Which NZ waters shouldn't you swim in?

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New Zealand's beaches, coastlines and rivers are shining jewels in the country's crown, but which ones need a bit more polishing?

For most, a Kiwi summer typically means inordinate amounts of time relaxing on a beach or near water, but a number of popular spots fail water quality measures used by councils including Auckland, Greater Wellington and Environment Canterbury.

Areas which don't meet the standards are normally signposted with warnings it is unsafe to swim, and undergo increased testing.

Safeswim has assessed all of the more than 180 beaches and freshwater sites in Auckland, and has selected 69 for weekly monitoring over the 2014-15 season.

The Greater Wellington Regional Council, along with other local councils, monitor 61 beaches and 24 river sites across the region where people frequently swim. Wellington sites are monitored weekly from mid-November to the end of March.

Water temperature and seaweed or algae cover are also measured, while river sites are tested for clarity.

Water from test sites is compared with national guidelines set by the Ministry for the Environment and the Ministry of Health.

The guideline "trigger level" for beaches which would require more monitoring is more than 140cfu (colony forming units) of enterococci bacteria per 100ml of water, while the threshold for rivers is at 26 cfu/100ml of E.coli.

"Surveillance mode", the lowest of three levels, means there's a risk of illness from swimming, but is acceptable eight in every 1000 swimmers in freshwater and 19 in every 1000 in coastal water.

If water quality reaches the "alert" category, the risk of someone getting sick is increased but still in the acceptable range and increased monitoring is carried out.

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Which NZ waters shouldn't you swim in?

Beach Resorts Are Destroying the Worlds Beaches

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Coastal development is not only making beaches less accessible, its destroying the coast all together. Researchers in the U.K. and the U.S. warn that real estate development is slowly eroding shorelines around the world. In a new book called The Last Beach, professor Andrew Cooper of the University of Ulster and professor Orrin Pilkey of Duke University warn that the construction of sea walls around beach developements are impeding the natural movement of water and sand. Beaches act as a natural defense against the force of ocean waves. Sea walls, however, dont absorb those forces as effectively as beaches do.

The wall itself is the problem. If you build a sea wall to protect the shore, the inevitable consequence is that the beach will disappear. The wall cannot absorb the energy of the sea. All beaches with defences ... are in danger. When you build the sea wall, that is the end of the beach, Cooper told The Guardian.

In fact, Cooper and Pilkey predict that if the current trend of development persists, there will be no beaches left in the developed world in as soon fifty years from now.

You can have buildings, and you can have beaches, but you cant have both, Pilkey told Duke University Press.

Whats a beach resort without beaches? It looks like were going to find out what that looks like sooner rather than later. There is a tragic irony in the idea that the very buildings we constructed as a monument to our love for beaches may be the very things that destroy them.

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Beach Resorts Are Destroying the Worlds Beaches

Hotels question Palm Beach County plans to raise hotel tax

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Palm Beach Countys proposed hotel tax increase is raising concerns about how to spend the money, even before it gets the go-ahead to be tacked onto hotel bills.

The County Commission on Tuesday decides whether to raise the tax on hotel stays and other short-term rentals to 6 cents per dollar. That would generate another $7 million a year to pay for more advertising to promote local tourist attractions and help pay for replenishing eroded beaches.

But the Palm Beach County Hotel and Lodging Association questions the proposed tax increase, saying more of the money should go toward beaches and advertising the region to tourists instead of also giving more money to cultural organizations.

Its the distribution of the (money) that we have always been concerned about, said David Semadeni, of the hotel and lodging association. Beaches is the reason for people to come to Palm Beach County for tourism.

The need to spend more public money to advertise a county already known for its beaches (it is in the name after all), has also raised questions.

I just have questions about the effect of promotion, County Commissioner Hal Valeche said. Its very difficult to track what the results are from.

Yet, other business leaders and tourism industry representatives have backed the tax increase, saying that more money for beaches and advertising will translate to more tourists.

And spending more to promote museums, art festivals, theaters and other cultural attractions in addition to beaches and other attractions also delivers a tourism boost, said Glenn Jergensen, executive director of Palm Beach County's Tourist Development Council.

We have got everybody involved (to) get the best results, Jergensen said. We have done our homework.

Palm Beach County, like Broward County, now charges 5 cents for every dollar spent per night for a so called bed tax on stays at hotels, bed and breakfasts and other short-term rentals.

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100-year study to examine effects of artificial intelligence

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Scientists have begun what they say will be a century-long study of the effects of artificial intelligence on society, including on the economy, war and crime, officials atStanford Universityannounced this week.

The project, hosted by the university, is unusual not just because of its duration but because it seeks to track the effects of these technologies as they reshape the roles played by human beings in a broad range of endeavours.

"My take is that A.I. is taking over," said Sebastian Thrun, a well-known roboticist who led the development of Google's self-driving car. "A few humans might still be 'in charge', but less and less so."

Artificial intelligence describes computer systems that perform tasks traditionally requiring human intelligence and perception. In 2009, the president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, Eric Horvitz, organised a meeting of computer scientists in California to discuss the possible ramifications of A.I. advances. The group concluded that the advanceswere largely positiveand lauded the "relatively graceful" progress.

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But now, in the wake of recent technological advances in computer vision, speech recognition and robotics, scientists say they are increasingly concerned that artificial intelligence technologies may permanently displace human workers,roboticise warfareand make of Orwellian surveillance techniques easier to develop, among other disastrous effects.

Dr. Horvitz, now the managing director of the Redmond, Washington, campus of Microsoft Research, last year approached John Hennessy, a computer scientist and president of Stanford University, about the idea of a long-term study that would chart the progress of artificial intelligence and its effect on society. Dr. Horvitz and wife, Mary Horvitz, agreed to fund the initiative, called the One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence.

In an interview, Dr. Horvitz said he was unconvinced by recent warnings that superintelligent machines were poised to outstrip human control and abilities. Instead, he believes these technologies will have positive and negative effects on society.

"Loss of control of A.I. systems has become a big concern," he said. "It scares people." Rather than simply dismiss these dystopian claims, he said, scientists instead must monitor and continually evaluate the technologies.

"Even if the anxieties are unwarranted, they need to be addressed," Dr. Horvitz said.

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Gulfstream Aerospace G450 N250AF – Close-up Landing at Split Airport SPU/LDSP – Video

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Gulfstream Aerospace G450 N250AF - Close-up Landing at Split Airport SPU/LDSP
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/EdoStuff-Aviation/355006944654032 Camera: Sony DSC-HX100V (Hand-held) Aircraft: Gulfstream Aerospace G450 Aircraft Registration: N250AF ...

By: Edostuff CroHD Planespotting

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Gulfstream Aerospace G450 N250AF - Close-up Landing at Split Airport SPU/LDSP - Video

Gifted scientist Margaret Thompson had a lasting impact on health care

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Margaret Thompson was one of Canadas most respected geneticists, a pioneer in genetic counselling and a devoted researcher into the causes of certain diseases.

She also participated in one of the darker chapters in this countrys history.

Hailed as a gifted scientist who had a lasting impact on Canadas health care system, Dr. Thompson also served for two years on the Alberta Eugenics Board, which approved the forced sterilization of individuals deemed unfit to reproduce.

Margaret (Peggy) Anne Wilson Thompson, who died in Toronto on Nov. 3 at the age of 94, was born on the Isle of Man, in England, on Jan. 7, 1920, and was six years old when her family moved to Saskatchewan. Like many young women at the time, she completed teacher training, and taught in rural schools for two years. She graduated from the University of Saskatchewan in 1943 with a degree in biology, and completed a PhD in zoology, specializing in metabolic genetics, from the University of Toronto in 1948.

She spent two years teaching at the University of Western Ontario before moving to the University of Alberta in Edmonton, where she taught zoology and started the Hereditary Genetic Counselling clinic. She also served on the Alberta Eugenics Board from 1960 to 1962, which authorized the sterilization of institutionalized mentally defective people who presented the danger of procreation if discharged and risked transmission of [their] disability to potential children. She was the boards last surviving member, according to the Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada.

Eugenics was introduced in 1883 by Francis Galton, who was Charles Darwins cousin, to apply the ideals behind the selective breeding of plants and animals to humans in order to weed out defects, including insanity, criminality and mental incompetence, and improve the quality of the human gene pool. It is widely dismissed today as pseudo-science and a violation of basic human rights.

Founded in 1928 to implement Albertas Sexual Sterilization Act, the rotating, four-person eugenics board approved the mostly involuntary sterilization of 2,834 individuals until it was shut down, and the act repealed, in 1972 by the government of then-premier Peter Lougheed. The only other eugenics board in Canada existed in British Columbia from 1933 to 1973.

In 1999, then-premier Ralph Klein apologized for the Alberta boards work and offered millions of dollars in compensation to survivors.

Dr. Thompsons death notice, the many online condolences and tributes, various biographies, her entry in the Canadian Encyclopedia and, most notably, her 1988 Order of Canada citation none makes any mention of her involvement on the eugenics board. Instead, they focus on the life and work of a protean scientist, mentor and teacher.

[Eugenics] was not a subject that I recall her speaking about, said her son Bruce Thompson, until the mid-1990s, when she informed us that the actions of the board were being investigated and that her testimony would be required. Other than knowing that she was giving testimony in Alberta, I recall no further conversations with her on this matter.

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Cass R. Sunstein: Why free marketeers don't accept climate science

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It is often said that people who don't want to solve the problem of climate change reject the underlying science, and hence don't think there's any problem to solve. But consider a different possibility: Because they reject the proposed solution, they dismiss the science. If this is right, our whole picture of the politics of climate change is off.

Here's an analogy. Say your doctor tells you that you must undergo a year of grueling treatment for a serious illness. You might question the diagnosis and insist on getting a second opinion. But if the doctor says you can cure the same problem simply by taking a pill, you might just take the pill without asking further questions.

Troy Campbell and Aaron Kay of Duke University's business school call this phenomenon "solution aversion." And they have found compelling evidence for it in the context of climate change.

In the most important of several experiments, they presented a large number of participants, both Republicans and Democrats, with this description of the current science of climate change: "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that there would be an increase of 3.2 degrees Fahrenheit in worldwide temperatures in the 21st century and that humans are responsible for global climate change patterns." This statement was placed alongside a recommendation that the U.S. impose restrictive regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The researchers also presented a similar group of people with the same description of the science, but alongside a recommendation that the U.S. profit by leading the world in green technology.

In both instances, Campbell and Kay asked the participants whether they agreed with the IPCC. And in both, about 80 percent of Democrats did agree; the policy solutions made no difference.

Republicans, in contrast, were far more likely to agree with the IPCC when the proposed solution didn't involve regulatory restrictions. Given the prospect of regulation, only 17 percent of Republicans agreed with the IPCC. Given the prospect of profit from green technology, however, 64 percent of Republicans agreed.

Here, then, is powerful evidence that many people (of course not all) who purport to be skeptical about climate science are motivated by their hostility to costly regulation.

A follow-up study fortified this conclusion, finding that even within a group consisting solely of Republicans, those with unusually strong free-market commitments are especially likely to accept the strong views of the American Lung Association on air pollution when they are presented with policy responses that are consistent with those commitments.

Liberals are hardly immune to solution aversion. Consider this question: Should Americans be very worried about "intruder violence," committed by criminals who come into people's homes? You might think that the answer wouldn't depend on the respondent's attitude toward gun control. But it turns out that liberals express much more concern about intruder violence when they're told gun control would reduce such violence than when they're told gun control would increase it.

For decades, social psychologists have emphasized the pervasiveness of "motivated reasoning": If people really don't want to believe something, they will work hard to find a way not to believe it. Campbell and Kay draw on this idea by suggesting that people's willingness to believe a diagnosis often turns on the proposed course of treatment.

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