France’s Political Class Blind to PS votes going to FN
The breaking of France’s presidential glass ceiling by Marine Le Pen promises to be more shattering than any fall-out connected with the now broken presidential hopes of Hillary Clinton.
This is because the fall-out will be a compound one blended from the glass ceiling effect and the upset triumph of President Donald Trump.
The French political class which is far more pervasive than anything their English-speaking counterparts can put forward is only just realising the truth that has been hiding in plain sight.
It is that Marine Le Pen and her Front National Party have a very good chance of winning the pending presidential general election.
As with their English-speaking counterparts the French political classes only in the last few weeks have understood that she is short circuiting the sectors that customarily act as middlemen between politicians and voters.
We are talking here of once-admired categories such as academics, think tank intellectuals, and of course journalists.
Marine Le Pen channeled Donald Trump before Donald Trump started running for President.
The most recent milestone on her own presidential route is the embarrassing back tracking of academics, think tankers, and journalists on the outcome of the primary within the Republican Party for its presidential candidate.
France’s commentators, much more esteemed than their counterparts in the English-speaking zone, had stated that the winner would be the more liberal of the two conservative party front-runners, Alain Juppe.
In the event the party plumped for the more right-leaning Francois Fillon.
As a result of this France’s biggest circulation daily Le Parisien did something that its English-speaking zone counterparts have still signally failed to do.
This was to acknowledge that its employees’ wishes manifested as fact and that opinion now had to be separated from news.
It banned from its pages all tendentious reporting and, more importantly still, opinion polls.
Even so, the French intellectual class, traditionally cherished in a way that its English-zone counterpart is decidedly not now radiates a fresh formula.
This holds that, yes, Marine Le Pen may perhaps be head-to-head with Francois Fillon in the first stage of the presidential elections.
But that she will be washed out in the second stage or run-off procedure in which French voters are required to unambiguously list their preference.
As with their US and British counterparts the commentariat cannot bring itself to ask itself from which sectors Marine Le Pen will draw her votes in this head-to-head or sudden-death challenge.
These votes are increasingly being seen as being drawn from the current ruling party the Socialist Party which has become so unpopular that its chances of regaining the Elysee are not even being considered.
Marine Le Pen has promised to close the book on political correctness and all that it contains. This means globalisation (think EU) and multi-culturalism (think the religiously affiliated version.)
This is music to the ears of provincial France where local products are being swamped by lower-cost competition from the rest of the EU.
She would seek détente with Russia which since the US and EU led embargo has ceased to take France’s surplus farm output.
She will stem the tide of immigrants who are viewed by this same sector (think “deplorables”) as lowering wage rates and putting pressure on accommodation and social services.
Meanwhile Marine Le Pen while keep the emphasis on France’s imperial world-power yearnings, notably in Oceania, where she has long had a soft spot for New Caledonia.
| This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. | Wednesday 25 January 2017 |
Ξ uArm Swift home robot designed not to cost an arm and a leg
Ξ Govt launches $3M fund, compels building owners to fix quake-risk masonry within a year
Ξ Management friction, unpaid bills sink promising pre-fab housing
Ξ Brexit: Supreme Court says Parliament must give Article 50 go-ahead
Ξ NZ economy seen leading the pack again
Ξ Work begins to develop open-ocean marine farms
Ξ Collision Repair Association says apprentices urgently needed
Ξ Wool a way forward in filter technology
Ξ While you were sleeping: DuPont bolsters Wall St
Ξ TPP survival tactics dominate new PM's first press conference
Ξ Hellaby execs sell down holdings to Bapcor, but one retains stake
Ξ Govt hikes minimum wage 3.3% to $15.75/hour
Ξ Food industry holds sway over public policy with lobbying tactics, study says
Robotic arms are moving out of large-scale factories and into homes or small businesses, and are increasingly used to help disabled people feed themselves and perform other tasks. Price is a problem though, so outside of some very specific use cases, they generally aren't worth it for interested tinkerers. But now, Ufactory has unveiled new versions of its consumer-level robot arms, the uArm Swift and Swift Pro, that are aimed at being cheap enough to splash out on, even if all you ever program it to do is stir your coffee for you.
Following the release of its first product, the uArm, back in 2014, Ufactory's next iterations – currently at the prototype stage and up for crowdfunding on Indiegogo – are reportedly smaller, stronger and more versatile. Both models can move across four axes, can lift 500 g (1.1 lb) and work between 5 and 32 cm (2 and 12.6 in) from the base.
Picking up and moving stuff is the uArm's specialty, and to that end it has a suction cup, gripper or a "Universal Holder" at its disposal. A modular attachment called a Seeed Grove socket adds other tools to its arsenal, including an electromagnet, RGB backlight, mini fan, and sensors for motion, color, temperature and humidity.With the help of an OpenMV Cam, the uArm Swift Pro can be taught to play...
They're powered by Arduino, and being open source, Ufactory is aiming to let the DIY crowd create their own programs and tasks for the arm through a visual programming language based on Blockly. These instructions can be relayed through USB and Bluetooth 4.0 connections, or the arm can be directly controlled through a keyboard-and-mouse setup or a smartphone app called uArm Play. There's a manual learning mode too, allowing you to guide the robot arm through a certain motion by physically moving it.
The base model uArm Swift is designed for beginners, packing this decent feature set into a frame that weighs 1.2 kg (2.6 lb) and measures 15 x 13.2 x 28.1 cm (5.9 x 5.2 x 11.1 in). The Swift Pro, on the other hand, is a little bulkier but far more precise, repeatable down to 0.2 mm, lending itself to more delicate tasks like drawing, 3D printing and laser engraving. With an OpenMV Cam, it can recognize, follow and respond to faces, colors and markers, allowing it to try its hand at chess or keep a fan aimed at your face.The uArm Swift robotic arm can be taught a movement by manually guiding the robot through...
Usually, playing around with all this tech comes with a hefty price tag. The Dobot M1, for example, which has an almost identical spec list, slugs your wallet for US$1,600, and more advanced options from bots like Rethink Robotics' Sawyer approach the $30,000 mark.
Spending thousands on a device that messily serves your breakfast or dynamically holds a lamp over your desk is excessive, but Ufactory is looking to make such things much more affordable. The company is currently seeking funding on Indiegogo, and is asking just $209 for basic model early bird pledge, representing a 51 percent saving on the expected retail price of $426. The Swift Pro, meanwhile, is currently up for a pledge of $339, and is expected to retail for $626. If all goes to plan, the uArm bots should be knocking on your door by May.
The uArm Swift can be seen in action in the campaign video.
| Source: Ufactory and New Atlas | January 24, 2017 |
Waste-to-energy showcase for reluctant New Zealand dairy sector
A 1,100-cow dairy in southern California became the first-ever operation in the world known to produce no-sulfur renewable diesel products from manure on a livestock facility in late April.
The milestone is the culmination of three years of collaboration between Scott Brothers Dairy in San Jacinto, California, and Ag Waste Solutions (AWS), a privately held company that designed the farm’s manure processing system.
“To make it to the top of the hill is a euphoric moment,” dairyman Bruce Scott says.
Steve McCorkle, founder and CEO of AWS, announced the partnership’s achievement on Facebook on April 27, 2015. The company claims its technology is the “future of sustainable farming.”
“We have proven that we can complete the circle of energy for individual farms while creating profit centers from manure, enabling farmers to exceed regulatory requirements and truly control their own destiny,” McCorkle said in a statement.
Scott says he is most proud to have produced a “deliverable” for the California Energy Commission, which helped fund the project. As far as he understands, the commission has no other no-sulfur diesel projects dealing with this type of waste stream, so he is pleased to have “crossed the finish line” by submitting a final report. The next step for the system is to prove it can operate continuously and thus be a commercially viable option for other agricultural operations.
“I didn’t expect to win over favor on this project quickly. But I’ve firmly believed in the direction of this project,” Scott says. “The tunnel may have gotten longer, but the light at the end of it has always stayed visible in my mind. I still believe it’s the most viable technology to get rid of a waste stream and produce something that’s value-added at the same time.”
Processing manure into renewable diesel products is just one of the system’s manure processing capabilities.
The dairy’s multi-stage system first separates high-BTU manure solids from the dairy’s liquid manure effluent. McCorkle says the first stage removes 98 percent of the total suspended solids and 40 percent of the dissolved solids, making good irrigation water for most farms.
The extracted water is further purified at Scott Brothers Dairy to remove the other 2 percent of suspended solids and the remaining dissolved solids, making the water potable. (This step was to satisfy manure application requirements that were specific to the dairy’s regional regulatory agency. See this Progressive Dairyman Feb. 7, 2014 article for more background about dairy’s unique permitting situation.)
The dairy’s manure solids are then fed to a pyrolysis gasifier. The gas production module then thermochemically decomposes the manure solids in the absence of air to produce syngas. The gas is then scrubbed of impurities and compressed for storage.
Using a Fischer-Tropsch process, the hydrogen and carbon in the gas is then converted in the system’s final stage into no-sulfur renewable diesel products. The Fischer-Tropsch process had been used to convert other feedstocks to renewable diesel but until recently was never proven to work with manure, let alone on a farm.
Perhaps more importantly than producing diesel, the process also produces a refined wax product in a controllable diesel-to-wax ratio. McCorkle says the wax product’s market value is three times that of the renewable diesel and can be further processed or blended off-site with other petroleum products, such as jet fuel or kerosene.
“We exceeded our own expectations on the first pass,” McCorkle says. “We were able to control the types and factions of liquids and waxes created. And we were able to attain the optimal ratio of liquids and waxes. This satisfies our business model of making enough diesel fuel for farm use and selling the wax products off-farm to create additional profit centers from manure.”
The system on Scott Brothers Dairy that produces renewable diesel products was built at pilot-project scale, meaning it is not commercially sized nor automated enough in order to operate 24-7 with minimal manpower.If the dairy had an adequately sized liquid fuels production module that ran continuously, it could produce at least 1 gallon of diesel fuel from three cows’ manure for a day. Right now the system can convert only one-eighth of the dairy’s gasified manure per day and has not yet been automated to run continuously.
The first production run of renewable diesel products was evaluated in an on-site lab as well as sent to an external lab for validation.. Future production runs will be tested to validate the fuel is consistently comparable, or superior, to other diesel fuels. Initial tests have shown the fuel has very similar characteristics to pump diesel but without detectable levels of sulfur. Even ultra low-sulfur pump diesel contains up to 15 ppm of sulfur.
When asked if it passed the sniff test and whether he would put it in his own tractor, Scott says: “No question about it.”
McCorkle suggests the next steps toward a commercially viable, 24-7 system require more funding to upsize the liquid fuels production module in order to match the size of the rest of the system and to demonstrate that the system can run continuously and more automatically with predictable results and with minimal personnel.
McCorkle is optimistic both goals can be achieved. For now, his countenance glows over the petrochemical milestone he and the dairy have achieved almost entirely by themselves.
“We didn’t achieve these results in a large, complex refinery with tens of engineers, chemists and scientists. We achieved these results with only a handful of people working in a remote farm environment,” McCorkle says.
| From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. | January 25, 2017 |
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
A story from from Reuters has generated rumors suggesting that private equity firm CVC Capital (CVC) will be acquiring MSC Software (MSC) for $800 million dollars. But why should engineers care? Well it could point to an interesting future for computer-aided engineering (CAE) users.
The recent trend in CAE acquisitions was one in which larger CAD or CAE firms would gobble up smaller ones. The path here is simple: add to the larger firm’s existing technology, broaden multiphysics and increase compatibilities and capabilities. This doesn’t seem to be the case here with the potential acquisition of MSC; however, it might be the end game achievement for CVC given MSC’s sales price.How MSC’s Rumored Sale Compares to Others in the CAE Industry
The rumored purchase price of $800 million for MSC isn’t a bad return for the privatization costs at $360 million, but, it pales in comparison to the sale of Mentor Graphics’ to Siemens PLM Software for $4.5 billion.
Given the similar employee size of the companies this might look like a good comparison, and the rumor mill agrees. It has suggested that the differences in price have been caused by “declining revenues.” However, these sources failed to take internal industry strategy into consideration.
Mentor Graphics specializes in electronics design automation (EDA) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations; whereas MSC focuses mostly on finite element analysis (FEA)-based physics. FEA is much more common in the industry.
| Continue to read full article on engineering.com | January 18, 2017 |
Kiwi ingenuity has seen a New Zealand owned cement company take lessons from ancient Roman concrete to create and launch a ground-breaking low-carbon footprint cement that helps reduce global CO2 emissions.
“HR CEMENT, based in Mt Maunganui, has managed to differentiate a basic commodity and develop a more environmentally friendly cement called ECO-CEM that has significant benefits when compared to standard cements,” said Chris Hall, Managing Director of HR Cement.
“ECO-CEM has the potential to reduce the carbon footprint of concrete utilised on construction sites by 15-30% and set a New Zealand benchmark for low-carbon concretes in New Zealand,” said Mr Hall.
“We looked at millennia-defying concrete mixtures used by the ancient Romans and, after applying modern cement manufacturing techniques, engineered a new cement using Pozzolan from the Central Plateau of the North Island.
Our focus when developing ECO-CEM was to produce a cement that has no downsides compared to the standard General Purpose cement available, coupled with all the clear advantages of a Pozzolanic cement, at a similar cost.
“The use of pozzolan and subsequently ECO-CEM, has significant advantages over standard concrete which are well known internationally. In comparison to standard cement, ECO-CEM gets stronger as time goes on, increases abrasion resistance, improves durability and permeability, alongside having a high resistance to the harsh climatic conditions experienced in New Zealand,” said Mr Hall.
One of ECO-CEM’s greatest strengths is that it is significantly more environmentally friendly than the existing production of Portland cement which is energy intensive and results in significant global greenhouse gas emissions.
The company’s location, being located within a volcanic field near high quality and natural Pozzolanic materials, gives HR CEMENT an economic advantage.
HR CEMENT believes ECO-CEM is a game-changer for the New Zealand concrete market as it will ultimately produce a stronger, more durable and more sustainable product,” Mr Hall said.
! An HRCement release | January 24, 2017 |
Political Class-Media Armageddons Recalled
Three scaremongering and imminent disaster predicted without qualification by the political classes that would paralyse civilisation in the new millennium have now conspicuously failed to come to pass.
The millennialist threats in terms of the disaster they were predicted to precipitate were:-
The Y2K COMPUTER paralysis was predicted to hit civilisation with the advent of the current millennium, the second millennium. In the event global data processing continued as before. The pretext for the scare was that computer operating system clocks were said to be self-eliminating at the point of entry into the new millennium.
What was the existing evidence to reveal the bogus nature of the claim?
The existence of a operating systems that were timed to run out prior to the millennium. Among these was the widely used Pick operating system, designed originally for the military, and which went on the market in 1973. In the event Pick operating systems having run through two clock changes (its proprietary one and the millennium one) continue to function as originally specified.
What happened? Global computational carried on as before, regardless of the digital changes inherent in the new digital time zone.
Who benefited? Computer service companies which toward the end of the first expansionary period of digital processing enjoyed a burst of activity in systems reworking.
FOOD MILES gripped the minds of the fashionable and media classes in the general superstitious frenzy attendant on the new millennium. This panic theory fed off the Peak Oil one. The contention was that any imported foods ate up miles in bringing them to the mouths of the consumers in the importing nations. Therefore everyone should eat locally, and ideally, organically produced foods.
What was the existing evidence that would have debunked this one?Any sea freight shipping price schedule.
What happened? A surplus of refrigerated shipping tonnage meant that the cost-per- food mile of imported food dropped substantially below that of freighting the same foodstuffs internally the process which further worsened the urban congestion of developed nations. It was also discovered that producing local foodstuffs organically or off season in greenhouses in fact consumed more energy than was involved in bulk carrier freighted imports.
Who benefited? Food miles gave traction primarily to urban non-productive activists. The scare was eventually abandoned as it became obvious that it was now being taken up by nations which saw it as an opportunity to erect non-tariff barricades to keep out imports.
PEAK OIL Anyone who sought to be acknowledged as being fashionable early in the millennium needed to let these two words trip off their tongues. The claim was that all the oil in the globe would simply run out. Or, as a consequence would become so expensive as to be beyond the reach of anyone or any institution. Whole nations we were reliably informed would become paralysed.
What was the existing evidence that would have readily debunked the panic?
Any perusal of North American shale oil projections.
What happened? New resources cut in and oil in relative terms is now cheaper than it has been for a generation simply because there is more of it.
Who benefited? The oil industry and oil producing nations took advantage of this scaremongering which had the effect of exaggerating the value of their product simply by advertising its scarcity.
| From The MSCNewsWire reporters' desk | Tuesday 24 January 2017 |
The minimum wage will increase by 50 cents to $15.75 an hour on 1 April 2017, Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Michael Woodhouse announced today.
The starting-out and training hourly minimum wage rates will increase from $12.20 to $12.60 per hour, remaining at 80 per cent of the adult minimum wage.
“The Government is committed to striking the right balance between protecting our lowest paid workers and ensuring jobs are not lost,” says Mr Woodhouse.
“An increase to $15.75 will benefit approximately 119,500 workers and will increase wages throughout the economy by $65 million per year.
“At a time when annual inflation is 0.4 per cent, a 3.3 per cent increase to the minimum wage will give our lowest paid workers more money in their pockets, without hindering job growth or imposing undue pressure on businesses.
“Annual increases to the minimum wage since 2009 reflect this Government’s commitment to growing the economy, boosting incomes and supporting job growth throughout New Zealand.”
| A Beehive release | January 24, 2017 |
Palace of the Alhambra, Spain
By: Charles Nathaniel Worsley (1862-1923)
From the collection of Sir Heaton Rhodes
Oil on canvas - 118cm x 162cm
Valued $12,000 - $18,000
Offers invited over $9,000
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242
Mount Egmont with Lake
By: John Philemon Backhouse (1845-1908)
Oil on Sea Shell - 13cm x 14cm
Valued $2,000-$3,000
Offers invited over $1,500
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242