A Turkish air force pilot won the top flying award at this year’s Royal International Air Tattoo at Fairford in the UK.
The top award is the King Hussein Memorial Sword – presented in memory of the late HM King Hussein of Jordan, Patron of the International Air Tattoo (1983-1989) – and is awarded for the best overall flying demonstration. This year it went to Maj Murat Keles, flying the F-16C “Solo Turk” from 141st Sqn, Turkish Air Force.
Major Keles is pictured below receiving his award.
Maj Keles said: “I am very happy. It is wonderful to receive this award in the first year of our display and in the same year as we celebrate 100 years of the Turkish Air Force.”
The sword was presented by Major General Malek Habashnah, Commander Royal Jordanian Air Force , on behalf of HRH Lt Gen Prince Faisal.[…]
RoboCup organiser Cetin Mericli says all the robots are autonomous, meaning they play with their own software intelligence
The UK’s best robot footballers have followed the example of their human counterparts and bombed out of the football World Cup.
The country’s first full team was taking part in the 2011 RoboCup in Istanbul over the weekend.
Sadly, the four-strong Edinferno squad from Edinburgh University, was knocked out in the group stages.
The team’s coach vowed to return next year with a much improved side.
Dr Subramanian Ramamoorthy, assistant professor at the School of Informatics, said the lack of success was largely due to the fact that the UK has no national RoboCup tournament at which Edinferno could fine tune their hardware, software and strategy.
“Almost all the bugs that stopped us were because we were not match ready,” he said.
By contrast, said Dr Ramamoorthy, opposing teams had taken part in their respective national tournaments and honed their players and team work before reaching the final in Turkey.
“I suspect we are one of the few that are here for their first year,” he said.
Despite getting knocked out in the early stages, Dr Ramamoorthy said Edinferno had accomplished many of its goals.
“Until this year there was no British team,” he said. “And we learned that our core technology is not that bad even though we have not been very successful.”
Humanoid
Edinferno took part in the Standard Platform League of the RoboCup which sees all teams use bipedal robots made by French firm Aldebaran Robotics. There are four other leagues covering software-only simulated soccer as well as small, medium and humanoid teams of robots. The RoboCup is the largest gathering of robots on the planet.
Dr Cetin Mericli, organiser of the RoboCup, said the event started in 1997 right after chess grand master Garry Kasparov was beaten by the IBM Deep Blue supercomputer.
Football was settled on as a “grand challenge” to focus the research efforts of robot makers and AI experts so the machines they produce get more competent. It gave them a benchmark against which to measure their progress, he said.
The problems that need to be solved to make a good team of football-playing robots are relevant to the many areas of human life that those thinking machines will have to tackle when they live and work alongside us, said Dr Mericli,
“We want to create robots that are intelligent enough to take care of themselves and to take care of anyone around them so they can be part of our lives,” he said.
The competition was definitely starting to produce smarter robots, said Dr Mericli, because the rules governing the competitions regularly had to be revised as the machines and their creators got better at walking, recognising objects, avoiding collisions and working together.
Pitches were now bigger, teams had more players and landmarks to help with navigation were being removed as the robots got smarter and played better.
Household name
The researchers, graduate students and engineers making the robots that take part were driving the development of robotics, said Dr Mericli.
He predicted that the great leaps being made by robotkind would mean an explosion in their numbers within a decade and lead to them becoming household gadgets that people cannot do without.
“They will be the mobile phones and smartphones of the future,” he said.
The ultimate aim of RoboCup is to produce a team that, by 2050 at the latest, can take on and beat the most recent human Fifa World Cup winning team. Dr Ramamoorthy is in no doubt its a reachable goal.
“I think we could get there,” he said. “We can make robots that can win that game as all the pieces are here.”
“However,” he added, “if we did get there, the result would not be just about football. If you had robots that could win that game they would be useful for so many other things.”
Added: Friday, 08 July 2011 at 4:55 PM – An RDFRS Original
We are delighted to announce that, with immediate effect, RichardDawkins.net is no longer banned in Turkey.
The ban had been imposed by default when Adnan Oktar aka Harun Yahya complained to a Turkish court that a thread on the site defamed him.
No formal complaint about the comments had ever been received by RD.net, nor were we ever formally notified about a court case against us.
The process of getting the ban lifted has been long and rather arduous, and we would like to express our deep and heartfelt gratitude to a group of Turkish lawyers for their unstinting efforts on our behalf.
We understand it is standard practice in Turkey that all judgements are appealed, and we therefore cannot state with certainty that the judge’s decision will not be overturned on appeal at a later date, although we will of course continue to defend any attempt to do so.
In the meantime, however, a huge and heartfelt THANK YOU to our Turkish legal team; and to all our readers in Turkey – WELCOME BACK! TEKRAR MERHABA!
via RD.net no longer banned in Turkey! – RDFRS UK – www.richarddawkins.net – RichardDawkins.net.
The FINANCIAL — VIENNA, 8 July 2011 – The Internet should remain free and access should be considered a human right, said the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatović at the presentation of a report on regulations affecting new media in the OSCE region today.
The study, commissioned by the office of the Representative and authored by Yaman Akdeniz, a professor at Istanbul Bilgi University, measures the level of Internet content regulation in the OSCE area and assesses national laws in light of OSCE commitments and international standards of free expression and access to information.
The Study on legal provisions and practices related to freedom of expression, the free flow of information and media pluralism on the Internet is the first ever OSCE-wide review of laws regulating the Internet. Mijatović said the rapid development of Internet technologies and growth in user numbers were factors that inspired the report, which offers recommendations on how to keep the Internet open.
“We will use the study as an advocacy tool to promote speech-friendly Internet regulation in the OSCE participating States,” Mijatović said.
“Some governments already recognize access to the Internet as a human right. This trend should be supported as a crucial element of media freedom in the 21st century.”
The study found that some participating States had problems submitting information for the study because legal provisions or relevant statistics were not easily retrievable. It also emphasizes that this lack of clarity makes it difficult for users to understand Internet regulation regimes.
Akdeniz expressed concern about the level of blocking practices encountered in the OSCE region. “Restrictions to freedom of expression must comply with international norms. No compliance could lead to censorship,” he said.
The Representative highlighted other key trends revealed in the survey.
“Legislation in many countries does not recognize that freedom of expression and freedom of the media equally apply to Internet as a modern means of exercising these rights and in some of our states, ‘extremism’, terrorist propaganda, harmful content and hate speech are vaguely defined and may be widely interpreted to ban speech types that Internet users may not deem illegal,” Mijatović said.
The study argues that filtering and blocking measures are in most cases incompatible with freedom of expression and the free flow of information, both of which are basic OSCE commitments.
It is also a concern that several countries allow for complete suspension of Internet services at times of war, in a state of emergency and in response to other security threats, added Mijatović.
via The FINANCIAL – Internet blocking practices a concern, access is a human right, says OSCE.
The Turkish response to the innovation score I generated for them in the Scientific American Worldview Scorecard was pretty clear. They interpret their low score — 39th out of 48 countries measured — as an indication that they continue to ‘miss the biotech train.’ The primary reasons for Turkey’s low score are:
* Relatively low intensity of biotechnology activities
* Relatively poor capital availability for biotechnology ventures
* Relatively weak educational output of scientists
* Relatively low R&D expenditures by domestic companies
The solution to improving Turkey’s standing seems pretty clear — strengthen IP, implement programs to encourage students to study science, and support investments in company formation and R&D. But, these are not simple changes. As India has seen in their dispute over Novartis’ Glivec patents, strengthening IP protection may mean balancing short-term domestic interests with the future potential of foreign investments. Promoting company formation and the development of scientists can also be challenging. My recent study of the locations of pharmaceutical drug inventors came to a surprising conclusion: the dominant countries are the legacy pharma countries. Despite their significant investments, emerging markets have yet to produce measurable outputs in innovation.
So, what is Turkey to do? I think that it is a bit harsh to say that they continue to miss the train. Many countries strive to develop biotechnology industries, and fail to show progress despite significant investments. Turkey is blessed with a strong entrepreneurial culture, and can get ‘on the train’ if they decide to provide patient sustained support. The key to developing a stronger biotechnology industry is to continue to find and clear hurdles to innovation. Case studies from around the world are in plentiful supply — the challenge is to identify and implement the solutions best suited to Turkey.
Yali Friedman lives in Washington, DC and is author of Building Biotechnology and other books; founder of DrugPatentWatch; and chief editor of the Journal of Commercial Biotechnology.
via Building Biotechnology in Turkey | Biotech Blog.
SYNOPSIS: BD Otomotive group owns and operates production facilities in Turkey and Italy for the conversion of light commercial vehicles into electric vehicles, and related activities.
Istanbul, Turkey, 6 July 2011 – Sustainable transport group BD Otomotive (BD OTO AS) is in advanced negotiations with the Norwegian court-appointed Trustee of THINK Global – the electric vehicle maker – to rescue the brand from bankruptcy.
BD Otomotive is a Turkey-based investment group behind a host of successful corporate ventures across Europe, which in recent years has focused on electric transportation. The group owns and operates production facilities in Turkey and Italy for the conversion of light commercial vehicles into electric vehicles (EVs), automotive battery pack assembly, and a new recycling plant for lithium-ion and other industrial batteries.
The group has also made major investments into EV charging infrastructure, and owns and operates charging stations across Turkey.
In addition, the company operates sales and service networks across Europe to market its sustainable mobility products, and also is an appointed distributor of Fisker Automotive cars and BYD commercial vehicles and buses.
Chairman of BD Otomotive, Osman Boyner, said: “Our intentions are simple – to bring THINK out of bankruptcy and make it the affordable urban EV for Europe it was always designed to be. We have the manufacturing capabilities and sales network to do this, and combined with a core group of retained THINK talent in Norway we aim to launch new platforms and the next generation of vehicles if successful in our bid.”
He added: “We know our aspirations are realistic and are extremely hopeful for the future of the brand.”
Negotiations between BD Otomotive and the Norwegian court-appointed Trustee in charge of THINK Global are ongoing. The negotiations’ conclusion will be subject to a further announcement.
via Turkisk Group Negotiating Possible Rescue of Bankrupt THINK: EVWORLD.COM.
