Category: Travel

  • SailGP making hay while America’s Cup heads for the courts – Sailweb

    Upstart America’s Cup rival SailGP is making hay while the America’s Cup disolves into its usual in-fighting scenario that is the norm for the old Mug between events.Russell Coutts, co-founder of the SailGP circuit with US software billionaire Larry Ellison, recently told SportBusiness.com that the SailGP circuit, would become profitable once a title sponsorship for the series is signed.The target is ten teams for the full SailGP circuit, which currently stands at eight teams with a ninth team signed, leaving just one franchise available.SailGP currently has eight international venues signed-up for the two-day racing events.

    Source: SailGP making hay while America’s Cup heads for the courts – Sailweb

  • Is deep-sea mining a cure for the climate crisis or a curse? | Mining | The Guardian

    Supported byAbout this contentSun 29 Aug 2021 10.00 BSTIn a display cabinet in the recently opened Our Broken Planet exhibition in London’s Natural History Museum, curators have placed a small nugget of dark material covered with faint indentations. The blackened lump could easily be mistaken for coal. Its true nature is much more intriguing, however.The nugget is a polymetallic nodule and oceanographers have discovered trillions of them litter Earth’s ocean floors. Each is rich in manganese, nickel, cobalt and copper, some of the most important ingredients for making the electric cars, wind turbines and solar panels that we need to replace the carbon-emitting lorries, power plants and factories now wrecking our climate.These metallic morsels could therefore help humanity save itself from the ravages of global warming, argue mining companies who say their extraction should be rated an international priority. By dredging up nodules from the deep we can slow the scorching of our planet’s ravaged surface.“We desperately need substantial amounts of manganese, nickel, cobalt and copper to build electric cars and power plants,” says Hans Smit, chief executive of Florida’s Oceans Minerals, which has announced plans to mine for nodules. “We cannot increase land supplies of these metals without having a significant environmental impact. The only alternative lies in the ocean.”Other researchers disagree – vehemently. They say mining deep-sea nodules would be catastrophic for our already stressed, plastic-ridden, overheated oceans. Delicate, long-living denizens of the deep – polychaete worms, sea cucumbers, corals and squid – would be obliterated by dredging. At the same time, plumes of sediments, laced with toxic metals, would be sent spiralling upwards to poison marine food-chains.“It is hard to imagine how seabed mines could feasibly operate without devastating species and ecosystems,” says UK marine biologist Helen Scales – a view shared by David Attenborough, who has called for a moratorium on all deep-sea mining plans. “Mining means destruction and in this case it means the destruction of an ecosystem about which we know pathetically little,” he says.It is a highly polarised dispute. On one side, proponents of nodule extraction claim it could save the world, while opponents warn it could unleash fresh ecological mayhem. For better or worse, these mineral spheres are going to play a critical role in determining our future – either by extricating us from our current ecological woes or by triggering even more calamitous outcomes.

    Source: Is deep-sea mining a cure for the climate crisis or a curse? | Mining | The Guardian

  • Supporting the future of computer science with the 2021 Google PhD Fellowships

    Since 2009, Google has been supporting top graduate students who want to make an impact on the future of technology. The Google PhD Fellowship program recognises candidates doing important and innovative research in computer science and related fields. In Australia and New Zealand, the program focuses on early-stage candidates. Winners receive fellowships which include a monetary award of $15,000 AUD to cover stipend and other research related activities, as well as a Google Mentor who works on topics related to their field of study and provides guidance. In 2021, we’re pleased to announce four new PhD students in Australia who have been awarded fellowships for their outstanding efforts. Sampson Wong, Google PhD Fellowship in Algorithms, Optimisations and Markets, The University of Sydney”Transport networks require regular monitoring and maintenance to sustain a high level of operability. As networks grow and as technologies improve, there is a rising demand for data-driven analysis of transport network data. This has resulted in governments and companies developing domain-specific tools to provide its citizens and users with the best recommendations. The speed and quality of these tools depend greatly on their fundamental building blocks. The goal of my thesis is to develop efficient algorithms for fundamental problems involving geometric movement data on transport networks. We use clustering and other algorithmic methods to detect commuting patterns in geometric movement data, and to select beneficial upgrades for a transport network.”Theekshana Dissanayake, Google PhD Fellowship in Machine Learning, QUT”Deep learning has shown great success in solving biosignal-based medical diagnostic problems. However, present solutions cannot generalise across multiple datasets captured from different experimental settings. Furthermore, the black-box nature of current solutions hinders the trust associated with the predictions made from a clinical perspective. This PhD research focuses on the generalisability and interpretability of deep learning models designed for biosignal-based medical diagnostics and considers both single and multi-channel biosignals (such as heart signals and brain signals using EEG and ECG).”Xinlong Wang, Google PhD Fellowship in Machine Perception, Speech Technology and Computer Vision, The University of AdelaideXinlong’s research interests lie in computer vision and machine learning, specifically  in enabling machines to see and understand the environment. Xinlong’s research focuses on object-level recognition, including 2D/3D/video object detection and instance segmentation.Yun Li, Google PhD Fellowship in Machine Learning, University of New South Wales “Deep learning has been demonstrating the potential to significantly revolutionise the practice of medicine and the delivery of healthcare. However, low volume, high sparsity, and poor quality of healthcare data and their diverse contexts may limit the efficacy of deep learning methods. In my research, we aim to develop a suite of robust and versatile few-shot machine learning methods to effectively discover personalised, transferable insightful knowledge with very limited data. Specifically, we have identified and proposed the solutions to 1) data-efficient methods for genomics sequencing; 2) medical image argumentation, 3) hierarchical multi-view data analysis; and 4) tinnitus diagnosis. We will continue to improve the explainability, transparency, and personalisation for better clinical translation. Our studies will have a broader impact on a wide range of practical scenarios such as genome study, medical diagnosis, drug discovery, and disease treatment.”In supporting these Australian Fellows we recognise their significant academic achievements and hope that they will go on to be leaders in their respective fields. We look forward to building even stronger links between industry and academia to help support important research in Australia. You can find out more about the Google PhD Fellowship program here

    Source: Supporting the future of computer science with the 2021 Google PhD Fellowships

  • The Scandalous Decision to Pickle Admiral Horatio Nelson in Brandy – Gastro Obscura

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    IN THE MIDDLE OF THE Napoleonic War, Britain’s most famous naval hero is struck by a fatal musket ball at the very moment of his greatest strategic triumph. Rather than bury his body at sea, a quick-thinking Irish surgeon preserves it in a cask of brandy lashed to the deck of the ship. A hurricane is on the horizon and the mast has been shot off; there is no way to hang the sails that would get ship (and body) to England quickly.The two words that stand out in this story? Brandy and surgeon.The scenario described is the death of Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, a moment so central to Britain’s story of itself that in a 2002 BBC poll, Nelson placed number eight on a list of 100 Greatest Britons—slightly behind Elizabeth I and ahead of Sir Isaac Newton and William Shakespeare. His monument in Trafalgar Square, a 169-foot-tall column surrounded by larger-than-life brass lions, is such a key British emblem that Hitler planned to take it back to Berlin as a trophy once he conquered London.

    Source: The Scandalous Decision to Pickle Admiral Horatio Nelson in Brandy – Gastro Obscura

  • #Elxn44: Transition Discussion Drills Down to Fossil Exec’s Dinner Table – The Energy Mix

    Just days before Liberal leader Justin Trudeau made a campaign promise to institute a C$2-billion just transition fund for oil and gas workers, one of Canada’s top fossil executive acknowledged that that transition has already reached her own household, with Shell Canada President Susannah Pierce telling The Canadian Press her children aren’t interested in following […]

    Source: #Elxn44: Transition Discussion Drills Down to Fossil Exec’s Dinner Table – The Energy Mix

  • 17 Small Towns in Europe to Add to Your Bucket List | Travel + Leisure

    For every Paris, Rome, and London, there are hundreds of small European towns that capture the spirit of their particular nation. From an itty-bitty Icelandic outpost surrounded by jaw-dropping scenery to an ancient seaside settlement on the Black Sea, here are 17 small towns in Europe to add to your travel list.

    Source: 17 Small Towns in Europe to Add to Your Bucket List | Travel + Leisure

  • Helping people and businesses learn how Search works

    Every day, billions of people come to Google to search for questions big and small. Whether it’s finding a recipe, looking for a local coffee shop or searching for information on complex topics like health, civics or finance, Google Search helps you get the information you need — when you need it. But part of accomplishing our mission also means making information open and accessible about how Google Search, itself, works. That’s why we’re transparent about how we design Search, how we improve it and how it works to get you the information you’re looking for. Like many of the topics you might search for on Google, Search can seem complicated — but we make it easy to learn about. Here are a few ways you can get a better understanding of how Google Search works:A one-stop shopToday, we’re launching a fully-redesigned How Search Works website that explains the ins and outs of Search — how we approach the big, philosophical questions, along with the nitty-gritty details about how it all works. We first launched this website in 2016, and since then, millions of people have used it to discover more about how Search works. Now, we’ve updated the site with fresh information, made it easier to navigate and bookmark sections and added links to additional resources that share how Search works and answer common questions.The website gives you a window into what happens from the moment you start typing in the search bar to the moment you get your search results. It gives an overview of the technology and work that goes into organizing the world’s information, understanding what you’re looking for and then connecting you with the most relevant, helpful information.On the site, you can find details about how Google’s ranking systems sort through hundreds of billions of web pages and other content in our Search index — looking at factors like meaning, relevance, quality, usability and context — to present the most relevant, useful results in a fraction of a second. And you can learn about how we go about making improvements to Search. (There have been 4,500 such improvements in 2020 alone!) As you’ll read about, we rigorously test these changes with the help of thousands of Search Quality Raters all around the world — people who are highly trained using our extensive guidelines. These rater guidelines are publicly available, and they describe in great detail how Search works to surface great content.

    Source: Helping people and businesses learn how Search works

  • The Shadow Docket

    The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington.Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times
    Rulings without explanations
    The Supreme Court opinion allowing Texas to ban nearly all abortions was different from most major rulings by the court.
    This one came out shortly before midnight on Wednesday. It consisted of a single paragraph, not signed by the justices who voted for it and lacking the usual detailed explanation of their reasoning. And there had been no oral arguments, during which opposing lawyers could have made their cases and answered questions from the justices.
    Instead, the opinion was part of something that has become known as “the shadow docket.” In the shadow docket, the court makes decisions quickly, without the usual written briefings, oral arguments or signed opinions. In recent years, the shadow docket has become a much larger part of the Supreme Court’s work.
    Shadow-docket rulings have shaped policy on voting rights, climate change, birth control, Covid-19 restrictions and more. Last month, the justices issued shadow decisions forcing the Biden administration to end its eviction moratorium and to reinstate a Trump administration immigration policy. “The cases affect us at least as much as high-profile cases we devote so much attention to,” Stephen Vladeck, a University of Texas law professor, told me.
    Shadow-docket cases are frequently those with urgency — such as a voting case that must be decided in the final weeks before an election. As a result, the justices don’t always have time to solicit briefs, hold oral arguments and spend months grappling with their decision. Doing so can risk irreparable harm to one side in the case.
    For these reasons, nobody questions the need for the court to issue some expedited, bare-bones rulings. But many legal experts are worried about how big the shadow docket has grown, including in cases that the Supreme Court could have decided in a more traditional way.
    “Shadow docket orders were once a tool the court used to dispense with unremarkable and legally unambiguous matters,” Moira Donegan wrote in The Guardian. “In recent years the court has largely dispensed with any meaningful application of the irreparable harm standard.”
    Why the shadow docket has grown
    Why have the justices expanded the shadow docket?
    In part, it is a response to a newfound willingness by lower courts to issue decisions that apply to the entire country, as my colleague Charlie Savage explains. By acting quickly, the Supreme Court can retain its dominant role.
    But there is also a political angle. Shadow-docket cases can let the court act quickly and also shield individual justices from criticism: In the latest abortion case, there is no signed opinion for legal scholars to pick apart, and no single justice is personally associated with the virtual end of legal abortion in Texas. The only reason that the public knows the precise vote — 5 to 4 — is that the four justices in the minority each chose to release a signed dissent.
    Critics argue that judges in a democracy owe the public more transparency. “This idea of unexplained, unreasoned court orders seems so contrary to what courts are supposed to be all about,” Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a Harvard law professor, has said. “If courts don’t have to defend their decisions, then they’re just acts of will, of power.”
    During a House hearing on the shadow docket in February, members of both parties criticized its growth. “Knowing why the justices selected certain cases, how each of them voted, and their reasoning is indispensable to the public’s trust in the court’s integrity,” Representative Henry Johnson Jr., a Georgia Democrat, said. Representative Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, said, “I am a big fan of judges and justices making clear who’s making the decision, and I would welcome reforms that required that.”
    The shadow docket also leaves lower-court judges unsure about what exactly the Supreme Court has decided and how to decide similar cases they later hear. “Because the lower-court judges don’t know why the Supreme Court does what it does, they sometimes divide sharply when forced to interpret the court’s nonpronouncements,” writes William Baude, a University of Chicago law professor and former clerk for Chief Justice John Roberts. Baude coined the term “shadow docket.”
    Six vs. three
    The court’s six Republican-appointed justices are driving the growth of the shadow docket, and it is consistent with their overall approach to the law. They are often (though not always) willing to be aggressive, overturning longstanding precedents, in campaign finance, election law, business regulation and other areas. The shadow docket expands their ability to shape American society.
    The three Democratic-appointed justices, for their part, have grown frustrated by the trend. In her dissent this week, Justice Elena Kagan wrote, “The majority’s decision is emblematic of too much of this court’s shadow-docket decision making — which every day becomes more unreasoned, inconsistent and impossible to defend.” In an interview with my colleague Adam Liptak last week, Justice Stephen Breyer said: “I can’t say never decide a shadow-docket thing. … But be careful.”
    Roberts also evidently disagrees with the use of the shadow docket in the Texas abortion case. In his dissent, joining the three liberal justices, he said the court could instead have blocked the Texas law while it made its way through the courts. That the court chose another path means that abortion is now all but illegal in the nation’s second-largest state.
    The justices are likely to settle the question in a more lasting way next year. They will hear oral arguments this fall in a Mississippi abortion case — the more traditional kind, outside the shadows — and a decision is likely by June.
    For more on the Texas abortion law:
    Republican lawmakers in Arkansas, Florida and South Dakota pledged to enact similar legislation.“Patients are crying. There’s a lot of anxiety and frustration,” one Planned Parenthood director said. Public opinion will play a greater role in shaping abortion policy. Here are the restrictions most Americans favor.

  • NYC Opens First Whiskey Distillery Since Prohibition – Robb Report

    It’s taken over a century, but the Big Apple finally has itself another whiskey distillery.This past Saturday, the Great Jones Distilling Co. opened its doors to the public in Manhattan’s NoHo neighborhood. It’s the borough’s first since Prohibition, a time when visiting a distillery was a much different (and illegal) proposition. But the building is more than just a place where whiskey is made, it’s a carefully curated experience for spirits enthusiasts.The journey begins when you step foot into the opulent Jazz Age-style atrium near the corner of Great Jones Street. Across the building’s 28,000 square feet and four stories, you’ll find an in-operation distillery, a restaurant, four distinct bars and a gift shop. You can take a tour of the distillery and follow it up with a guided tasting of the brand’s three spirits—a well-balanced straight bourbon, a complex four-grain bourbon and a peppery rye—while sitting at its elegant second-floor bar. Then, to close things off, you can buy a bottle of your favorite or all three (only the straight bourbon is available for purchase outside the distillery) on your way out the door.

    Source: NYC Opens First Whiskey Distillery Since Prohibition – Robb Report

  • Venice To Require Reservations, Entry Fee Starting Next Summer – TravelAwaits

    Officials have approved several measures designed to cut down on the crush of tourists flocking to the city. In addition to an entry fee which will be collected via electronic turnstiles, reservations will be required during busy tourist seasons.

    Source: Venice To Require Reservations, Entry Fee Starting Next Summer – TravelAwaits