Category Archives: Singularity

Although the coronavirus pandemic has dominated recent headlines, climate change hasnt gone away. Many experts are calling for a green economic recovery that directs investments into low-carbon energy sources and technologies.

Buildings account for 40 percent of total energy consumption in the US, compared to 32 percent for industry and 28 percent for transportation. States and cities with ambitious climate action plans are working to reduce emissions from the building sector to zero. This means maximizing energy efficiency to reduce building energy use, and then supplying the remaining energy needs with electricity generated by carbon-free sources.

My colleagues and I study the best ways to rapidly reduce carbon emissions from the building sector. In recent years, construction designs have advanced dramatically. Net zero energy buildings, which produce the energy they need on site from renewable sources, increasingly are the default choice. But to speed the transition to zero carbon emissions, I believe the US must think bigger and focus on designing or redeveloping entire communities that are zero energy.

Tackling energy use in buildings at the district level provides economies of scale. Architects can deploy large heat pumps and other equipment to serve multiple buildings on a staggered schedule across the day. Districts that bring homes, places of work, restaurants, recreation centers, and other services together in walkable communities also significantly reduce the energy needed for transportation. In my view, this growing movement will play an increasingly important role in helping the US and the world address the climate crisis.

Heating and cooling are the biggest energy uses in buildings. District design strategies can address these loads more efficiently.

District heating has long been used in Europe, as well as on some US college and other campuses. These systems typically have a central plant that burns natural gas to heat water, which then is circulated to the various buildings.

To achieve zero carbon emissions, the latest strategy uses a design known as an ambient temperature loop that simultaneously and efficiently both heats and cools different buildings. This concept was first developed for the Whistler Olympic Village in British Columbia.

In a typical ambient loop system, a pump circulates water through an uninsulated pipe network buried below the frost line. At this depth, the soil temperature is near that of the yearly average air temperature for that location. As water moves through the pipe, it warms or cools toward this temperature.

Heat pumps at individual buildings or other points along the ambient loop add or extract heat from the loop. They can also move heat between deep geothermal wells and the circulating water.

The loop also circulates through a central plant that keeps it in an optimum temperature range for maximum heat pump performance. The plant can use cooling towers or wastewater to remove heat. It can add heat via renewable sources, such as solar thermal collectors, renewable fuel or heat pumps powered by renewable electricity.

One example of a potentially zero-energy district currently being developed, the National Western Center, is a multi-use campus currently under construction in Denver to house the annual National Western Stock Show and other public events focused on food and agriculture.

A six-foot-diameter pipe carrying the citys wastewater runs underground through the property before delivering the water to a treatment plant. The water temperature stays within a narrow range of 61 to 77 degrees F throughout the year.

The wastewater pipe and a heat exchanger transfer heat to and from an ambient loop circulating water throughout the district. The system provides heat in winter and absorbs heat in the summer via heat recovery chillers, which are heat pumps that can simultaneously provide heating and cooling. This strategy serves individual buildings at very high efficiency.

Electricity used to operate the heat pumps, lighting and other equipment will come from on-site photovoltaics and wind- and solar-generated electricity imported from off-site.

Another district that will minimize carbon emissions is the Whisper Valley Community, under construction in Austin, Texas. This 2,000-acre multi-use development includes 7,500 all-electric houses, 2 million square feet of commercial space, two schools, and a 600-acre park. Its design has already received a green building award.

Whisper Valley will run on an integrated energy system that includes an extensive ambient loop network heated and cooled by heat pumps and geothermal wells located at each house. Each homeowner has the option to include a 5-kilowatt rooftop solar photovoltaic array to operate the heat pump and energy-efficient appliances, including heat pump water heaters and inductive stovetops. According to the developer, Whisper Valleys economy of scale allows for a median sale price $50,000 below that of typical Austin houses.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and other project partners are developing an open source software development kit called URBANopt that models elements of zero energy districts, such as building efficiency/demand flexibility strategies, rooftop photovoltaic arrays, ambient loop district thermal systems. The software can be integrated into other computer models to aid in the design of zero energy communities. NREL engineers have been engaging with high-performance district projects across the country, such as the National Western Center, to help inform and guide the development of the URBANopt platform.

The projects Ive described are new construction. Its harder to achieve net zero energy in existing buildings or communities economically, but there are ways to do it. It makes sense to apply those efficiency measures that are the most cost-effective to retrofit, convert building heating and cooling systems to electricity and provide the electricity with solar photovoltaics.

Utilities are increasingly offering time-of-use rate schedules, which charge more for power use during high demand periods. Emerging home energy management systems will allow home owners to heat water, charge home batteries and electric vehicles and run other appliances at times when electricity prices are lowest. Whether were talking about new or existing buildings, I see sustainable zero energy communities powered by renewable energy as the wave of the future as we tackle the climate change crisis.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image Credit: Denys NevozhaionUnsplash

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Buildings Consume Lots of EnergyHere's How to Design Whole Communities That Give Back as Much as They Take - Singularity Hub

SAN DIEGO, May 27, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --MVPvets, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that assists and prepares transitioning military veterans for meaningful employment in life science companies, announced the appointment of new Chairman of its Board of Directors, Capt. Derek Herrera, USMC (Ret.). Herrera has been actively involved as an MVPvets board member since early 2019. He succeeds outgoing Chairman Michael R. Minogue, the Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Abiomed, who has provided leadership as the co-founder of MVPvets since 2012 and will continue to serve as a board member.

Derek Herrera, Founder of Spinal Singularity, Michael R. Minogue, Abiomed Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Alex Gorsky, J&J Chairman, Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer all U.S.military academy graduates and CEOs in the medical device field, discuss MVPvets at the MedTech Conference in 2018. (PRNewsfoto/MVPvets)

Herrera is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy and served as a Marine Infantry and Special Operations Officer for eight years. In 2014, he was medically retired following an injury sustained during combat operations in Afghanistan. Since his injury, he has earned an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management and founded a medical device company, Spinal Singularity. Herrera started Spinal Singularity to develop devices that improve the quality of life for people with spinal injuries. He also serves as President of the Board for the Marine Raider Foundation and Board Member of the American Technion Society Western Region.

"I am thrilled to find new ways to support transitioning military veterans. As I left the military I found meaning and purpose in the medical device industry. I am so excited to help veterans make meaningful connections to explore industries that are focused on improving patients' lives," said Herrera.

"Derek is an inspiration to so many communities, especially military veterans re-careering into the medical device industry," said Michael R. Minogue, MVPvets co-founder and Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Abiomed. "We are proud to have such a passionate leader and entrepreneur help further the mission of MVPvets, which is now more important than ever for our transitioning veterans."

"Mike is without a doubt leaving big shoes to fill as outgoing chairman of MVPvets, and there's no question that Derek is the right choice to fill them," President and CEO of AdvaMed Scott Whitaker said. "MVPvets does such a terrific job connecting those who have served and sacrificed for our country with an industry whose number one priority is saving and improving lives. Thanks to Mike's leadership, so many veterans have found meaning and purpose in our patient-centered medtech community. I know we'll be able to say the same about Derek's time as chairman."

Herrera is joined on the MVPvets leadership team by Victoria Hathaway, who joins as operations manager. Hathaway has spent her career in higher education helping graduate students across colleges and universities achieve their educational and professional goals. Previously, she worked to increase access to postgraduate education for military veterans as Assistant Director of Diversity Recruitment. She graduated from the Student Affairs Program at the UCLA Graduate School of Education. She also serves as a volunteer for a veteran-focused nonprofit organization.

"My career has been spent recruiting, supporting, and celebrating student veterans, and I now have the privilege of helping military veterans secure meaningful employment opportunities in a rapidly emerging industry," said Hathaway.

Story continues

"Victoria's background in education, with a focus on veterans, will help fulfill the mission of MVPvets," said Minogue. "We are thrilled to have Victoria join the MVPvets team and look forward to her help expanding the impact our program has on the lives of veterans."

Together, Herrera and Hathaway will help lead the organization in its mission to connect military veterans with engaged mentors and careers in the medical device and life science industries.

MVPvets is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization connecting life science companies with talented veterans ready to serve a purpose, with a broad bandwidth of skills, and an extraordinary focus on achieving goals. MVPvets' network has grown to nearly 100 life science and medical device companies, hundreds of mentors, and thousands of veterans. For more information, visit http://www.mvpvets.org. MVPvets is endorsed by the Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed).

AdvaMed member companies produce the medical devices, diagnostic products and health information systems that are transforming health care through earlier disease detection, less invasive procedures and more effective treatments. AdvaMed members range from the largest to the smallest medical technology innovators and companies. For more information, visit http://www.advamed.org.

Media Contact:Victoria Hathaway205 809 6050240343@email4pr.com

SOURCE MVPvets

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Retired USMC Captain, Derek Herrera, to Take Chairman Role for MVPvets, a Nonprofit That Helps Military Veterans Find Careers in Medical Device and...

Jerry Coyne and his Darwinist/materialist/atheist brethren make public assertions that are nonsense on their face: they claim to be mindless meat machines, they deny the indisputable evidence for intelligent design in biology and for teleology in all of nature, they deny the obvious evidence for the supernatural in cosmological singularities such as black holes and the singularity at the origin of the Big Bang, and they deny the manifest corruption of modern science by materialism and arrogance and egotism. Materialists tout determinism and deny free will, despite the fact that determinism in physics has been quite decisively refuted and the fact that free will is well supported by neuroscience and that denial of free will negates the ability to make a truth claim of any sort (if a materialists opinion is forced by chemical reactions, theres no reason to think it corresponds to truth. Chemistry is not a propositional and can be neither true nor false). Atheists deny the existence of God because of evil in nature, without realizing that the recognition of evil presupposes an objective moral standard that can only be grounded in a Mind outside of man.

Darwinism/materialism/atheism (the three are nearly always found together) is beset with self-refuting non-sequiturs. This triad is not even a genuine ideological perspective as much as it is an incoherent mistake. Yet, ironically, many who tout it are quite intelligent people.

Playwright David Mamet noted a characteristic in politics that applies broadly to flawed belief systems. It struck me as a key to understanding the philosophical perspective of those who deny free will, design in nature, Gods existence, and the like. Mamet originally applied it to a particular political philosophy, but I apply Mamets principle to Darwinists et al:

in order for [Darwinists, atheists, materialists, etc.] to continue their illogical belief systems they have to pretend not to know a lot of things.

The pretense not to know things is at the root of Darwinist/atheist/materialist ideology. It was stated with astonishing candor by Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin, one of the past centurys leading Darwinists:

Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.

Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door

Lewontins confession is a remarkable invocation of Mamets principle: in order to maintain the Darwinist/materialist ideology, atheists have to pretend not to know a lot of things.

The fundamental reason that Darwinists have vented such fury at the intelligent design movement even to the point that a prominent scientific journal openly advocates government censorship of ID is that ID has forced Darwinists and other atheist and materialist ideologues to publicly explain themselves, and that has made their pretense that there is no design in nature so much harder to pull off.

Photo: David Mamet, by David Shankbone / CC BY-SA (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).

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Lewontin's Confession and Mamet's Principle - Discovery Institute

Attempting to predict and prepare for the future can be an arduous and alarming task for any entrepreneur or business. It may seem as though the risks are more prevalent than the opportunities, and its easy to get hung up on what could go wrong. Its also difficult to break out of existing paradigms and imagine how things could be different.

One antidote to this self-defeating thinking style is to engage the power of science fiction. Sci-fi is an incredible way to free up the imagination and construct alternative futures. At Singularity University (SU), my colleagues and I use a science fiction visioning exercise to get our clients to start thinking exponentially. Specifically, we have our program attendees create their own sci-fi in the form of comic books.

We begin by asking our clients to consider a current problem theyre working on, and we use sci-fi to project that problem into the future to see if theyre thinking about it in a big enough way. We construct a narrative of how the organization might change in the future. We consider how exponential technologies and trends will impact the future of the organization, and how they could possibly reposition themselves to create an ideal outcome that speaks to their mission and purpose.

It works remarkably well, so I advise you to try it for yourself.

Inviting people to create sci-fi narratives allows them to break out of the thought patterns that are holding them back. One of the big challenges of thinking about the future is that nobody really knows what it will look like. Using sci-fi tools, we can visualize possible futures and then decide which one is aligned with their organizations visions, strategies, and goals.

Constructing a narrative around a companys future vision isnt just an imaginative exercise; it has real implications for the way that organization communicates its values. This is the narrative that draws new talent into the company and draws innovation out of current team members. Story is an effective way to do that because our brains are wired for story. We can communicate highly complex ideas through story and narrative, making them memorable and compelling.

To do this, we use what we call a future-back approach: we imagine possible futures fifteen years out and then work backwards to now, to figure out the next steps we need to start executing on today to make our desired future a reality. As Alan Kay says, the best way to predict the future is to invent it. Even if we dont know exactly what is going to happen, once we start to visualize and create what that future might be like, we take the first step in making our visions come true.

After conducting dozens of sci-fi sessions, weve settled on a four-part framework that guides people to access and share ideas and insights that would otherwise be unexpressed. Lets walk through that framework

We start with a deep dive into exponential technologies to understand what current capabilities are being developed. Then we imagine possible futures: what might the world be like in fifteen years? How do we write the stories of characters who would live in that future? What are the business models, products, and services that make their lives possible in that future?

Sci-fi sessions dont just connect us with a fantastical future. We want to know what real people will experience in the future. In one comic book, readers meet Tulsi, a woman working to rebuild a Central American city severely damaged by an earthquake.

Another story followed Drule, a robot dog that served as a nanny for a single mother in a story set in 2030. We saw a character named Rhoda overcome Alzheimers disease through brain implants, and at 101 years old, we found her traveling the world as a journalist, keeping strong and active with the aid of a powerful exo-suit that also held her cargo including a portable home.

Its important to think about the character development of a human living in this futuristic world. What real, human problems do they face? What are the stories of how they might overcome some of those challenges in the future?

As we tap into these challenges through fiction, we can begin to trace these narratives back to their real-world applications.

An essential part of the work we do at SU is to address what we call Grand Global Challenges (GGCs). These GGCs describe major tests of humanity in areas such as food, water, shelter, and health.

As we facilitate the sci-fi exercises, we try to fold in impact to align with our Grand Global Challenges. We craft a problem statement and then look at it from a series of five questions:

We fill in the answers with all of the assumptions about this problem. We consider the ramifications it will have in the future, through the lens of the impact it has on our characters lives and by proxy, on our futures.

The third step of crafting sci-fi narratives is to apply the STEEP framework, imagining the future from the following perspectives:

What will each of these factors look like in fifteen years? Imagine how each of these areas will be impacted by technological advancements. Will Mars be colonized? Will telemedicine be common? Do we think major climate change will happen? Will climate change be reversed?

How are these factors interrelated? What will be the most defining characteristics of the world in fifteen years? These questions focus on the world at large, not just one specific business.

If youre going to try this activity, you can write down your predictions and thoughts on your own, but an even better option is to discuss your ideas with others to gain multiple perspectives. When we do this exercise in our sessions, we have participants talk through their ideas in groups, and their conversations allow individuals to think about future implications in a deeper way than they could alone.

Finally, we turn our focus back to the individual characters weve developed. Considering their future world and the challenges they face, we consider: what are their human needs, fears, and pain points? Who are their friends and family? What are their lives like?

We write a story around that character, following the Pixar formula of storytelling:

Hopefully, the way Ive described this exercise doesnt sound hard and stressful. It sounds fun. Its an opportunity to free up your imagination and come up with ideas that you would probably never think of if you were sitting in a dour brainstorming session about the future of your business.

If you see the potential of this approach, I invite you to take action: write your own future narrative, using the Pixar formula if you find it helpful. Give yourself permission to come up with crazy ideas. Free your mind, because its difficult to think about the future in our current constraints of reality. Bring together other people in your organization and do this together.

Remember: youre an agent of change to create this future, and its up to you to imagine the future that you would like to see and create the solutions you want to be part of. Constructing sci-fi narratives is a fascinating and fruitful way to do that.

Did you know we have anonline conferenceabout product design coming up?SPRINTwill cover how designers and product owners can stay ahead of the curve in these unprecedented times.

Published May 28, 2020 09:33 UTC

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How to supercharge your teams brainstorming sessions with sci-fi narratives - The Next Web

On August 14, Robby Krieger, legendary guitarist of The Doors, will release The Ritual Begins at Sundown, a new album that he has been previewing in recent weeks with a handful of mind-bending instrumental tracks (when not informing Doors fans how to play some of the bands classic songs in a YouTube tutorial series, that is).

The latest is Hot Head, premiered on Thursday. The jammy composition, paired with the visual psychedelics in the video below, will help you relax for a few minutes:

The Ritual Begins at Sundown will be the ninth solo album from Robby Krieger and the first since 2010s Singularity. The album pairs Krieger with longtime pal/colleague Arthur Barrow, who among his lengthy list of credits worked alongside Frank Zappa in the 1970s and 80s.

The album also features contributions from other Zappa alumni Jock Ellis (Trombone), Sal Marquez (Trumpet) and Tommy Mars (Keys) as well as AeB Bryne (Flute), Vince Denim (Sax), Chuck Manning (Sax), Joel Wackerman (Drums) and Joel Taylor (Drums).

Heres The Drift, which was released previously:

And Slide Home:

More on the record, per a press release:

The album really is a return to friends with his relationship with Barrow and Sal Marquez dating all the way back to his first solo album. After The Doors I started becoming interested in Jazz and started hanging out with a guy called Sal Marquez, he says. So we put this band together and that was the first Robby Krieger band and we played at the Whiskey A-Go-Go with Don Preston, Zappas keyboard player. Arthur Barrow who was a huge Zappa fan this was before he worked with Frank he decided that, after graduating from North Texas State music school that he was gonna come out to LA and try to get into Franks band, which was pretty brash of him, he laughs. He started hanging out with Don and with Zappa, Don was in my band so we decided to put Arthur in charge of the mixing at the Whiskey for our shows, thats when I first met him in the 70s.

The Ritual Begins at Sundownwill feature 10 tracks, all of them instrumental, recorded at Kriegers own Horse Latitudes Studio in Los Angeles Krieger and the Zappa alumni even tackle the Zappa track Chungas Revenge, in addition to the other nine original compositions on the album.

Heres the track listing:

1. What Was That?2. Slide Home3. The Drift4. Chungas Revenge5. Hot Head6. Yes, The River Knows7. The Hitch8. Dr. Noir9. Biancas Dream10. Screen Junkies

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Robby Krieger of the Doors Premieres Trippy New Song 'Hot Head' - Rock Cellar Magazine

The League of Legends patch 10.11 update is here. Riot Games seems dead set in ushering in the ADC meta, buffing pretty much all marksmen and even giving buffs to ADCs that work in solo lanes. Following this, Zeal is getting major buffs this and next patch, and I would bet well see a whole lot more play to Yasuo, Graves, and Quinn following patch 10.12 and beyond.

Without further ado, lets get into the changes.

Volibears rework hits the live servers, and we have an in-depth analysis about how to use his new kit.

Fiddlesticks will take an extra second longer to pose as his effigy. His Terrify (Q) passive will now terrify targets as long as he is posing as an effigy. Bountiful Harvest (W) will have its damage reduction to minions decreased from 60% to 40%.

Gangplank will have his base attack speed ratio increased from 0.658 to 0.69.

Graves will have the first shot AD ratio of his End of the Line (Q) reduced from 100% bonus attack damage to 80%.

Hecarims Rampage (Q) will have its base damage increased from 55/95/135/175/215 to 60/102/144/186/228. Alongside this, Rampage damage reduction to minions is increased from 33.3% to 40%.

Jannas Zephyr (W) will have its damage decreased from 55/90/125/160/195 to 55/85/115/145/175.

Kaisas Icathian Rain (Q) will have its damage ratio increased from 35% bonus attack damage to 40% bonus attack damage. Killer Instinct (R) will have its range increased from 1500/2000/2500 to 1500/2250/3000.

Luxs Lucent Singularity (E) will have its detonation slow duration increased from 0.25 seconds to 1 second.

Syndra will have her Scatter the Weak (E) cooldown increased from 16/15/14/13/12 seconds to 18/17/16/15/14 seconds.

Talon will have his Noxian Diplomacy (Q) mana cost increased from 30 mana to 40 mana. Alongside this, the heal on kill will be decreased from 20-71 based on level to 10-70 based on level.

The marksmen played in solo lanes before patch 10.11 will be getting updates to alter their performance outside of the bot lane.

Lucians passive Lightslinger will have the critical strike of his second shot increased from 75% to 100%.

Kalistas Sentinel (W) will have its bonus soul-marked magic damage increased from 10/12/14/16/18% of the targets max health to 14/15/16/17/18% of the targets max health.

Alongside this, Sentinel will no longer cost mana.

Vaynes Tumble (Q) will have its bonus basic attack damage increased from 50/55/60/65/70% of total attack damage to 60/65/70/75/80% of total attack damage.

Tristanas base attack speed ratio will be increased from 0.656 to 0.679.

WithLeague of Legends patch 10.11, the marksman role is getting an overall buff to its performance down bot lane. The following will be changed for each marksman:

All Zeal items will be getting a buff inLeague of Legends patch 10.11 and 10.12. For patch 10.11, all Zeal items will have their movement speed increased by 2%. This isnt that significant of a change, but following in patch 10.12, Riot Games is planning on buffing their attack speed further.

This will bring about a major shift in the meta, favoring more towards ADCs. With these futureLeague of Legends changes, it will also work as indirect buffs to Yasuo in the mid lane, Graves in the jungle, and Quinn in the top lane.

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League of Legends patch 10.11 update: The beginning of the ADC meta - PC Invasion

This is an ongoing series, go here to read part I

We are in a state of emergency in all of the forms that that phrase encompasses. As journalists, our job is to look at all of these facts, all of these moments, and catalog them, bring them to the reader, regardless of whether or not the reader can take more bad news. Although that will never stop being our job, it doesnt always sit right with us. Beyond the critical information that shifts every day, there is an underlying world of thought and feelings that statistics cannot touch. Our people, the Denver community, are a multi-faceted, resilient bunch, but that doesnt take away from the singularity that social distancing, infection rates and public policy changes can have.

In times like these, the responsibility on our shoulders also becomes an opportunity to help by letting others tell their stories, stories that readers can relate to. Grief is a process, an often lonely experience, but there is something to be said about being sad, being broken, and owning it allowing others to say Im here with you.

We have reached out to community builders, frontline workers, creatives and other media outlets to provide a glimpse into their worlds, give them a voice that will resonate with yours and (hopefully) provide comfort in the discomfort, because as lonely as this can be, Denver is a city of community and part of the battle is remembering we have that when everything else feels less concrete.

Photo by Karson Halloway

There is very little peace in my world right now.

Im speaking of the inner peace that lets one sleep deeply, that lets one mindfully listen to a piece of music, that lets one move through the world without a constant awareness that something is not right in the very air we are breathing.

Life is a fearful thing when the very air around us feels dangerous. When every breath might contain a tiny little piece of death. When a hug or kiss might kill. When we see that the trickle-down effect does work, but only with hatred and ignorance.

But in this lack of peace, in this dangerous wind, I am finding swirling eddies of beauty and love. I am finding people who show love to me in ways I hadnt imagined. A random text asking how I am from someone to whom I havent spoken in years. People who give extravagant tips for my virtual DJ sets, tipsthat I know very well go beyond whatever respite I might be providing them. My three-year-old, who is seemingly incapable of giving me 30 seconds alone, just this very morning giving me 30 minutes to write this because I told him it was important to me. He is sitting next to me right now, watching me type, being quiet for what seems the first time in weeks and weeks.

I dont know that I can find peace right now. I will be afraid, I will sleep restlessly, I will constantly be aware that the air can be dangerous. But the love people have shown me will give me the strength to get through this.

Courtesy of Rebecca Hannigan

I spend most of my days in bed, though, fortunately, I dont have COVID. Im a different sort of sick, though some would argue that it isnt sick, but selfish, a privileged problem, and sometimes Im tempted to agree. I understand what they mean. Im the first to be critical of me, to shift from crying about my internal state to mocking how its come to be, how Ive come to be, with such absurdity, with such self-hatred that seems like its been planted and cultivated in me like a seed. Accidentally swallowed, maybe, like watermelon, then met with the right conditions to grow. I do love growth. I might be obsessed with it, which is partially why Im here today, in this semi-hospital setting. Im in a treatment facility for eating disorders.

Were served food six times a day, and we sit three to a table, spaced apart, with staff stationed along the perimeter of the room like sentinels. We dont do dishes. We dont cook. Our role in the food chain is to eat every last bit on our plates, scrape the sides of the single-serving peanut butter container, drink to the last drop of milk, lick the knife clean of butter, even if youve run out of bread.

COVID-19 has been a great instigator of depression and loneliness, as we all know. Mix this with full days as blank slates for hearing the loud, condemning voices in your head, having nothing to stop you from exercising for half the day, avoiding grocery stores, or maybe, after starving, eating so much before making yourself sick, and youve got the perfect conditions for an eating disorder.

In life before and during COVID, Ive become more and more aware of how many individuals struggle with emotional eating, restricting, obsessing over diet and fitness for the sake of achieving something like nirvana-state in and with their bodies. To distract. To feel confident. Its more problematic than many of us acknowledge. Drinking often plays a role, as it has, and does more noticeably now, during COVID, with restaurants marketing quarantine-special drinks, with memes and tweets and jokes about being functional alcoholics, which truly, shouldnt be seen as anything less than a dangerous oxymoron. The normalization of such behaviors has contributed to my inability to stay in a healthy body for years. And then, cue absolute solitude, with no one standing between me, my self-deprecation, free full-body workouts online, a bottle of gin and box of wine and look where Ive landed.

Life in this facility, pre- and during COVID is a unique experience. Each time we use the bathroom, a staff member looks inside before we flush (right after meals, we have to keep the door open). That staff member is checking for vomit and bowel movements, which are classified and recorded. Anyone who has been eating all of their food is allowed to stand outside, during 15-minute intervals, in what I call The Cage: a second-floor patio surrounded by bars with hard, plastic forms that function as seats but are shaped like pills, as if their shapes and colors somehow give a sense of playfulness in the otherwise bleak imitation of freedom.

Again, Im fortunate. I dont have to deal with germ-mania, grocery store anxiety. I dont have to make my bed or sanitize surfaces. Compared to my former, quarantine situation which kept me lost in self-destructive, depressive thoughts, anorexic neuroses, exercise compulsions and drinking urges, it is. But at the same time, it isnt easy. Within these walls, medically-unstable men and women are wrestling with demons while wearing face masks, struggling to breathe deeply, and show feeling with only the eyes and forehead. Were together, offering support, but there is something slightly less human to plunging these dark, inner depths while keeping yourself six feet away. When another patient starts sobbing, shoulders shaking and face reddening, I want so badly to put my arm around them. I want someone to put an arm around me. Such a desire for contact isnt unique to this facility, of course, but its a marked difference Ive noticed in my own sessions with my psychiatrist and dietitian and therapist, how much less I feel like I know them, simply because of the patterned cloth covering all of our noses and mouths.

With COVID-talk constantly in the air, I think more about all of the professionals who are here, helping us. I think about the cleaning staff and overnight nurses who have to enter this world that can feel stifling with contagious, sad air-quality, then leave, only to be enveloped in contagious paranoia everywhere else. I think of my therapists roommates, my psychiatrists kids. I want to offer support to them as much as they support me. I dont feel as trapped as I did with myself in my own house, but I do feel more sad, on behalf of the world, on behalf of the many out there who, I imagine, are likely dealing with higher urges and greater stresses and temptation to engage in such self-destructive habits that Ive been able to step away from, with a considerable amount of help. If anything, if youre struggling, please, reach out to someone. Nourish yourself many times a day, and give yourself a balanced mix of greens and milk and cookies. When Im back out there, Ill be thinking of the patients and staff in this facility. And from inside, now, Im thinking of everyone outside, sanitizing, wrestling, waiting.

Photo by Julianna Photography

Ive been a writer for a while, so Im no stranger to aimless weeks spent feeling like a huge idiot.

As a writer, success is a mirage. If you land a job and thats a big if the job is basically: spitball some understanding of why this thing that happened is important.

But honestly, you never get anything. Pitching, writing, trying period it can feel like youre a hungry dog at a boarded-up carnival. When you finally sniff out some cotton candy, it disintegrates as soon as you bite down.

On my worst days, these last two months have made that hunt seem even more absurd. Even if you do make a thing, who cares? People are dying their friends and family are dying. Art and its pursuit feel trivial, even selfish. You cant eat art. It cant cure you.

And then I lift my head from my computer and I listen to my friends. For a while, we talk about how this all hurts. And as the conversation turns, we inevitably talk about who weve been spending time with while were alone: We talk about art. I hear one group of friends flip out about old movies theyve gotten into the remarkably modern Sunset Boulevard, the eerily prescient Safe while another takes (another) lap around the Adam Sandler filmography. I call my Dad and hear him talk about the new Fiona Apple album I think its really good! and a college roommate flex his philosophy major over text, comparing The Decameron to the uber-nerdy The Witcher book series hes been devouring.

X-ing out a Zoom window, Im different. Ah thats why we try. Not just because trying writing, painting, filming, crafting is itself an act of hope. But because, while, yes, you cant eat art, it can cure you. From the vantage point of my chairs ass-groove, I remember that, lick my paws, and trot back to the carnival, hungry for cotton candy, a nickel, dirt everything.

Photo Courtesy of Jami Duffy

The day before Youth on Record decided to halt in-person activities at our Youth Media Studio and in our school programs, our team was looking really fancy. Not fancy like theyve been for the past few weeks showing up to team zoom meetings in animal prints and funny hats and lounge-wear (ok pajamas) but fancy enough to receive an award from the Colorado Business Association for the Arts.

Our team of artists, administrators, and board members crowded into Sewell Ballroom with 700+ members of Colorados arts community for the annual luncheon. We shook hands and tapped elbows and made passing comments about coronavirus, or The Roni V, our teams kitschy nickname for the then-novel but soon to be ominous pandemic.

As I walked around, greeting and thanking friends and colleagues, I had a feeling, deep in my gut, that everything was about to change. But instead of allowing my mind to spiral out of control, I soaked in the moment of watching my friends and colleagues shine brightly, make silly jokes, and nibble on their plated quinoa and chicken lunch. At our table, we passed dessert and the occasional note and side-eyed glance. And, for a moment, we were ok. Better than ok. In fact, our vision for Youth on Record was accelerating and being recognized, and our team was closer and more aligned than ever.

Flash forward to earlier this week. Our team of community artists and all-around resilient bad-asses was tired and frustrated. They were doing their best to engage with each other at our Monday morning Zoom call, but the subtext was clear. My friends were feeling defeated. And this feeling was hitting them hard, despite the fact thatYouth on Record has continued all of our current services since March 15; despite that fact altALL Youth on Record staff members, teaching artists, and contracted artists are being paid fully(with no signs of layoffs of furloughs in the future); despite the fact thatweve taken a trauma-informed management approach and self-care to the next level. Still, in the middle of our organizations continued health, were feeling the pain of our current reality.

My hope is that by sharing our highs and lows, our strategy and set-backs, ourprogrammatic approach, ourmanagementandinner-life development activities, and ournew artistic and story-telling platforms, we might shed some light on the current circumstance for folks who dont know whats going on or how to help. Im also hopeful that Youth on Records story might offer some comradery and support for fellow artists, nonprofits, and partners who need friendship and community now more than ever.

I know weve all heard it. Were in this together. But, we are.

We really are.

The rest is here:

Musician, Writers and More Share Their Coronavirus Experience in Their Own Words Part II - 303 Magazine

Twenty years after the Department of the Navy started to consolidate its IT networks into the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI), youd think that the sea services would have come close to eliminating all of their network stovepipes by now.

If so, you would be wrong.

As of today, there are approximately 140 separate legacy and excepted networks throughout the fleet that still havent been brought under the NMCI umbrella. And even though they represent a relatively small user base, theyre basically ungoverned territory. Their continued existence makes it harder for the DON to move toward a future with universally-accepted standards, and where consuming commercial cloud services is second-nature.

Its become really unaffordable, and its a also large security burden, said Capt. Ben McNeal, the program manager for Naval Enterprise Networks. Weve been successful in the past in terms of absorbing legacy and excepted networks into NMCI, but we really want to take a leap as we move forward, much like we did on the afloat networks with the CANES program.

The Navy hopes to use the latest recompetition of its Next Generation Enterprise Network contract, known as NGEN-R, to achieve that vision, which McNeal calls domain singularity. The $7.7 billion award to Leidos is being held up for the moment by two separate bid protests.

But once those matters are resolved, the Navy wants to use the contract to help absorb its remaining one-off networks into a more manageable structure. McNeal said the ultimate goal would be to physically integrate those stragglers into NMCI, much as it already plans to do with ONE-Net, the Navys overseas network.

However, thats the sort of thing that takes a lot of time and money. So in the meantime, a single logical network that follows one set of standards may have to suffice as an interim goal.

There are going to be places where we cant roll in and converge to a single solution set, McNeal said in an interview for Federal News Networks On DoD. So we want to make sure that the logical connection allows us to have seamless data flow between those networks. Some of the concepts and solution sets within the zero trust architecture allows us to be able to have that seamless flow, such that its more of a logical than a physical connection. Policy, and how we architect those, allows for those trusts that dont exist today.

Integrating the Navys IT systems into NMCI is helpful for interoperability. But its less than ideal if NMCI itself is buried in technical debt.

And Navy officials freely acknowledge thats the case today. Aaron Weis, the Navy Departments new chief information officer, estimates NMCI is running about 15 years behind industry standards.

McNeal attributes much of the current problem to outdated requirements documents. If the network the Navys using today looks like something from 2001, thats because thats when NMCI was architected. Ever since then, its been designed mostly to connect individual bases with one another not to connect the Navy with the commercial cloud computing services it now wants to use.

The Navy has tried to address that problem too via NGEN-R.

Weve framed out a journey thats going to take us from being cloud-intolerant not able to consume cloud services at all to being cloud-tolerant, cloud-ready and ultimately, cloud-native, McNeal said. Were still just in the cloud-tolerant stage right now. As weve implemented things like Office 365, weve had to make major modifications to the network just to be able to consume those cloud based productivity services. Ultimately, when were in a cloud-native state, a new application can be consumed without issue, but were not there now.

The COVID-19 situation spotlighted that problem and potential solutions to it in spectacular fashion.

Faced with a crush of teleworkers that was exponentially larger than any of the military departments or agencies had ever anticipated, the Defense Department quickly put funding toward projects like bandwidth expansion.

In Norfolk, Va., for example the largest fleet concentration center in the world the total internet bandwidth available to Navy users was 2 gigabits per second (Gbps) before the pandemic hit. Projects to expand that capacity had been delayed for the past two years.

But armed with new funding as part of the CARES Act, the Defense Information Systems Agency managed to widen that pipeline to 44 Gbps almost overnight.

Likewise, the Defense Department quickly stood up a new service called Commercial Virtual Remote, based on Microsofts Teams platform, to let employees collaborate and communicate from home. That service has its limitations: its only authorized up to Impact Level 2, so it can only be used for the lowest levels of unclassified data.

But McNeal said its been something of a game-changer.

It provides for collaboration across the entire Department of Defense. It is the closest thing Ive seen yet to domain singularity we have all of the DoD that can consume these capabilities, theres a single tenant, and we can all collaborate together were all in it, he said during a May 12 webinar hosted by ACT-IAC . When I talk about domain singularity, this is what were trying to bring forth for other services in the same manner as DoD was able to bring forth for productivity services.

But when the Navy first implemented CVR, it was careful to warn its users not to get too used to it. Any data stored on that platform would be deleted, and the entire thing would be shut down once the pandemic was over, officials warned.

Thats partly because its a trivial matter for Navy users to connect to commercial cloud services when theyre at home, where theyre directly connected to the public internet. Once they return to their desk computers, NMCIs narrow pathways to the cloud simply wont be able to support all of those connections to a service like CVR.

Not in the near-term, at least.

All of our buildings across all of our posts, camps and stations across the Navy are based on an idea of an internal routing and switching fabric, McNeal said. So our challenge is how to upgrade the boundaries to allow for the same kind of user experience when youre external to the network. Those upgrades are underway, but the Navy cant afford to upgrade the infrastructure in each building across all 2,500 of those sites. Thats where were looking to some transformational technologies 5G for example as a mitigator of some of the cost and level of effort that would be required for some of those traditional upgrades, because that would be unaffordable.

Excerpt from:

Navy hopes new NGEN contract will lead to domain singularity - Federal News Network

My Hero Academia's mythos is surprisingly rich. Series creator Kohei Horikoshi has deftly added more and more brushstrokes of backstory to his world of quirk powers, heroes, and villains, while never really tipping the hat on the larger mysteries taking shape in the story. Well, as the My Hero Academia manga's "Paranormal Liberation War" arc unfolds, there's been one deep-simmering part of the storyline that's suddenly bubbling up to the surface: the Quirk Singularity Theory. Now we have learned that the true origins of My Hero Academia's doomsday theory, and it suggests the Quirk Singularity Theory may have been playing out in front of our eyes, this whole time!

Warning - My Hero Academia Manga SPOILERS Follow!

The latest chapters of the My Hero Academia have seen the Pro Heroes capture All For One's longtime disciple, Dr. Ujiko. The mad scientist has turned out to be a treasure trove of secrets, revealing everything from All For One steals quirks, to how the villain has survived so long. As it turns out, Ujiko (aka Dr. Garaki) was the man who first proposed the "Paranormal Singularity Theory", which predicted that after enough generations, superpowers (or "quirks") would intensify exponentially, until they became too powerful for people to control, and end up consuming the world.

But here's the thing: My Hero Academia's war arc has also revealed some substantial changes to the powers of both Izuki Midoriya and his rival Tomura Shigaraki. Izuku has seen his bond with the One For All power go even deeper than All Might, unlocking an entire array of new powers, courtesy of past users. Meanwhile, Ujiko has broken the restraints All For One placed on Tomura Shigaraki's mind and powers - including the original All For One quirk, which Shigaraki has apparently been carrying for quite some time. Now Shigaraki is fully awakened (no more hands), and his powers have been boosted to an ominous degree. But just as the villains' leader is coming into his power, Izuku's One For All power seems to be coming out, in kind.

What's happening with Deku and Shigaraki isn't just the next generation of the All Might / All For One rivalry taking shape. My Hero Academia has been stressing that both boys are on the verge of major power upgrades, and the levels of power their battle would unleash are on a whole other scale than their predecessors. This could very well be the flash-point in quirk evolution - two powerhouses wielding multiple quirks - that breaks the society of My Hero Academia. Because no matter who emerges as the winner, knowledge that quirks can become Omega-level threats will change everything.

My Hero Academia has finished airing season 4 of the anime on Hulu and Funimation. Online chapters of the manga can be found HERE.

Disclosure: ComicBook is owned by CBS Interactive, a division of ViacomCBS.

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Did My Hero Academia Just Reveal the Truth Behind the Singularity? - ComicBook.com

A bionic eye could restore sight to the blind and greatly improve robotic vision, but current visual sensors are a long way from the impressive attributes of natures design. Now researchers have found a way to mimic its structure and create an artificial eye that reproduces many of its capabilities.

A key part of what makes the eyes design so powerful is its shape, but this is also one of the hardestthings to mimic. The concave shape of the retinathe photoreceptor-laden layer of tissue at the back of the eyemakes it possible to pick up much more light as it passes through the curved lens than it would pick up if it was flat. But replicating this curved sensor array has proven difficult.

Most previous approaches have relied on fabricating photosensors on flat surfaces before folding them or transplanting them onto curved ones. The problem with this approach is that it limits the density of photosensors, and therefore the resolution of the bionic eye, because space needs to be left between sensors to allow the transformation from flat to curved.

In a paper published last week in Nature, though, researchers from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology devised a way to build photosensors directly into a hemispherical artificial retina. This enabled them to create a device that can mimic the wide field of view, responsiveness, and resolution of the human eye.

The structural mimicry of Gu and colleagues artificial eye is certainly impressive, but what makes it truly stand out from previously reported devices is that many of its sensory capabilities compare favorably with those of its natural counterpart, writes Hongrui Jiang, an engineer at the University of Wisconsin Madison, in a perspective in Nature.

Key to the breakthrough was an ingenious way of implanting photosensors into a dome-shaped artificial retina. The team created a hemisphere of aluminum oxide peppered with densely-packed nanoscale pores. They then used vapor deposition to grow nanowires inside these pores made from perovskite, a type of photosensitive compound used in solar cells.

These nanowires act as the artificial equivalent of photoreceptors. When light passes over them, they transmit electrical signals that are picked up by liquid metal wires attached to the back of the retina. The researchers created another hemisphere made out of aluminum with a lens in the center to act as the front of the eye, and filled the space in between it and the retina with an ionic liquid designed to mimic the fluid aqueous humor that makes up the bulk of the human eye.

The researchers then hooked up the bionic eye to a computer and demonstrated that it could recognize a series of letters. While the artificial eye couldnt quite achieve the 130-degree field of view of a human eye, it managed 100 degrees, which is a considerable improvement over the roughly 70 degrees a flat sensor can achieve.

In other areas, though, the approach has the potential to improve on biological eyes. The researchers discovered that the nanowires photodetectors were actually considerably more responsive. They were activated in as little as 19.2 milliseconds and recovered to a point where they could be activated again in 23.9 milliseconds. Response and recovery times in human photoreceptors range from 40 to 150milliseconds.

The density of nanowires in the artificial retina is also more than 10 times that of photoreceptors in the human eye, suggesting that the technology could ultimately achieve far higher resolution than nature.

The big limitation at the moment is wiring up these photosensors. The liquid metal connections are currently two orders of magnitude wider than the nanowires, so each one connects to many photosensors, and its only possible to attach 100 wires to the back of the retina. That means that despite the density of photosensors, the eye has a resolution of only 100 pixels.

The researchers did devise a way to use magnetic fields to connect nickel microneedles to just three nanowires at a time, but the process is a complicated manual one that would be impossible to scale up to the millions of nanowires present in the artificial retina. Still, the device represents a promising proof-of-concept that suggests that we may soon be able to replicate and even better one of natures most exquisite designs.

Given these advances, it seems feasible that we might witness the wide use of artificial and bionic eyes in daily life within the next decade, writes Jiang.

Image Credit: Free-Photos from Pixabay

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A New Bionic Eye Could Give Robots and the Blind 20/20 Vision - Singularity Hub