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shirlleycoyle · 4 years

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Gun Detection AI is Being Trained With Homemade ‘Active Shooter’ Videos

In Huntsville, Alabama, there is a room with green walls and a green ceiling. Dangling down the center is a fishing line attached to a motor mounted to the ceiling, which moves a procession of guns tied to the translucent line.

The staff at Arcarithm bought each of the 10 best-selling firearm models in the U.S.: Rugers, Glocks, Sig Sauers. Pistols and long guns are dangled from the line. The motor rotates them around the room, helping a camera mounted to a mobile platform photograph them from multiple angles. “It’s just like a movie set,” said Arcarithm president and CEO Randy E. Riley.

This process creates about 5,000 images of each gun floating ethereally. Arcarithm’s computer programmers then replace the green backdrop with different environments, like fields, forests, and city streets. They add rain or snow or fog or sun. A program then randomly distorts the images. The result is 30,000 to 50,000 images of the same gun, from multiple angles, in different synthetic settings and of varying degrees of visibility.

The point of creating this vast portfolio of digital gun art is to feed an algorithm made to detect a firearm as soon as a security camera catches it being drawn by synthetically creating tens of thousands of ways each gun may appear. Arcarithm is one of several companies developing automated active shooter detection technology in the hopes of selling it to schools, hotels, entertainment venues and the owners of any location that could be the site of one of America’s 15,000 annual gun murders and 29,000 gun injuries.

Among the other sellers are Omnilert, a longtime vendor of safety notification software, and newcomers ZeroEyes, Defendry, and Athena Securities. Some cities employ a surveillance system of acoustic sensors to instantly detect gunshots. These companies promise to do one better and save precious minutes by alerting police or security personnel before the first shot is fired.

They are all maneuvering around a problem: Algorithms, at their most basic level, collect data that is categorized, so they can independently determine if something new is of that category. In the tech industry, it’s generally believed that more data means a sharper algorithm. For companies that want to detect gunmen, therein lies one dilemma.

Screenshot from a promotional video for Omnilert's Gun Detect software

Visual detection machine learning has been developed for a wide range of uses, including diagnosing medical conditions and identifying pedestrians in a roadway. Researchers behind those efforts have access to nearly limitless pictures of tumors and inflammation and videos of joggers or dog walkers.

However, due to sensitivity, little footage from the start of shootings is readily available, certainly not enough to program a system that is supposed to differentiate a gun from a cell phone or a hairbrush reliably hundreds or thousands of times a day. Such footage is scrubbed from all but the darkest corners of the internet. There’s no inventory of it on Roboflow, Amazon Mechanical Turk, and other libraries of images for machine learning (though Roboflow does have a supply of still photos of guns).

The reliability of gun detection systems is of serious consequence to the people they monitor. This year, the Lockport City School District, in Upstate New York, implemented an algorithmic system to recognize faces and detect weapons. The technology misidentified black children at a higher rate, and emails between employees of its creator, ST Technologies, show the Canadian company was struggling to stop the system from mistaking broom handles for guns after it was implemented.

“I have concerns about the reliability of the object detection system and that system misidentifying a student holding a baseball bat and [police] will go and harass that student with a baseball bat,” said Daniel Lawrence, a researcher at the Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center, who has studied technology in crime detection.

Alternatively, Lawrence said, police tend to take these alerts less seriously if they are always detecting low-priority activity or making false positives. “Everything depends on accuracy,” he said.

To train a computer program to recognize a gun as soon as it’s drawn—and then to test that program—companies have to get creative. And a bit weird.

Arcarithm, founded as a military and security contractor by three former Lockheed Martin employees, started by programming cameras to detect drones overhead. A client challenged them to come up with a system to detect guns. “If we can do drones, we can do anything,” said Riley, “so we spent the next ten years trying to tell if a guy has a gun or a broom and it turns out we can.”

Theoretically, the vast array of distortions and alterations in images feeding Arcarithm’s algorithm would account for ways a gun is obscured in real footage—by hands, by climate, or by distance. Through seeing so many common guns so many ways, the algorithm would supposedly become so familiar with guns, it could spot one instantly.

To test if their algorithm responds to the intended stimuli, Arcarithm staffers have staged armed invasions of their own headquarters using airsoft guns, which use condensed gas to shoot tiny, non-lethal plastic pellets. They’ve also taken to a nearby field to record themselves. It is programmers and desk employees cosplaying as criminals or militiamen. “All the guys are doing it,” said Riley. “They usually work on the development end.” He adds that they warn the sheriff’s department, which usually sends an observer.

Arcarithm has not found any buyers outside the U.S. military, which seeks an alert system for armed people coming towards a base. Riley said he has approached the operator of a theme park and a school system near Huntsville.

Of the other U.S. companies selling gun detection technology, Athena did not respond to an interview request from Motherboard, and seems to have pivoted to making a dubiously marketed technology that monitors people’s temperature amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. A spokesperson for ZeroEyes said its technology is proprietary so they would not discuss it. A representative for Defendry said the company declined because it did not want its name in an article published by VICE Media.

Omnilert has supplied notification systems, mainly to colleges and universities, since 2003, and unveiled its Gun Detect software in October.

CEO Dave Fraser describes a kitchen sink approach to the data-to-feed-the-algorithm problem. His company has used technology made to produce video games to create CGI simulations of the first moments of hold-ups and shooting sprees. They’ve trained the algorithm on Hollywood movies (he named John Wick). And there is also what Fraser dubbed “pajama videos,” homemade clips of employees walking around with guns (real and toy) recorded in their homes during the COVID-19 remote work months. He’s also outsourced the task to a few video content creators.

“We’ve built up an internet database of ourselves and our contractors brandishing guns,” said Fraser. “We have thousands of hours of data we created and we own.” Homemade videos are used to both feed and test the algorithm.

The videos fill up the company Slack channel, he said. And programmers and other desk employees are tasked with creating them.

Even their public director of marketing, Elizabeth Venafro, has contributed self-filmed clips of herself marching through her home toting a toy rifle, which “felt very weird, as a non-gun-owner,” she said.

A graphic demonstrating Arcarithm's Exigent-GR gun detection system

Experts in academia say that machine learning can now identify objects, even from a distance, but the process hinges on sufficient data.

“Today, we are much better than we were five years ago,” Ali Farhadi, an associate professor at the University of Washington working in computer vision and machine learning, told Motherboard. “We can detect objects fairly reliably.” Each year, smaller and more specialized objects are detectable and computer scientists can program algorithms to identify the body motions and context around them. “Not only can we see scissors but we know how people act when they are cutting things,” he said.

Visual identification requires a vast amount of varied data. Even differences in the sun path between the northern and southern hemispheres and subtle differences in background scenery can cause the program to be less effective, he said. “You want something that works as well in American cities as Indian cities,” said Farhadi. It’s even best to get footage from the types of cameras one expects to be in the field obtaining the feed, he said.

Karthik Ramani, a professor in mechanical engineering at Purdue University, completed a project that trained computer learning to identify mechanical objects so as to help engineers find exact matches and replacements. Machine learning is capable of identifying detailed objects, he said, but synthetic data is no replacement for the thing.

In CGI-created images, “I was seeing a loss of energy,” said Ramani. “You don’t get the real-world noise and reflections and metals are shiny and things can get confused. As humans, we see this and we get used to it. The machine doesn’t know these things yet.”

Some false positives are inevitable, Fraser and Riley both conceded. But both claim the technology can give first responders a few precious minutes, or seconds, to save lives.

Lawrence, of the Urban Institute, said once any surveillance or analytic technology comes into the hands of police departments, it's inevitably used to target poor, minority areas. “It is over-applied in communities with persons of color,” he said. Such neighborhoods are disproportionately policed, and the use of technology like predictive policing is a major driver of those statistics, creating a feedback loop.

“This technology is very expensive and it makes no sense to have it applied to the entire city,” he said.

However, Lawrence does not think cities will buy gun detection software in the near future. The summer racial justice protests and the “defund the police” movement have caused cities to shrink from buying expensive, futuristic equipment for police purposes. “I think as a society, we are redefining what policing is and how much money should be allotted to what and how much money should go to the police,” he said. “I think we are on the precipice of using money to combat crime and the causes of crime in a different way.”

He thinks the buyers of the next generation of gun detection software will be private companies, but once a gun is thought to be detected, “the call will go to the police.”

It is widely acknowledged that the ubiquity of guns in the United States is one reason the number of police killings in the U.S. dwarf those of other countries. Police shootings of Black people sometimes begin with the excuse that the officer thought the person had a gun, including the deaths of Casey Goodman, Stephon Clark, Tamir Rice, and Amadou Diallo. During a traffic stop, Philando Castile informed an officer he possessed a legal gun and the cop immediately opened fire.

Like many companies who make automated systems, Omnilert defends its gun-detection technology by noting that the final decision is made by a human being. “It could automatically lock the door on a suspect,” said Riley. “Now it’s up to the police to show up and see what this person does.”

As for a police overreaction, Fraser said, “It’s a possibility. We tend to look at this as ‘no technology is perfect.’ We tend to think it’s a positive to put this technology in our customer’s hands rather than have them rely on hearsay or gunshots when it’s too late.”

The possibility is enough for Meredith Whittaker, faculty director of the AI Now Institute at New York University, to reject the use of the technology outright. Whittaker and other AI ethicists and scholars have noted that all algorithmic systems contain bias, and this fundamental flaw can't simply be fixed with more data or a software update.

“They shouldn’t purchase anything like this,” she said of those who would buy gun-detection technology. “There is no dataset that would make this work. They are flawed, they are racist and they are being put into schools.”

Gun Detection AI is Being Trained With Homemade ‘Active Shooter’ Videos syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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paulbenedictblog · 4 years

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Usa today Butter Gritty, radish stink, goatnapping: News from around our 50 states

Usa today

Usa today Alabama

Decatur: Extra than 800,000 gallons of untreated sewage spilled from the metropolis’s utility plant and at closing reached the Tennessee River at some point of two days of heavy rains, documents filed by Decatur Utilities display conceal. Disclosures filed with the Alabama Department of Environmental Management mark that about 8 million gallons of raw sewage cling escaped the Decatur Utilities sanitary sewer machine this 365 days in 81 overflows, The Decatur Everyday reports. A truly noteworthy discharge came about closing week when rain overwhelmed mature pipes, and sewage started pouring from a manhole discontinuance to the utility’s headquarters. It took the metropolis-owned firm more than 40 hours to give up the overflow. Decatur Utilities told the Environmental Department the heavy rains triggered the command, though the newspaper says the same corporations in neighboring communities reported few to no sewer overflows at some point of the identical length.

Usa today Alaska

Anchorage: An air provider that suffered a cyberattack has skilled more disruption than first and main projected, in accordance to a firm announcement. The RavnAir Community on Dec. 20 skilled what it known as a “malicious” cyberattack on its data technology network, Anchorage tv put of living KTVA reports. The firm canceled some Alaska flights of Plug 8 aircraft and said passengers could perchance well predict more time desk changes. This week the firm announced the disruption used to be worse than first and main reported. Restoration of programs could perchance well bear to a month, the firm said. Further flight cancellations and delays are likely for the team’s three airlines, RavnAir Alaska, PenAir and RavnAir Join, the firm said. The firm is working with the FBI, a cybersecurity firm and others to restore programs.

Usa today Arizona

Tucson: Three mountain lions came upon feeding on human remains discontinuance to a current Tucson mountain climbing lunge were killed, authorities said Wednesday. They weren't suspected of killing the particular person however were particular to be a hazard to the general public on story of they confirmed no alarm of officers looking out to amass the remains, the Arizona Game and Fish Department said in a assertion. The put of living within the Coronado Nationwide Wooded space used to be closed for a day while officials attempted unsuccessfully to trap the mountain lions. The medical examiner will work to establish the title and situation off of death for the particular person came upon Tuesday morning off the Pima Canyon Skedaddle. The lunge at the imperfect of Mount Lemmon used to be reopened Wednesday, sooner than a planned Jan. 14 reopening, after authorities made up our minds there used to be no hazard to the general public.

Usa today Arkansas

Minute Rock: A contemplate on Thursday ordered the metropolis to reinstate a police officer who used to be fired for fatally taking pictures a sunless motorist. Pulaski County Circuit Resolve Tim Fox reversed the Minute Rock Civil Service Commission’s ruling upholding the termination of Officer Charles Starks over the fatal taking pictures of Bradley Blackshire. Starks fired no less than 15 times by the windshield of a automobile Blackshire used to be using in February. Starks and but every other officer were trying a motor automobile give up at the time. Police commanders fired Starks in Can also, saying he violated department coverage. Fox upheld the fee’s ruling that Starks violated coverage requiring officers to pass out of an oncoming automobile’s path if likely other than fire. Nonetheless the contemplate said a 30-day suspension and reduction in wage to an entry-stage officer are more acceptable sanctions.

Usa today California

Corona: A Southern California quarantine zone has been expanded to be ready to give up the unfold of a illness that threatens the issue’s multibillion-greenback citrus exchange. The addition of 107 sq. miles encompassing the cities of Corona and Norco and phase of Chino followed the invention of a dozen trees with citrus greening illness in Corona, The Press-Endeavor reports. The quarantine zone now covers 1,127 sq. miles in sides of Riverside, San Bernardino, Los Angeles and Orange counties. The quarantine forbids motion of fruit, citrus crops or foliage, however the fruit also can be consumed on properties the put it used to be grown. Citrus greening illness is mostly is named Huanglongbing or HLB. It is a ways unfold by a little, aphid-tackle computer virus known as the Asian citrus psyllid. Contaminated trees obtain mottled leaves, manufacture deformed fruit and at closing die.

Usa today Colorado

Denver: Two affiliated organizations with ties to hospitals and insurance companies cling launched a six-figure public family ad blitz against the creation of a “public” medical insurance option within the issue. The advertising and marketing and marketing and marketing campaign started in December and springs sooner than the 2020 legislative session, which begins subsequent week and is expected to characteristic an intense struggle over how and whether or to no longer operate the general public option, the Colorado Sun reports. The so-known as public option, as proposed by Gov. Jared Polis’ administration, would in actuality be bustle by private insurance companies that will offer plans with authorities oversight. The plans could perchance well perhaps be on hand first and main most efficient to other folks that take coverage on their very non-public, with out wait on from an employer. Nonetheless Polis administration officials cling said they hope to expand the general public option to minute employers within a couple of years.

Usa today Connecticut

Hartford: The issue’s Department of User Safety is urging consumers to invent their homework before signing a contract with a gym or gymnasium. Commissioner Michelle Seagull says better health is known as a Recent 365 days’s resolution, and there tends to be a spike in unusual gym and gymnasium memberships in January. “Nonetheless on occasion the pleasure of belief wears off after a couple of months, and consumers are stuck in gymnasium contracts that they real don’t dispute,” she says. “That’s why we’re encouraging consumers to invent their homework and to be neat before making a dedication.” Connecticut law requires health clubs to cling contracts in writing. The actual person protection department urges consumers to be taught them carefully and know the device vital they'll pay, when the bill will are obtainable and what the cancellation coverage will likely be. The department additionally recommends studying online studies, talking to contemporary prospects and visiting the membership in particular person.

Usa today Delaware

Middletown: The 2020 Hummers Parade went off with out a hitch Wednesday following closing 365 days’s controversy, though parade watchers said it used to be no longer as real as past years and had a ways fewer marchers. Accompanying this 365 days’s parade used to be a team of more than 50 protesters retaining indicators decrying racism. Hundreds more lined the streets to ogle the annual parade that drew national scrutiny closing 365 days for a drift depicting young other folks in cages that many deemed offensive. The loosely organized parade is a spoof of the Mummers Parade in Philadelphia, and floats most regularly satire top news studies of the past 365 days. The parade used to be led by unofficial Big Marshal Jack Schreppler, who held an usual American flag with 13 stars. Just a few dozen and a half of minute teams and some lone other folks paraded by downtown Middletown on Recent 365 days’s Day. The most current topic depicted this 365 days used to be the Delabear from earlier this iciness.

Usa today District of Columbia

Washington: An it appears intoxicated man fell onto the tracks of a Metro put of living, causing one of the well-known most main delays of the unusual 365 days, in accordance to authorities. The actual person fell early Wednesday morning and used to be taken to a sanatorium with injuries no longer considered lifestyles-threatening, news stores declare. The fall is being investigated as an accident, in accordance to a Washington Metropolitan Role Transit Authority assertion that says the particular person gave the influence to be “below the influence.” The actual person’s identity wasn’t without lengthen launched.

Usa today Florida

Deland: Fifteen automobiles were shot at while using alongside Interstate 4 and Interstate 95 in Central Florida, authorities said Thursday. No injuries were reported, and the disaster from the Wednesday shootings appears to were triggered by a BB or pellet gun, in accordance a assertion by the Volusia County Sheriff’s Set apart of labor. The automobiles hit within the shootings were discontinuance to Deltona, DeLand and Daytona Seaside, in accordance to a assertion from the sheriff’s place of job. Look for accounts of the suspect automobile differ. An investigation used to be ongoing.

Usa today Georgia

Brunswick: The issue’s waters are closing to miniature fishing Jan. 15, however whelk season opens the following day. The annual miniature fishery closure aims to enable miniature to breed in neat ample amounts and grow to neat ample dimension to with pretty of luck present for a real miniature harvest within the coming 365 days, The News reports. The miniature fishery tends to reopen in dull Can also or early June, looking out on stipulations at the time. Meanwhile, the issue’s whelk season is to open at 7 a.m. Jan. 16 and bustle by 8: 15 p.m. March 31. Regulatory requirements for whelk trawls consist of the dispute of minimum 4-lunge stretch mesh trawl tools and a licensed turtle excluder instrument. Fishermen additionally need a issue commercial fishing license with a whelk endorsement.

Usa today Hawaii

Honolulu: Hawaiian Telcom painted over an unauthorized mural on one among its constructions by neatly-known marine artist Robert Wyland. The artist acknowledged he didn't cling permission to spray-paint the Maui building, The Honolulu Smartly-known particular person-Advertiser reports. The lifestyles-dimension image stretching 65 ft depicted a female humpback whale. Wyland said he apologized and hoped Hawaiian Telcom would no longer paint over the mural he created at some point of work over two days. “I converse regret for no longer running it up the meals chain,” he said Monday. “I’m so passionate. I allege to God I don’t focal point on these items. I form of painted it and explore forgiveness later.” Hawaiian Telcom by no means bought a without lengthen apology from Wyland, the firm said.

Usa today Idaho

Carey: Reveal land administration officials cling secured a conservation land dispute easement on the Cenarrusa Ranch ensuring the land in that put of living is no longer developed. The Bureau of Land Management and The Nature Conservancy in Idaho finalized the easement within the Pioneer Mountain foothills discontinuance to Carey after years of debate, The Cases-News reports. The easement ensures protection of about 13 sq. miles of land collectively with myth grouse habitat and migration corridors for wildlife, officials said. One of many longest pronghorn migrations within the west, a 160-mile scamper crosses the ranch and involves grouse breeding grounds, land officials said. The easement is additionally expected to advise unusual game opportunities collectively with more than 3 miles of gather entry to routes, officials said. “It’s the style of predicament that makes Idaho Idaho,” Nature Conservancy Conservation Supervisor Tess O’Sullivan said.

Usa today Illinois

Chicago: The metropolis appears to cling closed out 2019 with a drop within the need of homicides for the third consecutive 365 days, police grunt. Preliminary numbers Tuesday confirmed there had been 490 homicides in 2019, making it the main time the yearly quantity has dipped below 500 since 2015, when it used to be 491. The need of homicides in 2019 dropped 13% in contrast with 2018, when there were 565 homicides, in accordance to police statistics. The declines came about across the metropolis, collectively with in historically excessive-crime areas. Police cling credited the metropolis’s dip in crime to the dispute of technology historic to predict the put shootings could perchance well occur, while specialists additionally credited anti-violence programs that offer jobs and gang warfare mediation.

Usa today Indiana

Indianapolis: The metropolis is a bombed-out wretchedness put of living in an upcoming G.I. Joe comedian e book. Being depicted as a warfare zone is less than flattering, however author Paul Allor isn’t picking on the metropolis. He lives right here, and the story gifts Indianapolis as placing up a fight against the execrable guys of Cobra – prolonged-running nemesis of the G.I. Joe physique of workers. Unfortunately, Cobra principles the world in Allor’s story. The organization has no command making a cautionary instance of Indianapolis. “Cobra genuinely wipes the metropolis off the scheme,” Allor said. What’s left? Downtown’s Infantrymen and Sailors Monument, no less than, is considered on the conceal of “G.I. Joe” No. 5, scheduled to attain in stores Jan. 8. And a survivalist biker gang, the Dreadnoks, is placing out at the Indianapolis Art work Center. Abundant Ripple resident Allor additionally incorporates a reference to Guilford Avenue’s multicolored “rainbow” bridge.

Usa today Iowa

Fruitland: A provider membership intends to manufacture a memorial for veterans in this Muscatine County team. The Fruitland Community Lions Club desires to predicament it discontinuance to Fruitland Community Center other than at a cemetery. A membership committee made up our minds the put of living discontinuance to the center would enable more other folks to search it and would deter vandals, the Muscatine Journal reports. The committee worked with Louisa-Muscatine High College artwork students to predicament a manageable and affordable obtain. This could perchance well cling sunless granite walls with seating, a flag and lighting. Every dilapidated could perchance well perhaps cling two traces on the wall, ample room to list names and provider data, for $100. The memorial can match 400 names. “We don’t wish to leave somebody off real on story of there’s no room. We’ll salvage room – we’ll take more granite if we would like to,” says Janina Hawley, the committee chairwoman.

Usa today Kansas

Wichita: The issue has been ready to attenuate its carbon-dioxide emissions for a 10th straight 365 days largely due to the expeditiously adoption of wind energy and a dull pass a ways from coal-powered electricity. About 36% of all electricity produced in Kansas is from wind, the supreme share of any U.S. issue, the Kansas News Service reports. In 2019 on my own, Kansas noticed four unusual wind farms, adding ample capability to energy 190,000 homes for a 365 days. In 2017, about half of of Kansas’ total carbon-dioxide emissions came from burning fossil fuels, equivalent to coal and natural fuel, to operate electricity. Plant upgrades and federal environmental rules since cling compelled coal crops to neat up what used to be popping out of their smoke stacks. Carbon-dioxide emissions contribute to global warming.

Usa today Kentucky

Ashland: The metropolis is net hosting a dedication ceremony for loads of unusual statues, collectively with two of Roman deities. Ashland’s Friday festivities will consist of a lighting ceremony, catered meals, stay song and a presentation by the artist, Gines Serran-Pagan, The Just reports. The bronzed clay and fiberglass statues of Venus, Vulcan and the belief of Genesis were commissioned by an anonymous donor who hoped to memorialize three sure sides of their fatherland, in accordance to the newspaper. “I'm so grateful that Serran-Pagan’s magnificent statues will likely be phase of Ashland’s riverfront panorama,” metropolis supervisor Mike Graese said. “The generosity of the donor is, individually, reflective of Ashland’s giving spirit. Mayor Steve Gilmore said he’s confident the statues will scheme tourists from in every single put.

Usa today Louisiana

Baton Rouge: Authorities announced Thursday that a man has been arrested in connection with the deaths of three homeless other folks. Jeremy Anderson, 29, used to be arrested and charged with two counts of first-level homicide and one depend of 2d-level homicide, Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul told news stores at a press convention. Paul said evidence came upon inside Anderson’s residence helped hyperlink him to the murders. The first two killings came about Dec. 13 when Christina Fowler, 53, and Gregory Corcoran, 40, were came upon fatally shot under an overpass, huddled in blankets beside an empty browsing cart. On Dec. 27, investigators came upon 50-365 days-mature Tony Williams shot to death on the porch of a vacant residence about two blocks a ways from the put Fowler and Corcoran were came upon. Paul said Anderson lives two blocks a ways from the put each and each shootings occurred.

Usa today Maine

Freeport: Coastal Maine has quite a lot of seaweed and an supreme need of cows. A team of scientists and farmers think that pairing the 2 could perchance well wait on unlock a skill to tackle a warming world. The researchers – from a marine science lab, an agriculture center and universities in northern Recent England – are engaged on a thought to feed seaweed to cows to gauge whether or no longer that could perchance well wait on reduce back the greenhouse fuel emissions that contribute to climate exchange. Just a few quarter of the methane within the nation comes from cattle, which manufacture the fuel when they belch or flatulate. The belief that of feeding seaweed to cows has won traction in contemporary years thanks to a few studies that cling confirmed its doable to attenuate aid on methane. One of many immense questions is which forms of seaweed offer the supreme lend a hand to farmers wanting to attenuate methane, says Nichole Label, a senior compare scientist at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay, Maine, and the project’s chief.

Usa today Maryland

Annapolis: The governor has indicated he’ll proceed to enable refugees into the issue. The Capital Gazette reports Gov. Larry Hogan’s place of job launched a letter Wednesday that used to be sent to the Trump administration. The letter said the issue would proceed to settle for neatly vetted refugees. The White Home had situation a Jan. 21 reduce back-off date for states and cities to contemplate whether or no longer they would proceed to enable refugees to determine within their jurisdictions. “We are keen to settle for refugees who the federal authorities has particular are neatly and legally wanting for refugee predicament and were adequately vetted,” Hogan wrote in his letter. “This, as , is varied from any form of ‘sanctuary predicament’ for these within the United States unlawfully.” Maryland has accredited practically 10,000 refugees below Hogan’s management since 2016. Nonetheless the Republican used to be among 31 governors who wanted to refuse Syrian refugees in 2015 out of alarm of terrorism.

Usa today Massachusetts

Boston: The issue is extending its electric automobile rebate program. Republican Gov. Charlie Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito announced the rebates were being prolonged Wednesday to closing by no less than Dec. 31, 2021, and the administration will originate no less than $27 million on hand per 365 days in 2020 and 2021. The program used to be phased out from Sept. 30 by Tuesday on story of a fleet sigh in applications triggered an absence of funding, Baker and Polito said, however the funding thought they proposed for an extension used to be largely adopted in a contemporary supplemental funds. Since 2014, the issue has allotted more than $31 million for the bother, to incentivize the bewitch of more than 15,000 electric automobiles and reduce back the issue’s greenhouse fuel emissions by an estimated 39,000 metric heaps every 365 days, Baker and Polito said.

Usa today Michigan

Delta Township: The team has solved an olfactory mystery that will likely be dubbed “The Case of the Rancid Radishes.” Residents known as officials in Delta Township closing month, fascinated a couple of smell they notion could perchance well very neatly be natural fuel or sewer leaks. Township Supervisor Brian Reed and his employees bought to the, neatly, root of the command: rotting radishes in within sight farm fields. To be more real, it used to be the unseemly smell of decomposing daikon radishes, a Japanese root vegetable. They had been planted in fields within the township and surrounding areas as a conceal crop after a moist spring. The radish differ is among these urged by natural resources officials to plant at some point of such classes – to no longer reap however to decompose in a say to nourish the soil, aerate it and prevent erosion. Decompose they did, and when temperatures rose in December the scent permeated the air. The stench need to composed subside with consistently less warm climate.

Usa today Minnesota

Minneapolis: Reveal Attorney Same old Keith Ellison on Thursday known as for the Minnesota Board of Public Defense to search the assignment that ended in the suspension of Hennepin County’s chief public defender, saying he believes Mary Moriarty used to be focused for talking out against racial bias within the prison justice machine. One after the other, law clerks and attorneys in Moriarty’s place of job wrote to the board in her defense, praising her management and dedication to clients and calling for her reinstatement. And dozens of public defenders and public curiosity attorneys open air Minnesota signed onto a letter objecting to her suspension. Moriarty, appointed in 2014, used to be positioned on paid leave closing week. She said officials expressed concerns about her administration style, what they known as inflexibility with varied prison justice officials and confrontations on the wretchedness of racial inequality. They additionally questioned a series of tweets about historic lynchings within the Deep South, she said.

Usa today Mississippi

Hattiesburg: The Hattiesburg Cultural Center hosted a jazz brunch Wednesday in honor of Jeanette Smith, a prominent chief within the metropolis’s civil rights motion within the dull 1950s and early 1960s, WDAM-TV reports. She used to be 78 years mature when she died in Atlanta in 2018. Her dull husband, Dr. C.E. Smith, additionally used to be instrumental in Hattiesburg’s civil rights motion. Both of them served because the president of the Forrest County NAACP, which they joined in 1959. The heart plans on net hosting the brunch again subsequent 365 days to honor these that cling made a distinction for the civil rights organization, in accordance to the put of living.

Usa today Missouri

Jefferson Metropolis: The issue’s levees need to composed be reinforced and repaired, severely in rural areas hit onerous by prolonged flooding in 2019, in accordance to an advisory team appointed by Gov. Mike Parson. St. Louis Public Radio reports the Flood Recovery Advisory Working Community on Tuesday launched its declare on ways to tackle flooding within the issue and reinforce flood restoration. Parson signed an executive say in July creating the 24-member advisory team. File flooding early closing 365 days and within the summertime overtopped and breached dozens of levees alongside the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. Some sides of western Missouri skilled flooding for up to seven months. Rebuilding in flood-prone areas has ended in repeated disaster, said Dru Buntin, deputy director of the Missouri Department of Natural Sources.

Usa today Montana

Helena: Wildlife officials cling opened the enable lottery for non-motorized watercraft on the Smith River in central Montana. Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks every 365 days awards floating permits to groups of up to 15 other folks to gather entry to a 59-mile half of the Smith River east of Helena. Applications need to composed be submitted by Feb. 13 with a $10 non-refundable fee. The enable drawing is scheduled for March 2, officials said. The issue regulates the river to combat overcrowding and enable users to take quality, multiday floats, park officials said. About 10,070 other folks utilized for private floating permits closing 365 days, and about 1,300 were awarded, officials said. Folks can additionally take a gamble to hold a neat enable for $5 till March 12, officials said. That enable enables floaters to earn any day they wish to take the river time out, park officials said. The overall drift time out most regularly takes about four days and begins discontinuance to White Sulphur Springs, officials said.

Usa today Nebraska

Brownville: Federal inspectors thought to be taught about how neatly a nuclear energy plant handled a water provider safety command blamed on a silt buildup from the Missouri River, which overwhelmed or broke by levees closing spring. The Cooper Nuclear Station discontinuance to Brownville used to be running on corpulent energy Dec. 6 when employees detected that water wasn’t flowing by a pipe related to one among the plant’s two safety mills, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a news launch Thursday. The mills weren’t running on story of they're designed to kick in and supply energy for the plant’s cooling programs most efficient when all 5 traces that energy the plant are knocked out. If wanted, the quite quite a lot of generator used to be on hand, the NRC said. The plant generated energy at some point of the command.

Usa today Nevada

Carson Metropolis: The issue Supreme Court has ruled that workers’ compensation rates for injured inmates are situation at inmate pay rates other than the minimum wage. Inmate Darrell White used to be assigned to the Forestry Division when he suffered a finger hurt that left him temporarily disabled for 144 days in 2016, the Nevada Attraction reports. White filed for employees’ compensation incapacity advantages at the minimum wage situation within the issue Structure after his launch, however an appeals officer ruled that issue law sets the amount of compensation at the moderate monthly wage the prisoner in actuality bought when the hurt occurred, officials said. White argued his compensation need to composed be situation at the constitutionally assured $7.25 an hour. Court officials argued compensation need to composed be about 50 cents a day, or $22.93 every month, in accordance to what he used to be in actuality being paid.

Usa today Recent Hampshire

Dover: The Metropolis Corridor clock tower, which officials grunt has misplaced its sheen and is sorely in need of a fundamental beauty overhaul, will likely be getting a corpulent facelift sooner than the metropolis’s 400th birthday event in 2023. Metropolis Supervisor Mike Joyal says the 80-foot tower wants quite a lot of labor to gather it in display conceal-mighty condition for the metropolis’s immense birthday bash, the massive majority of that also can very neatly be neatly-known at some point of a 10-day time desk sooner than July 4, 2023. The historic bell atop the tower used to be rung July 4, 1976, to celebrate the nation’s bicentennial, in accordance to metropolis records. After that, Joyal says, to this point as he has been ready to resolve, the closing time the bell used to be rung used to be Sept. 11, 2001. The importance of the bell to Dover’s historic past makes it a need to for ringing on the metropolis’s 400th birthday, in accordance to Mayor-elect Robert Provider.

Usa today Recent Jersey

Howell: A particular person that situation off fireworks discontinuance to a movie theater as his pal made a marriage proposal created dismay among moviegoers who mistook the fireworks for gunshots, main to 911 calls and an evacuation, authorities said. Howell Township police answered to the Xscape Theater about 6 p.m. Wednesday and soon realized the theater supervisor had confronted a man who had lighted fireworks open air but every other industrial discontinuance to the theater, authorities said. The remnants of the fireworks were positioned, and it used to be particular that no pictures had been fired. A 23-365 days-mature Lakewood man told police he had situation off the fireworks as phase of his pal’s marriage proposal at the quite quite a lot of business. Whereas noting there used to be no intent to situation off dismay at the theater, a post on the Howell police Facebook page said that “obviously this used to be a in fact unfortunate resolution other than an overt act.”

Usa today Recent Mexico

Santa Fe: A newly solid steel instrument that could perchance well pinpoint the lunge of stars and planets across the night time sky the dispute of the bare peer is a throwback to the years real before the creation of telescopes, returning stargazers within the hills of northern Recent Mexico to the necessities of astronomy within the past. Keep in at St. John’s College by graduates, the instrument is a remake of prolonged-misplaced originals devised by Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe within the dull 16th century to chart the put of living of stars and the orbits of planets. It consists of 4 interlocking rings – solid of precision steel and aligned with the north huge title and equator – blended with a sliding viewfinder that is moved by hand to measure angles between the any celestial object, the horizon and the equator. Lengthy, painstaking measurements from such an instrument within the dull-1500s allowed Johannes Kepler to display conceal that Mars revolved in an elliptical orbit around the sun.

Usa today Recent York

Victor: The head Republican within the Reveal Meeting used to be charged Recent 365 days’s Eve with using while intoxicated in his issue-issued automobile, real per week after he wrote a newspaper column warning residents against getting dull the wheel inebriated. Brian M. Kolb, a Republican from Canandaigua who represents a district real open air Rochester, used to be arrested discontinuance to his residence after what he known as a “lapse in judgement.” Authorities said they were known as to a smash in Victor real before 10: 30 p.m. after a automobile like a flash met a ditch. Kolb used to be came upon to be the motive force of the 2018 GMC Acadia that crashed in front of his residence. An Ontario County sheriff’s deputy administered self-discipline sobriety tests, which Kolb failed, before taking him to jail. Whereas there, authorities said a breath take a look at indicated Kolb’s blood-alcohol express used to be over 0.08%, the ethical limit for using in Recent York.

Usa today North Carolina

Raleigh: The issue says it has secured an agreement with Duke Energy to excavate practically 80 million a entire bunch coal ash at six facilities. The Department of Environmental Quality said in a Thursday press launch that this could perchance well very neatly be the supreme coal ash cleanup within the nation’s historic past. It additionally settles quite a lot of ethical disputes between Duke and parties that consist of environmental and team teams. For an extended time, coal ash has been saved in landfills or in ponds, most regularly discontinuance to waterways into which toxins can leach. Duke Energy will cling coal ash from the Allen, Belews Creek, Cliffside, Marshall, Mayo and Roxboro sites into on-predicament lined landfills. “This agreement is a historic cleanup of coal ash pollution in North Carolina,” said Frank Holleman, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Legislation Center.

Usa today North Dakota

Mandan: Authorities grunt an ice jam alongside the Missouri River discontinuance to Mandan is causing water to upward push, threatening property alongside the shoreline. Morton County officials grunt water within the Sq. Butte Creek put of living alongside Willow Street and Rosy Lane has risen roughly 18 inches since Tuesday. Commission Chairman Bruce Strinden toured the put of living Sunday afternoon. He says residents could perchance well wish to pass objects from low areas. Authorities grunt they're working with the U.S. Navy Corps of Engineers to cling aid on increased releases at Garrison Dam till the ice jam wretchedness has been resolved. The Corps had increased discharges from the dam earlier within the week and planned but every other enhance Thursday.

Usa today Ohio

Cleveland: A ban on single-dispute plastic baggage took manufacture Wednesday in Cuyahoga County, though the ban won’t be enforced with fines till July 1. Despite the prolonged roll-out, most Enormous Eagle grocery stores within the county eliminated the bags origin Recent 365 days’s Day, Fox 8-TV reports. The firm could perchance well perhaps cling reusable baggage for bewitch, and prospects will gather fuel perks for every reusable gather historic. Just a few suburbs opted out of the ban, and Cleveland additionally opted out till July 1 to give a working team time to hunt for the affect of reducing plastic baggage on corporations. Some issue lawmakers and industrial teams grunt such local bans originate it more troublesome for grocers and varied corporations to operate, and proposed bills would prohibit local governments from forbidding the dispute of plastic baggage. Nonetheless Gov. Mike DeWine opposes these efforts, saying it could perchance well perhaps be a mistake for issue lawmakers to override local authorities choices.

Usa today Oklahoma

Sand Springs: A particular person stole a pickup truck with a drowsing passenger and a goat inside it and drove it the entire skill from Missouri to Oklahoma before releasing the terrorized victim and animal and at closing being arrested, authorities grunt. Essentially basically based mostly on an arrest declare, two men within the truck parked open air an adult video store in Carthage, Missouri, early Wednesday morning. The driver went at some point of the store, and the passenger fell asleep. When the passenger woke up, a masked man used to be using the truck and pointing a gun at his head, Tulsa TV put of living KOTV reports. The carjacking suspect, 40-365 days-mature Brandon Kirby, drove from Missouri by Kansas. All the device by the 130-mile ordeal, Kirby took methamphetamine, pistol-whipped the victim and consistently threatened him, in accordance to the arrest declare. The Sand Springs Police Department said on Facebook: “OK 2020, it most efficient took you 4.5 hours to gather uncommon. Let’s dull down on the carjacking-goatnapping calls for the the relaxation of the 365 days.”

Usa today Oregon

Salem: The need of nonaffiliated voters within the issue has increased by practically 60,000 for the reason that origin of this 365 days, in accordance to the Oregon Secretary of Reveal’s place of job. As of closing month, there were 951,908 nonaffiliated voters in Oregon – an enhance of nearly 7% since January 2019. The enhance of nonaffiliated voters is basically due to the issue’s “motor voter” law, handed in 2016, which mechanically registers eligible Oregonians as nonaffiliated voters when they register with the Oregon DMV. “There are no less than 300,000 unusual registrants since 2016 thanks to OMV (the Oregon Motor Voter Act),” says Paul Gronke, a political science professor at Reed College and political director of DHM Be taught. “And 80% or more of these didn't acknowledge to a postcard permitting them to affiliate.”

Usa today Pennsylvania

Harrisburg: The butter sculpture for this 365 days’s Pennsylvania Farm Present used to be unveiled Thursday, that comprises three of the issue’s professional sports activities physique of workers mascots. This 365 days’s sculpture, crafted from about 1,000 pounds of donated butter, reveals Gritty, Swoop and Steely McBeam, mascots for the Philadelphia Flyers and Eagles and the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Farm Present in Harrisburg, which calls itself the nation’s supreme indoor agricultural match, involves 12,000 competitive reveals and draws about 500,000 attendees yearly. It runs from Saturday by Jan. 11. Admission is free, however parking in Farm Present Advanced heaps is no longer. After the display conceal ends, the butter sculpture will likely be taken to a farm in Juniata County to be converted into energy by a methane digester. Recent to the display conceal this 365 days are onerous cider sales, an expanded rabbit competitors and a waterfowl habitat with stay ducks within the poultry put of living. There additionally will likely be a demonstration by other folks with bows using horses.

Usa today Rhode Island

Providence: The issue’s residents need to now cling medical insurance or face a penalty on their taxes. The taxation division launched a list of tax changes taking manufacture Wednesday, collectively with the unusual medical insurance mandate. Residents who invent no longer cling minimum crucial coverage in 2020 and invent no longer qualify for an exemption will face a penalty subsequent 365 days when filing a issue tax return for 2020. A federal appeals court ruling this month in Recent Orleans struck down the Cheap Care Act’s requirement that folks cling medical insurance, leaving President Barack Obama’s signature health care law in ethical limbo. Rhode Island’s Same old Meeting handed legislation that used to be signed by the governor to enact the requirement and penalty within the issue, with an efficient date of Jan. 1, 2020.

Usa today South Carolina

Charleston: The issue’s Department of Natural Sources is calling for residents to recycle historic oyster shells and discarded Christmas trees by programs aimed at boosting estuary health and promoting sigh of marine lifestyles. The issue is continuous to expand its oyster recycling and restoration program, the put South Carolinians and drinking locations can drop off historic oyster shells, severely after events equivalent to oyster bakes and holiday parties, The Post and Courier reports. The recycled shells are reintroduced to local waters, the put they give a ground for unusual oysters to grow, natural resources officials grunt. Stay oysters then filter water, defend against erosion, and attract fish and varied sea creatures to their reefs. The issue’s Coastal Conservation Affiliation and Natural Sources Department collectively donated more than $100,000 in tools to earn up and transport the shells, the newspaper reports.

Usa today South Dakota

Sioux Falls: South Dakota’s minimum wage is increasing pretty with the the open of the unusual 365 days. The issue’s minimum wage is now $9.30 per hour – an enhance of 20 cents from 2019. Workers who gather pointers are seeing their minimum wage upward push to $4.65 per hour. The need enhance are phase of a voter-licensed measure in 2014 to elevate the minimum wage, which used to be $7.25 an hour at the time, to $8.50 an hour. KELO-TV reports the minimum wage will proceed to enhance at the rate of the fee of living measured within the particular person fee index. The issue’s minimum wage used to be below $4 till 1992. The $7.25 minimum wage used to be situation in 2010.

Usa today Tennessee

Memphis: Elvis Presley’s Graceland is planning an public sale of artifacts to be held at some point of the dull entertainer’s 85th birthday event Jan. 8. The overall objects up for public sale Wednesday come from third-birthday party collectors however were thoroughly researched and licensed by Graceland Authenticated, in accordance to a news launch from Elvis Presley Enterprises Inc. The mansion and all artifacts within the Graceland Archives proceed to be owned by Lisa Marie Presley and continuously are no longer for sale. The 288 artifacts consist of a golf cart, clothes, jewelry, autographs, live performance memorabilia and Hollywood objects. As neatly as, loads of Graceland experiences will likely be auctioned, with the proceeds benefiting the Elvis Presley Charitable Foundation. Items to be included within the general public sale were announced Monday alongside with registration data. The catalog is on hand at Graceland’s official online store.

Usa today Texas

Dallas: A contemplate on Thursday sided with a sanatorium that plans to amass an 11-month-mature lady from lifestyles pork up after her mom disagreed with the resolution by doctors who grunt that the newborn is in disaster and that her condition will by no means reinforce. Trinity Lewis had asked Resolve Sandee Bryan Marion to wretchedness an injunction in Tarrant County district court to make certain Cook dinner Kids’s Scientific Center doesn’t ruin her daughter Tinslee Lewis’ lifestyles-sustaining therapy. Texas Simply to Lifestyles, an anti-abortion team that opposes the “10-day rule” and has been advocating for Tinslee, said the girl’s mom will attraction the contemplate’s resolution. Scientific doctors at the Castle Value sanatorium had planned to amass Tinslee from lifestyles pork up Nov. 10 after invoking Texas’ “10-day rule,” that also can very neatly be employed when a family disagrees with doctors who grunt lifestyles-sustaining therapy need to composed be stopped.

Usa today Utah

Salt Lake Metropolis: Operators of a copper mine cling announced plans to elongate operations by the dispute of an experimental technique of extraction they grunt is safe despite concerns about doable groundwater contamination. The Salt Lake Tribune reports that officials with the Lisbon Valley Mine are wanting for permits for an acid-basically based fully extraction skill that entails pumping diluted sulfuric acid underground in San Juan County northeast of Monticello. The unusual assignment could perchance well lengthen the mine’s lifespan for a minimum of but every other 25 years, officials said. Environmentalists cling raised concerns about prolonged-timeframe water contamination for within sight residents reliant on groundwater for drinking and cattle. The Lisbon Valley Mining Company has managed the mine since 2008 when its ragged proprietor declared monetary wretchedness three years after opening, officials said.

Usa today Vermont

St. Albans: The Vermont attorney overall’s place of job sued the issue’s supreme dairy operation Thursday, alleging the farm built a 90,000-sq.-foot barn addition and a 10 million-gallon manure pit with out the required permissions. Attorney Same old T.J. Donovan said the growth of the Lumbra Farm in Berkshire between 2016 and 2017 qualified as a neat farm operation below issue rules, alternatively it used to be shunned the required permits and planning input from the Company of Agriculture, Food and Markets and issue environmental officials. Donovan didn't suppose that the additions to the farm contributed to the water pollution woes that cling plagued the issue, however since the expansions were shunned the wanted permits, there used to be no skill to resolve if water qualify used to be affected. Vermont has been struggling for years to bolster water quality in Lake Champlain. Agricultural pollution is considered one among the supreme sources of that pollution.

Usa today Virginia

Richmond: The issue has done practically 1,400 other folks in its 412-365 days historic past – more than any varied within the nation. Nonetheless as a unusual Democratic majority prepares to open up the legislative session, some see an opportunity to ruin executions in Virginia. A bill to abolish the death penalty has been filed by Del. Lee Carter, a Democrat from Manassas, and loads of additional bills are expected. The frenzy is backed by Virginians for Alternatives to the Loss of life Penalty, alongside with some noteworthy voices: family members of homicide victims. Thirteen family members sent a letter to the Same old Meeting in November asking lawmakers to abolish the death penalty. No death sentences were imposed within the issue since 2011, and most efficient three other folks dwell on Virginia’s death row. Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, the issue is 2d most efficient to Texas in need of executions, at 113.

Usa today Washington

Yakima: The issue’s snowpack is less than a 365 days within the past, and officials grunt it’s same to the open of 2015, the issue’s closing immense drought. The Capital Press reports the statewide snowpack is 47% of regular. It used to be 46% of regular at the moment 5 years within the past. “It’s very paying homage to 2015, however this 365 days we are skill dull on mountain precipitation,” says Scott Pattee, issue water supply specialist for the Natural Sources Conservation Service in Mount Vernon. “It’s worrisome. It’s the third-slowest open in snow accumulation statewide for the reason that 1990s, and we had one among the driest Novembers on file.” The supreme wretchedness is that the 5 mountain reservoirs serving the Yakima Basin are vastly dull in recharging, and 130% to 135% of regular snow fall is now wanted within the Better Yakima to gather it aid to regular by April 1, Pattee says.

Usa today West Virginia

Charleston: Gov. Jim Justice on Thursday tapped the director of a Same old Motors dealership to lead the issue’s Division of Motor Vehicles. Everett Frazier, who has worked within the auto exchange for more than three an extended time, will open as DMV commissioner Monday, in accordance to a news launch from the Republican governor. “My goal is to tackle every person who comes by the door of the DMV as a guest,” Frazier said. “I'm looking ahead to being phase of a physique of workers that will maximize the dispute of technology to originate the DMV more atmosphere pleasant and customer-pleasant.” Justice said Frazier’s journey within the auto industrial involves 25 years of managerial positions, most only within the near past because the director of operations at the Thornhill GM Superstore in Logan County. Frazier has additionally resigned as a member on the issue’s pharmacy board to procure the unusual DMV role.

Usa today Wisconsin

Madison: A conservative law firm on Thursday asked a contemplate to search out the Wisconsin Elections Commission in contempt and impose $12,000 a day in fines till it without lengthen purges more than 200,000 voters from the rolls, a pass Democrats are preventing within the main battleground issue. A contemplate closing month ordered the purge of voters who could perchance well cling moved and didn’t acknowledge within 30 days to notification sent by the elections fee in October. The bipartisan fee has deadlocked twice on makes an try by Republicans to invent the purge without lengthen while an attraction to the court say is pending. Rick Esenberg, chief of the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Legislation and Liberty that introduced the lawsuit, said the fee need to purge the voters now. The contemplate in December ruled that the fee used to be breaking issue law by no longer placing off voters who didn't acknowledge to the October mailing asking that they verify their tackle.

Usa today Wyoming

Casper: The issue’s population increased pretty within the 2d half of of 2018 and first half of of 2019 after three years of decline. Census figures launched this week display conceal Wyoming’s population grew by 1,158 between July 2018 and July 2019. The issue’s total population of 578,880 remained below a peak of 586,000 in 2015. The Casper Smartly-known particular person-Tribune reports essentially the latest numbers were recorded before a coal firm’s monetary wretchedness in 2019 furloughed a entire bunch of workers at two fundamental coal mines for four months. Onerous times within the coal, oil and natural fuel industries triggered many other folks to leave Wyoming initiating in 2015. Reveal economist Wenlin Liu says sigh within the energy and building industries accounted for Wyoming’s contemporary population enhance. Liu says Wyoming’s that restoration now reveals indicators of slowing, with contemporary lower job sigh and rising unemployment. Wyoming remains the least-populated issue within the U.S.

From USA TODAY Community and wire reports

Be taught or Portion this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/50-states/2020/01/03/butter-gritty-radish-stink-goatnapping-news-around-states/40936221/

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charlottelehanemotiongraphics · 5 years

Text

Single Use Plastic Project

What are single use plastics?

Single-use plastics, or disposable plastics, are used only once before they are thrown away or recycled. These items are things like plastic bags, straws, coffee stirrers, soda and water bottles and most food packaging.

Plastic bottles are the most commonly collected plastic packaging type. This is because they are easy to sort and there are well developed markets for the recyclate. The bulk of bottles are made from PET or HDPE, which account for about 90%.

Note: The UK has a much higher use of HDPE bottles than most countries due to its use for containing milk.

Plastic bottles are normally made from one of only four polymer types and are very easily identified, both by members of the public and those sorting the collected bottles. The four polymer types used are:

PET (e.g. fizzy drink bottles and squash bottles)

HDPE (e.g. milk bottles and detergent bottles)

PP (e.g. ketchup bottles)

PVC (e.g. large squash bottles). Although the use of PVC in such applications is in decline

How the UK deal with plastic

Plastics are processed in the UK and abroad. Plastics are separated from your other recyclables at a facility in London and sorted into the different plastic types, including plastic bottles and mixed plastics, such as pots and trays. Plastic bottles are predominantly sent to facilities in the UK for remanufacturing - they are washed and chipped to create plastic pellets which can be remade into plastic bottles. The other mixed plastics are sent to outlets in the UK and overseas for manufacturing into new products.

“None of the recycling we collect is incinerated or sent to landfill unless it is too contaminated to be processed.”

Once the material is sorted, it is sent to reprocessing companies to be turned into new materials and products. Some of these recycling markets are in the UK while others are based outside of the UK. The recycling gets sent to where there is a reliable and financially sound market for the materials.

At present, much of the manufacturing industry that the UK relies on is in the Far East and therefore, some of the material has to be sent there. The material gets turned into a vast range of products, from kitchen appliances, to toys, clothes and packaging.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=fgfTQfKRVPY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO3jFKiqmHo

More than 40 companies, including Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Asda, have signed up with the government, trade associations and campaigners to form the UK Plastics Pact.

The Pact says it’s a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to rethink the way we use plastic and its impact on the environment.

Recently, the government said it was considering banning plastic straws and cotton buds and this came hot on the heels of a proposal to make consumers pay a deposit on drinks bottles and cans.

Bans on plastic products

A major step to expand the reduction of plastics beyond bud, straws and stirrers has been announced in the UK Plastics Pact.

Apart from packaging, two of the biggest plastic problems are straws and ear buds. These are among the most widely used items that turn up on beaches around the UK.

Plastic cotton buds are often flushed down toilets and are small enough to pass through water filter systems and end up being eaten by fish and other marine creatures.

The scale of UK plastic straw use is staggering with a figure of eight-and-a-half billion thrown away each year. The government is consulting on these steps with a possible ban to be introduced next year.

Last December, 193 countries committed to a UN plan to stop plastic waste entering the oceans. However, the commitment is not legally binding and doesn’t have a timetable. And different countries have adopted different schemes.

Around 40 have banned single-use plastic bags, with charges or outright prohibitions in place in China, Rwanda and many others including Bangladesh.

Others including the UK are moving to ban plastic straws and cotton buds. Zero plastic waste shops are opening in many towns and cities while plastic-free aisles in stores was part of the 25-year plan for nature in the UK put forward by Prime Minister Theresa May.

Encouraging the Public

some countries are beginning to create collection points for plastics such as bottles in order to encourage more people to properly recycle their waste rather than just throwing it into a regular bin. By doing this, those who hand in plastics will also be rewarded with a small amount of money per plastic, in order to give motivation. Some countries which already operate a similar deposit system have installed “reverse vending machines” to automate the process of reclaiming a deposit.Many of these machines are able to sort, crush and store used bottles.So-called “reverse-vending” has operated since 1984 in Sweden, where more than 90% of household waste is recycled.

Facts on single use plastic

by 2050 the ocean will contain more plastic (by weight) than fish. Studies also found that tiny particles of plastic are already in our food chain and an average person who consumes seafood ingests 11,000 tiny pieces of plastic per year.

full 32% of the 78 million tons of plastic packaging produced annually is left to flow into our oceans; the equivalent of pouring one garbage truck of plastic into the ocean every minute.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS7IzU2VJIQ

Effects plastics have on the environment and animals

Much is made of plastic’s impact on our marine environments. And rightly so given the massive destruction that plastics can wreak on our oceans. With 80 percent of marine garbage being land-based, 90 percent of that is estimated to be plastic. Unlike other materials, plastic never truly decomposes, it simply breaks into smaller bits that will remain in the oceans forever as a sort of microscopic plastic soup.

Chronic Hunger “The really sad thing about this is that they’re eating plastic thinking it’s food,” says Matthew Savoca, a marine biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Imagine you ate lunch and then just felt weak and lethargic and hungry all day. That would be very confusing.”

Plastic stands to cause intestinal blockages in an animal that consumes it. Death is the ultimate tragedy for animals that consume plastic and this is a sad fate that both wild and domestic animals alike can face.

As plastic bags can take up to 1,000 years to break down, once an animal dies and decays after ingesting plastic, the plastic is then freed back into the marine environment to carry on killing other wildlife.

An animal with its head stuck in a plastic food container may suffer from overheating, suffocation, dehydration, starvation, and eventual death from these elements. It is also not equipped to defend itself from a threat.

In August 2000, an eight metre Bryde’s whale died soon after becoming stranded on a Cairns beach. An autopsy found that the whale’s stomach was tightly packed with 6 m2 of plastic, including many plastic check-out bags. Such obstructions in animals can cause severe pain, distress and death.

Bryde’s whales, like many other types of whales, feed by swallowing large amounts of water. If the Bryde’s whale had died at sea, it would have decayed, releasing the plastic to kill other marine life for hundreds of years to come.

In 1998, a pelican was found dead in Kiama after eating 17 plastic bags.

The pelican presumably thought the plastic bags were food. The pelican was preserved and named Pete. Since then he has been standing in front of a sign at Fitzroy Falls that informs visitors of how he died and the problems of plastic bags and ocean pollution.

How to reduce single use plastics

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle

Even when single-use plastics are sent to landfills (there are 3,091 active landfills in the U.S. alone), they aren’t harmless. Landfill liners can leak harmful pollutants into the watershed and plastics on the tops of landfills can be carried away by the wind.The best way to curb single-use plastic pollution is to reduce your personal plastic consumption!

In order to reduce paper cup waste, are the schemes of a few coffee chains, like Pret A Manger, who introduced a discount of 25 to 50 pence if you bring our own reusable mug. They hope this incentive may help change consumer habits. Besides saving in your morning coffee expenditure, you will also be helping to reduce wastage sent to landfills.

Americans purchase about 50 billion water bottles per year, averaging about 13 bottles per month for every person in the U.S.! That means by using a reusable water bottle, you could save an average of 156 plastic bottles annually.

You can easily reduce your plastic bottle consumption by:

Installing a filter system in your house or purchasing a filtering jug

Getting a reusable water bottle

Drinking tap water when possible

Half a million straws are used in the world every day. Refusing straws is becoming a trending practice!

Next time, rethink and refuse plastic bags! There are many alternatives to plastic shopping bags, like canvas bags, reusable bags, backpack, or even cardboard boxes. Try to always carry a reusable bag with you and try to avoid plastic bags next time you go shopping.

Videos that provide ideas on how to reuse plastic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuysL6OXeLo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwYXf_SJXSo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edXimuzIVhk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MvbNwmqDvY

Biblography

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/plasticpledge/

http://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/ways-plastic-pollution-impacts-animals-on-land/

https://www.earthday.org/2018/03/29/fact-sheet-single-use-plastics/

https://www.clearpublicspace.org/blog/reduce-reuse-recycle/the-impact-of-single-use-plastic-in-our-lives

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/06/plastic-planet-animals-wildlife-impact-waste-pollution/

http://www.greeneducationfoundation.org/nationalgreenweeksub/waste-reduction-tips/tips-to-use-less-plastic.html

http://www.plasticfreechallenge.org/what-is-single-use-plastic/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42703561

https://www.recycle-more.co.uk/how-is-it-recycled-/plastic-recycling

http://www.wiseuptowaste.org.uk/recycle/what-happens-to-my-recycling/

http://www.prijatelji-zivotinja.hr/index.en.php?id=934

References for infographic deigns

(Found from google images)

Vector design/style ideas

Colour Palettes

Idea Development

The angle I am going to take on this project will be through the impact on all animals, aquatic and land-based, however my focus will be aquatic. Due to the period making it a bit difficult to fit both in along with other information, I will see how I progress to determine how much of each I will put time into.

My animation will begin on some basic, short facts on plastic, where it comes from, how long it takes to degrade etc., and then move over onto the impact it has on animals due to this. If I can find free use photos of animals in situations caused by plastic, I will use some, but if not I will use illustrator to make vectors of them (this would also be good as I could animate them).

The video will then move over to things we can do to help animals, and ourselves, including a few ideas of recycling, and a few countries that are making huge movements in reducing plastic consumption.

My animation will be designed with a cute theme, with most of my art coming from illustrator vectors, and I’m thinking of creating a sort of mascot turtle that will go through the video with the viewer to explain everything. The video will include mostly soft, complementing colours, and then I would save contrasting colours for important messages in the text, or for certain bits of art to draw attention to that point.

I want to use quite soft music to match the video, perhaps a piano piece or just relaxing music in general, but I will be able to pinpoint the best sounds once I have made a firmer design of my animation.

Turtle Mascot Sketch Ideas

Fave 2

Font

I have chosen this font without too much regard to others, as I have used this one before for a similar cute style, and I think it will fit perfectly with my ideas for this animation. Its hand-drawn and “cutesey” but it is also really easy to read in all point sizes, so it will be really easily adapted into my work.

Background Scene Sketches

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sweetcomputerface-blog · 5 years

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Fish Feed Pellet Microwave Drying Machine

With the development of the situation, the market of microwave drying machine has developed rapidly, and the production enterprises have also made good achievements, innovations in technology and increasing benefits. In fact, drying has a long history, as early as ancient times, people began to use natural conditions for material drying. With the development of the times, they are gradually replaced by manual operation. Instead, microwave drying equipment has gradually developed.

Characteristics of Fish Feed Pellet Microwave Drying Machine：Energy Saving of Microwave Drying Equipment.Because the substance containing water is easy to absorb microwave and heat, there is almost no other loss except a small amount of transmission loss. Therefore, it has high thermal efficiency and energy saving. Microwave drying equipment can save more than 1/3 energy than infrared drying.Microwave drying equipment dries rapidly.Microwave drying equipment is completely different from traditional drying methods. It is a process in which the dried material itself becomes a heater without heat conduction.

Safety and harmlessness: Because microwave energy of microwave drying equipment is controlled to work in metal drying chamber and waveguide tube, microwave leakage is very little, there is no radiation hazard and harmful gas emission, no waste heat and dust pollution, neither food pollution, microwave drying equipment nor environmental pollution. Anti-mildew, sterilization and preservation of microwave drying equipment.Microwave drying equipment has thermal and biological effects. Microwave drying equipment can sterilize and prevent mildew at lower temperature. Because of its fast drying speed and short drying time, it can preserve the activity of materials and vitamins, original color and nutritional ingredients in food to a great extent. Advanced Technology.As long as microwave power is controlled, microwave drying equipment can achieve immediate drying and termination. The programmable automatic control of drying process and drying process specification can be carried out by using man-machine interface and PLC.

Microwave drying equipment is a kind of microwave drying equipment, which is obtained by the special movement of electrons in the magnetic field through DC or 50Hz alternating current on the electro-vacuum device or semiconductor device. This motion can be explained simply as follows: from the point of view of dielectric structure, one kind of molecule is called electrodeless molecular dielectrics, the other is called polar molecular dielectrics. Microwave drying equipment in general, they are arranged irregularly.In an alternating electric field, the polar molecular orientation of these media changes with the polarity of the electric field, which is called polarization. The stronger the applied electric field is, the stronger the polarization effect of microwave drying equipment will be. The faster the polarization of the applied electric field changes, the faster the polarization will be. The more intense the thermal movement of molecules in microwave drying equipment and the friction between adjacent molecules will be. In this process, the conversion of electromagnetic energy to thermal energy is completed. When the heated material is placed in the microwave field, the polar molecules of microwave drying equipment swing and rub back and forth with the microwave frequency of billions of times per second. The heat generated by microwave drying equipment is enough to make the material hot-dry in a very short time.

Fish Feed Pellet Microwave Drying Machine

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teiraymondmccoy78 · 5 years

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The Prophets of Cryptocurrency Survey the Boom and Bust

Not long ago, I was in Montreal for a cryptocurrency conference. My hotel, on the top floor of a big building downtown, had a roof garden with a koi pond. One morning, as I had coffee and a bagel in this garden, I watched a pair of ducks feeding on a mound of pellets that someone had left for them at the pond’s edge. Every few seconds, they dipped their beaks to drink, and, in the process, spilled undigested pellets into the water. A few koi idled there, poking at the surface for the scraps. The longer I watched, the more I wondered if the ducks were deliberately feeding the fish. Was such a thing possible? I asked the breakfast attendant, a ruddy Quebecer. He smiled and said, “No, but it is what I tell the children.”

My mind had been marinating overnight—and for more than a year, really—in the abstrusities of cryptocurrencies and the blockchain technology on which they are built. Bitcoin and, subsequently, a proliferation of other cryptocurrencies had become an object of global fascination, amid prophecies of societal upheaval and reform, but mainly on the promise of instant wealth. A peer-to-peer money system that cut out banks and governments had made it possible, and fashionable, to get rich by sticking it to the Man.

Some of this stuff I understood; much of it I still did not. If you’re not, say, a computer scientist or a mathematician, the deeper you get into the esoterica of distributed ledgers, consensus algorithms, hash functions, zero-knowledge proofs, byzantine-fault-tolerance theory, and so on—the farther you travel from the familiar terrain of “the legacy world,” where, one blockchain futurist told me, pityingly, I live—the better the chance you have of bumping up against the limits of your intelligence. You grasp, instead, for metaphors.

Blockchain talk makes a whiteboard of the brain. You’re always erasing, starting over, as analogies present themselves. So, Montreal bagel in hand, I considered the ducks and the carp. Let the pellets be a cryptocurrency—koicoin, say. Would the ducks then be currency miners? Every altcoin—the catchall for cryptocurrencies other than bitcoin, the majority of which are eventually classified as shitcoin—has its own community of enthusiasts and kvetchers, so perhaps the koi were this one’s. The koicommunity. The breakfast attendant who had put out the pellets: he’d be our koicoin Satoshi—as in Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous and still unidentified creator of Bitcoin. Yes, the koicoin protocol was strong, and the incentives appeared to be well aligned, but the project didn’t really pass muster in terms of immutability, decentralization, and privacy. Koicoin was shitcoin.

A few hours later, I was at lunch in a conference room in another hotel, with a table of crypto wizards, a few of them among the most respected devs in the space. (Devs are developers, and even legacy worlders must surrender after a while and ditch the scare quotes around “the space,” when referring to the cryptosphere.) Four of these devs were researchers associated with Ethereum, the open-source blockchain platform. Ethereum is not itself a cryptocurrency; to operate on Ethereum, you have to use the cryptocurrency ether, which, like bitcoin, you can buy or sell. (Among cryptocurrencies, ether’s market capitalization is second only to bitcoin’s.) The devs were specimens of an itinerant coder élite, engaged, wherever they turn up and to the exclusion of pretty much everything else, in the ongoing construction of an alternate global financial and computational infrastructure: a new way of handling money or identity, a system they describe as a better, decentralized version of the World Wide Web—a Web 3.0—more in keeping with the Internet’s early utopian promise than with the invidious, monopolistic hellscape it has become. They want to seize back the tubes, and the data—our lives—from Facebook, Google, and the new oligarchs of Silicon Valley.

One of them, Vlad Zamfir, a twenty-eight-year-old Romanian-born mathematician who grew up in Ottawa and dropped out of the University of Guelph, was scribbling equations on an electronic tablet called a reMarkable pad. He narrated as he scrawled. The others at the table leaned in toward him, in a way that recalled Rembrandt’s “The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp.” To the two or three people at the table who were clearly incapable of following along, he said, earnestly, “Sorry to alienate you with my math.” Zamfir is the lead developer of one strand of Casper, an ongoing software upgrade designed to make Ethereum scale better and work more securely—an undertaking thought to be vital to its viability and survival. “It’s shitty technology,” Zamfir, whose Twitter bio reads “absurdist, troll,” told a journalist two years ago.

Zamfir was showing the others some rough equations he’d worked out to address one of the thousands of riddles that need to be solved. This particular effort was an attempt (jargon alert) to optimize the incentive structure for proof-of-stake validation—that is, how best to get enough people and machines to participate in a computing operation essential to the functioning of the entire system. “We’re trying to do game theory here,” Zamfir said. The others pointed out what they thought might be flaws. “It doesn’t seem reasonable,” Zamfir said. “But the math works out.” This summarized much of what I’d encountered in crypto.

To his right sat Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s founder and semi-reluctant philosopher king. Buterin, who is twenty-four, occasionally glanced at Zamfir’s formulas but mostly looked into the middle distance with a melancholic empty stare, sometimes typing out messages and tweets on his phone with one finger. He was a quick study, and also he pretty much already knew what Zamfir had come up with, and to his thinking the work wasn’t quite there. “When the models are getting overcomplicated, it’s probably good to have more time to try to simplify them,” he told me later, with what I took to be generous understatement.

Buterin had been working, simultaneously, on another version of Casper. So he and Zamfir were both collaborating and competing with each other. There seemed to be no ego or bitterness—in their appraisal of each other’s work, in person, or on social media, where so much of the conversation takes place, in full view. Their assessments were Spockian, and cutting only to the Kirks among us.

They had first met before a conference in Toronto in 2014. Zamfir was amazed by Buterin, whom he called a “walking computer,” and he joined Ethereum as a researcher soon after. Now good friends who meet up mostly at conferences and workshops, they had greeted each other the day before in the hotel lobby with a fervent embrace, like summer campers back for another year, before quick-walking to a quiet corner to start in on the incentive-structure-for-proof-of-stake-validation talk. Whenever and wherever Buterin and Zamfir convene, people gather around—eavesdropping, hoping for scraps of insight. The two are used to this and pay little heed. There were no secrets, only problems and solutions, and the satisfaction that comes from proceeding from one toward the other.

The first time I heard the word “Ethereum” was in April, 2017. A hedge-fund manager, at a benefit in Manhattan, was telling me that he’d made more money buying and selling ether and other cryptocurrencies in the past year than he’d ever made at his old hedge fund. This was a significant claim, since the fund had made him a billionaire. He was using words I’d never heard before. He mentioned bitcoin, too, which I’d certainly heard a lot about but, like most people my age, didn’t really understand. I’d idly hoped I might be just old enough to make it to my deathbed without having to get up to speed.

As the year wore on, that dream faded. The surge in the price of bitcoin, and of other cryptocurrencies, which proliferated amid a craze for initial coin offerings (I.C.O.s), prompted a commensurate explosion in the number of stories and conversations about this new kind of money and, sometimes more to the point, about the blockchain technology behind it—this either revolutionary or needlessly laborious way of keeping track of transactions and data. It seemed as if language had been randomized. I started hearing those words—the ones I’d never heard before—an awful lot: “trustless,” “sharding,” “flippening.” Explaining blockchain became a genre unto itself.

The dizzying run-up in crypto prices in 2017 was followed, this year, by a long, lurching retreat that, as the summer gave way to fall, began to seem perilous. As with notorious stock-market and real-estate bubbles, innocents had been taken in and cleaned out. But both boom and bust reflected an ongoing argument over what cryptocurrencies and their technological underpinnings might be worth—which is to say, whether they are, as some like to ask, real. Is crypto the future or a fad? Golden ticket or Ponzi scheme? Amazon 2.0 or tulip mania? And what is it good for, anyway? It sure is neat, but for now it lacks its killer app, a use that might lead to mass adoption, as e-mail did for the Internet. “We need the hundred-dollar laptop, the iPod,” a blockchain apostle told me.

Now and then, legacy titans voiced their scorn. Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of J. P. Morgan, labelled crypto “a fraud”; Warren Buffett used the phrase “rat poison squared.” Legions of skeptics and technophobes, out of envy, ignorance, or wisdom, savored such pronouncements, while the true believers and the vertiginously invested mostly brushed it aside. They had faith that a new order was nigh. They pumped but did not dump.

Among a certain subset, it was both fashionable and integral to ignore the fluctuations in price. The idea was to build and shore up a new system—for everything from payments and banking to health care and identity—that was either a replacement for the old one, or at least an alternative to it, one that was borderless, independent of state control and of exploitation by Big Tech. “It’s definitely nice to try to eke out some completely parallel kind of world that’s totally separate from the existing one,” Buterin said. “It does interact with the rest of society, and the goal is definitely to help improve the mainstream world, but we’re on a different track.” Such an undertaking would, at best, take many years and likely span several economic and investment cycles. While the old armature rots, a new one rises alongside it, much as the new Tappan Zee Bridge, over the Hudson, gradually took shape next to the rusty old one it would one day replace. To Buterin, however, the benefits were already clear. “The cryptocurrency space has succeeded at making certain aspects of the international economy more open, when politics is moving in the exact opposite direction,” he said. “I do think that’s a meaningful contribution to the world.”

Buterin is a striking figure, tall and very lean, with long, fidgety fingers, sharp elfin features, and vivid blue eyes, which, on the rare occasions when he allows them to meet yours, convey a depth and warmth that you don’t expect, in light of the flat, robotic cadence and tone of his speech. People often joke about him being an alien, but they usually apologize for doing so, because there’s a gentleness about him, an air of tolerance and moderation, that works as a built-in rebuke to such unkind remarks. As we spoke, on the first afternoon of the Montreal conference (the crypto life is a never-ending enchainment of conferences, and is pretty much wall-to-wall dudes), he aligned some items in front of him: pens, Post-its, phone. He forgoes most social niceties and overt expressions of emotion but, when he finds questions or assertions agreeable, is generous with notes of encouragement: “Yep, yep, yep”; “Right, totally”; “Yes, yes, exactly.” Arguable remarks elicit a mechanical “Hmm.” He seems to anticipate your question before you even know quite what it is, but he forces himself to allow you to finish. He has a dry sense of humor.

He said, “I definitely don’t have the kind of single-minded C.E.O. personality that a lot of Silicon Valley V.C.s lionize—that thing of being ambitious and wanting to win at all costs, like, basically, Mark Zuckerberg.” He was dressed that day, as on the day before and the day after, in a gray turtleneck, black track pants, and laceless Adidas sneakers over turquoise socks. He often wears T-shirts with unicorns and rainbows. He likes to cite Lambos—as in Lamborghini, the cryptobro trophy ride of choice—as shorthand for the excessive trappings of wealth, which do not interest him. He’s about as indifferently rich as a man can be. Although he sold a quarter of his bitcoin and ether well before the prices began to soar last year, he is said to be worth somewhere in the vicinity of a hundred million dollars. (He recently gave away a couple of million dollars to a life-extension research project.) He has no assistants or entourage. He owns little and travels light. “Recently, I reduced my bag size from sixty litres to forty,” he said. “Forty is very tolerable. You can go on fifteen-kilometre walks with it.” The Adidas, he said, were his only pair of shoes. “Actually, I have another pair that’s in one of the many places I call home.” These are friends’ apartments, where he sometimes sleeps for a few nights at a stretch—in Toronto, San Francisco, Singapore, Shanghai, Taipei. He especially likes East Asia. He speaks fluent Mandarin.

After Montreal, he was headed to Berlin and then Switzerland. His home, really, is the Internet. At one point, I referred to an Ethereum outpost in San Francisco, which I’d read about, as a “base of operations,” and he rejected the term: “Home. Base of operations. The more you invent your own life style, the more you realize that the categories that have been invented are ultimately, at best, imperfect devices for understanding the world, and, at worst, fake.”

I’d been trying for months to talk to Buterin. In January, I reached out to his father, Dmitry, who reported back that Vitalik was not interested in an interview. “He is trying to focus his time on research,” Dmitry said. “He’s not too excited that the community assigns so much importance to him. He wants the community to be more resilient.” Dmitry Buterin, forty-six, is from Grozny, in Chechnya. He studied computer science in Moscow and then started a financial-software business, before emigrating to Canada, when Vitalik was six. Dmitry settled in Toronto, with Vitalik; Vitalik’s mother, a financial analyst, chose Edmonton. Vitalik, when he was three, got an old PC and began fiddling around with Excel. By ten or eleven, he was developing video games. “Vitalik was a very smart boy,” his father said. “It was not easy. His mind was always racing. It was hard for him to communicate. He hardly spoke until he was nine or ten. I was concerned, but at some point I realized it is what it is. I just gave him my love.”

He also gave Vitalik his first glimpse of Bitcoin. It was 2011, somewhat early, but Dmitry was an avowed anarcho-capitalist, a cynical child of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. For many others like him, especially in those early days, the first encounter with Bitcoin was like a religious epiphany—powerful, life-altering, a glimpse of an entirely different and perhaps more agreeable way of ordering human affairs. “Bitcoin looks like money’s dream of itself,” the technology journalist Brian Patrick Eha wrote, in “How Money Got Free.”

“Before Bitcoin came along, I was happily playing World of Warcraft,” Vitalik told me. He had already been nursing some inchoate ideas about the risks and intrinsic unfairness of centralized systems and authority. He once told a journalist, “I saw everything to do with either government regulation or corporate control as just being plain evil. And I assumed that people in those institutions were kind of like Mr. Burns, sitting behind their desks saying, ‘Excellent. How can I screw a thousand people over this time?’ ” Bitcoin scratched this itch. But in many ways what drew him in was the elegance of the system, invented, it seemed, by a rogue outsider out of thin air. It suited a world view, a dream of a fluid, borderless, decentralized financial system beyond the reach of governments and banks, inclined as they inevitably are toward corruption and self-dealing, or at least toward distortions of incentive. Buterin said, “If you look at the people that were involved in the early stages of the Bitcoin space, their earlier pedigrees, if they had any pedigrees at all, were in open source—Linux, Mozilla, and cypherpunk mailing lists.” These were subversives and libertarians, ranging in political affinity from far left to weird right, as often as not without institutional or academic stature or access. “I found it immensely empowering that just a few thousand people like myself could re-create this fundamental social institution from nothing.”

In the eighties, cryptographers and computer scientists began trying to devise a foolproof form of digital money, and a way to execute transactions and contracts without the involvement (or rent-seeking) of third parties. It was the man, woman, or group of humans known as Satoshi Nakamoto who, with Bitcoin in 2008, solved the crux—the so-called double-spend problem. If you have ten dollars, you shouldn’t be able to pay ten dollars for one thing, then spend the same ten for another. This requires some mechanism for keeping track of what you have, whom you gave it to, and how much they now have. And that was the blockchain.

Definitions of blockchain are as various as the metaphors—bingo, Google Docs, a giant room of transparent safes—that people use to try to illustrate them. Broadly speaking, a blockchain is an evolving record of all transactions that is maintained, simultaneously and in common, by every computer in the network of that blockchain, be it Ethereum, Bitcoin, or Monero. Think, as some have suggested, of a dusty leather-bound ledger in a Dickensian counting house, a record of every transaction relevant to that practice. Except that every accountant in London, and in Calcutta, has the same ledger, and when one adds a line to his own the addition appears in all of them. Once a transaction is affirmed, it will—theoretically, anyway—be in the ledger forever, unalterable and unerasable.

Historically, records have been stored in one place—a temple, a courthouse, a server—and kept by whoever presided. If you distrust central authority, or are queasy about Google, this won’t do at all. With blockchains, the records, under a kind of cryptographic seal, are distributed to all and belong to no one. You can’t revise them, because everyone is watching, and because the software will reject it if you try. There is no Undo button. Each block is essentially a bundle of transactions, with a tracking notation, represented in a bit of cryptographic code known as a “hash,” of all the transactions in the past. Each new block in the chain contains all the information (or, really, via the hash, a secure reference to all the information) contained in the previous one, all the way back to the first one, the so-called genesis block.

There are other words that are sometimes included in the definition of blockchain, but they are slippery, and grounds for endless parsing, asterisking, and debate. One is “decentralized.” (Some blockchains are more decentralized than others.) Another is “immutable”—the idea that, in theory, the past record can’t be altered. (This is different from having your crypto stolen or hacked, when it’s stored in an online “wallet.” That happens all the time!) Then there’s “privacy.” The aspiration is for a digital coin to have the untraceability of cash. Because bitcoin was, at the outset, the dark Web’s go-to tender for the purchase of drugs, sex, weaponry, and such, many assumed that it was private. But it isn’t. Every transaction is there in the ledger for all to see. It is, fundamentally, anonymous (or pseudonymous, anyway), but there are many ways for that anonymity to be compromised.

The odds are high that someone, somewhere, has attempted to make an explanation like this one to you. The chain-splainer is a notorious date spoiler and cocktail-party pariah. Here he comes—you’re trapped. You should have known better than to ask about mining.

Mining is a reward system—compensation for helping to maintain and build a blockchain. The work of establishing and recording what’s legit takes machinery, memory, power, and time. Cryptocurrency blockchains require that a bunch of computers run software to affirm (or reject) transactions—it’s a kind of automated convocation. During this ritual, the computers in the network are competing, via brute guesswork, to be the first to get the answer to a really difficult math problem. The more computational power you have, the more guesses you can make, and the more likely you are to get the answer. The winner creates a new block and gets a reward, in, say, bitcoin—new bitcoin, which has not previously been in circulation. (Satoshi ordained that there be a finite number of bitcoin ever created—twenty-one million—so that no one could inflate away the value of existing bitcoin, as, say, the Federal Reserve does with dollars. Other cryptocurrencies, including ether, don’t necessarily have finite supplies.)

This system is known as Proof of Work. The problem-solving exercise is proof that the computers are doing the work. This approach has serious and, some would say, fatal, flaws. First, it requires a tremendous amount of electricity. This year, it is said, the Bitcoin network will use as much energy as the nation of Austria, and produce as much carbon dioxide as a million transatlantic flights. Mining rigs—computers designed specifically to do this work—are thirsty machines. Mining farms tend to sprout up where juice is cheap (typically, in proximity to hydropower projects with excess capacity to unload) and where temperatures are low (so you don’t have to burn even more electricity to keep the rigs cool). There are open-air warehouses in remote corners of sub-Arctic Canada, Russia, and China, with machines whirring away on the tundra, creating magic money, while the permafrost melts. Second, a small number of mining conglomerates, or pools—many of them Chinese—have wielded outsized influence over the network and the decisions that get made. Last month, one of the biggest of these, Bitmain, confirmed plans to go public.

The alternative, which Zamfir and Buterin were working on in Montreal, is called Proof of Stake. In this scenario, the holders of the currency in question become the validators, who typically take a small cut of every approved transaction. Theoretically, the more crypto you have, the more influence you have, so PoW partisans consider PoS to be plutocratic as well—a new gloss on the old problem of too much in the hands of too few.

In 2013, Buterin travelled to San Jose for a Bitcoin meet-up, and felt that he’d encountered like-minded people for the first time in his life—a movement worth devoting himself to. “The people that I had been searching for the whole time were actually all there,” Buterin told me. Zooko Wilcox, a cryptographer, recalled Buterin telling him, “This is the first technology I’ve ever loved that loves me back.” Buterin had been writing blog posts about it for five bitcoins per post. Together, he and Mihai Alisie, a Romanian blockchain entrepreneur who’d read his posts, founded Bitcoin Magazine. Buterin had a knack for explaining things—at least to an audience already primed to understand. But, as he travelled around the world to Bitcoin meet-ups, he began to think that the technology was limited, that attempts to jury-rig non-money uses for this digital-money platform was the computational equivalent of a Swiss Army knife. You basically had to devise hacks. He envisaged a one-blade-fits-all version, a blockchain platform that was broader and more adaptable to a wider array of uses and applications. The concept behind Bitcoin—a network of machines all over the world—seemed to be a building block upon which to construct a global computer capable of all kinds of activities.

In..

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adrianjenkins952wblr · 5 years

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The Prophets of Cryptocurrency Survey the Boom and Bust

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http://bit.ly/2QBhnFA

#IFTTT #Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin

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hermmachinery · 8 months

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What is a 1t/h Chicken Feed Making Machine?

Chicken feed machine is suitable for small and medium-sized agricultural farms, such as raising rabbits, chickens, ducks, geese, fish, pigs, cattle, sheep, water, and other farmers. Chicken feed-making machines can also produce sinking fish feed, as well as powder, pellets, crushed materials, lump materials, etc.

1. Raw material receiving and storage (cleaning) Impurities in the raw materials not only affect the growth of animals, but also easily cause blockage of pipelines and equipment, and even damage equipment (screens, ring molds, etc.). Screening, magnetic separation, and suction dust removal methods can be used.

2. Smash The purpose of crushing: increase the specific surface area of the feed, improve the digestion and utilization of the feed by the animal; improve the quality of the subsequent processes such as ingredients, mixing, and pelleting, and improve the work efficiency of these processes.

3. Mixing process Ingredients are the process of feeding and metering various feed materials with specific ingredients in accordance with the requirements of the formula. Mixing is a process in which various material components are stirred and mixed after the feed product has been metered and formulated so that they are mixed and distributed evenly.

5. Avoid automatic grading of feed ingredients and reduce environmental pollution. In the process of powder storage and transportation, due to the different volumes and masses of various powders, it is easy to produce a classification. After the pellets are made, there is no classification of feed ingredients, and the pellets are not easy to dust. During the feeding process, the pellets have much less pollution to air and moisture than powders.

6. Kill Salmonella in animal feed. Salmonella will remain in animal tissues after being ingested by animals. People who eat animals infected with this bacteria will suffer from Salmonella gastrointestinal problems. The method of steam high-temperature tempering and re-granulation can kill Salmonella in animal feed.

Henan Herm Machinery Co., Ltd was established in 2010 and has been devoted to the research and development of Feed Mill Machinery ever since. With more than 10 years of experience, Herm® has become a leading manufacturer and supplier of animal feed machines and complete animal feed production lines, cattle feed plants, poultry feed plants, animal feed pellet production lines, etc. It always endeavored to improve the quality of products and aims to meet the new requirements of the international market.

If You Are Ready to Start a Feed Pellet Plant Business, please contact us for the feed mill machine. We Can Provide Professional Design and Comprehensive Guidance According to Your Needs. Get in touch with us now!

Welcome Contact Us!

Henan Herm Machinery Co., Ltd

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Whatsapp: 0086 18037508651

#broiler feed machine #chicken feed machine #chicken feed making machine

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courtneyvbrooks87 · 5 years

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The Prophets of Cryptocurrency Survey the Boom and Bust

In..

http://bit.ly/2QBhnFA

#IFTTT #Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin

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vanessawestwcrtr5 · 5 years

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The Prophets of Cryptocurrency Survey the Boom and Bust

In..

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jerrytackettca · 6 years

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Farmed Fish Are Depleting Oceans of Wild Fish

It's estimated that within the next 10 years, farm-raised fish will make up the majority of fish consumed by humans. There are already 100 species being farmed,1 and while aquaculture, as it's technically known, may sound like a sustainable alternative to catching wild fish, it poses many of the same problems plaguing industrial land-based livestock operations, or concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

Among these is the need for a concentrated source of food. On land, this often comes in the form of genetically engineered corn and soy, but farmed fish are sustained via a diet of other fish, known as fishmeal. Aquaculture is a $160 billion industry,2 and as one of the fastest-growing sectors in the food production industry, its appetite for fishmeal is immense.

About 25 percent of wild-caught fish — amounting to about 20 million tons of seafood — are used to make fishmeal that's fed to farmed fish,3 and stocks of wild fish may be dwindling as a result.

Sardinella Stocks Dwindling as Demand for Fishmeal Increases

In West Africa, sardinella is one of the most important fish species for both food security and job creation. It's also one prized for the production of fishmeal powder. In Mauritania, a country in Northwest Africa, 770,000 tons of sardinella are caught annually, up from 440,000 tons just a few years ago, according to a 2015 report funded by the European Union.4

Looking to cash in on the growing fishmeal demand, Chinese investors have built factories dedicated to exploiting the seemingly copious amounts of fish in Mauritania, Senegal and Gambia.

Yet, according to Abdou Karim Sall, president of an association of small-scale fishermen in Senegal, who spoke to Reuters, "In four or five years, there won't be any fish stocks left; the factories will close, and the foreigners will leave ... We'll be left here without any fish."5

In a Reuters investigation, it's revealed that aquaculture is increasingly taking sardinella away from the local people who depend on it for their survival. Reuters reported:6

"Sardinella migrate across a 1,000-mile zone shared by Mauritania, Senegal and Gambia. Officials from each country insist that they want to manage their fish sustainably and develop the kind of processing, freezing and export industries that could create thousands of jobs.

But with no effective regional management system yet in place, this goal may not be compatible with installing ever-more grinding machines for the benefit of fish farms producing food for Asia, Europe and North America."

Fishmeal Factories Encourage Local Fish Fleets to Exploit Fish Stocks

According to the Coalition for Fair Fisheries Arrangements (CFFA), which promotes the livelihoods and food security of costal fishing communities, catches of sardinella in West Africa continue to decline, including in Mauritania, where only 172,000 tons were caught in 2017, down 41 percent from the 292,000 tons caught in 2016.7

Prior to the introduction of the fishmeal industry, the sardinella catch was limited naturally by how much the local market would bear. This natural limit has been removed now that fishmeal factories will buy as much fish as the fishing fleets will bring in. Marine scientist Patrice Brehmer told Reuters, "We could face a catastrophic situation."8 CFFA agrees, noting:9

"Whereas the effort by artisanal fleets in earlier years was restricted by the demand from the human consumption market, this restriction no longer exists at the moment. The fishmeal plants can absorb large quantities of fish, which stimulates artisanal fishermen to increase their effort.

Mauritanian fishmeal plants have even brought in a completely new fleet of efficient Turkish purse seiners to supply them with fish.

Senegalese fishermen from Casamance are now landing catches at fishmeal plants in Gambia. Sometimes these landings are so big that even the fishmeal plants cannot absorb them. As a result, considerable quantities of sardinella have to be dumped at sea or on the land."

Fishmeal Factories Threaten Job Security, Cause Pollution

Job security is also being threatened. Senegal's national dish, known as thiéboudiène, features smoked sardinella, which are carefully dried and smoked by thousands of women working in the sardinella smoking industry.

Whereas the demand for smoked sardinella was once high from local markets, now this activity is threatened because fishmeal factories are buying up all the sardinella, paying twice as much as the women fish smokers can, "leaving them with nothing but time on their hands," Reuters reported.10

The women can no longer afford to purchase fresh sardinella, leaving them out of jobs and the local residents without smoked sardinella to enjoy. Many fishermen are also wondering if they'll soon be forced to find a new line of work.

Gaoussou Gueye, a veteran fishmonger, told news outlet DW, "When the ships go out to sea together, there are not enough fish and they return without any catch. People are thinking there are no more fish left ... If we still had enough fish in Senegal, we would not to have to look for licenses in other countries to fish."11

What's more, the fishmeal factories are causing air and water pollution along the coast. Physicians in the area have even reported an increase of illnesses related to the pollution. Moctar Ame, an ear, nose and throat specialist in Nouadhibou, a city with more than 20 fishmeal factories, told DW that 20 percent of his patients have diseases caused by the factories' pollution:12

"There are many diseases that are directly related to the pollution of these factories. They release toxic air particles. When these particles enter the body, they cause allergies, chronic bronchitis and skin rashes. We cough a lot and have infected throats because of these particles."

Ninety Percent of Fish Used for Fishmeal Could Be Eaten by Humans Instead

The notion of fish farming becomes far less sustainable when you consider that growing fish is using up valuable supplies of fish that could be eaten directly by humans.

A study published in the journal Fish and Fisheries even revealed that most fish destined for fishmeal production are food-grade or prime food-grade fish that could be used to feed people.13 Study author Tim Cashion, research assistant at Sea Around Us, told NPR:14

"I was expecting there to be more truth to the argument that most of these fish don't have a place for human consumption, that there's generally not a market or a possibility of a market for these fish, but that's not what we found ...

In a world with many food insecure populations and people that could substantially benefit from having more fish in their diet ... that we're using 20 million tons of fish to feed aquaculture and livestock production? I think people should care about that."

Many farmed fish species, including tilapia and carp, are fed fishmeal. Further, about 30 percent of fishmeal production is used to feed CAFO animals including pigs and chickens. The types of fish used for fishmeal are also expanding to include not only sardinella and similar fish like anchovies, but also pompanos, drums and even some crustaceans.

It's a concerning finding, considering human exploitation, including overfishing, is the major cause of declining marine species, with some declining in numbers by 74 percent between 1970 and 2010.15

Farmed Fish Spread Diseases to Wild Fish

Aside from threatening wild fish stocks for the production of fishmeal, farmed fish also threaten wild fish by spreading disease, including sea lice and piscine reovirus (PRV). Sea lice are tiny parasitic crustaceans that feed on salmon skin and mucous. Just one or two sea lice can kill a juvenile salmon, with the lice literally eating the salmon alive, and adults may also be harmed if infestations occur.

As noted by Watershed Watch Salmon Society, "Even if average sea lice levels are kept 'low' on a farm, even very low numbers of lice per farmed salmon can add up to billions of sea lice eggs being released into surrounding waters."16

PRV, meanwhile, causes Heart and Skeletal Muscle Inflammation (HSMI) disease, which can be deadly to salmon. One study of salmon in British Columbia, Canada, revealed the proportion of PRV infection in wild fish was related to exposure to salmon farms.17

PRV was detected in 95 percent of farmed Atlantic salmon and up to 45 percent of wild salmon from regions highly exposed to salmon farms. In contrast, only 5 percent of wild salmon living in regions farthest from salmon farms were infected.

Not Good for Oceans, Not Good for You

Nutritionally speaking, farmed fish are also a far inferior choice to the wild variety. For starters, their pens are often placed near shore, which means they're close to land-based sources of pollutant runoff. In addition, their diet of ground-up fishmeal may lead to concentrated levels of toxins like PCBs.

In a global assessment of farmed salmon published in the journal Science, PCB concentrations in farmed salmon were found to be eight times higher than in wild salmon.18 What makes fishmeal so toxic? In some cases, the fish used to make the feed comes from polluted waters.

Some of the toxicity also stems from the manufacturing process of the pellets. The fatty fish are first cooked, resulting in two separate products: protein meal and oil. While the oil has high levels of dioxins and PCBs, the protein powder also adds to the toxicity of the end product. To this protein powder, an "antioxidant" called ethoxyquin is added.

According to the documentary "Fillet-Oh-Fish," this is one of the best kept secrets of the fish food industry — and one of the most toxic. Ethoxyquin was developed as a pesticide by Monsanto in the 1950s. Its use is strictly regulated on fruits, vegetables and in meat, but not in fish, because it was never intended for such use.

The effects of this chemical on human health have never been established. The one and only study ever done on ethoxyquin and human health was a thesis by Victoria Bohne, a former researcher in Norway who made a number of disturbing discoveries, including the fact that ethoxyquin can cross the blood-brain barrier and may have carcinogenic effects.

Are There Any Healthy Seafood Options?

Because much seafood is polluted, I only recommend eating safer seafood choices such as wild-caught Alaskan salmon, sardines, anchovies, mackerel and herring. All of these are at low risk of contamination, yet are high in healthy omega-3 fats. You'll want to opt for sustainably harvested wild-caught fish as well.

One of the best options toward this end is to look for the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) logo, which features the letters MSC and a blue check mark in the shape of a fish. The MSC logo ensures the seafood came from a responsible fishery that uses sustainable fishing practices and meets the following standards:19

Fish stocks are sustainable — there are enough fish left in the sea to reproduce.

Environmental impacts are minimized — fishing operations must be carefully managed to maintain the structure, productivity, function and diversity of the marine ecosystem.

Effective management — the fishery must comply with relevant laws and have a management system that allows it to respond quickly to changes in the status quo.

from http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/11/13/aquaculture-food-security.aspx

source http://niapurenaturecom.weebly.com/blog/farmed-fish-are-depleting-oceans-of-wild-fish

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