London picked as test bed for Skynet-like Intel tech - The Register
London will be a guinea pig for future smart city technology after Intel pledged to spend a slice of £25m ($40m) on a new lab in the capital. The chipmaker will also plough millions into research centres dotted around Blighty.
Intel will set up the unwieldily monikered Collaborative Research Institute for Sustainable Connected Cities in the capital in partnership with Imperial College and University College London, it announced yesterday at an event at 10 Downing Street.
The company will spend the £25m over the next five years on all five of its Collaborative Research Institutes, but wouldn't give the breakdown of exactly how much London would be getting. ICL and UCL will also chip in some dosh, but again no figures were bandied about.
At the same event, Chipzilla said it will open a string of research centres around the UK, investing around £45m in an Intel Labs Europe UK R&D network: this will employ 350 researchers in labs including the one in London and others in Brighton, Swindon and Aylesbury to start with, and five more to be decided on by the end of the year.
"It is investments like this that will help us put the UK on the path we need to take to create new jobs, new growth and new prosperity in every corner of our country," Chancellor George Osborne said at the launch.
"We are determined to make the UK the best place to do business in the world and a great place for technology companies to invest and build new business. It is encouraging to see major tech partners like Intel investing in this country as a result of the policies that the Government has put in place," he self-congratulated.
Intel will use the London lab to suss out smart city technology and it will also team up with Shoreditch's Tech City entrepreneurs to use their "social media expertise" to "identify and analyse emerging trends with cities".
"Using London as a testbed, researchers will explore technologies to make cities more aware by harnessing real-time user and city infrastructure data," the company said in a statement, describing similar Skynet-like smart city research elsewhere.
"For example, a sensor network could be used to monitor traffic flows and predict the effects of extreme weather conditions on water supplies, resulting in the delivery of near real-time information to citizens through citywide displays and mobile applications."
Rattner: City under pre-planned stress
Intel CTO Justin Rattner also said that the London Olympic games would give the firm a great opportunity to look at a city under pressure and figure out where the weak points are.
"London is, as everyone knows, the host city to the 2012 summer Olympic Games, and we plan to use the event to understand the experiences of a city under pre-planned stress. What systems worked or didn’t work and why? How were the daily lives of the citizens, workers, and businesses of London affected?" he wondered out loud.
As well as giving Intel the opportunity to see it mess up, London is also a good choice for the research institute as the fifth largest city in the world.
"It has the largest GDP in Europe, and with over 300 languages and 200 ethnic communities, its diversity is a microcosm of the planet itself, offering an exciting test bed to create and define sustainable cities," Rattner enthused. ®
London 2012: Phillips Idowu faces monumental task - coach - BBC News
Olympic silver medallist Phillips Idowu is facing a "monumental battle" to win gold in the triple jump at the London Games, says his coach Aston Moore.
Idowu's main rivals, Frenchman Teddy Tamgho and American Christian Taylor, have better personal bests.
American Will Claye, 20, will also pose a threat to the 33-year-old Londoner.
"I believe it will be a monumental battle of will and talent. You hope that Phillips comes out on top," Jamaican-born Moore told BBC Sport.
"The fourth place could be a jump that would normally have won the competition, but you could finish fourth this year.
"[But] it's an Olympic medal, it's never going to be easy or everyone would be doing it."
At the Beijing Games, Idowu's best jump was 17.62m, but he was beaten into second by 17.67m from Portugal's Nelson Evora, who has been ruled out of the London Games by a stress fracture.
Since then new faces have emerged in the form of 21-year-old world champion Taylor, who beat Idowu in Daegu in August, world championship bronze medallist Claye and 22-year-old Tamgho, whose personal best of 17.98m is third on the all-time list.
"The two American guys are very dangerous," Moore continued. "Sometimes you can have good athletes but you know you've pretty much got their measure. [Yet] these guys are good winners.
"I'm almost forgetting the young French guy Teddy Tamgho, who we haven't heard from yet this year but he's been jumping 17.90s for the last two seasons."
Idowu, who came out on top against his rivals in his opening competition of the season at the Diamond League meeting in Shanghai last weekend, was devastated after coming second in Beijing and Moore says the 2009 world champion's target has not changed.
"The gold - that's what he's preparing for, that's what he's ready for and he will be disappointed with anything other than gold.
"He wanted to win the last one but he came second by 5cm. He wants to put that right on home soil.
"He's a Londoner, a Hackney boy. I think he's going to love it."
UK Athletics' national triple jump coach Moore, himself a former triple jumper for Great Britain, started working with Idowu a few months before the Beijing Olympics and admits he has seen a change in the athlete ahead of London.
"I wouldn't say that pressure is getting to him but certainly with a lot of the athletes, as it's a home Olympics, people are much more focused, and I've noticed that from him," said Moore.
"He's much more focused on what needs to be done and how it needs to be done. My job is to make sure it doesn't become over the top and he starts looking at every last detail. I think together we can manage that quite well.
"Those five years are his most successful so that makes our relationship reasonably tight because I am the person that has helped him through his best period as an athlete."
Moore guided Commonwealth gold medallist Ashia Hansen to a world record and has worked with UK Athletics since 2000, but he admits he will feel the nerves when Idowu lines up for his first jump at the Olympic Stadium in London.
"I'm usually most nervous in the first round, because this is the one. This is the one that sets the scene for everything.
"I want the jump to send a particular message out to every other competitor. So I'm most nervous about that one because I want him to nail it, and then get better from there. Normally my blood pressure and heart rate and everything jump on that one.
"Then, it's work as usual."
Vauxhall Mallards and Great Witchingham seek progress in ECB National Club Championship - EDP 24
Friday, May 25, 2012
4:36 PM
The two remaining Norfolk sides in the National Club Championship are set for a showdown this weekend.
Vauxhall Mallards will face Great Witchingham on Sunday in the group semi-final of the Kingfisher Beer Cup after both teams recorded comfortable wins in their second round ties last weekend.
Mallards registered an eight-wicket win at reigning East Anglian Premier League champions Cambridge Granta.
Skipper Paul Bradshaw removed both Granta openers with only 20 runs on the board, before Stuart Lipshaw’s five-wicket burst saw the hosts fold to 130 all out in the 40th over. The off-spinner claimed five for 23.
Carl Amos and David Turner put on 70 for the first Mallards wicket and Amos went on to steer the visitors to victory in the 40th over with an unbeaten 72 from 104 balls.
Witchingham thrashed Boston by 205 runs as Sam Arthurton, pictured, hammered a century.
Arthurton made 133, while James Hale (48no) and Carl Rogers (41) also contributed in a total of 279 for four from their 45 overs.
Boston were then skittled out for just 74, with Jonathan Spelman claiming four for 32 and two wickets apiece for James Spelman and Tom Collishaw.
Sunday’s match at Great Witchingham starts at 1pm.
London 2012: 640,000 tickets put on sale this month have been sold - The Guardian
London 2012 organisers have sold more than two-thirds of the remaining tickets that were put on general sale this week, with many sports sold out.
Of the 928,000 tickets first put on sale this month around 640,000 have been sold. That leaves around 300,000 still to be sold, plus a further 150,000 to 200,000 that will come back on to the market as seating configurations are finalised.
In addition to those sports that had sold out before the general sales window opened, the 70,000 general access tickets to the Olympic Park have also gone, as have race walk, mountain biking, trampoline and shooting.
Organisers said there was still good availability in volleyball, football, taekwondo, handball, basketball, boxing, beach volleyball, canoe sprint, table tennis and hockey. However, most of the remaining tickets are at high-price points.
Paralympic sales were also described as encouraging, with a further 125,000 tickets sold this week, taking the overall total to 1.2m. In all, there are 8.8m tickets available for the Olympics and 2m for the Paralympics.
While the figures suggest that 25 of the 26 Olympic sports will sell out, allowing Locog to hit its £650m revenue target with ease, organisers face an uphill battle to sell the remaining 1.3m football tickets.
Locog will also put tickets for the main climb in the cycling road race and the cycling time trial at Hampton Court on sale next week at £15. The move has proved controversial with cycling fans used to watching the action from the side of the road for nothing.
On the same day, 29 May, general access tickets to the tennis tournament at Wimbledon – allowing access to Henman Hill and the outside courts but not the show courts – will also be made available.
London 2012 organisers – who warned earlier this week that users would face waits of half an hour on the site at peak times but said that it had remained operational throughout – this week defended their record on ticketing, insisting that they have managed to balance fairness with revenue raising.
"Do I think we have delivered the fairest possible system? I absolutely do. We got it about as right as we could. We wanted to hit our revenue targets, we wanted full stadiums and we wanted to treat everyone as equally as we could," said Locog's deputy chairman, Sir Keith Mills.
London's luscious, low-key side - Los Angeles Times
Low-cost London
London didn't make the Economist's Intelligence Unit top 10 list of the 10 most expensive cities in the world — Zurich, Switzerland, can chant, "We're No. 1!" — but you may feel penny-pinched compared with pricey L.A. as your point of reference. We don't, for instance, pay $30 for a one-way express train ride into the city from LAX. Oh, wait. We don't have an express train. Never mind.
For transportation other than the Heathrow Express, here are two words for every London traveler: Oyster card. You'll save major bucks and time if you have this tube/bus/rail card and perhaps feel a little smug as you place it smartly on the ubiquitous "circle" that gives you safe passage onto your chosen mode of transport. You buy the card and load it with however many pounds you like. For instance, if you're riding from Paddington to Piccadilly Circus, you'd cough up almost $7 if paying cash but only $3.20 with the Oyster, a budget aphrodisiac for sure.
Meals too can be budget wreckers. I'm tickled at having found a couple of good places near my hotels that didn't break my bank.
Some critics sneer at Masters Super Fish (191 Waterloo Road, 011-44-20-7928-6924) about a block from the H10 London Hotel, where I stayed for about $220 a night, but my early evening fish and chips dinner was tasty, and the place was full of regulars. If you're going for the décor, don't. If you're going for a nice meal of fresh fish (which doesn't have to be fried) for about $15, do.
My best find (thanks to Time Out London) was Bonnington Café (11 Vauxhall Grove, http://www.bonningtoncafe.co.uk), not far from the Kia Oval cricket ground, which puts it off the path. But I did have a sit-down lunch of vegetarian squash/chickpea curry over rice and a nice green salad for $8 (also open for dinner). It's about the dishes, not the décor, at this community-run eatery. Afterward, stroll around the square and you'll see Bonnington's pocket park (and head over to the Harleyford Road Community Garden while you're at it). Because especially in the coming weeks, London promises to be anything but an oasis of calm.
Low-key London
Perhaps because we think of London as stately, we also think of it as sedate. This would be incorrect. Victoria station at afternoon rush hour makes an L.A. SigAlert look like a garden party. Eventually, you're going to need to remove yourself. You can leave London (see below) or you can remove yourself from the chaos. Or both.
London is loaded with gardens — more than 2,500 of them — chronicled at http://www.londongardensonline.org.uk. I sampled several but fell madly for the Royal Botanic Gardens, or Kew. You have to want to visit Kew — it was a 90-minute bus/train/bus ride for me — but the Sturm und Drang is worth it for the sheer absence of Sturm und Drang.
The 300-acre Kew is dotted with structures (Waterlily House, Kew Palace, the Orangery restaurant and more), each of which is a little magic pocket of surprises. I suggest taking the tram ride ($6.35) around the garden and then putting on your dancing shoes to hobnob with the birds, bees and, alas, the jets that break the reverie.
Admission: $22 adults, free for children 17 and younger. Info: http://www.kew.org.
Contrast Kew's open spaces with the nine-mile Regent's Canal, a waterway and towpath enclave that's a buffer from urban insanity. Start at the Canal Museum, a one-time ice house, near King's Cross. Its history lesson on ice cream is more interesting than its discourse on the man-made canals.
On the mile and a half walk from the Canal Museum to Camden Town, I encountered bikers, joggers, strollers, moms, babies, dogs, swans, ducks and the occasional graffito. Water trickled through the locks like the tinkle of aquatic piano keys.
The bubble burst at Camden Town, reminiscent of the Orange County swap meet but with more global food offerings and less charm. A sugar infusion at vegan Cookies & Scream buoyed my spirits, as did embarking on the London Waterbus Co.'s canal boat bound for Little Venice. The 50-minute ride (about $12.30 one way) put me back in the bubble as it glided past Regent's Park, through the London Zoo and by Italian manor houses, depositing us at Browning's Pool near the renovated Rembrandt Gardens. There, willows wept but a bride and groom beamed as they posed for post-nuptial pics. Blue skies and young love — does it get better than this?
Canal Museum: http://www.canalmuseum.org. Admission about $6.35. Regent's Canal: http://www.waterscape.com/canals-and-rivers/regents-canal. London Waterbus Co.: http://www.londonwaterbus.com.
Liquid London
London is all about the liquid — the 60 billion cups of tea Brits drink each year, the 27 million pints of beer quaffed each day, the 23 or so inches of rain that fall, on average, in London each year. You'll find enough tea/coffee houses and pubs (although they're said to be disappearing at the rate of two a day) to slake your thirst, but your personal shelter from the storm needs a special place, and that place is James Smith & Sons, which sells umbrellas and walking sticks. It's been a going concern since 1830. I could not leave without buying an umbrella, silly for a Southern Californian.
James Smith & Sons, 53 New Oxford St., http://www.james-smith.co.uk.
Although it was raining, I didn't need the umbrella for my trip down the Thames on the Thames Clipper, which is really an enclosed commuter boat. It's an overlooked way of seeing London like a local — a local in a hurry. It leaves slowly from the London Eye, but just past the Tower Bridge, it goes full tilt on its run to Greenwich. No narration, but you can figure out the sites yourself.
Round trip: http://www.thamesclippers.com, about $12.75 with an Oyster card discount.
It seemed only right on my liquid tour to stop at the Cutty Sark, an 1869 clipper ship that in its prime carried tea from China (and later wool from Australia). Queen Elizabeth II reopened the ship last month, almost five years after a fire gutted it. Now it sits in a steel cradle, its beauty restored, pointing proudly at this section of the 205-mile Thames as if to say, "Landlubbers are lame." You walk enough in London, and I promise that's true.
Cutty Sark, part of the Royal Museums Greenwich, http://www.rmg.co.uk/cuttysark. Admission: About $20.
Leaving London
What's more romantic than dinner in London? Just about anything, but definitely dinner in Paris. I'd booked the Eurostar for this fast train trip to France, leaving on the 3 p.m. speeder to Paris and returning about 9 p.m. (You gain an hour, so you'll arrive about 6:30 p.m. at Gare du Nord station.) The countryside blurred by, fields of yellow rapeseed exploding with color amid patches of vibrant spring green. From the Gare du Nord, I walked across the street to Terminus Nord, ordered a glass of wine, some escargot and a steak with béarnaise sauce and fries, which sound less sinful as pommes frites. Tab: $75, not including tip. Effect: Made me giggle at the silliness of it all. Next time: I'll stay longer. Or be more adventuresome with my restaurant choice. Or go to Brussels, which you can also do for less than a day. If you book far enough in advance, a standard nonrefundable ticket for Brussels or Paris can be about $100, round trip. Leaving London made me long for it, and I returned, happy but tired, just before midnight to log a little more shut eye before continuing one L of a trip.
Eurostar, http://www.eurostar.com. Terminus Nord, http://www.terminusnord.com.
travel@ latimes.com
London 2012 - Bolt gutted with win at Golden Spike - Yahoo! Eurosport
Usain Bolt laboured to victory in the men's 100 metres at the Golden Spike meeting in Ostrava on Friday but was at a loss to explain why after failing to improve on his season best or meet the target he had set himself before the race.
Jamaica's Olympic champion and world record holder clocked 10.04 seconds into a head wind to beat Kim Collins of Saint Kitts & Nevis and American Darvis Patton.
It was the slowest time Bolt has run in his 30 sprint finals and a step down from the 9.82 he produced in his only previous outing this season in Kingston, Jamaica on May 5.
He had spoken this week of wanting to run around 9.7 seconds as he continues his build-up to this year's London Games.
"I'm disappointed," Bolt said. "At the start I felt pretty much no energy. I guess it was one of those bad days.
"I wasn't feeling as strong as I usually feel out of the blocks, my legs felt dead. I don't know what the reason is. I'll need to go back to the drawing board, talk to the coach."
Bolt was slow out of the blocks, after South Africa's Simon Magakwe was disqualified for a false start, but easily reeled in Collins, who crossed the line in 10.19 with Patton three one hundredths of a second further back.
The 25-year-old Bolt said the false start did not affect him, yet his reaction time of 0.180 seconds off the line suggested otherwise.
Britain's Dwain Chambers was fifth in a season best 10.28 but failed to reach the Olympic qualifying time of 10.18 that would have guaranteed him eligibility for selection.
Chambers, 34, served a two-year doping ban but was cleared to compete at the London Games when the Court of Arbitration overruled a British Olympic life ban on drug offenders.
In the men's 400 metres, Olympic champion Lashawn Merritt of the United States won in 45.13 seconds while Veronica Campbell-Brown was victorious in the women's 200 in 22.38.
While it was an improvement on the 22.50 Jamaica's twice Olympic champion ran at last week's Shanghai Diamond League meeting, Campbell-Brown's rival, Carmelita Jeter of the United States, still holds the year's quickest time of 22.31.
"I am grateful for the result, the objective is to finish healthy and I am happy I got the victory here tonight," Campbell-Brown said.
"The (Olympic) competition will be tough... it is too early to say (who will be the biggest challenger), there are so many talented women and everybody wants to win. We will get a better idea as we get closer to the Games."
Wallace Spearmon of the United States won the men's 200 in 20.14 while fellow American Sanya Richards-Ross beat Olympic champion Christine Ohuruogu in the women's 400 in 50.65 seconds.
The men's 110 metres hurdles was won by another American, Dexter Faulk, in 13.13, and Briton Tiffany Porter also matched her season best to claim the women's 100 metre hurdles.
Olympic javelin champion Czech Barbora Spotakova overcame her poor record at home meets with a world-leading 67.78 metres with her main rival, Russia's Mariya Abakumova, second (64.34).
"I felt better than ever before at this meeting," Spotakova said. "I had the feeling my best throw was taken down by wind a little, I think I have a few metres left (to improve).
"I am pleased I delivered a balanced series of attempts, that's a good base for one attempt to fly further. And I am happy I beat her," she added, referring to Abakumova.
Vitezslav Vesely capped a great night for the hosts in the javelin by beating Olympic champion Andreas Thorkildsen of Norway with an 85.67 metre effort.
GM's Vauxhall announces new Astra at UK plant - Yahoo Finance
LONDON (AP) -- General Motors' Vauxhall plant in northern England will build the company's top-selling Astra vehicles, the automaker said Thursday — a relief for U.K. politicians who had lobbied its American owner to keep the plant open.
The announcement comes after workers at the Ellesmere Port plant, near Liverpool, overwhelmingly backed a job deal which turned the factory into a 24-hour-a-day operation, a key cost-cutting measure pursued by parent company GM Europe.
GM Europe lost $700 million in 2011 and has been struggling to turn around its Opel and Vauxhall brands. It had been feared the company would close the Ellesmere Port facility in favor of consolidating production elsewhere — such as its headquarters in Ruesselsheim in Germany or Gliwice in Poland.
In a separate announcement, Opel said that the Ruesselsheim plant would switch to producing other models.
GM's announcement — which comes with a 125 million pound (nearly $200 million) investment and 700 extra jobs — is a break for leaders such as British Business Secretary Vince Cable, who fought to keep the British plant open.
Prime Minister David Cameron, speaking from the northern city of Manchester, called the decision "a fantastic vote of confidence."
"The U.K. government gave this its full backing. The unions supported the necessary changes. The workforce has responded magnificently. It is a British success story," he said.
Cable, who at one point traveled to the U.S. to plead the plant's case, told BBC television that no financial inducements were offered to General Motors Corp. to keep the U.K. facility open, saying the move underlined that Britain is "a good business environment for the motor industry."
Production of the new car is due to begin in 2015, with at least 160,000 vehicles scheduled to be produced every year.
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