IBM Research in Australia has announced plans to undertake research with Melanoma Institute Australia to help further advance the identification of melanoma using cognitive technology. This planned research builds on IBM’s existing research agreement with Molemap, which uses advanced visual analytics to analyse more than 40,000 data sets including images and text. IBM Research plans to analyse dermatological images of skin lesions to help identify specific clinical patterns in the early stages of melanoma1. The Australian research aims to help reduce unnecessary biopsies and help clinicians more accurately understand skin cancer, which could help to improve patient care.

Advancements in assistive image analytics and deep learning technology could in the future help doctors in the fight against preventable blindness.

The IBM Research findings achieve the highest recorded accuracy of 86 percent by using deep learning and pathology insights to identify the severity of diabetic retinopathy.

IBM today announced the signing of a new five-year infrastructure services agreement with The Westpac Group, which marks a key step in Westpac’s technology transformation program.

: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it has signed a five-year multimillion dollar agreement with Veda (ASX: VED), a leading provider of credit information and analysis in Australia and New Zealand. The agreement extends Veda's existing strategic outsourcing relationship with IBM, which continues to provide Veda with a highly reliable and resilient infrastructure, and now includes cloud services.

ASL to benefit from IBM Cloud and IBM PureApplication to deliver for secure real time payments for NPP Australia

IBM has announced the availability of its cloud container service in its Australian data centres, delivered out of Sydney and Melbourne, on IBM Cloud.

IBM Watson Customer Engagement tools help extend the Bank’s leadership in customer experience.

IBM Security today announced a new capability from IBM Trusteer that helps banks identify fraudulent accounts before they are opened. The technology also protects consumers even if they are not a customer of the bank being targeted with the fake account.

IBM today announced a new analytics-based tool for its data centre consolidation and relocation services which help clients gain up to 50% operational savings from the consolidation of IT assets and data centres.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that the University of Melbourne, a world class research university, has selected IBM to design and install a high efficiency, high density cooling solution to support new IT initiatives such as Cloud and Research computing, in its new data centre, Data Hall 2.

IBM positioned as the Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Center Outsourcing and Hybrid Infrastructure Managed Services, Asia Pacific

【JOSEPH】〜REI YUZUKA MOROCCAN JOURNEY〜宝塚歌劇団　花組トップスター 柚香 光さんをヴィジュアルに起用したイベントをスタート！womens/photo-gallery/moroccan-journey/ pic.twitter.com/LyAzWCS02H— ONWARD_PressRoom (@onwardpressroom) March ...

Melbourne-based start-up Level35 is using Watson, the cognitive computing platform developed by IBM (NYSE: IBM), and IBM Cloud to help public-sector project managers improve how they communicate within some of the largest government agencies in Australia.

Watson matched tumor board treatment recommendations in up to 96% of cases;reduced clinical trial screening time by 78%, studies find. Prostate cancer is latest add to Watson for Oncology; the tech will be available to support 80 percent of the incidence of cancer by year-end. Nine new adopters of Watson oncology offerings around the globe expands Watson's reach to 55 organizations worldwide.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced its role as the systems integration partner for the $100 million Smart Grid, Smart City initiative led by the EnergyAustralia consortium. IBM will play a pivotal role, as a member of the consortium, in the development of Australia’s first smart grid network, following the formal contract signing of the deal between EnergyAustralia and the Australian Government.

IBM collaborates with academia and industry to educate and prepare IT professionals, telecommunications engineers, and electrical power engineers for the electricity networks of the future

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a business consulting and technology partnership with Yarra Valley Water to enhance the management and functionality of its assets and customer service to over 1.7 million people and 50,000 businesses throughout Melbourne now and in the future. Through this partnership Yarra Valley Water will gain access to critical insights to maximise asset performance and improve customer service outcomes across its operations.

Daily Photo – Bathhouses in Budapest There are different old Turkish baths all over Budapest. This particular one had about seven different pools, and this was the most ornate. I’m not 100% sure, but I think the roof can partially retract too. I can imagine that a century earlier it would have probably been the […]

Study Reveals Australian Office Workers Stressed by Irrelevant Email Overload

Zoo and Aquarium Association Uses IBM Technology to Support Endangered Species Programme

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that the Foundation for Young Australians has successfully integrated IBM’s SPSS analytics platform into its research capabilities, resulting in significant boosts to the organisation’s reputation as a national leader in its field.

Thank you, first and foremost, to theSwede. When I told you I wanted and needed to do some creative work, over a decade ago, you simply said "Okay" and were nothing but supportive. None of this would exist without you. Thank you as well to both Cannonball and Torpedo. Someday you'll be old enough to read these, and I hope you find them all as enjoyable, meaningful, and as embarrassing as they are/were intended to be.

Thank you to Mom, Dad, Hanna, Emma, my grandparents, all extended family, for giving me the experiences, insight, and humor that crafted STW. Thank you Mitch, Donna, and all for their support as well. Thank you to so many friends, innumerable to name. Your support has meant everything.

Thank you to classmates, advisors, and colleagues from the past 10 years at Cornell, NIST, and Northeastern, particularly to those who never found out about STW when it needed to remain a professional secret, and just as particularly to those who were in full support and encouragement when the secret came out. Thank you to so many students, but especially everyone from the NU ChemE class of 2015, who I am ever indebted to.

Thank you to so many in the comics/creative community, especially Danielle Corsetto, Jon Rosenberg, Joan Cooke, Christopher Moore, Jessica Hagy, Holly and Jeffrey Rowland, Sara McHenry, Gary Tyrrell, Zach and Kelly Weinersmith, Matt Lubchansky, Monica Keszler, Ryan Walsh, every artist I have collaborated with, so so so many others. Thank you for all that you have done to bring me into your world, and for all that you have done for my career.

It's been a very long time since I worked there, but thank you as well to Three Point for all those experiences at creative writing that almost certainly led to the creation of STW.

Thank you to Westley, Sprite, Wakefield, Shiv, and Bitey, too. Why not.

And finally, thank you to all of you kind readers. For however long you have read STW, thank you. I am so incredibly humbled by your support and kindness and so incredibly grateful for all that you have given to STW as well. I wish all of you whatever joy and happiness that you deserve.

STW ran for 10+ years and 3500+ comics. It's as much yours as it is mine, now.

Thank you all, so harking much.

IBM Australia (NYSE: IBM) and The Sauce, today published the first Australian BPO Report 2012 (ABPO Report), which investigates the current state of business process outsourcing in Australia and points to future trends. Global expansion is seen to be the key driver and benefit of outsourcing decisions amongst 71 percent of organisations surveyed. The report also showed significant anticipated growth in business process outsourcing activity among large organisations with between 1,000 to 5,000 employees (this constituted one-third of all respondents). This group of Australian organisations is expecting an increase of 20 percent over the next two years.

The Australian Customs and Border Protection Service (ACBPS) has implemented an advanced passenger analysis solution with IBM to improve border security.

NOTE: This post has been updated to reflect that X-Peditions' 2020 season has filled.

X-Peditions is a collaborative project between Strobist.com and Washington DC-based Focus on the Story. You can learn more about our program in general, and/or get early notification for next year's program, at X-Peditions.com.

Sydney, Australia – 29 May 2014: The IBM (NYSE: IBM) 'Heart of the City' installation at this year's Vivid Sydney is using data analytics to map and visualise the real-time movement of festival attendees with WiFi devices walking around the 40-plus installations along the Vivid Light Walk precinct.

INPEX selects IBM to manage operation critical apps in Australia

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the appointment of David La Rose as Managing Director of IBM Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ). He replaces Kerry Purcell, who will return to a senior leadership role in IBM Japan.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the appointment of Professor Iven Mareels as Lab Director of IBM Research-Australia.

Woodside Energy and IBM will work together to re-imagine the way work is done using next-generation technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing to help Woodside realise its vision of an “intelligent plant”.

2019.9.22よく見ればわかるものはわかるでもその場でおきてること続きをみる

『著作権保護のため、記事の一部のみ表示されております。』

nevver:

Nobody home, Alyssa Miserendino

dollypopinspiration:

eberfigueira

Back to the set I designed for

@herculesuniversal

early September in Brazil. Thanks

@francescosourigues

One-shot between Harry and Ginny a day before his Auror-training began. Canon, R&R

Next quarter, starting March 30, I will be teaching “Math 247B: Classical Fourier Analysis” here at UCLA.  (The course should more accurately be named “Modern real-variable harmonic analysis”, but we have not gotten around to implementing such a name change.) This class (a continuation of Math 247A from previous quarter, taught by my colleague, Monica […]

After some discussion with the applied math research groups here at UCLA (in particular the groups led by Andrea Bertozzi and Deanna Needell), one of the members of these groups, Chris Strohmeier, has produced a proposal for a Polymath project to crowdsource in a single repository (a) a collection of public data sets relating to […]

My student, Jaume de Dios, has set up a web site to collect upcoming mathematics seminars from any institution that are open online.  (For instance, it has a talk that I will be giving in an hour.)   There is a form for adding further talks to the site; please feel free to contribute (or make […]

In contrast to previous notes, in this set of notes we shall focus exclusively on Fourier analysis in the one-dimensional setting for simplicity of notation, although all of the results here have natural extensions to higher dimensions. Depending on the physical context, one can view the physical domain as representing either space or time; we […]

I want to write this, but I don't want anyone to feel compelled to read it, so here, have some cut tags!

( Work stress )

That trip to Tosche Station can wait!

Emmy Nominee Leslye Headland to write, produce, and serve as showrunner for new untitled Star Wars series for Disney+.

Three years ago Japanime released an English version of Dynamite Nurse (originally published in 2011) via Kickstarter. Although we added this take-that deck building game to our collection earlier this year, it took a bit of time to find some friends from our various gaming circles willing to play the game given the boundary pushing artwork. The character illustrations are in the style of anime - colorful and detailed - but bordering on pornographic.

In making a case for the game's merits, I pointed out that Dynamite Nurse is centered on strong female characters (sure, the nurses are barely clothed and poses provocatively but they’re the main focus of the game and hold all the power). Also, the game has an interesting storyline. In Dynamite Nurse, players take on the role of nurses competing to save patients who have been severely wounded while out exploring dungeons. Fun fact: in an odd parenthetical note, the rulebook states the characters are actually doctors that are simply referred to as nurses in the fantasy realm of the game.

Components for Dynamite Nurse include 214 double sided glossy cards, 30 cardboard tokens, and a 34 page rulebook. You’ll definitely want to sleeve the cards for frequent use.

Gameplay is straightforward and easy to learn. In the first phase of each player’s turn, they do the following:

(1) play cards from their hand

(2) decide between treating patients in their hospital or purchasing a new card to add to their discard pile

These two main actions can be done in any order. If a player elects to treat patients, the treatment points on cards in their hand are used to conduct surgery (to fully heal a patient and add them to their victory point pile) or treat with care (to bring a critical care patient about to die to stronger health, while still leaving them in their hospital for further treatment). If electing to buy a card, a player is limited to purchasing a single card from the purchase decks, as is common in a traditional deck builder.

In the next phase of a player’s turn, they draw a patient from the Dungeon Deck and lay them out in the back of the ambulance, ready to be moved to a waiting hospital. When a patient is admitted to the ambulance, they are tagged with the hospital marker of one of the players, signifying they are under the care of that nurse. If there is no room in the ambulance for the patient (the ambulance can hold a number of patients equal to the number of players in the game), instead of drawing a patient from the Dungeon Deck, the patient in the front of the ambulance is flipped over, entering critical condition. This is bad for the player whose hospital tag is on that patient as the patient may eventually die and accrue Kill Mark Cards (also known as penalty points) for the associated player.

To wrap up a player’s turn, they complete hospital admissions (optional) and check for patients in critical condition in their hospital. If a player decides to admit patient(s), they move one or more patients tagged with their hospital token with from the ambulance to their hospital. Admissions must be carefully balanced as a hospital only has 2 beds. If there are more patients than beds available, the player must select a number of patients equal to the bed shortage and put them in critical condition. Patients in critical condition are at risk for death if bed shortages continue over subsequent turns.

The title of Dynamite Nurse is held by the player with the most dead patients. It’s initially acquired by the first player to have a patient die. It’s a traveling status, in that, it will immediately shift to any player whose dead patient count exceeds the player who previously held the title. The designation provides some strategic advantages during the game (perhaps as a catch up mechanism) but earns -2 victory points at the end of the game for the player still holding the title.

The game ends when either the Dungeon Deck or the Kill Mark Card deck runs out. A player wins by amassing the highest victory point total. Victory point formula: healed Patient Card VP total – Kill Mark Card penalty point total. 

Dynamite Nurse is subject to a bit of analysis paralysis, but it’s very limited because the pressing tasks required to keep from losing (treating sick patients) clearly take priority.

I really enjoyed the gameplay here. It was competitive without being too complicated, which is just how I like my card games to be (card games always have a bit more of a casual feel to me and I turn to them when I want a relaxing game). We had a lot of laughter during our games and the take-that actions didn’t upset anyone too much as they were pretty evenly distributed among all players. I love almost everything about Dynamite Nurse. That being said, I’m disappointed Japanime doesn’t publish a family-friendly version of the game so that I can play with a wider audience. I’m not naïve; I understand that racy artwork adds to the appeal for a certain demographic but the sexualization of the characters in Dynamite Nurse isn’t subtle – it’s right in your face on every card and a major turn off for players who are more conservative, have strong feelings about portraying women as sexual objects, or those who want to play the game with the under 18 crowd. There is no way we could play this with our kids and it’s only because of the artwork. During one of our games, we spent four minutes debating what the inanimate object was between one of the nurse’s legs pressed up against her panties (cell phone was the consensus but one of my friends insisted it was a cheese grater). Another minor complaint - we found the included rulebook to be a bit confusing. Multiple times we had questions that the rulebook did not seem to provide a clear answer on and so our group had to come to a agreement on a house rule. For example, under Transport, the rulebook notes to draw a Patient Card from the top of the dungeon and place it in the ambulance in “the furthest location from the dungeon”. As the dungeon is left of the ambulance, this would mean placing the card to the right of any existing patients in the ambulance like so:

D   P1  P2 P3 NewPatientHere

However the drawing two pages later in the rulebook meant to illustrate how to transport shows the new patient being added to the ambulance in the the location closest to the dungeon like so:

D NewPatientHere P3 P2 P1

Aside from the rulebook confusion and the risqué illustrations, Dynamite Nurse is a compelling game that can be played in under an hour.  I’m giving it a OUI rating (take note Japanime – the rating will climb to a OUI OUI should a family friendly version be released).

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Publisher: Japanime Games
Players: 3-5
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About an hour
Game type: deck building, take-that
Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

Because I love a good story and groove on rich immersive themes, legacy games really appeal to me. The chance to be part of an unfolding narrative is wonderful. It provides a structure for friends to commit to an investment of their time together on a regular basis. It holds everyone's interest over time (when the story is well written and executed). Especially valuable for me is that it lessens the bitter taste of a loss; I get so interested in the plot that I don't care as much about winning. I'm trying to tamp down my competitiveness and narrative driven games help. Finally, I’m a huge fan of Inka and Markus Brand (we have a number of their games in our library already, including all of the Exit  games, Encore, and Raja of Ganges). For all of these reasons, I was really excited when Ravensburger sent me a copy of Inka and Markus’s newest legacy game, Rise of Queensdale, to review.

I actually received my review copy early in 2019, but our RoQ group consists of parents with busy schedules so we can only get together about once a month to play. We've made our way through 13 games so far, and with only 2 or 3 more to go before we finish the legacy series of games, I thought it was a good time to sit down and share my thoughts on the game (Especially in light of Christmas approaching).

Rise of Queensdale  is a legacy worker placement game set in Medieval times. Players take on the role of subjects to King Nepomuk II and Queen Margaret and are tasked with building a new city, Queensdale, on behalf of the royal family. Each player is given jurisdiction over one quarter of the city and is competing against the other players to build the best borough.

As the legacy series of games progresses, players continue to build different types of structures to earn favor with the royal family (fame points) in the midst of dealing with political drama, disease, and other Medieval happenings. Each game in the series sees players attempting to reach their next epoch goal (a target number of fame points). If they are successful, they will have a new, higher epoch goal during the subsequent game.  Note that multiple players can reach their epoch goals during the same game as gameplay continues through the end of the current round once one player reaches their goal. The winner of each game is the person who surpassed their epoch goal by the most points.

The artwork in the game is illustrated by Michael Menzel with graphic design provided by the Fiore GMBH studio in Germany. Michael is probably most familiar to the US based board game community as the illustrator for the Legends of Andor series of games. He brings the same fantasy style drawings he used in that game, with their romantic fonts and soft palettes of color to his work here and it’s lovely. There are a lot of components included in Rise of Queensdale   and Michael does a good job of tying them all to the theme as a cohesive set with the artwork.

Components include dozens of different types of wooden tokens (huts, meeples, player score markers, etc.); the city building board,  scoreboard (epoch tracker, fame counter, and more), action board, player boards, building tiles, and other pieces made out of cardboard; and wooden dice. Everything has held up wonderfully as the months and games have gone by. The rulebook is flipped through frequently and while it’s showing signs of wear, it’s still holding together, staples in place. The rulebook is straightforward and we haven’t had any issues understanding the nuances of the rules.

The narrative in Rise of Queensdale is well written.  It’s memorable and everything that happens makes sense in the framework of the fictional universe laid down by the designers. We’ve played a lot of narrative driven games (Pandemic Legacy, Betrayal Legacy, Middara, Aeon’s End Legacy, Legacy of Dragonholt, Charterstone,  and Seafall, just to name a few) and Rise of Queensdale ranks near the top for narrative driven games that do a good job of incorporating the game play into the storyline. Some legacy games feel more like a story was loosely slapped on top of the game mechanisms, but that isn’t the case here. At the same time, this isn’t an RPG with some board game elements thrown in. The mechanics of the board game have been adeptly planned and implemented; they’re challenging and provide a compelling experience. As the legacy series unfolds, more actions are added to the action board; no one gets complacent or bored because new options keep coming available. Our game group has agreed that there seems to be enough components and actions to allow for replayability as a standard board game even after we’ve reached the very end of our last game in the legacy series.

Rise of Queensdale is a great board game for bringing friends and family together. It’s competitive, so those who turn up their noses at cooperative games and like to win against others will find it enjoyable. Everyone is working toward their own epoch goal and multiple players can reach their goal during a game, so everyone can feel accomplished even when they don’t win. This also creates a brilliant built-in catch up mechanism as the player in last place has the nearest epoch goal to reach. The further a player gets ahead of others in the series of games, the farther their epoch goal becomes and the greater the chance that the players behind them will reach their goals before the leader does. In our games, no one has been able to run away with the scoreboard so far. That helps the game stay family friendly. The narrative turns the game into a shared adventure where everyone is an active participant. Better than going to a movie is feeling like you’re starring in one. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this review, because Rise of Queensdale  is a series of games,  right from the beginning, it fosters a commitment for players to spend time together on a regular basis. That’s the best gift to share with friends and family – our time – and anything like Rise of Queensdale that can make that happen is a wonderful Christmas present to place or find under the tree.

-------------------------------------------------
Publisher: Ravensburger
Players: 2-4 (We played with 4)
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 1 hour per game
Game type: narrative driven, legacy, dice rolling, worker placement
Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.