Monthly Archives: March 2021

Trust, media and technology: A conversation with Janet Coats at the University of Florida – Gainesville Sun

Posted: March 7, 2021 at 1:41 pm

Janet Coats has a daunting task as the first managing director of theConsortium on Trust in Media and Technology at the University of Florida: helping to mend the deep woundsin our civic life and head off the next pandemic of disinformation.

An interdisciplinarygroup of scholars have been studying these issues:how media and technology can become more trustworthy,and develop programs for the application of new knowledge and toolsand the creation of new policy and law, as its website frames the mission.

Coats has been on the job for less than three months. A former editor at the Sarasota Herald Tribune, more recently director forthe Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, and dean of faculty at Poynter, Coats brings more real-world experience and less of an academic background to therole.

Despite the dire circumstances for trust in media and technology, or perhaps because of this,the consortium has beenbuoyedbysome recent news beyond the arrival of its new director: a $2million gift from Gainesville developers Linda and Ken McGurnthat aligns with the fight against disinformation, and HiPerGator -- a supercomputer that has come online to providethe fastest artificial intelligence tool in higher education.

With all of that, Coats sat down for a Zoom conversation recently from her office at the UF College of Journalism and Communications where a new dean, Hub Brown, is set to over next month.

What is themission of the consortium?

To some degree,we are enteringa new phase to the consortium. There hasnt been apermanent.managing director.Sopart of my job is to figure out where we go from hereand how to build on the work of the people associated with the consortium to date.

There is so much conversation going on around trust. A lot of it is focused on things like media literacy and the platforms like Facebook and Twitter. That will be part of what werelookingat, but Im really trying to push us forward into things like artificial intelligence.

UFs new supercomputer gives an opportunity to look at AI and large data sets that other universities and journalism programs dont really have.Sotrying to think about how technology is moving, where its moving and what some of the new issues of trust might be.

It really feels like an inflection point, where some of theconversations about trust may be shifting.Theres certainly going to be more conversation about what regulation and access mean.And I also think theres going to be a different conversation about AI, machine learning and things like that. Both as ameansof surfacingmore factual information, and alsoas away of understanding where things are coming from.

My goalsright noware to look at those places where theuniquecapabilitieswe have with our research and our access to computing can help fill in the gaps.

Some of the things I was working on with my colleagues at Arizona State, we have aprogramthere on media literacy. I believe that is a really important element of this, but we are now where people can be reading from the same book, but theirinterpretation of it is completely different depending onwhereyouarecoming from

Jan. 6 is a great example of this. We call be sitting and watchingwhat isunfolding in front of us on the television screen, and the literacy people are bringing to this is very much informed by beliefsand peer groups, associations, where you are in the social media sphere. It is such a challenge to think we are all watching the same thing but seeing so differently.

How can the consortium address some of these challenges to civic trust?

In termsifwhat the consortium is focusedon,Iwant to be sure were not fighting the last battle. We did not see the kind of power and influence the platforms were going to have when they were first emerging. When I first went onto Facebook, it was cool to see my high school friends and what was going on with them. But it has morphed into this political and social firehose, commentary, and means to spread a lot of information and disinformation.

Some of our scholars are looking at things like interaction with political news and the psychology of how you come to information. We have to grapple with how traditional news coverage re-enforcessome of thedisenfranchisementof voices.The news is not reflective of a lot of peoples reality. Not only does it notreflectit, it suppresses it.

Its more than a common set of facts, its also about experiences. For instance, trust about health information. Some of that is based on very legitimate experiences with the medical system. We think about distrust of media, but there is a lot of institutional distrust that underpins thatthat is separate from news coverage.

Its not just in the media that things are moving so fast. Its in science and medicine.You think about the evolution of the vaccine.When the pandemic first began, the conversationwas that this can take years as you go through all the testing and safety procedures. And then for it to come so quickly.Just reading how scientists talk about that: in the last few years, in ways that werent obvious to people others than scientists working on this,the process hadaccelerated.Expectations about what waspossiblechanged even within the science community in ways the rest of us had not caught up to.

Trust is broken in our elections in ways that may be hard to fix within an election cycle.

"Were Floridians, so weve been living with can you trust an election, now for 20 years. Im still traumatized by hanging chads. Even the machinery of elections, the process, has all kinds of ways people mistrust things beyond the political information.

"Theres the how we convey information, and then trust in the institutions themselves. Theres interplay between those things of course."

Are you optimistic about where things are headed and the impacts the consortium can have?

"I have to be optimistic or I wouldnt do this. For me, this is theculminationof years and years of work as a journalist. Issues of trust are not new. We could see diminished trust in our work andpolarization. Thats picked up speed in thedigital age.

"I do think that intervention can make a difference. In one sense, I think an era ended (on Jan. 6), the first 20 years of being in a truly connected world. For a lot of people, the flaws in social media, the echo cambers, really became stark.

"Soin one way, Im optimistic that this is a chance to engage the conversation in a different way. And in a way thatreally gets into the rights andresponsibilitiespieces of this. For social media platforms, what should that look like in a regulatory environment?

"When the president getsdeplatformedon Twitter, different people look at that, some with cheers and some with arguments about taking the voice of the president out of the public square, or at least a corner of the public square.No matterwhere youcome down on that, the implications are broad and the conversation is one that is ripe."

Will that conversation happen in academic papers, in classroom lectures or in ways that are somehow more direct outreach to the community?

"One of the advantages of a college of journalism is that we can do all those things. Because it is interdisciplinary, were able to have collaborativerelationshipswith scholars all over the university.Sowe have that rigorous scholarship. We can take the current moment that were studying into the classroom. The students are teaching us. They are living in this world in a very different way than I do.

"Those of us who grew up with three channels on the television are never going to be native to this digital world. These young people will shape the dynamic. And the public scholarship is something that journalism educators do particularly well because were used to writing in the mainstream media.

"One of the things that Im eager to do is to get the consortium in that broader trust dialogue that is going among researchers and the broaderconversation among people who are navigating this world and wanting help with that.

What are the goal posts that will help you know youre heading in the right direction?

"Im still trying to find out where light switches are over here. There is a body of work to draw from, from what the scholarshave been pursing in their research, and I'm having conversations with them on what theyre learning and where we think we should go.

"Part of my job as managing director is to be just that, to manage consortium. I would never hold myself up to be an expert in this, certainly not in a scholarly way in understandingtrust. A lot of my job is bringing together the thinking of others and facilitating collaborations within UFand the business world too.The KPIs are going to come.

"As someone who watched the internet change the world inwayswe were slow to understand in the 90s, AI is that force now. The resources and commitment of UF has in place make that a real opportunity. The consortium stands right at the intersection of that: AI and technology, and how information is moving, and what that means for trust, and what that means for ways people communicate, share information and collect information. That is exciting to me."

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Technology really can be stranger than fiction at times – The Irish Times

Posted: at 1:41 pm

Ive been reading and rereading novels of the great writer Ursula K Le Guin over the past year, and they have had me thinking about the difficulty of writing about technologies that will (or wont) be in use in ones imagined future worlds.

Much has been written about the influence of science fiction on eventual science fact. Although writers and filmmakers create fanciful worlds, many of their tech fictions have shaped the actual technologies we end up with years later.

The topic even features in serious academic work. One 2018 study examined how often science fiction has been referenced in papers presented at a top international conference on human-computer interaction, noting: Sci-fi movies, shows or stories do provide an inspiration for the foremost and upcoming human-computer interaction challenges of our time, for example through the discussion of shape-changing interfaces, implantables or digital afterlife ethics.

When science fiction creates particularly compelling representations of future technologies, people remember them. Later on that fictional tech can seem an obvious way of realising the possibilities of real-world technologies when technical capabilities advance.

Star Trek is regularly referenced in this connection, and little wonder: the technologists designing the first 20th century iterations of personal tech were the 1960s kids who grew up with TV Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

No surprise then that mobile handsets might seem an obvious step along the way towards Trekian communicators, with the mid-90s Motorola flip clamshell model paying obvious homage in its StarTAC name.

Then there were the Enterprises touchscreens and its speaking computer. iPads and iPhones and Alexa and Siri, anyone?

Many years ago I interviewed a number of leading voice technology experts and every one referenced Star Trek and 2001 as inspirations. New generations of technologists will have a further half century of screen and fiction technologies to inspire tomorrows devices.

And yet it can take time for us to adapt to new technologies even when weve been given them in fictional format. Again take mobiles. For a lot of us (okay, me) who became the first generation of untethered mobile phone-users in the 1990s, a mobile sure didnt seem like an obvious mass market device.

Which brings me back to Le Guin. Ive been reading her novel The Lathe of Heaven, considered one of her best. Written in 1971 and set in Portland, Oregon, its a dystopian tale set (then) in a future in which climate change and overpopulation has created a bleak, impoverished world.

The climate element is eerily spot on. So-called cli-fi, a term coined in 2007 for climate-related fiction, might seem a more recent invention but step aside Al Gore Le Guin pretty much nailed the how and why of the reality we are living through. Her overpopulated earth is trying to accommodate seven billion people, a number weve surpassed.

The reader eventually discovers that events are unfolding in 2002. Yikes: in what is now our own past.

A minor detail has preoccupied me. On her future earth there are phones. But, jarringly, there arent mobile phones. Characters use landlines. They do not even have anything like an answering machine connected to the phone.

Plot elements involve people not answering their landlines. And yet there are other advanced technologies, such as a device that enables a researcher to manipulate the brain during sleep.

This landline-only futurescape creates an odd feeling of anachronism. By the 1980s the first mega-brick mobiles were in use by shouty financial sector yuppies. By 2002 about half the US population had a mobile phone.

Noticing this is not to critique Le Guin. Id wager science fiction writers do at least as well in guessing what might come next as professional futurologists, the people paid to apply their noggins to this task.

Instead what really intrigues me is how this case of the missing mobile phones exemplifies how hard it can be for any of us, much less the finest of science fiction writers, to imagine the mundanities of how long-standing technologies might morph into something utterly new.

Add in uncertainty about what the general public might want and use. And, of course, what technologists think people will use a device for is often not what it gets used for as writer William Gibson famously noted in a novel, the street finds its own uses for things.

In retrospect, the incremental microchip-enabled changes that replaced landlines with powerful pocket computers, where the ability to make a phone call is now a minor if useful feature, were neither obvious nor a foregone conclusion even in the 1990s, much less the 1970s.

Its the very human flip-side of the supposed science fiction predicts our future technologies truism. Sometimes futuristic fiction later foregrounds how hard it can be to see what is wrongly believed to be the obvious.

In this sense Le Guin makes me (as always) feel a bit more human this time (like the 1990s me) in really not having seen that amazing phone revolution coming at all.

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Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Engineering to Test Carbon Capture Technology at Technology Centre Mongstad in Norway – Business Wire

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TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Engineering (MHIENG), part of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) Group, has entered into an agreement with Technology Centre Mongstad (TCM) to test its proprietary solvent for capturing CO2 at the amine plant located in Mongstad, Norway. The test campaign will start in May.

The proprietary solvent to be tested is the KS-21TM, an amine-based adsorbent used in the Advanced KM CDR ProcessTM newly developed by MHIENG in collaboration with Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc. (KEPCO). Its long-term usage will be demonstrated in Norway, one of the worlds most advanced countries with respect to environmental regulations on CO2 capture, in a quest to achieve commercialization within 2021. Compared to the earlier KS-1TM solvent, which has been adopted at 13 commercial plants delivered by MHIENG, KS-21TM has a number of advantageous properties such as lower volatility and greater stability against degradation. The newer solvent is also expected to enable reduced running costs and other economic benefits.

At a time when CO2 capture needs are expanding in the United Kingdom and Europe, the test program at TCM, which has state-of-the-art facilities and specialized knowledge, will confirm KS-21TMs long-term durability and assess its environmental impact, thus providing MHIENG with technological data relating to its significantly higher CO2 capture rate. The test program will enable MHIENG to set a timetable for KS-21TMs commercialization, opening the way for the company to expand orders in the UK and European markets.

Since its establishment in 2012, TCM, equipped with the worlds largest-scale CO2 capture testing facilities, has provided users with profound knowledge, online analysis, and advanced analytical technologies relating to the trace components of gas emissions. Its data accumulated through testing exceed 1,000 categories and contribute significantly to commercialization of absorbents.

On reaching the new agreement with TCM, Kenji Terasawa, MHIENG President & CEO commented: MHI Group today is strengthening its efforts in the energy transition field, to help realize a carbon neutral world on a global scale. For many years, MHIENG has strived to minimize CO2 emissions from gas emissions, utilizing its cutting-edge technologies. Today we possess reliable and economically feasible carbon capture technologies supported by more than three decades of research and development activity and a robust track record of commercial plants around the world. TCMs abundant knowledge and experience in environmental impact assessment, and its state-of-the-art testing environment, will raise the level of our CO2 capture technologies further, enabling us to accelerate business expansion in the vital UK and European markets. We expect the new testing program will contribute to realizing carbon neutrality in the years ahead.

Ernst Petter Axelsen, CEO at TCM, also welcomed the new collaboration. Its very satisfying that a leading capture technology developer like MHIENG has chosen TCM as the arena for their carbon capture tests. Our staff is ready to ensure effective execution of the tests, and to provide expert advice throughout the campaign.

About KM CDR Process

MHI Group together with Kansai Electric Power Co, Inc. (KEPCO) started the development of the Kansai Mitsubishi Carbon Dioxide Recovery KM CDR Process, a post-combustion carbon capture technology, in 1990. As of February 2021, MHIENG has delivered a total of 13 commercial plants with the KM CDR Process, making it a global leader in carbon capture technology deployment. Two more plants are currently under construction.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PtnuRWOQAY&t=1s

TCM offers unique test facilities

TCMs test facilities for CO2 capture consist of an amine plant, a chilled ammonia plant, as well as an area for new, groundbreaking modular capture technologies. Both the amine and the chilled ammonia plants capture CO2 by means of a chemical liquid known as a solvent, consisting of a mix of water and either amine- or ammonia-based solutions. Starting in 2021, the site for modular technologies will be used for testing technologies such as membranes and adsorbents (solid materials that bind CO2).

TCM uses two different industrial live flue gas sources (fluidized catalytic cracker and combined cycle gas turbine) from Equinors refinery at Mongstad, with different content of CO2.

The amine plant is a unit with generic capabilities developed to serve as a demonstrator for solvent-based capture technologies. The unit has so far been utilized by five technology developers in addition to scientific testing using non-proprietary solvents (monoethanolamine and CESAR 1) for helping developments in the global carbon capture community.

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Tara Conley Awarded Stanford University Race and Technology Fellowship – Montclaire News

Posted: at 1:41 pm

March 4, 2021

Montclair State professor will develop digital toolkit to support young peoples advocacy campaigns for racial justice education in public schools

Posted in: Communication and Media, Research

Assistant Professor Tara L. Conley of Montclair State Universitys School of Communication and Media has been awarded the prestigious Race and Technology Fellowship by Stanford Universitys Digital Civil Society Lab and Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity.

Conley, a transmedia storytelling professor, is one of 14 scholars to receive the 2021 fellowship, which is awarded to exceptional social sector leaders around the world working on ideas to benefit civil society.

Her project will serve as a catalyst for change in Americas K-12 schools. Conley will work with students around the country to create Ruby a digital toolkit for youth activists and advocates of color to support civic campaigns that push for comprehensive and accurate Black and ethnic studies curricula in public schools nationwide.

Named for Ruby Bridges, the first African-American child in United States history to integrate a white elementary school in the South, the idea for the project was born during interviews Conley conducted with students specifically, the Okolo sisters, Nene (19) and Ekene (16) from San Diegos Poway Unified School District in the spring of 2020.

When I was researching and interviewing the Okolo sisters last year, I was inspired by their passion and tech-savvy approaches to engage the community and force school change at the local level, says Conley. I quickly learned they were among a growing group of young activists of color across the United States currently taking up the fight for equitable and accurate representation in school curricula.

The goal of Ruby is to address the challenges young activists currently confront as they develop digital advocacy campaigns. Ruby will address this challenge by providing interactive tools and resources that young activists like the Okolo sisters can use, distribute, and build off of to support their efforts for educational reforms in their local school districts.

These young people are in the midst of what I believe to be a paradigm shift in public school education across the U.S., says Conley. But they are also up against powerful institutional forces that are violently resistant to change, especially now, as the former administration worked to condemn educators, journalists and scholars who confront Americas so-called exceptional history.

Tara L. Conley is an interdisciplinary Black feminist scholar, media-maker and writer. Her scholarship centers Black life in the study and exploration of place, media histories and technoculture.

In 2013, she founded Hashtag Feminism to locate and archive feminist discourse by way of tracking Twitter hashtags on the web. In 2015, she produced a short documentary, Brackish, about life in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. Most recently, her reporting and creative nonfiction essays have appeared in Bloomberg, ZORA magazine, Parents magazine, Courier Newsroom, and in the anthology Black in the Middle: An Anthology of the Black Midwest. She is also the founder of Media Make Change, a media company that specializes in social justice storytelling through media production, strategic communications, curriculum development and research.

Im really excited about the potential impact of this project, says Conley. I have an amazing group of folks supporting me at Stanford, as well as the opportunity to help build a network of youth activists across the country. Ruby is coming at a moment when theres a strong desire from both the institution and community to make a difference. Im just really grateful to be part of this work while the stars are aligning.

Learn more about Tara Conleys scholarship and multimedia projects by visiting http://www.taralconley.org and http://www.mediamakechange.org.

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PAR Technology Corporation Releases Conference Call and Webcast Information for Fiscal 2020 Fourth Quarter & Year End Financial Results – Business…

Posted: at 1:41 pm

NEW HARTFORD, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--PAR Technology Corporation (NYSE:PAR) today announced that it will report its fourth quarter financial results on Monday, March 15, 2021. The results are scheduled to be released at 4:00 p.m. ET, followed by an investor presentation and conference call at 4:30 p.m. ET.

PAR Technology President and Chief Executive Officer Savneet Singh, Chief Financial Officer Bryan Menar and VP for Business Development, Christopher Byrnes will provide a business update and address questions from call participants.

To participate in the call, please call 844-419-5412, approximately 10 minutes in advance. No passcode is required to participate in the live call. Individual & Institutional Investors will have the opportunity to listen to the conference call/event over the internet by visiting the investor page on PARs website at http://www.partech.com/about-us/investors/. Alternatively, listeners may access an archived version of the presentation call after 7:30 p.m. on March 15 through March 22, 2021 by dialing 855-859-2056 and using conference ID 2996764.

PAR Technology looks forward to your participation in this conference call. Please call Tiffani Temple at 315-738-0600 x 6325 with any questions.

About PAR Technology Corporation.

PAR Technology Corporation through its wholly owned subsidiary ParTech, Inc., is a customer success-driven, global restaurant and retail technology company with over 100,000 restaurants in more than 110 countries using its point of sale hardware and software. ParTechs Brink POS integration ecosystem enables quick service, fast casual, table service, and cloud restaurants to improve their operational efficiency by combining its cloud-based POS software with the worlds leading restaurant technology platforms. PAR Technologys Government segment is a leader in providing computer-based system design, engineering and technical services to the Department of Defense and various federal agencies PAR Technologys stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol PAR. For more information, visit http://www.partech.com or connect with PAR Technology on Facebook or Twitter.

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Skeleton Technologies to enter Asian automotive market through strategic cooperation with and investment from Marubeni | Graphene-Info – Graphene-Info

Posted: at 1:41 pm

Skeleton Technologies, Estonia-based manufacturer of graphene-enhanced supercapacitors, and Marubeni Corporation, one of Japans largest conglomerates, have signed a strategic cooperation agreement to support commercial scale-up and customer acquisition for Skeletons supercapacitors in the Asian automotive sector, with a strong focus on electrified vehicles and hydrogen transportation.

As part of this agreement, Marubeni Corporation also made an equity investment on top of the 41.3 million Series D financing round announced by Skeleton in November 2020. The sum of Marubenis investment was not disclosed.

The cooperation will primarily focus on the SuperBattery product line, which has 15-second charging capability and hundreds of thousands of deep charge/discharge cycles. In addition, Skeleton Technologies and Marubeni Corporation also aim to cooperate on new applications for curved graphene, Skeletons patented material enabling the companys technological and competitive advantages.

Enabling carbon-neutral electrification is a key priority for Marubeni Corporation. Skeleton Technologies fits perfectly in our portfolio as they fill the gap for high-power, extremely long high-cycles, and efficient energy storage devices, said Masayuki Omoto, COO of Next Generation Business Development Division of Marubeni Corporation.

According to Omoto, Skeleton has validated its competitive advantage in real-life applications and has shown strong commercial traction. We are delighted to back Skeleton because we see that, besides their technological advantage, they are going after scale as evidenced by their participation in the 3 billion European Battery Innovation project alongside companies such as Tesla and BMW, Omoto noted.

Skeleton Technologies is currently investing in technology development and scaling up a new product line for the automotive sector. The cooperation with Marubeni covers Asia, excluding China and India, and will offer new resources to commercialize Skeletons graphene-based SuperBattery. This new energy storage solution is the ideal complementary technology for lithium-ion batteries and hydrogen fuel cells, improving overall system efficiency and performance.

Our cooperation [with Marubeni] will drive the Asian automotive markets adoption of our technology in the near future as the cost down will be much faster than for lithium-ion batteries, stated Taavi Madiberk, CEO and co-founder of Skeleton Technologies.

While having a strong focus on the expanding electrified and hydrogen-based transportation market, Skeleton and Marubeni will also cooperate on new applications of Skeletons patented curved graphene material, the key enabling technology behind Skeletons supercapacitors performance advantage.

We have been cooperating with Marubeni for many years in introducing Estonian tech companies for investment purposes, noted Kaspar Kork, Director of Estonian Investment Agency, which helped to land the Japanese investment in Estonia. This is an extremely important investment for the Estonian CleanTech sector, which will open up the Asian market to Skeleton. Skeleton is a good example of how the combination of business experience and science creates synergy in Estonia, leading a company started as a spin-off and its unique product to the world market, Kork added.

Skeleton works with some of the largest companies in the world from leading Tier One automotive firms and industrial equipment OEMs to truck fleet operators and aerospace prime contractors to decrease CO2 emissions and fuel consumption, to improve power quality and protect equipment and infrastructure from power peaks, and to power electrification to fight climate change.

Skeleton Technologies Group has three main locations: its manufacturing in Grorhrsdorf, Saxony, Germany, materials development in Bitterfeld-Wolfen, Saxony-Anhalt and electrical engineering in Tallinn, Estonia. From its foundation in 2009, the company has grown from 4 to more than 140 people.

We established Marubeni Corporation Tallinn Office in 2019 to find investment and collaboration opportunities in Estonia. Estonia has one of the densest startup ecosystems around the world with many unique valued technology companies and supportive enablers like Estonian Investment Agency. We believe this strategic cooperation with Skeleton will be a good case of collaboration between Estonian companies and us, adding value through the cooperation, said Takao Fukuoka, General Manager of Marubeni Corporation Tallinn Office.

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Nine Masts Capital Selects Bare Cove Technology as Their Cloud Technology Partner – Business Wire

Posted: at 1:41 pm

HONG KONG--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Bare Cove Technology (BCT) is pleased to announce that Nine Masts Capital has successfully migrated to Bare Cove Technologys fully managed, cloud-hosted IT services platform. In addition to cloud hosting and IT support, Nine Masts has engaged BCT on an ongoing basis to provide CTO consultancy, cyber security advisory, and software development services.

Nine Masts believes investment in technology is key to staying competitive and furthering our growth strategy. BCTs commitment to innovation, cloud-based collaboration, and strategic technology decision-making made them the obvious path forward, said Alain Bordoni, Head of the Non-Investment Team at Nine Masts Capital. The BCT team managed our complex migration with calm professionalism and reliability. They continue to impress us with their commitment to high-quality engineering and support, continued Bordoni.

We are honoured Nine Masts Capital trusts us as their primary technology partner, said Emily Randall, Chief Executive Officer of Bare Cove Technology. We look forward to helping them drive their innovative technology strategy forward.

About Bare Cove Technology

Bare Cove Technology (BCT) is an award-winning IT and cybersecurity solutions provider. Our team is made up of proven leaders in the fields of cybersecurity, software development, cloud technologies, and IT infrastructure and design. Based in Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia, BCT supports the top asset managers in the Asia Pacific region, helping our clients meet the evolving expectations of institutional investors and global regulators.

To learn more about Bare Cove Technology, contact info@barecovetech.com or visit https://www.barecovetech.com.

About Nine Masts Capital Management

Launched in May 2010, Nine Masts Capital Management deploys market neutral, relative value related strategies with a focus on the Asia Pacific region through liquid trading activities predominantly across equity, credit and volatility asset classes.

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In the Space.com forums this week: Perseverance prizes, exploration and breaking theories! – Space.com

Posted: at 1:39 pm

This week, we kick off our Perseverance Prize giveaway. Celebrating space exploration even further, we talk about the next frontiers we'd like to see explored. Finally, community members take on a mind-bending theory about alternate universes!

If you haven't already, make sure to register for the Space.com forums and join a community of like minded space enthusiasts! Youll be able to join our launch watch parties and be the first to know about upcoming giveaways, AMAs and more!

Our latest giveaway kicked off this week, offering up a pack of commemorative prizes. One lucky winner will be walking away with:

All you have to do is follow the instructions over at this thread. Remember, following each step makes sure your entry is valid!

Our Community Question this week focused on preparing for space exploration. Suppose you were getting for a journey to a very distant planet, one that would mean a years worth of travel each way. What would you bring with you? The community came up with some fascinating answers:

Software to analyze the now very bright blue-shifted objects ahead of us, which were too dim for Earth scopes. Such relativistic speeds greatly brighten on-coming objects.

Extra Cheetos. - Helio

I would take Elon Musk with me. He would know how and where to navigate, getting us there safely and returning safely. He would make a great space partner. Plus, he'd be cool to hang out with! - Pearl

A very large amount of digital media including music, books and photographs and devices to use it. Toothbrushes with toothpaste to last two plus years and as much toilet paper I can carry. A handball and football if gravity is simulated along with my favorite baseball cap. Also if I could I would take extra fuel. - richWorld

Check out the rest of the thread here.

There arent very many things that can sink you down a rabbit hole the way that thinking about infinity can. However, what if a community of math aficionados and space enthusiasts got together and, say, debated it? How do you debate infinity, you ask?

Here's just a taste of the conversation:

Well infinity is a big number 🙂 Consider the universe size in the BB model, only 46.5 billion light years radius, How Big Is the Universe?

Presently telescopes can only see out to about 13.5 billion light-years from Earth (z ~ 12) so that leaves 33 billion more light-years presently not observable. Now this discussion introduces an infinite number of universes.

How do you plan to observe those infinite numbers of universes from Earth? - Rod

Rod

"How do you plan to observe those infinite numbers of universes from Earth?"

Who says that is possible? - Catastrophe

Head over to this thread for more.

The prevalence of extraterrestrial life.

Shooting asteroids for practice.

Bending the laws of physics.

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In the Space.com forums this week: Perseverance prizes, exploration and breaking theories! - Space.com

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Take Math to Mars and Beyond With NASA’s Pi Day Challenge – Teachable Moments | NASA/JPL Edu – NASA/JPL Edu News

Posted: at 1:39 pm

Learn about pi and the history of Pi Day before exploring some of the ways the number is used at NASA. Then, try the math for yourself in our Pi Day Challenge.

Captured on Oct. 20, 2020, during the OSIRIS-REx missions Touch-And-Go (TAG) sample collection event, this series of images shows the SamCam imagers field of view as the NASA spacecraft approached and touched asteroid Bennus surface. Image credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona | Full image and caption

In this illustration, NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter stands on the Red Planet's surface as NASA's Perseverance rover (partially visible on the left) rolls away. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech | Full image and caption

This artist's concept shows what Deep Space Station-23, a new antenna dish capable of supporting both radio wave and laser communications, will look like when completed at the Deep Space Network's Goldstone, California, complex. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech | + Expand image

Expedition 52 Flight Engineer Jack Fischer of NASA shared photos and time-lapse video of a glowing green aurora seen from his vantage point 250 miles up, aboard the International Space Station. This aurora photo was taken on June 26, 2017. Image credit: NASA | Full image and caption

As March 14 approaches, its time to get ready to celebrate Pi Day! Its the annual holiday that pays tribute to the mathematical constant pi the number that results from dividing any circle's circumference by its diameter.

Pi Day comes around only once a year, giving us a reason to chow down on our favorite sweet and savory pies while we appreciate the mathematical marvel that helps NASA explore Earth, the solar system, and beyond. Theres no better way to observe this day than by getting students exploring space right along with NASA by doing the math in our Pi Day Challenge. Keep reading to find out how students and you can put their math mettle to the test and solve real problems faced by NASA scientists and engineers as they explore the cosmos!

Dividing any circles circumference by its diameter gives us pi, which is often rounded to 3.14. However, pi is an irrational number, meaning its decimal representation goes on forever and never repeats. Pi has been calculated to 50 trillion digits, but NASA uses far fewer for space exploration.

Some people may think that a circle has no points. In fact, a circle does have points, and knowing what pi is and how to use it is far from pointless. Pi is used for calculating the area and circumference of circular objects and the volume of shapes like spheres and cylinders. So it's useful for everyone from farmers storing crops in silos to manufacturers of water storage tanks to people who want to find the best value when ordering a pizza. At NASA, we use pi to find the best place to touch down on Mars, study the health of Earth's coral reefs, measure the size of a ring of planetary debris light years away, and lots more.

In the United States, one format to write March 14 is 3.14, which is why we celebrate on that date. In 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution officially designating March 14 as Pi Day and encouraging teachers and students to celebrate the day with activities that teach students about pi. And you're in luck, because that's precisely what the NASA Pi Day Challenge is all about.

This year, the NASA Pi Day Challenge offers up four brain-ticklers that will require students to use pi to collect samples from an asteroid, fly a helicopter on Mars for the first time, find efficient ways to talk with distant spacecraft, and study the forces behind Earth's beautiful auroras. Learn more about the science and engineering behind the problems below or click the link below to jump right into the challenge. Be sure to check back on March 15 for the answers to this years challenge.

Take the NASA Pi Day Challenge

Educators, get the lesson here!

NASAs OSIRIS-REx mission has flown to an asteroid and collected a sample of surface material to bring back to Earth. (It will arrive back at Earth in 2023.) The mission is designed to help scientists understand how planets form and add to what we know about near-Earth asteroids, like the one visited by OSIRIS-REx, asteroid Bennu. Launched in 2016, OSIRIS-REx began orbiting Bennu in 2018 and successfully performed its maneuver to retrieve a sample on October 20, 2020. In the Sample Science problem, students use pi to determine how much of the spacecraft's sample-collection device needs to make contact with the surface of Bennu to meet mission requirements for success.

Joining the Perseverance rover on Mars is the first helicopter designed to fly on another planet. Named Ingenuity, the helicopter is a technology demonstration, meaning it's a test to see if a similar device could be used for a future Mars mission. To achieve the first powered flight on another planet, Ingenuity must spin its blades at a rapid rate to generate lift in Mars thin atmosphere. In Twirly Whirly, students use pi to compare the spin rate of Ingenuitys blades to those of a typical helicopter on Earth.

NASA uses radio signals to communicate with spacecraft across the solar system and in interstellar space. As more and more data flows between Earth and these distant spacecraft, NASA needs new technologies to improve how quickly data can be received. One such technology in development is Deep Space Optical Communications, which will use near-infrared light instead of radio waves to transmit data. Near-infrared light, with its higher frequency than radio waves, allows for more data to be transmitted per second. In Signal Solution, students can compare the efficiency of optical communication with radio communication, using pi to crunch the numbers.

Earths magnetic field extends from within the planet to space, and it serves as a protective shield, blocking charged particles from the Sun. Known as the solar wind, these charged particles of helium and hydrogen race from the Sun at hundreds of miles per second. When they reach Earth, they would bombard our planet and orbiting satellites were it not for the magnetic field. Instead, they are deflected, though some particles become trapped by the field and are directed toward the poles, where they interact with the atmosphere, creating auroras. Knowing how Earths magnetic field shifts and how particles interact with the field can help keep satellites in safe orbits. In Force Field, students use pi to calculate how much force a hydrogen atom would experience at different points along Earths magnetic field.

Pi Day is a fun and engaging way to get students thinking like NASA scientists and engineers. By solving the NASA Pi Day Challenge problems below, reading about other ways NASA uses pi, and doing the related activities, students can see first hand how math is an important part of STEM.

Plus, join the conversation using the hashtag #NASAPiDayChallenge on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

TAGS: Pi, Pi Day, NASA Pi Day Challenge, Math, Mars, Perseverance, Ingenuity, Mars Helicopter, OSIRIS-REx, Bennu, Asteroid, Auroras, Earth, Magnetic Field, DSOC, Light Waves, DSN, Deep Space Network, Space Communications

Lyle Tavernier, Educational Technology Specialist, NASA/JPL Edu

Lyle Tavernier is an educational technology specialist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. When hes not busy working in the areas of distance learning and instructional technology, you might find him running with his dog, cooking or planning his next trip.

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Take Math to Mars and Beyond With NASA's Pi Day Challenge - Teachable Moments | NASA/JPL Edu - NASA/JPL Edu News

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Opinion: Spending on space is wasteful. The Appalachian – The Appalachian Online

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Opinion: Spending on space is wasteful. The Appalachian

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Since NASAs Perseverance Rover landed on Mars last week, it seems like space has been on everyones minds. Theres no doubt about it, space is cool. The idea that we are one tiny speck in the ever-expanding universe is hard to wrap our heads around, but humans are naturally curious creatures so we are inclined to try. The U.S. may be a prominent figure in space exploration but is sending robots into space the best use of our tax dollars, especially with the serious challenges our country faces such as COVID, climate change and income inequality?

Since the founding of NASA in 1958 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, federal dollars have been going toward researching and exploring space. A little over a decade later, the U.S. landed a man on the moon or maybe not depending on who you ask. Space exploration is incredible, but we have to remember that NASAs funding comes from the pockets of everyday Americans.

The U.S. is the richest country in the world, but thats not to say it doesnt have problems. In 2020, more than 50 million Americans experienced food insecurity, which increased due to COVID-19. Closer to home, Watauga County experienced a food insecurity rate of 16.8% last year. The pandemic has been hard on Americans and food insecurity is just one example of how people are struggling.

With people struggling to eat in the richest country in the world, is exploring space how our tax dollars should be spent? About 5.9% of the federal budget is spent on Medicare and healthcare, 5.7% is spent on housing and community and 6.3% on education. Spending for these programs is in the single digits so where is all our money going? The military which receives over half of all discretionary spending. Of course, Americas outrageous military spending is a whole different issue. Only 0.5% of the federal budget goes to NASA but 0.5% of a $4.5 trillion budget is a lot of money, $23.3 billion this year to be exact.

$23.3 billion is a lot of money for NASA, which has little to no direct impact on everyday Americans lives. Sure, space is cool to learn about and the advancement of science and technology is very important, but parents who cant feed their children probably dont care about some rocks on Mars.

NASA should not be a priority when issues such as poverty, food insecurity and homelessness exist in America. Our tax dollars should be spent on us improving our infrastructure, helping the poor, bettering education and solving climate change. To be clear, government funding for research is very important and NASA should not be abandoned. Knowledge should be accessible and space shouldnt be treated like a personal playground for the ultra-rich. Right now we need to focus on fixing the problems here on Earth before we try to figure out the age-old mysteries of space.

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Opinion: Spending on space is wasteful. The Appalachian - The Appalachian Online

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