loans and advances (of course, the Plan/non-Plan distinction has now been abolished).

Devolution is not all aid but embodies a strong redistributive element. We isolate this elementRedistributive Resource Transfers, (RRT)as gross devolution adjusted for some benchmark for the normal resources a state can expect to receive, which we define as the states share in aggregate gross domestic product (or alternatively as a states share in own tax revenues). Thus, RRT are transfers over and above states contribution to GDP (or taxes) and serve as a useful, if imperfect, measure of aid.

There are two key differences between RRT and traditional foreign aid. RRT are intra-country transfers and do not augment overall national disposable income like foreign aid does; second, the donor-recipient relationship is also very different because states benefiting from transfers are part of the national governance structures that determine them.

Figure 1 shows the ranking of states, in 2015, in the descending order of RRT received in per capita terms. The top 10 recipients are: Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Nagaland, Manipur, Meghalaya, Tripura, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Assam.

The yellow and green dotted lines in Figure 1 show, respectively, the all-India urban and rural annualized per capita poverty lines for 2015. Annual per capita RRT flows for all the North-Eastern states (except Assam) and Jammu and Kashmir have exceeded the annual per capita consumption expenditure that defines the all-India poverty lines, especially the rural one. In other words, RRT are substantial in magnitude.

We then correlate a states RRT with a number of outcomes. The results are striking. Higher RRT seem to be associated with:

l Lower per capita consumption

l Lower gross state domestic product (GSDP) growth

l Lower fiscal effort (defined as the share of own tax revenue in GSDP)

l Smaller share of manufacturing in GSDP, and

l Weaker governance.

Figures 2-5 depict these findings. The results turn out to be quite robust (to alternative definitions of RRT) and there is suggestive evidence of causality (from RRT to economic outcomes and governance). There are a few states which are exceptions (for example, Tripura with respect to per capita GSDP growth or Mizoram with regard to governance). The details of the methodology (including the index used to proxy overall governance) are outlined in Chapter 13 of the Economic Survey 2016-17. These results indicate that all the pathologies associated with foreign aid appear to manifest in the context of intra-country transfers too.

If the evidence suggests an RRT curse, what are the policy implications?

Clearly, the solution cannot be to dispense with RRT altogether, since in a federal system the Centre must play a redistributive role because it will always have to redirect resources to under-developed states. Rather, the Centre will need to ensure that the resources it redistributes are used more productively.

Of course, it is possible that the RRT curse originates from poor connectivity and poor infrastructurephysical, financial and digitalthat most of these states, and certainly the North-Eastern states, suffer from. Enhancing connectivity on a war footing (as the government has attempted for financial inclusion with the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, or PMJDY, expediting the optical fibre network, etc.) will have a moderating effect. Beyond facilitating connectivity, there are a number of ways in which the architecture of redistributive resource flows could be modified.

One possibility will be to redirect a quantum of RRT directly to households as part of a universal basic income (UBI) scheme in relevant states. Targeting issues plague existing development interventions and transfers directly to households could eliminate a large majority of these problems.

Another possibility would be to find ways to offset the tendency of states receiving high RRT to relax their own tax effort. Perhaps future Finance Commissions could revert to the practice of the 13th finance commission of explicitly conditioning transfers on the tax effort of states, and perhaps to an even greater extent.

Given that some high RRT recipient states have performed better than others, the capacity of states to utilize funds efficiently plays an important role. To encourage better governance, the fund transfer mechanism could explicitly include a few monitorable institutional indicators as criteria for resource transfers.

In sum, large bountiesin the form of redistributed resourcescan create surprising pathologies, even in democratic India. Recognizing and responding to them creatively will be important to learn the lessons of development experience in India and around the world.

The article is an abridged version of chapter 13 of The Economic Survey, 2016-17.

Arvind Subramanian, Rangeet Ghosh, Syed Zubair Noqvi and Kapil Patidar worked on this years Economic Survey.

Comments are welcome at theirview@livemint.com

First Published: Tue, Feb 14 2017. 11 20 PM IST

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The pathologies of redistributive resource transfers - Livemint

Guaranteed basic income proposed. – Bayshore Broadcasting News Centre

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Tuesday, February 14, 2017 Regional | by Claire McCormack

Queens Park looks at a pilot project, which is supported by the Bruce Grey Poverty Task Force.

The Bruce Grey Poverty Task Force supports the Ontario Government's pilot project of a basic income guarantee, but says the province needs to realize poverty isn't just an urban issue.

Task Force Co-ordinator Jill Umbach says the idea is to provide a government subsidy for low income people that would go right to them in a similar way to the Ontario Seniors' Benefit Program.

Umbach says the plan is to have income information go to the government at tax time and if someone qualifies, the rest would be automatic.

The Task Force likes the idea of enabling low income people to receive the money they need in a more dignified way without being micro-managed by the province and regularly required provide documentation about how much money they've made.

The program began to take shape in June 2016 with a discussion paper from the province called Finding a Better Way: A Basic Income. Consultation sessions followed and the Bruce Grey Poverty Task Force attended a number of them.

Umbach says they made sure the rural perspective was clearly conveyed to others during the consultations which all took place in urban centres.

She notes rural issues cannot be ignored, and believes more robust economic development and local investment will reverse the rise of precarious work, loss of benefits to families and out-migration of young people and families from the community.

Umbach says the pilot would be rolled out in just a few communities within the province for a span of three years. It would replace Ontario Works subsidies in those instances.

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Guaranteed basic income proposed. - Bayshore Broadcasting News Centre

Robots and AI are coming for our jobs, but can augmentation save us from automation? – Digital Trends

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The American truck driver is soon to be an endangered species. Some 3.5 million professionals get behind the wheel of trucks in the United States every year, making it one of the most common jobs in the country. In a couple decades, every last one may be out of work due to automation.

Industry giants around the world are investing in autonomous vehicles. In Australian mines, Rio Tinto employs hundred-ton driverless trucks to transport iron ore. Volvo is seeking volunteers willing to be ferriedaround Londons winding streets with no one at the wheel. MIT researchers recently determined the most efficient wayfor driverless trucks to transport goods something called platooning. The guy behind Googles first self-driving car now runs autonomous trucking startup Ottoin San Francisco.

Truckers may be among the most vulnerable to automation but theyre certainly not alone. Over the past year weve seen an AI attorney land a job at a law firm, Hilton hire a robotic concierge, and even ahem robojournalists cover the U.S. election. As far as we know, none of these bots have caused a human to get laid off but theyre telling of things to come.

Were trying to blur the distinction between electronic circuits and neural circuits.

The so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution will transform the job market, eliminating over five million jobs in the next five years, according to the World Economic Forum.So what do we do, as humans? Augment ourselves.

Augmentation was the running theme of this years Bodyhacking Conference in Austin, Texas. Attendees lined up for RFID implants, speakers demonstrated bionic body parts, grinders exhibited artificial senses, and an entire fashion show put smart apparel on display. Most of the augmentations were idiosyncratic and wouldnt make a potential employee more competitive in the future job market (except, perhaps, for documentary filmmaker Rob Eyeborg Spences prosthetic eye camera). With this in mind, we explored the ways in which augmentation may safeguard us from automation.

Humans have extraordinary brains the best in the animal kingdom but in AI weve created minds that exceed our own in many ways. Sure, humans still hold the title for outstanding general intelligence, as todays AI systems excel at the specific tasks theyre designed for, but algorithms are advancing fast. Some are even learning as they work. A year ago, AI experts thought it would take at least another decade for an algorithm to defeat a top-tier Go player. And then this happened.

Entrepreneur, futurist, and headline-staple Elon Musk is so concerned about AI that he co-founded the billion-dollar nonprofit OpenAI to promote friendly AI in December 2015. Six months later, he told a crowd at theCode Conferencehe wants to develop a digital neural layer colloquially called neural lace to augment humans on par with AI. He echoed these comments at the World Government Summit in Dubai on Monday, suggesting that such a symbiosis could potentially solve the control problem and the usefulness problem likely to face future humanity.

This rolled electronic mesh can be injected through a glass needle.

Harvard University

The concept is relatively simple: A neural lace is some sort of material that boosts the brains ability to receive, process, and communicate information. Its an extra layer, perhaps a kind of electronic mesh, that physically integrates with the brain and turns the mind into a kind of supercomputer.

If this sounds like science fiction, thats because it is. Or it was. The term was first coined by sci-fi author Iain M. Banks in his Culture series.

But almost exactly one year before Musk made his comment at the conference, a team of nanotechnologists at Harvard University published a paper called Syringe-injectable electronics in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, in which they described an ultra-fine electronic mesh that can be injected into the brains of mice to monitor brain activity and treat degenerative diseases. The possibility for such a material to augment the brains input-output capacity was too enticing to overlook.

Were trying to blur the distinction between electronic circuits and neural circuits, co-author Charles Lieber told Smithsonian Magazine. We have to walk before we can run, he added, but we think we can really revolutionize our ability to interface with the brain.

Musk hasnt kept completely quiet about his neural lace aspirations either. In August he told an inquisitive Twitter follower that he was making progress on the project. In January he said an announcement may come this month.

A functioning neural lace is still realistically many years off, but augmented by such a device, humans could conceivably compete with AI at computational tasks currently left to machines, while maintaining our high levels of intuition, decision making, and general intelligence. Were already cyborgs. With smartphones and the internet as external brains, we boast superhuman intelligence. But analog outputs like typing and speech are slow compared to digital speeds. Imagine listing under the skills section on your rsum the ability to query a database, receive a response, and relay that information to a colleague in the fraction of a second it takes Google to display search results. It would make you a desirable candidate, indeed.

As robust as we are in mind, humans are desperately delicate in body. Were fleshy, fragile things, prone to break and tear under pressure. Robots, on the other hand, are rugged, and capable of tackling strenuous tasks with relative ease.

But robots are also fairly inflexible. Where a human can seamlessly transition from one action to another, machines tend to do just one thing well and need to be recalibrated to perform new tasks.Enter exosuits. Fitted with these powered external skeletons, humans assume superhuman strength while limiting risk of injury associated with bending and lifting. Think Iron Man or the metallic gear worn by Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt in Edge of Tomorrow.

Were fleshy, fragile things, prone to break and tear under pressure.

Like neural lace, these suits arent stuck in science fiction. Engineers at Hyundai, Harvard, and the United States Army are actively developing systems to serve paraplegics, laborers, and soldiers alike.

What Ive been working on in my lab for years is to combine the intelligence of the [human] worker with the strength of the robot, Hoomayoon Kazerooni, director of the Berkeley Robotics and Human Engineering Laboratory, told Digital Trends. Robots are metal, they have more power than a human. Basically, the whole thesis is to combine human decision making, human intelligence, and human adaptability with the strength and precision of a robot.

Through his robotics research, Kazerooni founded SuitX, a company that created the PhoeniX medical exoskeletonfor patients with spinal cord injury and a modular, full-body exosuit called the Modular Agile Exoskeleton (MAX).

We use robotic devices where we have repetitive tasks, Kazerooni said. Anything thats dangerous we also automate. These are structured jobs.

MAX features three components: backX, shoulderX, and legX, each of which assists its titular region, minimizing torque and force by up to 60 percent.

These machines reduce forces at targeted areas, Kazerooni said. Its basically supporting the wearer, not necessarily from a cognitive point of view by telling workers how to do things, but by letting the workers do whatever tasks theyve done in the past with reduced force.

Kazerooni recognizes that machines may someday be so cheap and efficient that human workers simply become an expensive liability. Until then, the best way to keep laborers safe, productive, and employed may be to augment their physicality.

The state of technology in robotics and AI is not to the point that we can employ robotics to do unstructured jobs, he added, which require a [human] workers attention and decision making. Theres a lot of unstructured work we cant yet fully automate.

Across the country, in the Harvard Biodesign Lab, a team of researchers are developing a softer side of exosuits.

Packed with small motors, custom sensors, and microprocessors, these soft wearable robots are designed to work in parallel with the bodys muscles and tendons to make movement more efficient. In a recent paper published in the journal Science Robotics, the interdisciplinary Harvard team demonstrated an almost 23 percent reduction in effort with its exosuit compared to unaided walking.

Its going to be a very difficult time for all human workers.

The Biodesign Labs has so far been working with DARPA to develop exosuits to help soldiers carry heavy loads over long distances. However, project lead Ignacio Galiana thinks the suit can find applications beyond the battlefield.

Factory workers in the automotive, naval, and aircraft industry have to move around very large and heavy parts, he told Digital Trends. Having a simple system they can wear under their normal pants can give them an extra strength.

Theres now even a need for people to get packages delivered the next day, and so postal service personnel have a burden to move heavy packages around quickly, he added. If they could wear an exosuit that makes them faster and stronger, that could make their work much easier.

Galiana doesnt think humans and robots will compete directly for the same jobs. Instead, he sees them working in parallel so long as humans can keep up with increasing physical demands.

Human intelligence and decision making is critical in a lot of factory jobs, and the human brain is really hard to imitate in robots, he said. That will be key to keeping workers in the workplace. If you give extra strength to a factory worker who has that decision making and intelligence capabilities, you could see them being more effective and staying in work for longer, working alongside robots.

Despite the progress thats been made in the past few years, superhuman strength and intelligence lie somewhere in the hazy futurescape, inaccessible to most of todays workforce and not exactly helpful when trying to figure out what humans should do now to safeguard themselves against automation.

For an immediate answer, we turned to Tom Davenport, co-author of Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines. In 2015, Davenport and co-author Julia Kirby published Beyond Automation in the Harvard Business Review, in which they laid out five practical steps workers may take to improve their employability against machines.

In their list, Davenport and Kirby encourage humans to stand out, whether by developing skills outside the realm of codifiable cognition (such as creativity) or learning the ins-and-outs of the machines themselves. (After all, someone needs to fix these things when they break down.) The authors advice is primarily meant for knowledge workers, however, not physical laborers whom Davenport thinks will have a much more challenging transition in the future job market.

I try to be optimistic, Davenport told Digital Trends, because I do think there are some valuable roles that humans can still play relative to these smart machines, but I dont think its a time to be complacent about it. Any type of worker will need to work hard to keep up the right kinds of skills and develop new skills.

Freightliner was the first truck manufacturer to obtain the right to test an autonomous vehicle in Nevada.

As an example, Davenport points to our friends the truck drivers. I dont know how many of them will be willing to develop the computer-oriented skills to understand how autonomous driving works, he said. And even if they did take an entry course in programming, what good would it do? Driving in general is a dying profession.

I think its going to be a very difficult time for all human workers, Davenport said. Im optimistic that many of them will make the transition but not all of them will. Im definitely more pessimistic about certain jobs than others. Even for knowledge workers there will be some job loss on the margins but I believe there are a number of viable roles that they can play. Thats what a lot of my writing has been about roles that knowledge workers can play that either involve working alongside smart machines or doing something they dont.

When Davenport says smart machines, he means narrow AI: systems that do a few specific things really well, such as recognizing faces, playing board games, and creating psychedelic art.

Theres another evolution of AI though, the kind that keeps Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking up at night: artificial general intelligence, which can basically do anything a human can intellectually.

What happens when these arise?

All bets are off, Davenport said.

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Robots and AI are coming for our jobs, but can augmentation save us from automation? - Digital Trends

Boeing ramps up automation, innovation as it readies 737MAX | The … – The Seattle Times

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Boeings latest jet, the 737 MAX, should start delivering to airlines by May, even as 737 production ramps up to 47 jets per month. To handle it all at the Renton plant, Boeing has installed a new automated wing spar assembly line and re-choreographed how it finishes the wings.

As Boeing prepares to deliver its first 737 MAX airplane and to boost production of single-aisle jets 12 percent both by May the Renton factory has geared up with additional refinements of its already humming manufacturing methods.

Boeing showed off the latest innovations inside its Renton factory on a tour of the 737 wing facility Monday, showcasing impressive new robotic machines as well as more efficient ways of deploying its mechanics. While it introduces the new 737 MAX, the company is also ramping up its 737 production rate to 47 per month, from 42.

Vice president and general manager Keith Leverkuhn brimmed with good news about the program schedule and the new jets performance.

Leverkuhn said the MAX flight test program has just one test to complete and should get certification from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) within days or weeks.

He said the fourth flight test airplane last month completed a 100-flight-hour tour of the Pacific Rim including a cold soak test in Yakutsk, Russia, and a stop in hot and humid Darwin, Australia that produced just a single squawk, the term used to denote the airplane performing even slightly off expectations.

Having already built 13 of the initial MAX 8 models, all now sitting around Renton airfield awaiting FAA certification, Boeing showed off the first of the large MAX 9 models sitting on the assembly line and almost ready to roll out.

Its advanced winglets, sweeping up and down from the wingtip, set it apart from the current model 737s on the adjacent line, with their traditional upward-swept winglets.

Also very different were the MAXs new LEAP engines.

With a fan diameter of more than 69 inches, the LEAP seemed to dwarf the older CFM-56 engine, with its 61-inch fan, on a nearby current model 737-900ER.

The MAX 9 will begin flight tests in April, Leverkuhn said.

Soon after, the smaller MAX 7 will come along, and then the high-density version that budget airline Ryanair covets, the MAX200, seating 199 passengers.

And Leverkuhn said Boeing is actively seeking input from airlines on whether it should add one more even larger model, the MAX 10, to the family.

To make all this possible, dramatic changes are well underway inside the Renton factory.

New automated machines are revolutionizing assembly of the wing spars the long beams along the leading and trailing edges of each wing.

And on the other side of the building, crews of engineers and mechanics who finish the wings by installing all the wiring, plumbing and control systems have figured out how to accommodate the coming rate increases up to 52 jets per month next year, then 57 jets per month in 2019 without adding another line to their area.

In a plant that has steadily morphed into the most productive airplane factory in the world, Barry Lewis, director of 737 Wing Operations, declared on Monday that the transformation is almost complete.

On one side of the wing building, Boeing currently has 10 large machines that it introduced in 1997 when it developed the current model of the 737.

Known as Automated Spar Assembly Tools, or ASAT machines, these drill and fasten the heavy spars that are the structural spines along the edges of the wings.

To increase 737 output by 36 percent over the next three years, Boeing at first thought to buy some more ASAT machines, which were designed and supplied in the late 1990s by Mukilteo-based engineering firm Electroimpact.

But Boeing realized it doesnt have room. The ASAT machines are huge, with a tall, wide gantry straddling the 60-foot-long spar.

So all 10 of these machines will be phased out by year end, replaced by just two fully automated Spar Assembly Line (SAL) cells newly designed by Electroimpact and already in place.

Each cell contains two Electroimpact drilling and fastening machines, much smaller than the ASAT machines, that zip along a single spar simultaneously, drilling and filling as they go.

Critically, alongside the business end of each machine is a robotic arm that swings in and changes the drill head and the fastener whenever a different type of hole is to be drilled.

On the old ASAT machines, changing the tools is done manually, adding a great deal of down time. In the new SAL cells, thats all automated.

At one end of the SAL cell, two operators sat before a control console Monday intently watching eight big screens, including four video screens monitoring every move of the machines.

In future, whether we need two operators (or just one) per cell is to be determined, Lewis said.

The new SAL cells, occupying 80 percent less floor space than the ASAT machines they replace, are just the latest push in Rentons drive toward automation.

In recent years, Boeing has transformed the way it installs systems in the 737 fuselages by shifting to a moving line. It also has automated the way it assembles the skin panels for the wings using huge Electroimpact machines.

Earlier, final assembly of the wings was made more efficient and more automated with a move from putting them together while hanging vertically in fixed tools to a more ergonomic and faster horizontal build line, in which the wings are assembled lying flat.

And yet Lewis deflected concerns about robots replacing humans, pointing out that Boeing will be hiring modestly in Renton over the next few years, not losing workers.

Were going up in rate, he said. More planes means more jobs.

In another sector of the wing building, where the wings are completed with all the wiring and ducting added, the second set of MAX 9 wings awaited delivery Monday evening to the final assembly line.

There, Lewis praised his team of engineers and mechanics for figuring out how Boeing can increase throughput as high as 57 pairs of wings per month without adding any new machinery.

Its people thinking of better ways to do it, said Lewis.

The workers divided up the work into smaller packages, which could be accomplished with more people working on the wing simultaneously yet with their moves choreographed so as not to get in each others way.

Darwin Stachowiak, a team lead on the wing installation, said that by having front line employees think through the most efficient way to get the work done, weve really streamlined the way we build these wings.

The 737 will be 50 years old in April.

Yet if all the production increases in Renton go to plan, and Boeing decides to go forward with the MAX 10, Boeing will within a few years be making more 737s than ever before, and airlines will be flying five new variants of the jet.

Right now, everything is on track to accomplish just that.

Originally posted here:

Boeing ramps up automation, innovation as it readies 737MAX | The ... - The Seattle Times

Redwood Software Named a Strong Performer in Independent Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Report – Yahoo Finance

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LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Redwood Software, enterprise robotic process automation specialist, has been named as a Strong Performer in the Forrester Research, Inc. report: The Forrester Wave: Robotic Process Automation, Q1 2017.

The report evaluates Redwoods solution against criteria including desktop and virtual desktop integration, bot creation design and automation engine, and others. Forrester notes that Redwood is more API-oriented (data integration) and less UI-oriented (desktop integration) than other vendors in the field. It also highlights that Redwood draws on its ERP professional services experience,

plugging inefficiencies in SAP and Oracle enterprise apps to reduce manual labour in supply chain, logistics, forecasting, ecommerce delivery, and financial posting.

Redwoods robot deployment times are reduced by a catalogue of SAP and Oracle robots, resulting in a smaller set of centrally run robots that run without concern for a physical desktop. Control room and governance features include real-time views of robot progression, and audit forms that provide a snap shot of what the robot has executed with data sources and steps.

Redwood believes that this marks its core differentiation. Its preferred method of integration is where robots dont interact at the User Interface (UI) level, but integrate directly with the ERP and other applications. Its large library of pre-built components and over 100 robotic business processes takes away the need for custom coding and on-going script maintenance. This results in the highest degree of automation levels (between 70-100%), fast implementation times, and reusable robots that can be scaled and deployed globally with ease.

Redwoods vision is to help businesses achieve The Robotic Enterprise, whereby all processes such as Record to Report, Order to Cash, Procure to Pay, Human Capital and the Supply Chain are run by robots, only including people where human judgement and analysis is required. Eliminating the need for desktop based automation takes away the need for large teams of people to manually manage and recode robots. Instead, there are generally a few business users who are empowered to make business process changes without the need for constant script development and maintenance.

Tijl Vuyk, Founder and CEO, Redwood Software adds, We are pleased to have been recognised by Forrester in this space, which we believe underscores the strength of our vision for how back office processes can be re-imagined and robotised. Our in-depth ERP knowledge allows us to go deeper and wider into processes, helping businesses streamline processes and redirect resources to where they can have greatest business impact customer care, marketing and product innovation.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170215005051/en/

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Redwood Software Named a Strong Performer in Independent Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Report - Yahoo Finance