SCROLL NEWS / DISCOVERY
Search headlines
Find the stories shaping the conversation.
Results for " rfa " 1,319 found 🔀 AI-powered Shuffle
Tracking tsunamis triggered by extreme weather
As much of Western Europe faced record-breaking temperatures and extended drought this summer, Croatia experienced another weather event that could also set a worrisome precedent.Over the course of two weeks, a series of meteorological tsunamis (meteotsunamis) struck Croatia’s Adriatic coast, alarming both residents and tourists. Social media posts showed flooded seaside promenades and people walking through knee-deep water. Fortunately, no deaths or major damage were reported.In a world where natural disasters seem to be increasing, meteotsunamis — tsunamis caused by rapid weather changes – rarely make headline news. But warming sea temperatures and changing atmospheric conditions may help explain why these phenomena could become more common, especially in shallower seas and inland lakes with wide coastal shelves.“We have definitely become more aware of them, and there have been a lot more reports of these events in the last 10 years,” says Jadranka Šepić, an associate professor of environmental physics at the University of Split whose research focuses on efforts to track meteotsunamis in real time. She is also one of Croatia’s ambassadors for Science Comes to Town (SCTT), a European Commission-funded programme aimed at making research more accessible to the public.Šepić sees two possible reasons for the apparent increase in meteotsunamis. One is that photos and videos shared on social media are providing more empirical evidence, while rising air and sea temperatures could also play a role. The geophysicist “cannot say with certainty” that warming is a contributing factor because research is still ongoing. “But I can say that previously in Croatia we might have had one exceptionally strong event every 10 or 15 years, and one strong event every five years, and within 15 days this summer we had five strong events,” Šepić notes. “This is not typical.”‘A fist against the sea surface’Unlike tsunamis that are triggered by underwater earthquakes or volcanoes, meteotsunamis are caused by sudden changes in atmospheric pressure combined with other rapidly developing weather events, such as thunderstorms. The effect “is like pushing a fist against the sea surface,” Šepić explains. The resulting oscillation intensifies as it reaches shallower water, and “can be far more destructive than a wind-driven wave because meteotsunamis are accompanied by very strong currents than can penetrate much deeper inland.” The meteotsunami, she continues, “then behaves the same as a tsunami — they slow down and grow as the sea shallows, and then grow further in places like harbours due to further shallowing and narrowing. When they come ashore, they can be very destructive — taking everything with them out to sea and then taking it back.”Croatian research institutions have tracked such sea oscillations since the 1930s because the relatively shallow Adriatic Sea is prone to meteotsunamis. The strongest recorded so far was in June 1978, according to the Adriatic Meteotsunami Catalogue, which is supported by the European Research Council (ERC), Croatian Science Foundation and the country’s leading research institutions. During that event, six-metre-high waves flooded the coastal town of Vela Luka on Korčula Island, causing major damage.Other meteotsunami “hotspots” in Europe include the Mediterranean Sea as well the Atlantic coastal shelves off France, Portugal and Spain. In June 2006, a meteotsunami with five-metre-high waves swept through the harbour of Ciutadella in Spain’s Balearic Islands, causing widespread damage to boats. Several less powerful events were reported in the Balearics and off the coast of Spain this summer, leading to some beach closures.Forecasting is challenging because of how quickly meteotsunamis can develop and their uncertain trajectory. Šepić is involved in two ERC-funded research projects — SHExtreme and MeD-Track — aimed in part at strengthening monitoring and real-time data collection. Access to accurate and immediate information is essential for early-warning systems.Early exposure to meteotsunamisŠepić first learned about meteotsunamis from her parents while growing up in Croatia. She later had the opportunity to investigate these events during her master and doctoral studies in geophysics at the University of Zagreb. The geophysicist has also conducted research at the Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries in Split, the University of the Balearic Islands in Palma de Mallorca and the Institute of Ocean Science in the Canadian province of British Columbia.Projects like SCTT are important to raise awareness about research and inspiring young people to pursue studies and careers in science, notes Šepić. She credits her colleagues at the University of Split and the Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries for their community outreach and engagement in the European project, which includes partner universities and institutions in Brest (France) and Kiel (Germany). As an example of town-gown collaboration, Šepić highlights her own university’s ‘Oceanographers on the Island’ programme. This initiative offers workshops and hands-on learning for children living on numerous Croatian islands.“It is a great privilege for Split to be involved in a project like Science Comes to Town, which is the first of its kind in the European Union," Šepić says. As for encouraging new generations of scientists, “This is a great effort, and I hope that we will see an effect in a few years.”Science|Business, which connects policymakers, academics and industry through its news reporting, analysis and events, is an SCTT partner.
A timeline of Mike Causey’s sometimes-turbulent tenure as NC insurance chief
A look at Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey’s career as a second complaint about his behavior with women surfaces.
Inside Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4: The New Game-Changing Tech Powering Every Mode
Smoke, weather and animation have all seen huge upgrades.
Science News unveils its list of 10 scientists making an impact on our world
As a teenager, Gabriela Farfan became fascinated by the shapes and colors of minerals. Now, as curator of gems and minerals at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, she studies what they can reveal about our planet.From corals that preserve chemical signatures of changing oceans to sparkling gemstones, Farfan uses crystal structures, chemistry and spectroscopy to uncover the information trapped inside minerals and show why they’re an essential part of natural history. WASHINGTON, O
What can minerals tell us about Earth’s past? This geologist is finding out
Smithsonian geologist Gabriela Farfan studies corals, gemstones and other minerals for clues to changing oceans and environments.
First iPhone Duo unboxing videos surface ahead of official reviews
A series of iPhone Duo unboxing videos are now on YouTube, showing how the device ships in its open configuration, and how the display crease is practically invisible.
Suspects wanted for string of business burglaries in Fairfax County
Police are searching for suspects accused in a string of Fairfax County business burglaries.
Scientists Use Ancient Rains to Map the Possible Origin Life on Mars
Billions of years ago, rain may have helped shape where the chemistry of life could begin on Mars. A new study maps how formaldehyde, an important prebiotic molecule, may have reached the surface. This map could help guide future missions searching for signs of past life on Mars.
Some Olathe retirees frustrated after health insurance premiums rise again for 2027
These concerns first surfaced last fall when retirees learned their city health insurance premium costs were going up by 500% to 900% for 2026.
People Are Vibe Coding the Ads Out of Their Smart TVs: Here's How
A viral Claude Code prompt lets Android smart TV owners switch off sponsored rows and tracking software and build their own home screens.
Sundar Pichai: Google’s Frontier Imperative, Compute Scarcity Dilemmas, Future AI Products and Businesses
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has little patience for doubts about Google’s willingness or capacity to compete at the frontier of AI. His company’s latest Gemini 4 Argon model — long-promised and recently delivered — beats OpenAI and Anthropic’s latest public models on coding, math, science, and knowledge-work benchmarks and has placed Google’s AI back among the world’s best. Amid chatter that Google was fine with good-enough lightweight ‘Flash’ models, Pichai pushed back hard against any suggestion that company is limiting its research ambitions. “We won’t do it any other way,” he told me in a Big Technology Podcast interview recorded this week at Google’s Mountain View headquarters. Pursuing cutting-edge research is costly for Google, requiring compute and chips that otherwise could be sold at a high markup by its cloud business. But Pichai said allocating resources to frontier AI development is “ground zero” for Google. “Our cloud business is at any given moment in time forgoing short-term revenues because we are making compute trade-offs to support frontier AI development,” Pichai told me. In our conversation, we discussed Argon (which Pichai says processed three times as many tokens as Gemini 3 in the 72 hours after launch), AI’s role in developing better models, the AI interface of the future, competition with OpenAI, Google’s partnerships with Anthropic and Apple, data centers in space, and the nature of his optimism. You can read the full conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, below, or listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice. Alex Kantrowitz: Google is back at the frontier with Gemini 4 Argon, which beats OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s public models on benchmarks spanning coding, math, science, and knowledge work. The conventional wisdom was that Google had given up on the frontier to focus on fast, good-enough models for its products. That was wrong? Sundar Pichai: Very wrong. Look, we are so committed to being at the frontier. It’s in our DNA. We won’t do it any other way. We’ve been thinking about the AI frontier for well over a decade now. The frontier is very dynamic. It’s very competitive. It’s very exciting. I couldn’t be more pleased with how Argon has come together. We took our time with it. We made sure we tested it safely and deployed it carefully. We took a bit longer than our other models, given its capabilities. Across the board, be it for agentic work, knowledge work, coding, creative tasks, Argon is one of the really good frontier models. The first 72 hours since we launched, it’s almost up to 25 trillion tokens used, which is about three times what Gemini 3.0 had in the first 72 hours. And we are capacity constrained as we are serving it. Excited, but there are always areas….. You know, the frontier is very dynamic, and you have to keep evolving the models. There are areas which we can see we need to improve as well. We’ll be at work on all of that as well. Which areas? On any given model, Argon would be across the board better at everything if you just look even two months back. But the space is so evolving. Even on coding, for example, there are pockets where we know we need to do better, and there’s clear feedback. We’ll make it better. The argument for standard models is that they’re already good enough to build great products, with the frontier valuable only for certain tasks. Meta built Muse with good models rather than the best, and Google could put standard models into Maps, Gmail, and Search. Why isn’t that sufficient? It’s definitely not how I have thought about it at all. We are deeply committed to driving the state of the art and actually pushing where this technology can go, all the way from transformers. That’s a journey we’ve been on. You will see us continue to do that. When you’re at the frontier, you get an earlier look into the emerging capabilities, earlier than others, which helps you better prepare for the future. We are fortunate to have a wide set of opportunities across consumer and enterprise. Some of our cloud customers, for sure, want the model at the frontier. The frontier models will be better at developing the next set of models in an era of recursive self-improvement. I would argue it matters there. Internally, we have definitely seen a steep point of inflection by deploying Argon to our developers. It definitely tackles problems which our previous models could not do. Being at the frontier puts you at the innovation frontier and helps you drive that as well. There is room for models of all sizes and capabilities. That’s why we did Flash, Flash-Lite, etc. I agree with you that you can develop very good product experiences with not necessarily the most frontier model, because they tend to be slower and more expensive too. But we care about the Pareto frontier, and we’re committed to doing all of that. You said developing frontier models gives you a look at what’s coming. What do you see on the horizon? What makes this moment so exciting is you build something which you think is a culmination of months of work, and you put it out. You already see clear headroom ahead. We’ve all been working on these agentic, long-horizon capabilities, but clearly the frontier is going to have multiple of these agents working together to do things. That’s an example of an exciting paradigm underway. It’s also clear to me that users, both in consumer and enterprise, will have access to some multi-agent framework for them, working all the time doing things. It feels like a moment of infinite possibilities. Sergey Brin said one of Argon’s core innovations was relying more on the model to help develop the model. Yet incidents involving OpenAI’s bots breaking containment and Google’s bots accessing a site they shouldn’t have suggest these systems still aren’t perfectly aligned. Isn’t there reasonable cause for concern about accelerating toward recursive self-improvement? There are three parts to your question. Let’s first talk about RSI itself. You’re right, Sergey mentioned RSI being a critical contributor as we are developing Argon. But to be very clear, today, in a continuum, we are pretty far from the end state of RSI or something like that. The right way to describe it is you have RSI loops along with AI researchers in various aspects of model development. You almost have agents helping AI researchers in some automated way work together to build these models. It’s good to at least understand where we are today, and it’s super exciting. I expect that continuum to keep making progress as we go into next year. The second question is around safety. Security comes from defense in depth. You’re talking about alignment, obviously. We all are doing a lot of work to make sure the models are as aligned as possible. But it’s an active area of research, and there are clear gaps. That’s not the only thing we rely on. You have the work you do on alignment, but beyond that, we put a lot of effort into real-time monitoring as these models are working. Making sure you have good telemetry into what’s happening so that you can intervene in real time if you see unexpected behaviors. How you do that, the architecture with which you do that, how you make sure it’s all sandboxed and isolated in a way that it can continue doing its job during real-time monitoring — these are all areas of investment. Obviously, when we deploy these models, giving customers, enterprises, control, both with real-time monitoring, but their ability to decide where they deploy, what type of data which models ever have access to, etc. All that work is very, very important, and we are doing a lot of that. As an industry, we need to constantly up our game and take the time to do all this stuff, including dedicating the compute required to make sure you can safely deploy these models. The third part is: Is it all enough? This is why there are a lot of conversations in the industry, and I think it’s reasonable to be worried. The right way to approach something you worry about is early on thinking about what more we can do. As an industry, you’re definitely seeing increased levels of work on alignment, testing for safety, etc., as we deploy these models. The next step would be developing better standards so there are cross-industry standards of how we do these things, including the ability to evaluate using independent evaluators. If you look at areas like financial controls, we have accounting standards, we have independent auditors. Those are all the next natural steps for us as an industry to work toward, and regulation will end up playing a role as we go through all of that as well. Google pursues both language models and world models, while some other AI companies like OpenAI have focused more heavily on LLMs as the path to AGI. Why is world-model research important to you? As humans, you obviously perceive the world around you, and you’re taking all those inputs. Making sure these models are able to understand the laws of physics, simulate the world in high fidelity. All that, I think, are key enabling blocks for intelligence. We are working across all possible applications of this. Take an area like robotics. It’s not an accident: If you look at embodied reasoning benchmarks, Argon is state of the art. That all comes from our experience building world models. Inherently, I would expect there will be architectures which will converge all of this in the future. But for us, we view this as, today, this jagged frontier that is intelligence. We want to be at the frontier of all the possible approaches, and that will help us both drive better research, better insights, and develop a much better AGI model, is how we think about it. Some people argue Google should focus on selling its computing resources rather than using them for AI research. Cloud wants to sell compute at a high markup, while researchers need a very big computer to build the best models. How do you balance those demands? Ground zero for us is making sure we are investing in the compute that’s needed to be at the AI frontier. In 2015, I set the company to be AI-first. AI is that key horizontal ingredient across everything we do, all the way from Search to Cloud to Waymo. That is ground zero for us, making sure both for research and developing the models that we have enough compute needed. Beyond that, we have these independent businesses which each have their own long-range plans. They’re using those long-range plans to project forward, and we plan for compute for all of them. The cloud team, they have a business and they have a projection and they have demand signals. They have committed contracts. With that help, we can plan on a long-term compute trajectory for them. We’re fortunate to have this wide set of opportunities. There’s no company in the world which isn’t making trade-offs at any given moment in time. But the first principles we operate on is making sure we have enough compute to invest in the frontier, and that’s non-negotiable, and everything else works on top. Remember, we are building our own compute, our own data centers. There are long lead times. The compute we have today is a function of decisions I made in 2024. Even if you think back to a year from today, last year the agentic coding takeoff hadn’t happened. Today, obviously, when you sit and look at anything, everyone is short—not just us, other companies—and everyone wishes you had two times what you had planned for. That comes with the territory. At any given moment in time, we are planning for what we would need two to three years out in the future. You’re going to find some decisions you make may look suboptimal two years out, depending on where the state of the art is. I don’t spend too much time thinking about it. The way I think about compute allocation is making sure Google DeepMind, both for research and frontier model development, is cutting edge in terms of compute access. After that, we plan for all our businesses. It’s great we can provide our compute to other people too, like we have done. It allows us to scale that up, get real tests for it in the widest application set possible, test it in the real world, and make sure we are at the cutting edge of technology at every layer of our AI stack as well. Ben Horowitz relayed on a podcast that Andy Jassy had said compute was sold out until 2028. Are you seeing the same thing? If today a customer is coming out and asking us for compute in ’27, that is incredibly difficult to do. Even last year we went out and leased some short-term compute to accommodate some customers and help them out. But yes, we are all dealing with similar timelines. Every major technology shift seems to involve overbuilding, from railroads to fiber. Do you think that’s happening here? It depends on the time frames you’re looking at. This level of build, if I take a long enough time frame, it makes complete sense to me. We are at early stages of the most consequential technology ever, and this is not like fiber. It’s not dark. We are using it. We are capacity constrained on a daily basis. The applications, the underlying technology is improving rapidly. But running a company, the way I work through the moment is you look at your demand signals. You look at your committed revenue opportunities that you’re getting in the form of contracts. You balance that with the underlying technical capability, or internally you balance how we are using it internally, the model trajectories. Based on all that, you take a disciplined approach—a confident, aggressive, but disciplined approach—to plan out compute. But when you talk about the broader economy as a whole, you’re having people operate with various levels of risk. I focus on what I can control as a company and plan through it. If your question is, can there be an overbuild? Yes, because you can have some constrained components. Remember, what matters is a set of everything you need to build out that compute. Memory, electricity, electricians…. Land. Like 2,000 components or more. You could get constrained at some point. There could be things which cause bottlenecks, and then you could have overbuilds. There could be external shocks to the economy. There are macro risks. All that is possible at any given time. But am I confident that the compute we are planning for, we will have uses for it given enough time? Absolutely, yes. I was in the room when you said AI would be as profound as fire and electricity. If you believe that, shouldn’t you give researchers the biggest possible computer, even at the expense of today’s cloud profits? We’re all doing some form of that. Our cloud business is at any given moment in time forgoing short-term revenues because we are making compute trade-offs to support frontier AI development. What you’re seeing is true already. But you want to be thoughtful. Even our AI researchers have some constraints, which are also good. That’s what inspires creativity. That’s what helps you come up with a more efficient algorithmic breakthrough, maybe to use less memory. What we are committed to is to invest what’s needed to stay at the frontier. OpenAI President Greg Brockman told me a few months ago that the ideal AI product might have no interface at all—just as natural as conversation. What do you think the interface looks like in the age of AI? Computing historically has been humans adapting to computing. With AI, it’ll be the other way around. The technology will adapt seamlessly to how humans live and go about their day-to-day life. You want to be able to speak to that AI when you want to. It has context. It can be persistently running somewhere, give you continuity. You’re not dealing with a lot of complexity. It’s natural. All that makes sense to me. That doesn’t mean it won’t have any interface, however. Nowadays, even on my phone, Gemini voice models are so good. I can just press the microphone button. I can just ramble. That’s why we call it Rambler. I can ramble. It intelligently corrects with my personal context. Even my friends’ names, weird names, it gets it right, even if it first guesses it wrong. It’s amazing. I’m not going in, backspacing, editing once I finish saying it. It’s remarkable how good it’s gotten. But there are going to be moments you will need an interface. You may want to entertain yourself. You may want to watch a video. You may ask your AI to create something, and you want to watch it, consume it. The way I think about it is, you want it to be as seamless and as natural as possible, and that you are not doing the hard work adapting to whatever the interface is. The technology is adapting to how you’re working at any given moment in time. When I asked Sam Altman about competition from Google, he argued that OpenAI was building AI-native products and implied Google was bolting AI onto existing ones. Do you accept that framing, and can a “bolt-on” compete with an AI-native product? First of all, it’s a very dynamic moment. We are all pushing each other. OpenAI has pushed us as a company too. This is not just we are doing something to them. Far from it. Yes, Google went into its own version of a code red too. In the AI moment, all of us have to respond with varying levels of urgency at any given moment in time. We are constantly building new products as well. Gemini was built from the ground up as a product—the Gemini app I’m talking about. Or tomorrow, as all of us are adapting to agents, are you bolting agents onto ChatGPT, or are they building it natively? How would you think about that? You can always put these questions back. I don’t think of it that way. I think of it as you want to build world-class product experiences that are AI-native and they are winning. Some of it is adapting products, some of it is rethinking new experiences. They will all be part of how you approach this moment. How do you expect to make money from these AI interfaces? If an agent recommends a product and I buy it, should it take a cut of the sale, even if that’s disclosed? I’m going to put enterprise aside. Consumers are going to increasingly value this technology. Take software developers today. Developers are willing to pay for these coding models because it really helps make them more productive. Nobody would want to code the way they were coding three years ago, or even the same time last year. When you’re delivering value, there’s value to be had. I’ve never seen examples where consumer products really scale to billions of users, where people are using it intensely, and haven’t had monetization to go along with it. If you’re providing value to people, there is inherent value to be had. The nature of it may change. You’re asking a scenario in which agents are doing stuff for you. At the end of the day, you will have commercial needs. The agents need to fulfill those commercial needs. The providers on the other side are going to see value in that. There’s going to be some mechanism by which it gets fleshed out. That’s what an efficient system does. But what matters is that you’re building those world-class consumer experiences. I promised myself one product feature request: Can you make Gemini-powered search in Gmail as good as searching Gmail through ChatGPT? What’s going on here? One of the exciting things we announced recently is the unified Gemini agent for enterprise, and we’re bringing that to consumers. These are persistent agents which run 24/7 in the cloud. We’re spinning up a micro VM effectively for every query, and from the runtime, the harness, the model—it’s all a headless service. It’ll work everywhere, and it has your context with you. You can address this agent whether you’re in Workspace, in Search, in Gemini. Agents are going to drive this unification from a customer experience, which people are looking for. When you have a broad product portfolio and you’re moving forward fast, there are always areas where you’re moving forward faster than some other areas. That’s valid feedback. But we are putting a lot of time and effort into making sure, as we build out our agentic experience, that unification and that capability works well across all these services. People have asked where Google’s equivalent of Muse or Dots is. Do you anticipate creating a new product to compete with them? Our goal with Gemini is to be a personal, proactive, and powerful assistant. That’s what we are working toward. You saw us describe the early versions of it at Google I/O this year with Spark. Effectively, already, if you open the Gemini app as a Pro or an Ultra user, you see Chat and Task, and they start giving you that agentic experience. With Argon now, that capability is dramatically accelerated. What we announced recently in our enterprise event, we are bringing that to consumers as well. Soon in Gemini, you will be able to ask something, and it’s a continuum. You don’t need to think about whether you’re asking a chat or an agentic task. It’ll just automatically do the right thing, and it can work persistently in the background securely and get things done for you. Already, empirically, when I look at what’s coming into Gemini in our app, last year you would have tagged them and most of them would have been chats. But a steadily growing percentage is already agentic tasks in Gemini. Yes, we are going to bring personal agents to our consumers. It’ll work in the Gemini app. It’ll work in Google Search. It’ll work in Gmail. You can address it, call it, etc. We want to make sure we’re getting it right. It’ll be powered by Argon, and we are very excited to bring it to our users. Google has invested and committed tens of billions of dollars to Anthropic. What do you see in Dario Amodei that makes you want such a deep investment and partnership? Very early on, when we looked at the founding team of Anthropic, it was very clear to us this was a world-class team which was involved in some of the earliest GPT models. We were quickly able to assess that they would be at the frontier. We’ve always tried to identify and partner with companies which would be at the cutting edge of technology. We’ve done that with SpaceX. We’ve done that with Anthropic. That’s what we saw, and we had a chance to partner. Is your partnership with Apple to license Gemini for Siri expanding, contracting, or standing still? For both us and Apple, that partnership was about translating the capabilities of AI into better experiences for users. I thought Apple has done a phenomenal job of incorporating—they customize these models and build it into Siri—and it’s been great to see the reception. We are committed to doing more. You’re going to do more with them? There’s nothing specific to comment, but it’s a partnership. It’s working well. What have you learned so far about the feasibility of data centers in space? It’s a very exciting project. Projects like this remind me—I still recall that moment in the desert for the DARPA Grand Challenge, watching the Stanley car compete in it, which ended up being the basis for Waymo. With all these technologies, you’re at a moment in time where it looks a bit like sci-fi, but 10 to 20 years down the line, it’s actually working in a meaningful way. I feel the same in space. We’ve always believed in betting big on these technologies. Quantum has been a great example of it. We’re probably 10 years into the journey. Waymo, we are almost 20 years into the journey. Space, we are two to three years into the journey. It’s clear to me that it’s an approach which will make a lot of sense in the future. Being in sub-synchronous orbits with 24/7 access to the most abundant form of energy we have access to will make a lot of sense for this exponential increase in compute that we are going to need. Having said that, this is a challenging project. The team has disciplined milestones. It was a super exciting milestone to send the TPUs up to space. Sometime, as we are speaking, we are expecting a “hello world” moment from them. I look forward to seeing that happen, and we’ll continue investing here too. You previously said 25% of the code written within Google was written by AI. What’s the number today? That number in our world today is meaningless in the sense that every part of what we now touch is influenced by AI deeply. What we are tracking with Argon, for example, it’s been a point of inflection. People are using Argon to really go tackle complex projects, including projects which affect millions of lines of code. In the four weeks since we have launched Argon, we have seen a 30% increase in CLs, and more importantly, almost a similar increase—a one-third decrease in rollbacks. People are writing code more productively and better code with it. We are tracking it with newer metrics now. How are you dealing with opposition to data centers? If you can’t build in the U.S. the way you want to, where else do you go? We’re very committed to building our data centers very responsibly. When I look at our largest data centers in some of the communities where we have been the longest, I visit them, I talk to people. There are people who come and tell us their kids have gone to college because of our investments in these communities, and we’ve grown in those communities. To me, this is about doing it right. Engaging with the communities early, doing it transparently. We are committed to making sure we are bringing incremental power, and we cover 100% of the cost of our power needs for these projects. It’s understanding the impact on neighborhoods and making sure you’re working thoroughly to address them. Done rightly, you can continue making progress. But we are constantly taking feedback into account. I do worry not everyone operates the same way. People have been surprised by data centers showing up in their backyard. Those are all important. As an industry, we should continue to do better. But part of the reason, in a 20-year time frame, we are thinking about things like data centers in space is making sure we are able to put these data centers where maybe the trade-offs will be different. What unproven area of AI is Google working hardest to crack? Is it continual learning—getting models to keep updating after release—or something else? There are multiple parallel paths. You saw with Argon we have a million output tokens. With our Gemini models early on, we had a one-million context window on the input side. These are all examples of breakthroughs we are constantly working on. How do you think about synthetic data? How do you think about continual learning? How do you think about more efficient architectures? We do dedicate a meaningful percentage of our compute to these research bets too. It always goes hand in hand, including our world models. Those are all bets we are placing. Sometimes, as part of these bets, there are ideas that emerge which just make their way into the mainline models. Maybe we don’t fully talk about it, but we have multiple steps in these areas. Working in technology requires optimism that building something will improve the world, but those bets can leave real consequences when they fail. I recently returned to a town in El Salvador where enthusiasm for Bitcoin had given way to unfinished construction and something resembling a ghost town. How do you maintain the optimism you spoke about in your Stanford commencement address while accounting for those risks? I genuinely have a deep conviction that improving technology and improving access to technology makes people’s lives better. It’s been my personal experience in my life, out of which comes that deep conviction, optimism. But with that, I’ve always felt humanity’s journey is always about working hard to harness that technology to make it work well for society. The optimism is not an optimism that you just build whatever you want, whenever. You work hard to make sure you’re building technology in the service of humanity, to make the human condition better. That’s got to be the defining goal as we are approaching it. With that framework, I’m very, very optimistic. We are in very early stages of the kind of progress that we are going to see on many areas. We’re all talking about areas like healthcare. A lot of the progress is ahead. The ability to make things in a fundamentally cheaper way on many things where things have been getting expensive for a long, long time, discovering new materials, etc., which really bend the curve—it’s tough to step today and understand the impact of all that, but they’re going to be very profound. I’m very optimistic, but we have to be rightfully concerned about all the ways this technology can go wrong. Sundar, I know you don’t do many of these. Thank you. Thanks, Alex. Appreciate it.
Impressions: Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 DMZ - CoD's Extraction Shooter Mode Hits The Target
3vPvPvE
There's A Suspicious-Looking Hole On The Moon, And NASA's Going To Investigate It With A Surface Mission
The Moon is covered in pits and craters to choose from, but the Marius Lunar Pit has NASA's attention.
UW-River Falls to offer Halloween carnival and 'Haunted Lab' science demonstrations Oct. 20
Two special Halloween-themed events are planned at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls on Tuesday, Oct. 20, including a Halloween carnival and “Haunted Labs” science demonstrations.
People who've finished Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 on the new YOLO, single-life difficulty share experiences and tips for doing so
In COD: Modern Warfare 4's new YOLO difficulty, any game over screen takes you back to the very beginning of the game. But there are some tips for beating it.
Planning commission lauds work on ‘complex’ Lake Fairfax Business Center development plan
Plans to transform most of the Lake Fairfax Business Center in Reston into a mixed-use neighborhood are heading to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors for a final vote. Developer EYA secured a supportive recommendation from the Fairfax County Planning Commission last Wednesday (Oct. 14) after its legal representative confirmed that any lingering disagreements with
Sensor Tower data shows the yawning gap between GTA 6 and everything else
In terms of preorder numbers, Rockstar's game is 148% head of 2022's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 at this point from launch
Entertainment Look-A-Head: ‘Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2,’ ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4,’ ‘Clayface’
From Oct. 20-25, new games launch, movies hit the theaters and several series get new episodes.
People are using AI to make their smart TVs dumb again
Fed up with ads, tracking and sluggish interfaces, some smart TV owners are turning to AI agents to strip away bloatware and take back control of their TVs.
How Science Is Helping Coastal Communities Build Resilience to El Niño
The current El Niño may become the strongest in modern recorded history. The naturally occurring climate phenomenon, primarily associated with persistent, high ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, could have global-scale effects on weather and ocean conditions through 2027.
The next Call of Duty will introduce a new sub-series to the franchise
It's been five years since Vanguard - the most recent Call of Duty sub-franchise - but Activision is finally ready to develop a new one.
Yankees' Intriguing Trade Rumor Resurfaces — But Does It Make Sense?
Does it make sense for the New York Yankees to pursue this trade?
Scientists Say: Blood Falls
This five-story-tall waterfall in Antarctica gets its blood-red color from the same reaction that creates rust.
Players on Steam so far seem delighted with Modern Warfare 4's campaign, making it one of the most well-received Call of Dutys in recent history
Modern Warfare 4 may signal Call of Duty's return to form, at least judging by player sentiment on Steam so far.
Old Fidel Castro interview resurfaces in attack ad against Miami congresswoman
“She cozied up to a dictator and, now, she is cozying up to another wanna be dictator, Donald Trump,” Eliott Rodriguez said in the ad.
Clarksville Area Chamber of Commerce’s Veteran Business of the Month, Above Standard Building Maintenance - Clarksville Online - Clarksville News, Sports, Events and Information
Clarksville, TN - Above Standard Building Maintenance has been providing services like janitorial services and hard-surface stripping and waxing to folks in
‘The Field Is Atrocious,’ ‘Risking Players’ Health’ — Super Bowl Champion, NFL Fans Rip Playing Surface in London for Jaguars-Texans Game
The NFL’s 2026 international series has gotten off to a solid start, with games in Australia and Brazil followed by two matchups in London. Now, the fifth international game of the season, and third in London, features the Jacksonville Jaguars and Houston Texans at Wembley Stadium in Week 6.
CNBC names Ohio the No. 1 state to do business
In Focus host Mike Kallmeyer heads to Lima for the Lima Chamber of Commerce Big 7 Business Roundtable to sit down with Rick Carfagna, the VP of Government Affairs for the Ohio Chamber of Commerce
United’s C.E.O. Says It Should Cost More Not to Sit in the Middle Seat
Scott Kirby of United Airlines said that “it’s expensive to fly airplanes” and that airfares may have further to rise.
Xbox gets 30 new games next week, including Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4
Next week, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, Peak, Final Fantasy Resonance, and 27 more new games launch across Xbox consoles and Xbox PC.
Chinese scientists develop nanoparticles to improve pesticide
In a study published in the Journal of Controlled Release, researchers mimicked gut bacteria pili-hair-like structures that function as hooks-to design hollow, rough-surfaced silica nanoparticles
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Gets a Warm Steam Welcome With 90% Positive Reviews
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is off to an unusually good start on Steam. The campaign early access went live for pre-order customers on October 16, and at the time of writing, 1,630 of the game's 1,812 Steam user reviews are positive, giving it a "Very Positive" score of 90%. Insider Gaming...
VEDS Took Center Stage as the Marfan Foundation Convened the World’s Best Scientists in Barcelona
Scientists around the globe are working tirelessly on behalf of the VEDS community to advance research progress. And, they’re being convened by the Marfan Foundation and its division: the VEDS Movement - most recently in Barcelona at Science in Spain.
Captain Price Actor Sends Message to Fans as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Campaign Praise Rolls in
Barry Sloane, the actor behind Call of Duty's Captain Price, has shared a message with fans as praise for Modern Warfare 4's campaign rolls in.
Salt crystals could hold clues to life beneath Enceladus's ice
The ocean beneath Saturn's moon Enceladus lies under kilometers of ice, but some of its contents do reach the surface. Jets near the south pole spray out water vapor and icy particles, offering a way ...
Modern Warfare 4 Emerges to Best Call of Duty Steam Rating in a Decade
Modern Warfare 4 is the highest-rated Call of Duty game to hit Steam in over a decade, but will that persist when multiplayer gets here?
Microplastics and water create free radicals, new study finds
When water comes into contact with plastic surfaces, a key chemical reaction does take place, new research indicates.
Has there ever been a mountain taller than Everest?
Mount Everest may be the king of the planet today, but has Earth ever thrust a larger mountain from its surface?
Tech stocks erase $1 trillion of wealth as oil surges to $110 for the first time since May
The sharp drop in tech shares came as concerns resurfaced about ballooning AI debt, rising interest rates and high gas prices.
Who Is Alive and Who Is Dead at the End of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4's Campaign? Infinity Ward Explains Captain Price's Fate
Who is alive and who is dead at the end of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4's campaign? Infinity Ward explains Captain Price's fate.
Here's What The Reviews Are Saying About Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 4's Campaign
Out now for those who pre-ordered digitally
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 on Nintendo Switch 2 Is Not The Disaster You’d Imagine
Modern Warfare 4 is the first Call of Duty since 2013 to launch on a Nintendo console. We played the campaign on Switch 2 and were pleasantly surprised by its performance.
Music star who attended Berklee College hits Trump with 3-word insult onstage
A Grammy-winning singer with a Berklee College background used some choice words about President Donald Trump during a recent performance.
Windows 11 Is Finally Becoming the OS It Should Have Been From the Start
Microsoft is completely redesigning parts of its OS so it doesn't hog all the resources of lower-end PCs with 8GB of RAM.
Next Week on XBOX: New Games for October 19 to 23
Next Week on XBOX: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, Final Fantasy Resonance, We Were Here Tomorrow, and more coming soon!
Plague is stoppable. The next health threat may not be.
The word plague is scary. Centuries ago, the Black Death killed tens of millions of people and changed the course of history. Plague still kills people around the world, and the word still evokes catastrophe. New fears of plague surfaced on October 2, when a lab worker in Irkutsk, Russia, died of pneumonia. Reports suggested that she may have contracted plague through a laboratory exposure. Understandably, people were alarmed. On October 7, the World Health Organization called for the Russian Federation to be transparent about what it knew. WHO issued an update on October 10. Russian authorities told WHO that testing did not identify plague and that investigations found no laboratory release. WHO said confidence in its risk assessment remained limited and that further clinical, epidemiological, and laboratory information was needed. The cause of the woman’s illness remains unknown, and WHO says a laboratory-associated exposure cannot be excluded. As I explained in a recent interview, this incident is very unlikely to lead to a pandemic. Plague is still active, including in the U.S., which sees a handful of cases each year. But it is a disease we can prevent and treat. Plague doesn’t spread readily, and it responds to antibiotics. The standard response—isolate the patient, trace contacts, and administer antibiotics and monitor for symptoms among contacts for seven days—works. We have even planned for antibiotic-resistant plague. At CDC, we developed a playbook for antibiotic-resistant plague and ran exercises on how to find and stop it. CDC guidance anticipates engineered resistance and recommends two different classes of antibiotics if there’s reason to suspect it. There is no evidence that resistance—or even confirmed plague—is involved in this incident. We have thought through how to address plague, but we’re not ready for the next major health threat that emerges from a lab or from animal spillover to humans. What should concern people is how little stands between the world and the next pathogen to get loose. Since peak COVID, epidemic preparedness has fallen off the political agenda, but the risk is greater than ever. More labs handle dangerous pathogens with more ways to make those pathogens deadlier, and more people live and work in close contact with animals. There are actions we can take now: We need better lab safety in every country. The number of labs that work with dangerous pathogens has increased worldwide over two decades, but there’s no enforceable international standard and no inspection regime; the Biological Weapons Convention, fifty years on, still has no verification mechanism. Labs that study dangerous germs need strong safety systems, training, and oversight. We need to reduce spillover events. Three in four emerging human infections start in animals, and there’s a lot we can do to reduce spillover risk, but the world is doing very little of it. Live-animal markets are one place to act. For instance, closing live-bird markets helped control H7N9 influenza in China. Reducing opportunities for people to encounter infected animals can prevent infections before they become outbreaks. In The Formula for Better Health, which is now out in paperback along with the hardcover, Kindle, and audiobook versions, I argue that labs do too many risky experiments with too many dangerous pathogens in too many institutions, and that every experiment should first answer one basic question: Is the likely benefit greater than the risk? Spillover risk can also be reduced: In the book, I discuss how Brazil cut its deforestation rate by 70% from 2004 to 2012 while increasing agricultural production and reducing risky contact between people and forest animals. We need faster detection and response. Delay costs lives. Strong surveillance, good labs, and trained responders can turn a single case into a small cluster of infections instead of an epidemic. Resolve to Save Lives has worked for nearly a decade to help countries find and stop outbreaks faster. The 7-1-7 target, which Resolve to Save Lives developed with partners in Uganda and elsewhere, provides a clear standard: detect within 7 days, notify within 1 day and complete all essential early response actions within 7 days. In Uganda’s Kasese district, for example, a review of a measles outbreak using 7-1-7 identified shortages of accessible funds, fuel, and vehicles that delayed the response. District leaders established funds they could access quickly. When, a few months later, the Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever appeared, the district detected it in three days, notified authorities in one, and mounted an effective response in two. Only one case was confirmed, and the patient survived. Because funds were available before the emergency, authorities were prepared and able to act. This kind of preparation can’t wait until the next crisis begins. Plague is an old disease we that know how to stop. The next threat may be harder to recognize, harder to treat, and easier to spread. Safer labs, less risk of spillover, and faster outbreak detection and response need sustained investment now, while we still have time to prevent the next emergency. Share
Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra Review: Complicated, yet So Damn Worth Getting Stuck In
The Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra isn't just a MacBook Pro for PCs. It's a strong sign that local compute power is what we actually need in the so-called "AI era."
The Surface Laptop Ultra delivers on most of Microsoft's promises
Microsoft promises one machine for dev, AI, and gaming, and mostly gets there.
I've lived with Microsoft's $6,000 Surface Laptop Ultra, and it's so close to being the best MacBook Pro alternative you can buy
Microsoft's top of the line Windows 11 PC is finally here, and it's giving the MacBook Pro a real good run for its money.
Choose hope, family and friends over politicians, say leaders during Interfaith Forum at Salt Lake Tabernacle
Martin Luther King III, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and Nobel Prize leader call for hope in connection
Cattle futures higher waiting on direct business
At the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, live and feeder cattle were up, optimistic about the week’s direct business. Direct cash cattle trade activity was relatively quiet on Thursday. There was a lone bid that surfaced in Kansas at $226 live, but the rest of cattle country has been quiet. It appears sellers are holding out for […]
Pete Hartweger Provides Legal Perspective at Exit Planning Institute Business Owner Forum
Spencer Fane attorney Pete Hartweger presented at the Exit Planning Institute (EPI) Kansas City Chapter’s annual Business Owner Forum on September 2 in
Activision's Head Marketer Says Modern Warfare 4 Faces A 'Call Of Duty Tax'
The newest sequel needs to bolster flagging engagement
‘No offense to Zelda’ but GTA 6 and COD Modern Warfare 4 are ‘the two biggest games of the year’, Activision exec says
Modern Warfare 4 is out next week…
How This Zombie Foot is Helping Scientists Fight Stingray Strikes
Warm El Niño waters are driving an increase in stingray injuries. These labs are devoted to understanding what’s going on under the surface.
Precision weather radar visualization requires better science, not just new tech
Learn how multi-source atmospheric science, GRAF modeling, and precision weather radar visualization create a more accurate representation of surface weather.
Companies pledge free software and computing for AI in science
The European Commission has announced that a group of companies and foundations will offer free services, such as software or access to supercomputers, to European scientists using AI in their research.Unveiled on October 15 at a conference in Dublin, the initiative is the latest step by the Commission to try to help researchers use the technology. Scientists have used forms of AI, such as machine learning, for decades. But advances in deep learning in the past decade, and the wider interest in large language models since the release of ChatGPT in 2022, have spurred governments to invest in new AI tools that could help the scientific process.In July, the US announced it is spending $5 billion on the Genesis Mission, which it describes as a “national effort to harness AI for science,” funding 278 projects across areas such as autonomous labs or new AI tools in astronomy. The Commission has also identified AI in science as a priority, but the €107 million it pledged from Horizon Europe in 2025 does not come close to US spending levels. That said, the vast majority of public research spending in the EU comes from national funds. Today’s announcement at the European AI in Science Summit doesn’t commit any new public money. Instead, it launches the AI in Science Enablers Initiative, a set of voluntary contributions from companies and foundations. The idea is that the companies also benefit by getting access to scientific ecosystems, and feedback on how their tools work. Google, for example, has put up €3 million of cloud computing credits to European researchers. The Novo Nordisk Foundation intends to make its supercomputer, Gefion, available to European researchers, according to the Commission statement. The chipmaker Nvidia said it would provide access to tools, compute, training and collaborative projects.The publisher Elsevier also offered complementary licenses to some of its AI tools, plus AI training for PhD, postdoctoral and master’s students. The French AI firm Mistral will provide the European research community with access to its open-weight models, Vibe seats and application programming interface credits, according to the Commission’s statement. Vibe is one of the firm’s chatbot models. The idea is that more firms and foundations will come on board in the future as the initiative grows.
Fairfax County leaders consider how to reduce hurdles for small businesses
Fairfax County leaders are considering ways to cut red tape for small businesses.
Fairfax County seeks to cut red tape for local businesses facing hurdles
Fairfax County leaders are exploring ways to streamline bureaucratic processes and cut red tape for local businesses.
Chinese scientists say they spotted possible Israeli electronic warfare units
PLA scientists publish algorithm used to estimate sources of GPS spoofing around Israel using flight data.
Virginia’s Fairfax County Public Schools builds bridges to quantum computing
The district is installing a quantum computer at one high school that will be usable in early 2027 and has built local partnerships on curriculum.
2026 State of the Climate Report Shows a Planet Reaching Its Limits
The seventh edition of an annual report analyzing Earth’s "planetary vital signs” indicates that Earth systems are rapidly destabilizing, some at an accelerating rate. The report, published today in BioScience, analyzed 16 of these signs, including greenhouse gas emissions levels, ocean heat content and acidity, the mass of major ice sheets, the number of hot days, Earth's surface temperature, and more.
PROFILE: Ben Sio
New President of CenterState CEO Brings Nearly Two Decades of Experience to Drive CNY Growth By Stefan Yablonski Ben Sio serves as president of the CenterState Corporation for Economic Opportunity — or CenterState CEO. The independent Syracuse-based nonprofit is committed to creating inclusive, equitable and sustainable economic growth in Central New York. “I started in this position in March, so it has been six months. I’m in my 19th year with CenterState,” he said in August. As president, he is responsible for overseeing the organization’s administration and governance, while leading and executing its vision to be an effective advocate, exceptional employer and a force for positive outcomes for the community. He previously served as chief of staff and senior vice president of strategy, policy and planning, overseeing the organization’s long-term strategic planning, consulting, corporate governance, fundraising and development, land-use planning and government relations. In his years with the organization, Sio has led or supported many high-profile strategic initiatives including the creation of the CNY Rising Plan, the launch of the NUAIR Alliance and the region’s UAS strategy, the creation of the Micron-enabled Community Priorities Document and the recently awarded NY Smart I Corridor Tech Hub. “When we decided to split Rob’s [Simpson] role into two positions, he has the CEO title and I got the president title. Rob remains focused on forward looking vision strategy for the organization and I’m more focused on the day-to-day operations,” he explained. “I’m also responsible for building consensus around strategic needs and priorities and managing the change necessary to drive execution. It’s an eventful job. “The experiment that we call CenterState is always evolving and shifting and addressing where we see market demand and market failure. “If we see something in our economy that isn’t going the way we think it should go, then whether it is housing development or workforce development or something else, we are always figuring out how to step into these situations and address those challenges.” “We are the largest ever in terms of staff that we have ever been. We are no longer the 20-person organization we were when we started out many, many years ago,” he said. “There are more day-to-day things to take care of. But also there is just so much happening in the community right now that is pulling CenterState and our expertise in so many directions. I tell people if we were bored and not busy, then I’d be really concerned about what we are doing. But we are not bored. We’ve certainly got our hands full — and that is a good thing.” CenterState has now approximately 63 employees on its staff, according to recent nonprofit database records. It’s involved in myriad programs, ranging from Genius NY, a business accelerator competition for uncrewed systems, IoT and robotics startups, to CenterState Up Start, a collaborative business development program that connects local, service-based businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs to the tools and networks that help them thrive. CNY Guy Through and Through A Central New York guy through and through, Sio was born and raised in Skaneateles. “My mom was a teacher, an art teacher. My father worked for many, many years with National Grid. He was there through the transition from Niagara Mohawk to National Grid,” he said. “Neither of my parents were touched by cutbacks and job loss. But I grew up going through that transition and being concerned that there were rounds of layoffs. My childhood connection to the economy here in Central New York … years ago it was on the decline. There were people that lived here that were concerned about losing their job. They were thinking they lived in a place that didn’t show much promise.” That narrative translated to his generation, he added. “The kids that grew up in the ‘90s in Central New York were very much told, directly or indirectly, by their parents, that they had to go somewhere else to find economic opportunity. That is what I grew up thinking,” he said. “I only went a few miles down Route 20 for college — in Geneva, New York; I graduated from Hobart and William Smith College with a bachelor’s degree in public policy and political science. “I got real interested in regional economies; because what makes regional economy is what makes the economy successful. And when I graduated, I had an opportunity to move to Washington, DC and work down there at a nonprofit doing this work.” However, he decided to stay in Central New York. “I got hired two weeks after I graduated. I got hired by the Greater Syracuse Chamber of Commerce. At the time it was one of two entities doing economic development in Central New York — [the Greater Syracuse Chamber of Commerce and the Metropolitan Development Association] — and it eventually became CenterState CEO,” he said, referring to 2010 merger between the two organizations. During his time at CenterState, Sio has also split time at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., where he supported communities developing export and foreign direct investment (FDI), a long-term cross-border investment where an individual or company from one country buys a lasting stake or control in a business located in another country. The program — known as Global Cities Initiative — was designed to help leaders in major U.S. and international metropolitan areas reorient their local economies toward global markets. “Early on in my tenure at CenterState, we had done a lot of work with the Brookings Institution, just regional planning stuff. We worked with them on developing a regional export plan, to export more products out of Central New York and a larger business plan for the region. They hired me on to help replicate those plans in different parts of the country,”Sio explained. “So, I worked there for three or four years. I worked for CenterState, but I was technically loaned to Brookings for a period of time to help them do this work elsewhere.” Family ties “My wife is Carly. We have been married 14 years. We have two kids, a 3-year-old and a 7-year-old. “With a 3-year-old and a 7-year-old, fun is a relative term these days. We do a lot of hiking. The kids this summer got very interested in waterfalls. We’ve hit every waterfall we could in a short hike — we’ve done Skaneateles and some others.” “I do woodworking and wood turning — it’s a branch of woodworking; you use a wood lathe. My big thing there is making wood bowls. I do that in most of my free time, which is not much,” he quipped. “I like to get into my woodshop and make a bowl and decompress and turn off the rest of the world for a little bit. I usually do it late at night when the house is quiet. It is definitely my escape from the day to day. I make a lot of bowls; all different sizes, all different species of wood. It’s a fun thing to do for me.” He gives away many of his creations. “They are mostly gifts — I don’t really sell them. I really don’t have time to go set up a booth at a fair or craft show. I usually give them away. I donate them to different things. If you are in my periphery, you’ve likely received a salad bowl from me as a gift. I just need to find something to do with all the stuff that I create,” he said. Lifelines Name: Benjamin Sio Position: President, CenterState CEO Birth Date: Not provided Birth place: Syracuse Residence: Westvale Education: Hobart and William Smith Colleges in the Finger Lakes Affiliations: Member of the boards of Skaneateles Festival, Greccio Foundation, Interfaith Works, CNY Community Foundation Personal/family: Married with two kids Hobbies: Woodworking and woodturning
BUSINESS UPDATE: Attracting World-Renowned Piercing Educators to Oswego
Growing number of renowed piercers are coming to Oswego to share knowledge at newly opened Aqua Spa Float Center piercing suite Submited by Aqua Spa Float Center & Wellness Boutique [caption id=attachment_11066 align=alignright width=450] Recent opening of Aqua Spa Float Center piercing suite.[/caption] Professional piercers and educators from countries including France, Scotland and India have come to Oswego’s Aqua Spa Float Center & Wellness Boutique to share their knowledge In the past year and a half, the Port City has become a destination for some of the industry’s most respected educators through the efforts of the Aqua Spa Float Center & Wellness Boutique. Beginning in January of 2025, Aqua Spa Float Center envisioned a new version of body piercing, one where elegance, safety and personal expression could converge. According to the Aqua Spa, piercing is no longer just a trend — it’s a refined form of personal identity, luxury styling and self-investment. It’s not only about the jewelry — it’s about the entire experience. The team welcomed first guest piercer Ruben Triguero, a senior French piercer, piercing stylist and international educator, who has over two decades of experience and has worked in some of the world’s best studios, including Paris, Rome, New York, Miami, Los Angeles and Dubai. In those studios, he offered his expertise and refined styling skills. Triguero is a prominent figure and leader in the piercing community and shares his knowledge with piercers teaching classes for the industry’s most prestigious organizations, including Latinoamérica Body Piercing Association (LBP) and Association of Professional Piercers (APP). He is currently the senior international instructor of the APP. Triguero has a passion for creating stunning, personalized piercings for clients around the world. Education and Mentorship Following a year of success and popularity, Aqua Spa Float Center hosted the grand opening of its private dedicated piercing suite in March. Aqua Spa Float Center & Wellness celebrated this next chapter with a grand opening and ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by the Oswego Mayor Robert Corradino, members of the Greater Oswego-Fulton Chamber of Commerce, local business owners and community members. The educational focus, aligned with Aqua Spa Float Center’s vision and mission, had already begun expanding beyond clients. Aqua Spa has hosted multiple workshops and continuing education opportunities for professional piercers, inviting studios from across the region to gain hands-on experience from internationally recognized instructors without the expense of traveling to national or international conferences. These educational events have welcomed nationally and internationally recognized professional piercers and educators from countries including France, Scotland, India, and throughout the United States. Aqua Spa also continues to collaborate with talented regional and local professionals, creating opportunities for education and mentorship that benefit both industry peers and clients throughout Central New York. Aqua Spa Float Center & Wellness Boutique owners — Tammy Wilkinson and Terry LeRoi — have been deeply rooted in the piercing industry with over 30 years in business as LeRoi Fine Body Jewellery. Combining that experience with holistic wellness, self-care and self-expression is the new concept with the client Luxe Piercing Experience at the Aqua Spa Float Center. “At LeRoi Fine Body Jewellery and Aqua Spa Float Center, we’ve been fortunate to work with many of the world’s most respected piercers through our involvement with the Association of Professional Piercers and by attending conferences across North America and Europe,” said LeRoi, founder of LeRoi Fine Body Jewellery and co-owner of Aqua Spa Float Center & Wellness Boutique. “Those experiences have shown us that education is what drives our industry forward. “Not every piercer or studio can travel to major conferences like the APP Conference in Las Vegas or APP Benelux in the Netherlands, so we’re committed to bringing that level of education here. Hosting internationally respected educators like Jef Saunders allows our clients to experience the highest standards of professional piercing while giving piercers throughout the Northeast the opportunity to learn from some of the very best in the profession. That’s something we’re incredibly proud to offer our community.” When asked about the client experience, Wilkinson explained that education is at the heart of every appointment as well. “Our vision is to nurture and enhance wellness, balance and harmony through a multi-modality-centered facility, and we aspire to empower sustained, positive change, well-being and self-awareness; and educate to the benefits of natural health, holistic wellness and life balance,” Wilkison explains. “Piercing is no different. The piercing experience feels just as peaceful and rejuvenating as any other spa services. From the moment our clients arrive, they are in the very best hands with our kind and professional Wellness Ambassadors and experienced APP guest piercers.” Wilkinson also explained that piercing clients receive stellar care: every Luxe Piercing appointment includes a one-on-one private piercing in Aqua Spa’s dedicated piercing suite, their choice of custom jewellery by LeRoi Fine Body Jewellery, thorough after-care instructions and complementary check-up appointment, complementary whole-body red light therapy session in the Class II NovoTHOR medical device to promote healing, and access to many rejuvenating spa services. Piercing clients get 15% off during any event. According to Wilkinson, “Health and safety are always our highest priority when you come in for a piercing or jewelry installation. Before each appointment, all tools and jewelry are sterilized in a Statim autoclave, and every surface in the piercing room is carefully disinfected. During the procedure, your piercer will wear a mask and change gloves as needed to maintain a sterile environment. Once your piercing is complete, your piercer will go over detailed aftercare instructions with you. Following these steps is crucial to ensure proper healing before you leave our sanctuary.” As a part of the experience, guest piercers include a thorough anatomy review of the client’s desired piercing to ensure the new addition will work in harmony with the existing. “Our clients are enjoying building and creating ear curations with these international professionals. It’s a unique styling event and a chance to highlight self-expression,” Wilkinson said. Clients and piercers throughout the region are flocking to this piercing destination in Upstate New York. The Luxe Piercing Experience has welcomed clients and piercers alike from around the globe. Owners Wilkinson and LeRoi hope to continue the momentum with more educational seminars with industry experts to be a hub of knowledge and expertise. They hope to establish LeRoi Fine Body Jewellery and Aqua Spa Float Center as legacy businesses known for their lasting, positive impact on the piercing and holistic wellness industries.
UTC doctoral student Zach Lloyd finds his path in cybersecurity
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga doctoral student Zach Lloyd spent the summer at the Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) Pacific in San Diego, using cybersecurity skills he developed at UTC to support U.S. Department of Defense research.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Preload and Global Release Times Confirmed for Campaign, DMZ, and the Full Game
Activision has confirmed the global release times and preload details for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, which launches in various parts over the coming weeks.
Sony takes down PS5 piracy store offering 1,600 games, multiple clones appear just hours later
Sony reportedly took down Overdrive, a PS5 piracy store offering more than 1,600 games. However, the project quickly resurfaced on GitHub with a new release.
RFA Class of 1961 gathers for 65-year reunion
ROME — Dozens of members of the Rome Free Academy Class of 1961 recently came together to share old memories — and make new ones — during their 65-year reunion.
Science Corporation implants its vision-restoring chip in its first Stargardt disease patient
Max Hodak, the former president and co-founder of Neuralink, detailed on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt how his company's work with PRIMA is part of its path toward a novel brain-computer interface (BCI).
ESA targets Anbernic emulation handhelds as "superfake" piracy enablers
But third-party sellers, not Anbernic, are the ones routinely selling ROM-filled SD cards.
Student Artists Produce Themed Mural for Department of Political Science
On the surface, the Lane Room Mural is simply a new painting on an old wall. But beneath the vibrancy and impressive scale of the work is a story of art
Deep-Sea Rocks Spontaneously Combusted After Scientists Brought Them to the Surface
A recent discovery highlights an unforeseen potential hazard of deep-sea mining.
Comparing Off-World Rover Driving Distances
This infographic illustrates the distances driven by various rovers on the surface of Earth’s Moon and Mars. Of the vehicles shown, the NASA Mars rovers
Entertainment Software Association Requests U.S. Trade Investigate Anbernic's 'Superfake' Handheld Emulator Market
Pocket-sized Politics
Eye Microbiome: How Bacteria May Influence Eye Health and Disease
The ocular surface hosts a low-abundance microbial community that may help regulate immune defenses, while changes in its composition have been associated with inflammatory and infectious eye diseases. Research into the gut-eye axis and microbiome-targeted therapies suggests possible diagnostic and treatment applications, but the underlying mechanisms, causal relationships, and clinical effectiveness remain uncertain.
NASA’s Perseverance Sets Off-World Record for Total Distance Driven
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has driven farther than any vehicle ever has on the surface of another world. On Oct. 11, the rover’s odometer reached
M5 Pro MacBook Pro vs Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra: Compared
The Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra uses Nvidia graphics in a bid to take over from the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5 Pro as a productivity favorite. Here's how the two powerful notebooks compare.
Packers’ Christian Watson Leaves Teammate in Awe With ‘Nasty’ TD
Christian Watson gave the Green Bay Packers a touchdown worth watching again.Javon Bullard surfaced the locker room review.Following Watson’s second score in Sunday’s 31-7 victory over the Chicago Bears, the Packers defensive back needed some time to describe what he had seen.“I ain’t going to lie. That [expletive] was nasty. That was nasty,” Bullard said, […] The post Packers’ Christian Watson Leaves Teammate in Awe With ‘Nasty’ TD appeared first on HEAVY.
Ron Perlman’s Watrfall Hands Audiences Control Of $275,000 Creator Fund
EXCLUSIVE: Watrfall, the Ron Perlman-backed creator platform, is planning to put the power in the hands of audiences. The company, which we first told you about in August last year, has opened submiss...
Scientists Discover a Strange New Quantum State Where Two Materials Meet
Researchers have directly observed an unusual quantum state emerging at the boundary between an atomically thin material and a metal. Scientists have directly observed an unusual quantum state forming where a material just one atom thick meets a metal. The discovery, made by a research team led by the University of Osaka, demonstrates how interactions
Apple MacBook Pro 16 vs Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra: Poll shows clear winner
With the launch of the newest Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra, many people are comparing the laptop to the Apple MacBook Pro 16 with the M5 Pro. This comparison is quite apt, as both machines target the same audience. A poll run by Hardware Canucks has now revealed which laptop users prefer more.
DMZ for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 being released early, but Infinity Ward shoots down PvE hopes
If you're pre-ordering Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, Infinity Ward is giving you a reason to jump in every few days in the lead-up to launch.
Microsoft Is Taking AI Beyond the Data Center, But Its Surface Business Is Just a Small Piece of the Pie
The tech giant's latest Nvidia-powered Surface devices add another dimension to its growth strategy as shares trade near all-time highs.
Microsoft Is Taking AI Beyond the Data Center, But Its Surface Business Is Just a Small Piece of the Pie
The tech giant's latest Nvidia-powered Surface devices add another dimension to its growth strategy as shares trade near all-time highs.
Microsoft Is Taking AI Beyond the Data Center, But Its Surface Business Is Just a Small Piece of the Pie
The tech giant's latest Nvidia-powered Surface devices add another dimension to its growth strategy as shares trade near all-time highs.
Delta expects higher fares and strong demand through the holiday season
(CNN) — Delta Air Lines reported a huge jump in fuel costs, but said passengers are continuing to book flights despite the significantly higher airfares.
New Plugin Allows Us To Turn Our Steam Deck Into a PSP, PS5, or Xbox 360
A new plugin for the Steam Deck allows us to change Game Mode to different console interfaces, making it feel like a PSP, PS3, Xbox 360, and more.
Artemis II crew describes yellow and green hues on the Moon’s surface
Artemis II astronauts reported yellow, green, brown, blue and beige hues on the Moon during an April flyby, according to a preliminary NASA report.
NVIDIA’s CUDA Moat Is Accelerating RTX Spark Laptop Sales, Higher 128GB Unified Memory Options Belonging To Surface Laptop Ultra Already Out Of Stock
NVIDIA’s CUDA platform is speeding up RTX Spark laptop sales, with the higher 128GB unified memory options of the Surface Laptop Ultra already out of stock
Microsoft offers MacBook Pro owners up to $1,000 to switch to Surface Laptop Ultra
Microsoft is offering MacBook Pro owners up to $1,000 in extra cash back when they trade in their Apple laptop and preorder the new Surface Laptop Ultra. The bonus is paid in addition to the device’s normal trade-in value, as Microsoft tries to lure Apple users to its $2,599.99 RTX Spark-powered flagship.
Scientists Discover a Hidden Hydrogen Pathway That Could Transform CO2 Into Valuable Fuel
Scientists have uncovered an unexpected pathway for hydrogen transfer during catalytic CO2 conversion. A computer model designed to predict how carbon dioxide becomes useful chemicals produced a surprising error: It identified formic acid as the main product instead of methanol. When scientists expanded the model to account for thousands of previously overlooked reactions, its predictions
James Talarico Resurfaces At ACL; Mental-Health Claim Unverified
James Talarico returned at ACL after a nine-day absence. The mental-health-facility claim remains unverified as scrutiny of his record grows.
Maryland Business Helps Landowners Restore Wildlife Habitats
Wildlife specialist Luke Macaulay runs Land & Wildlife, helping landowners improve wildlife habitat and balance farming with conservation.
Assistant Professor of Climate Data Science | The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education
Boston University invites applications for a faculty position at the rank of Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth Environment. This tenure-track position in Climate Data Science , beginning on July 1, 2027, is part of the ongoing cluster hire in Environmental Data Science and complements faculty searches within the Faculty of Computing and Data Science.rnrnWe particularly welcome candidates whose research focuses on the physical basis of climate, climate variability, and climate change, and who employ data science methodologies to deepen our understanding of how the climate system is changing and how these changes affect the global environment. Areas of interest include—but are not limited to—the changing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events; interactions between the atmosphere and terrestrial, oceanic, biospheric, and cryospheric systems; and improved understanding of Earth system predictability at seasonal, decadal, and longer time scales. We envision this position playing a central role in connecting and enhancing existing departmental strengths in climate-related research and teaching, including terrestrial and marine biogeosciences, land surface and coastal processes, paleoclimatology, energy and economic policy, and environmental sustainability. This faculty member will also contribute to university-wide interdisciplinary initiatives — including the Urban Biogeoscience and Environmental Health (URBAN) program, the Institute for Global Sustainability, and the Center for Climate and Health at the School of Public Health — and is expected to develop collaborative ties with the Faculty of Computing and Data Sciences, where shared interests in machine learning, large-scale data analytics, and Earth system modeling provide natural ground for joint advising, co-teaching, and grant development. This hire reflects our commitment to advancing interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of climate and data science. This position contributes to the University convergence themes of Global Sustainability as well as Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Computing that are core pillars of BU's cross-disciplinary research priorities.rnrn Position Qualifications:rn Candidates should have a PhD or equivalent degree, demonstrated ability to obtain external funding to support their program of research and scholarship, and a commitment to excellence and innovation in teaching, education, and mentorship of students. The successful applicant will be expected to supervise graduate research in Ph.D. programs, teach at all levels in the Earth Environment curriculum, and maintain an externally funded research program. We seek applicants whose research complement strengths in the Department and around the University. For more information about the Department, see
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Launch Rollout Adds DMZ Early Access
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 has added DMZ to its list of early access experiences available for pre-order players ahead of its launch later this month.
Essentia Health hosting annual “Families Remember with Love” memorial celebration
Interfaith service honors children lost to miscarriage, stillbirth, childhood or adult death during Pregnancy and Child Loss Awareness Month
Microsoft wants you to "break up with your MacBook" for a Surface Laptop Ultra, and it's paying big bucks to make it happen
You can get up to $1,000 cash back on top of trade-in value if you send Microsoft a MacBook Pro and buy a Surface Laptop Ultra.
Scientists create new statewide surface geologic map of Nebraska
A new academic paper by Paul Hanson and Matthew Joeckel of the Conservation and Survey Division in the University of Nebraska–Lincoln's School of Natural Resources contains a brief phrase—"new linework"—that ...