The city of Scottsdale is fighting a lawsuit filed this summer that claims a recent contribution to renovations at McDowell Mountain Golf Club constituted an illegal subsidy.
AZCentral reports the city has asked the complaint be dismissed. The city contributed $1.5 million to renovations at the golf course's clubhouse. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation owns most of the land beneath the course, and the city has an agreement to use it. A private entity, White Buffalo Golf LLC, bought the course?s operating rights from SunCor Development Corp. of Tempe in April last year for $2.2 million.
AFP - With its masters required to hone their skills over decades, sushi in Japan is steeped in tradition. But it is also often a high-tech operation where robotic precision steals the limelight from the chef's knife.
The country is dotted with thousands of "kaiten" (revolving) sushi restaurants where raw fish slices atop rice balls travel on conveyer belts along counters waiting to be picked up by diners.
Behind the scenes, however, it is far from a simple merry-go-round, with robots in some locations rolling out perfectly-sized rice balls onto plates embedded with microchips.
Measured dollops of spicy wasabi paste are squirted onto the rice assembly-line style before they're topped with raw fish.
And the most cutting-edge eateries are even connected to monitoring centres that can quickly tell whether the right balance of dishes is being produced -- a far cry from traditional-style places where the sushi chef and his knife still reign supreme.
"Sushi isn't going round at random but rather it is coming out based on a number of calculations," said Akihiro Tsuji, public relations manager at Kura Corp., a major operator in a market expected to hit $5.0 billion in revenue this year, according to industry figures.
"Though traditional, sushi is stuffed with high technology. You can't operate low-price revolving sushi restaurants without databases and scientific management," he told AFP at a Tokyo outlet.
Kura has invented a serving device called "sendo-kun", which roughly translates as "Mr Fresh", a plate with a transparent dome that opens automatically when diners select the dish.
While the hood keeps the sushi moist and clean, it also contains a microchip telling managers what kind of fish are swinging around on the conveyer belts and how long they have been there.
Since their birth half a century ago, kaiten sushi restaurants have evolved from selling traditional sushi into miniature museums of the food that Japanese people eat today, including battered tempura, noodles, and even ice cream.
The dishes are cheap, usually starting at around 100 yen (around $1) for two pieces of sushi.
Now, more and more outlets are equipped with dedicated "high-speed" lanes where customers can receive their order via a touch-screen menu.
Ryozo Aida, a 68-year-old university lecturer, said he visits the Kura outlet with his wife because of its "affordable prices".
"It may sound strange in a sushi restaurant, but I like tempura," he said as he jabbed his fingers at a touch-screen panel.
Inside the kitchen, screens show how many adults and children are dining and roughly how long they have been in the restaurant.
"Even if all the 199 seats here are occupied, how much sushi we need will differ depending on how long they have been at the table," Tsuji said.
The system combines real-time data with information about how many items were consumed in similar circumstances in the past, displaying results for kitchen staff.
Complementing on-the-spot efforts, the Kura chain also has a remote assistance system serving its network of more than 300 outlets.
In-store cameras feed images to dozens of supervisors who move from restaurant to restaurant with laptops -- while others watch from monitoring centres -- to advise restaurants instantly if there is enough food and the right mix of offerings on the conveyer belt. The cameras can zoom in on sushi to make sure it is laid out in regulation elegance -- although they don't monitor customers' faces for privacy reasons.
At another outlet run by Genki Sushi's "Uobei" brand in the fashionable Tokyo district of Shibuya, the concept of one conveyor belt has been updated. All 90 seats face counters with three decks of "high-speed" lanes delivering sushi directly to the person who ordered via multi-lingual touch screen.
Accuracy and speed is the name of the game with the store targeting delivery in under a minute.
"As we looked at how fast we can deliver what's ordered, we came up with this system," said Akira Koyanagi, district manager for Genki, adding that it also cuts down on wasted food.
All this high technology costs money, but sales at kaiten sushi restaurants have grown 20 percent over the past five years with the industry expected to rake in nearly $5.0 billion this year, according to research firm Fuji-Keizai Group.
A key challenge, however, is that Japanese people are eating less fish and more meat these days as world prices rise due to strong demand in the United States and Europe.
"Procurement is getting tough," said a Genki Sushi spokesman.
OTTAWA, August 6, 2013 ??? The University of Ottawa has reached a tentative deal for a new collective agreement with the Association of Professors of the University of Ottawa (APUO), the union representing its full-time faculty members.
The agreement was reached on Sunday, August 4, in the afternoon, after two full days of talks with a mediator. The deal must be ratified by the University?s Board of Governors and the members of the APUO.
?We are extremely pleased to have reached a tentative settlement,? said Allan Rock, president and vice-chancellor of the University of Ottawa. ?This deal addresses some of the key long-standing issues, such as pension and tenure track positions. It also offers increased compensation that is in line with what other Ontario professors have received. I would like to commend all parties for their efforts and such a successful result.?
The details of this tentative agreement will not be communicated at this point. Both the University?s Board of Governors and APUO members must first be informed of and then approve the terms of the agreement.
Negotiations are still ongoing with the union representing uOttawa?s support staff (SSUO-OSSTF). The University is confident that a fair and equitable agreement can be reached before the end of August.
?
INFORMATION:
Patrick Charette
Director, Corporate Communications
University of Ottawa
Office: 613-562-5800 (3137)
Cell: 613-724-8290
patrick.charette@uottawa.ca
?
BOSTON (Reuters) - Jurors in the murder and racketeering trial of Boston gangster James "Whitey" Bulger asked the judge on Monday whether or not they could find him guilty of a crime because they believed one of his associates had committed it.
The question came in a note from the jury on its fifth day of deliberations over the sweeping 32 counts against the 83-year-old former mob boss of the "Winter Hill" gang in the 1970s and '80s.
The note said they were having trouble reaching unanimous votes on some of the charges under the racketeering count. The racketeering count encompasses 38 criminal acts -- including 19 murders Bulger is accused of ordering or committing.
The jury only needs to find Bulger guilty of committing two of those 38 crimes, which also include extortion, drug dealing and money laundering, for him to be guilty of racketeering.
U.S. District Judge Denise Casper told the 12 members of the jury that they could not find Bulger guilty of a crime if they believed one of his associates committed it but said he could be guilty of killing a victim who did not die by his hand.
It was the first question the jury had asked of the judge since Thursday in a trial entering its 10th week.
Bulger has pleaded not guilty to all charges, although his lawyers have acknowledged that their client was a drug dealer, extortionist and loan shark, in short an "organized criminal."
Family members of Bulger's victims have long waited for verdicts on the killings, and about a half-dozen survivors have been a regular presence in the courtroom.
Bulger sat quietly in court dressed in a gray shirt, dark pants and white sneakers. He declined to testify on his own behalf and called the trial a "sham."
The case of the man whose story inspired Martin Scorsese's 2006 Academy Award-winning film "The Departed" has brought back memories of a bygone era of Boston history when machine-gun toting mobsters killed rivals in telephone booths and basements and pulled the teeth from their victims' skulls before burying them in shallow graves.
It also highlighted a black mark on the history of the FBI. Agents who shared Bulger's Irish ethnicity turned a blind eye to his reign of terror in exchange for information they could use against the Italian-America Mafia, which at the time was a top national target of the FBI.
Bulger fled Boston in 1994 after a tip that his arrest was imminent and he eluded capture until 2011, when FBI agents found him hiding out in an apartment in Santa Monica, California, with a stockpile of guns and more than $800,000 in cash.
He agreed to forfeit the cash and guns, but according to court papers filed on Monday he will be allowed to keep a Stanley Cup ring given to him by an associate, who was not identified.
(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Grant McCool)
Hyperloop plans unveiled late Monday imagine a 'fifth mode of transport' in which passengers travel at extreme speeds through tubes to reach their destination. Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, says the idea is 'extremely speculative.' But if the hyperloop is ever realized, it could revolutionize transportation and energy.
By David J. Unger,?Correspondent / August 12, 2013
A conceptual design rendering of the hyperloop passenger transport capsule. Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk unveiled his much-anticipated plans for a hyperloop transportation system Monday.
Tesla Motors/AP
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"I've got a hyperloop to catch."
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Why It Matters
Energy: Transportation is the second-most energy intensive sector in the US, behind electric power. ?
Environment: Solar-powered intercity transit could dramatically reduce emissions.
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That's a phrase you might hear sometime in the future, if you believe Elon Musk. The driving force behind Tesla Motors' luxury electric car and SpaceX's forays into private space travel is throwing his weight behind a "fifth mode of transport." The hyperloop, as he laid out in plans late Monday, would whisk travelers in pods at about the speed of sound through tubes to reach their destinations.?
It's not an entirely new idea, and Mr. Musk stresses that his plan is "extremely speculative." But if executed exactly as he envisions it, the hyperloop would offer a combination of high speed, low cost, and low emissions that would make planes, trains, automobiles, and boats look positively Stone Age.
"Short of figuring out real teleportation, which would of course be awesome?(someone please do this)," Musk wrote in a 57-page proposal, "the only option for super fast travel is to build a tube?over or under the ground that contains a special environment."
The basic concept is?"a cross between a Concord and a rail gun and an air hockey table," as Musk described it at a conference in May. Columns of air would push passenger cars through special, low-pressure tubes at speeds greater than 600 mph. To reduce friction, the cars would levitate on a cushion of pressurized air.?
Planning by postcode -- new map reveals how prepared cities are for climate changePublic release date: 12-Aug-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Dr. Oliver Heidrich oliver.heidrich@ncl.ac.uk 44-019-122-26563 Newcastle University
The ability of cities to combat the cause of climate change and to adapt to future weather patterns depends on where we live, new research suggests.
Scientists at Newcastle University, UK, have revealed a "postcode lottery of preparedness" across the UK based on what each city is doing to not only reduce greenhouse emissions but also adapt to future climate change and extremes of weather such as flooding and drought.
Devising a new way of ranking cities - the 'Urban Climate Change Preparedness Scores' - the team scored 30 cities based on four levels of readiness: Assessment, Planning, Action and Monitoring.
Publishing their results today in the academic journal Climatic Change, they reveal huge variation across the UK and say the same system could be used to rank urban areas around the world.
Newcastle University's Dr Oliver Heidrich who led the research said it highlighted at a glance the "state of readiness" across the country and how prepared we are for the future.
"Of the 30 cities we assessed, all of them acknowledged that climate change was a threat and all except two had a strategy or policy in place to reduce emissions and also adapt to cope better with future weather patterns, in particular flooding," explains Dr Heidrich, a senior researcher in the School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences at Newcastle University.
"But a plan is only any good if you implement it and then assess it to see how effective it has been, this requires a long term investment in the strategies.
"We found that in many cities this wasn't happening. In some cases, plans were in place but nothing had been done about them. Many cities published plans and partially implemented associated schemes such as introducing electric vehicles or solar panels as well as making changes to the built environment to reduce the risk of flooding. But very often, no-one was monitoring to see whether it made a difference or had actually made things worse.
"The aim of this research is not to name and shame cities, but if we are to be prepared for the increased occurrences of floods and droughts then we do need to make sure that our climate change policies are in place, that they are working and that the consequences of implementing these strategies are being checked."
The 30 cities chosen for the study were those selected as part of the European Urban Audit database and are representative of urban areas across the UK.
The Newcastle team then applied the scoring methodology to assess the level of preparedness of each of the cities to climate change, rating from 0-3 against both adaption and mitigation.
London was found to have one of the most advanced strategies in place, mitigating the impact on climate change through, for example, energy efficiency and saving, increasing the use of renewables, waste management and the introduction of greener modes of transport. Leicester also scored highly, carrying out rigorous monitoring and providing regular reports on the city's carbon footprints.
Other cities, such as Newcastle, had advanced electric vehicle infrastructures in place while Sheffield and Coventry have established programmes to produce more energy from waste and reduce landfill.
Almost all cities had set targets for reducing CO2 emissions although quite a few would not commit to an actual target, figure or timescale, rendering them meaningless; reduction targets varied from just 10% to 80%. Edinburgh was one of those with a deadline, setting a target of reducing carbon emissions by 40% by 2020 and to achieve a zero carbon economy by 2050.
In most cities, adaptation policies lagged behind the mitigation plans. With flooding a key threat in many urban areas both now and in the future the team showed that many cities were still unprepared to cope with extremes of weather patterns. Although many had flood protection schemes in place, few had assessed whether they were actually effective.
Dr Heidrich adds: "What this research highlights more than anything is the huge variations in the state of readiness for climate change across the UK, and the method of assessing the preparedness of cities can easily be applied to cities in other countries.
"Although cities of all sizes across the UK acknowledge climate change is a threat, there is considerable spread of measures in place and huge inconsistency in policy between areas and against national and international targets.
"Local Authorities are pivotal to the implementation of global climate policy so it is essential that we embed adaptation and mitigation strategies within the urban planning framework."
###
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Planning by postcode -- new map reveals how prepared cities are for climate changePublic release date: 12-Aug-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Dr. Oliver Heidrich oliver.heidrich@ncl.ac.uk 44-019-122-26563 Newcastle University
The ability of cities to combat the cause of climate change and to adapt to future weather patterns depends on where we live, new research suggests.
Scientists at Newcastle University, UK, have revealed a "postcode lottery of preparedness" across the UK based on what each city is doing to not only reduce greenhouse emissions but also adapt to future climate change and extremes of weather such as flooding and drought.
Devising a new way of ranking cities - the 'Urban Climate Change Preparedness Scores' - the team scored 30 cities based on four levels of readiness: Assessment, Planning, Action and Monitoring.
Publishing their results today in the academic journal Climatic Change, they reveal huge variation across the UK and say the same system could be used to rank urban areas around the world.
Newcastle University's Dr Oliver Heidrich who led the research said it highlighted at a glance the "state of readiness" across the country and how prepared we are for the future.
"Of the 30 cities we assessed, all of them acknowledged that climate change was a threat and all except two had a strategy or policy in place to reduce emissions and also adapt to cope better with future weather patterns, in particular flooding," explains Dr Heidrich, a senior researcher in the School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences at Newcastle University.
"But a plan is only any good if you implement it and then assess it to see how effective it has been, this requires a long term investment in the strategies.
"We found that in many cities this wasn't happening. In some cases, plans were in place but nothing had been done about them. Many cities published plans and partially implemented associated schemes such as introducing electric vehicles or solar panels as well as making changes to the built environment to reduce the risk of flooding. But very often, no-one was monitoring to see whether it made a difference or had actually made things worse.
"The aim of this research is not to name and shame cities, but if we are to be prepared for the increased occurrences of floods and droughts then we do need to make sure that our climate change policies are in place, that they are working and that the consequences of implementing these strategies are being checked."
The 30 cities chosen for the study were those selected as part of the European Urban Audit database and are representative of urban areas across the UK.
The Newcastle team then applied the scoring methodology to assess the level of preparedness of each of the cities to climate change, rating from 0-3 against both adaption and mitigation.
London was found to have one of the most advanced strategies in place, mitigating the impact on climate change through, for example, energy efficiency and saving, increasing the use of renewables, waste management and the introduction of greener modes of transport. Leicester also scored highly, carrying out rigorous monitoring and providing regular reports on the city's carbon footprints.
Other cities, such as Newcastle, had advanced electric vehicle infrastructures in place while Sheffield and Coventry have established programmes to produce more energy from waste and reduce landfill.
Almost all cities had set targets for reducing CO2 emissions although quite a few would not commit to an actual target, figure or timescale, rendering them meaningless; reduction targets varied from just 10% to 80%. Edinburgh was one of those with a deadline, setting a target of reducing carbon emissions by 40% by 2020 and to achieve a zero carbon economy by 2050.
In most cities, adaptation policies lagged behind the mitigation plans. With flooding a key threat in many urban areas both now and in the future the team showed that many cities were still unprepared to cope with extremes of weather patterns. Although many had flood protection schemes in place, few had assessed whether they were actually effective.
Dr Heidrich adds: "What this research highlights more than anything is the huge variations in the state of readiness for climate change across the UK, and the method of assessing the preparedness of cities can easily be applied to cities in other countries.
"Although cities of all sizes across the UK acknowledge climate change is a threat, there is considerable spread of measures in place and huge inconsistency in policy between areas and against national and international targets.
"Local Authorities are pivotal to the implementation of global climate policy so it is essential that we embed adaptation and mitigation strategies within the urban planning framework."
###
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: atlantacondominiums.us --- Saturday, August 10, 2013 ATLANTA, Aug. 5, 2013 /PRNewswire/ ? Land on the Flint River, an oceanfront home site in Port Saint Joe, Fla., two Florida condominiums and a car wash in Gainesville, Ga., are among approximately 150 properties set to sell in a pair of back-to-back auctions Aug. 27-28. John Dixon Associates will manage the sales, both of which [...] ...
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Public release date: 12-Aug-2013
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