Capgemini and the America’s Cup Media reveal WindSight IQ™, breakthrough technology that will visualize the wind live on screen, allowing fans and commentators to better understand optimum routes and team tactics, and making coverage of the sport more accessible than ever before.
The America’s Cup follows the rules of Match Racing, with its own codes and language.
Franck Cammas, Head of Performance for Orient Express Racing Team and skipper of the official French Challenger on the 35th America’s Cup gives us the run through.
A little boy's perspective on sailing from Greenland to Alaska via the Arctic, following the fabled Northwest Passage through icebergs, fog, and uncharted waters.
A true story of poor judgment and questionable parenting, but also of friendship and adventure. A cubicle-dwelling nine-to-fiver hatches a secret plan to buy an old Dutch sailboat, fix her up, and return to the Pacific via the Northwest Passage.
His wife hopes for a family. Somehow, both dreams are set in motion–simultaneously.
Undeterred, they pack a single suitcase, their six pound newborn, and board a flight to the Netherlands. The boat is a slowly-sinking national treasure, her engine a museum piece.
If all goes according to plan, they’ll be ready to cross the Atlantic by autumn.
But nothing ever does, not with a new baby on an intractable old boat like Sentijn. Hard choices will have to be made if they want to see home waters again.
But, it’s not until their darkest hour–deep in the Arctic–when they finally realize the truth. They’ve been home all along.
Sandia National Laboratories’ four-channel, silicon photonic single-sideband modulator chip, measuring 8 millimeters on each side and marked with a green Sandia thunderbird logo, sits inside packaging that incorporates optical fibers, wire bonds, and ceramic pins.
Credit: Craig Fritz, Sandia National Laboratories
From SciTechDaily by Sandian National Lab A milestone in quantum sensing is drawing closer, promising exquisitely accurate, GPS-free navigation.
Peel apart a smartphone, fitness tracker or virtual reality headset, and inside you’ll find a tiny motion sensor tracking its position and movement. Bigger, more expensive versions of the same technology, about the size of a grapefruit and a thousand times more accurate, help navigate ships, airplanes and other vehicles with GPS assistance.
Now, scientists are attempting to make a motion sensor so precise it could minimize the nation’s reliance on global positioning satellites. Until recently, such a sensor — a thousand times more sensitive than today’s navigation-grade devices — would have filled a moving truck. But advancements are dramatically shrinking the size and cost of this technology.
For the first time, researchers from Sandia National Laboratories have used silicon photonic microchip components to perform a quantum sensing technique called atom interferometry, an ultra-precise way of measuring acceleration. It is the latest milestone toward developing a kind of quantum compass for navigation when GPS signals are unavailable.
Sandia National Laboratories scientist Jongmin Lee, left, prepares a rubidium cold-atom cell for an atom interferometry experiment while scientists Ashok Kodigala, right, and Michael Gehl initialize the controls for a packaged single-sideband modulator chip.
Credit: Craig Fritz, Sandia National Laboratories
The team published its findings and introduced a new high-performance silicon photonic modulator — a device that controls light on a microchip — as the cover story in the journal Science Advances.
The research was supported by Sandia’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development program. It took place, in part, at the National Security Photonics Center, a collaborative research center developing integrated photonics solutions for complex problems in the national security sector.
GPS-free navigation a matter of national security
“Accurate navigation becomes a challenge in real-world scenarios when GPS signals are unavailable,” said Sandia scientist Jongmin Lee.
In a war zone, these challenges pose national security risks, as electronic warfare units can jam or spoof satellite signals to disrupt troop movements and operations.
Quantum sensing offers a solution. “By harnessing the principles of quantum mechanics, these advanced sensors provide unparalleled accuracy in measuring acceleration and angular velocity, enabling precise navigation even in GPS-denied areas,” Lee said.
Modulator the centerpiece of a chip-scale laser system
Typically, an atom interferometer is a sensor system that fills a small room. A complete quantum compass — more precisely called a quantum inertial measurement unit — would require six atom interferometers.
But Lee and his team have been finding ways to reduce its size, weight, and power needs. They already have replaced a large, power-hungry vacuum pump with an avocado-sized vacuum chamber and consolidated several components usually delicately arranged across an optical table into a single, rigid apparatus.
The new modulator is the centerpiece of a laser system on a microchip. Rugged enough to handle heavy vibrations, it would replace a conventional laser system typically the size of a refrigerator.
Lasers perform several jobs in an atom interferometer, and the Sandia team uses four modulators to shift the frequency of a single laser to perform different functions.
However, modulators often create unwanted echoes called sidebands that need to be mitigated.
Sandia’s suppressed-carrier, single-sideband modulator reduces these sidebands by an unprecedented 47.8 decibels — a measure often used to describe sound intensity but also applicable to light intensity — resulting in a nearly 100,000-fold drop. “We have drastically improved the performance compared to what’s out there,” said Sandia scientist Ashok Kodigala.
Silicon device mass-producible and more affordable
Besides size, cost has been a major obstacle to deploying quantum navigation devices. Every atom interferometer needs a laser system, and laser systems need modulators. “Just one full-size single-sideband modulator, a commercially available one, is more than $10,000,” Lee said.
Miniaturizing bulky, expensive components into silicon photonic chips helps drive down these costs. “We can make hundreds of modulators on a single 8-inch wafer and even more on a 12-inch wafer,” Kodigala said.
And since they can be manufactured using the same process as virtually all computer chips, “This sophisticated four-channel component, including additional custom features, can be mass-produced at a much lower cost compared to today’s commercial alternatives, enabling the production of quantum inertial measurement units at a reduced cost,” Lee said.
As the technology gets closer to field deployment, the team is exploring other uses beyond navigation. Researchers are investigating whether it could help locate underground cavities and resources by detecting the tiny changes these make to Earth’s gravitational force. They also see potential for the optical components they invented, including the modulator, in LIDAR, quantum computing, and optical communications.
“I think it’s really exciting,” Kodigala said. “We’re making a lot of progress in miniaturization for a lot of different applications.”
Multidisciplinary team lifting quantum compass concept to reality
Lee and Kodigala represent two halves of a multidisciplinary team. One half, including Lee, consists of experts in quantum mechanics and atomic physics. The other half, like Kodigala, are specialists in silicon photonics — think of a microchip, but instead of electricity running through its circuits, there are beams of light.
These teams collaborate at Sandia’s Microsystems Engineering, Science, and Applications complex, where researchers design, produce, and test chips for national security applications.
“We have colleagues that we can go down the hall and talk to about this and figure out how to solve these key problems for this technology to get it out into the field,” said Peter Schwindt, a quantum sensing scientist at Sandia.
The team’s grand plan — to turn atom interferometers into a compact quantum compass — bridges the gap between basic research at academic institutions and commercial development at tech companies. An atom interferometer is a proven technology that could be an excellent tool for GPS-denied navigation. Sandia’s ongoing efforts aim to make it more stable, fieldable, and commercially viable.
The National Security Photonics Center collaborates with industry, small businesses, academia, and government agencies to develop new technologies and help launch new products. Sandia has hundreds of issued patents and dozens more in prosecution that support its mission.
“I have a passion around seeing these technologies move into real applications,” Schwindt said.
Michael Gehl, a Sandia scientist who works with silicon photonics, shares the same passion. “It’s great to see our photonics chips being used for real-world applications,” he said.
A former Bayesian crew member has been left bewildered about how the luxury superyacht could sink as it has withstood choppy seas in the Atlantic previously.
When guests were celebrating the acquittal of British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch aboard the £30million Bayesian, the 183ft yacht tragically sank off the coast of Italy.
It had been anchored offshore from Porticello, having sailed from the seaside village of Cefalu, when it was hit by a freak waterspout caused by bad weather and sank near Palermo.
Investigations are underway as to why the Bayesian sank when others in the vicinity remained afloat when disaster struck just before 5am on Monday.
The yacht's former chief stewardess Monica Jensen, 48, said it is 'a bit strange' because she's crossed the Atlantic on the boat and it withstood bad weather 'all over'.
Last night, Mr Lynch – once dubbed the British Bill Gates and worth an estimated £852million and his daughter Hannah, 18 - who completed her A-levels this summer and has a place to read English at Oxford University – were among six missing and feared dead.
The body of one man, thought to be an onboard chef, has been found, while specialist divers fear those unaccounted for could be in the hull of the ship after getting trapped in their cabins.
And in an extraordinary twist, the tragedy comes days after Stephen Chamberlain, an ex-colleague of Mr Lynch – who he had successfully fought the fraud case with – died after being hit by a car.
An emergency and rescue service boat navigates on the sea near the site where the Bayesian sank when disaster struck just before 5am on Monday
The yacht's former chief stewardess Monica Jensen, 48, said it is 'a bit strange' the boat sank because she's crossed the Atlantic on the boat and it withstood bad weather British tech tycoon Mike Lynch is missing after his superyacht sank
Ms Jensen worked on the Bayesian from November 2018 to October 2020 for a private owner, and said it was then sold.
She was onboard for two Caribbean seasons and cruised around Italy, Malta, Greece and the Balearics on the yacht.
She told The Telegraph: 'It seems a bit strange. We have been in bad weather with it, crossed the Atlantic. It's been all over. These things definitely don't happen very often.'
Matthew Shank, chairman of the Maritime Search and Rescue Council, told Radio 4 this morning: 'There were weather warnings out that evening for intense thunderstorms. They are still incredibly rare weather events.
'Given the rarity of these events there isn't really much the captains or the crew could do to prepare for these events given how rare they are.
'Reports that people who were in the life raft have had to enter the life raft from the water, and that indicates to me that this emergency has happened very, very quickly.
'People haven't had time to enter the life raft from the vessel, they've had to enter from the water.'
As the yacht began to sink, a member of the crew fired a distress flare which alerted vessels nearby.
Mr Shank added: 'One of the captains from the anchorage said he saw the vessel there one minute and then the next minute the yacht was gone and all he saw was the red flare which indicates to me that this has been a catastrophic incident which has gone very quickly.
The superyacht was docked off the coast of Porticello, near Palermo, when a waterspout hit
A weather map shows how Mike's Lynch's yacht was buffeted by winds of up to 150mph
Italian Coast Guard Command teams and firefighters are carrying out search and rescue operations with helicopters and ships to find missing people after the yacht sank on Monday
The yacht - carrying 10 crew members and 12 passengers - had the world's tallest aluminium mast at almost 250ft.
The enormous mast could have been what caused the vessel to capsize and sink rapidly, according to an expert.
It broke during the waterspout, causing the ship to sink after the weight of the mast took the hull beyond the 'down-flooding angle', technical consultant and nautical expert Gino Ciriaci told Italian website Corriere Della Sera.
The yacht is owned by Revtom, a company registered on the Isle of Man. Revtom's legal owner is Angela Bacares, Mr Lynch's wife.
Emergency divers found wreckage of the vessel at a depth of 187ft, where 'through the portholes they saw corpses'.
In June, Mr Lynch won a 13-year legal fight and was cleared by a San Francisco court of conducting a massive fraud relating to a £8.64 billion sale of his firm, Autonomy, to US company Hewlett-Packard in 2011.
If found guilty, it could have landed him 25 years in a US jail.
To mark his freedom, Mr Lynch had invited guests from legal firm Clifford Chance as well as his own company Invoke Capital to celebrate on the yacht trip.
Italian Coast Guard Command teams and firefighters are carrying out search and rescue
Experienced cave divers for deep sea recoveries continue the rescue operation
Emergency response teams are seen at the harbour near where the boat sank Monday morning
In a cruel twist, it was revealed last night Mr Lynch's ex colleague and co-defendant in his fraud trial, Stephen Chamberlain, died in hospital after being hit by a car on Saturday
The father of Ayla Ronald, who was part of Mr Lynch's legal team, confirmed that the sailing trip was supposed to be a celebration of the tycoon's acquittal.
But yacht sank as a fierce storm battered the area overnight on Sunday.
Mr Lynch's wife Angela Bacares, 57, who was among the rescued recalls the boat suddenly 'tilted' at around 4am, before glass began shattering.
The superyacht had been lit up and illuminating the night sky when a waterspout - a whirling column of air and water mist - unfolded nearby.
Witnesses have described the moment the yacht went down as very sudden, claiming it was as if it just 'disappeared'.
'The boat was all lit up. Around 4.30am, it was no longer there,' said one.
'A normal joyous vacation day at sea turned into tragedy'.
The Italian Coastguard said in a statement that a nearby boat offered assistance to people before emergency services arrived.
The Sir Robert BP, a Dutch sailing ship which had been anchored by the Bayesian, is believed to have rescued the 15 survivors.
The British-flagged Bayesian is thought to have arrived in Porticello before it sank
The Bayesian, which was previously known as the Salute, was a vessel built in Viareggio, Tuscany, by luxury shipmaker Perini Navi in 2008
Karsten Borner, the captain of the boat, described how his vessel was battered by strong gusts, with his team working to stabilise it and manoeuvre it to avoid hitting the Bayesian nearby.
Two more passengers on board the Bayesian who are still missing are the chairman of Morgan Stanley International, Jonathan Bloomer and his wife.
Mr Bloomer is a close friend of Mr Lynch and was confirmed missing by Italian Authorities alongside his wife.
According to his Linkedin profile, Mr Bloomer is the chairman of insurance provider Hiscox and was formerly the chief executive of Prudential before being ousted in a boardroom coup in 2005.
The other two yet to be found are Mr Lynch's attorney Christopher Morvillo and his wife Nada.
Attorney Gary Lincenberg said Morvillo and his wife 'are presumed to be passed away' after the yacht went down near Sicily.
Tragically, the body of a man was found floating alongside the sunken vessel on Monday.
Experienced cave divers for deep sea recoveries continue the rescue operation for missing people who were on board a sailboat that sank off Porticello, near Palermo, Sicily, Italy
Localization with the GeoGraage platform (Imray nautical raster chart)
Divers search for the missing people, including British entrepreneur Mike Lynch, after a luxury yacht sank off Sicily, Italy August 19
Authorities identified the man as Canadian Recaldo Thomas, who was working as the boat's chef and was the only crew member unaccounted for.
His body was recovered, and police divers spent the day trying to reach the hull of the ship, which was resting at a depth of 163 feet off Porticello where it had been anchored, rescue authorities said.
British mother Charlotte Golunski and her one-year-old baby called Sofia were reported to be among those rescued by a nearby sailboat, with Dr Cipolla confirming that they were treated at the Di Cristina hospital.
'By the way, I know that there were some young people on board, some very young people. They are very tired and they continually thank us for the care and attention we are giving them and the little girl. They are very tired but they are very sweet people,' Dr Cipolla said.
Ms Golunski, 36, has described how she momentarily lost her daughter in the 'fury of the waves', before finding her and managing to get them both to safety.
Nautical maps show the last known location of the Bayesian just after 2am local time on Monday, when it was at anchor
Charlotte Golunski, 36, and her young daughter Sofia were two of 22 people aboard the superyacht when it was battered in a storm before sinking on Monday morning
'I held her afloat with all my strength, my arms stretched upwards to keep her from drowning,' Ms Golunski said.
'It was all dark. In the water I couldn't keep my eyes open. I screamed for help but all I could hear around me was the screams of others.'
The mother, who is in hospital with her baby where she received treatment for a minor shoulder injury, abrasions and a 'wound that needed stitching', according to Dr Cipolla, described the ordeal as 'terrible', detailing how 'in a few minutes the boat was hit by a very strong wind and sank shortly after.'
Ms Golunski and her little girl were taken to be assessed at the Children's Hospital in Palermo.
The baby is said to be doing fine and is unharmed, with tests only carried out as a precaution.
Five other people were taken to the Bagheria territorial emergency point.
Others reportedly required no hospital treatment, and spoke to authorities about what happened as the incident is being investigated.
Rama’s Bridge between India and Sri Lanka figures in ancient myths, and can be seen from space, in this case captured from the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1994. NASA/PUBLIC DOMAIN
A “seafood mafia” is plying the waters between India and Sri Lanka
to satisfy China’s appetite for an increasingly rare delicacy.
THE STRING OF LIMESTONE ISLANDS slung between India and Sri Lanka was once a bridge built by Rama to retrieve his wife, held hostage on the island; or, it was crossed by Adam on his flight from Eden—depending on which epic you prefer.
To the north, the shallows of the Palk Bay eventually become the Bay of Bengal. To the south, the Gulf of Mannar is the antechamber of the Indian Ocean. Formerly fertile fishing grounds, both bodies of water are now hotbeds of a relatively recent kind of marine-based misdeed: sea cucumber crime.
Crimes Against Sea Cucumbers
As this map from the German magazine Katapult indicates, the number of criminal incidents in both India and Sri Lanka involving sea cucumbers has increased from no more than eight in 2015 to no less than 58 in 2020. In other words: It’s a crime spree!
While most cases are concentrated on either side of Rama’s Bridge, the most recent wave has also touched Lakshadweep, the cluster of small islands that constitutes one of the union territories of India to the west of its mainland (and on the left on this map).
Sri Lanka’s legal market for sea cucumbers next to India’s illegal one is proving too tempting a proposition for poachers.
PHELPS BONDAROFF/KATAPULT MAGAZIN/CC BY-NC-ND 4.0/REPRODUCED WITH KIND PERMISSION
Like their terrestrial namesakes, sea cucumbers are tubular creatures. But that’s where the comparison ends. Sea cucumbers are animal, not vegetal. Some grow up to six feet long. And while you can get a land cucumber for under a dollar at the supermarket, a pound of sea cucumbers will easily set you back hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.
Also known as sea slugs or sea leeches, sea cucumbers are a family of about 1,450 different species worldwide and are cousins to sea stars, sand dollars, and other echinoderms. Eyeless and limbless, they do have a mouth and an anus, and these they put to good use: By recycling waste into nutrients, they excrete key ingredients (to the tune of five Eiffel Towers’ worth per reef per year) for coral reefs and help slow the acidification of the oceans.
For centuries, sea cucumbers have also been a sought-after delicacy and used as a dubious medicinal ingredient in China and Southeast Asia. Sea cucumbers are eaten dried, fried, pickled, or raw; as an accompaniment to Chinese cabbage or shiitake mushrooms; spiced and mixed with meat or other seafood; and used in soups, stews, and stir-fries. In traditional medicine, they’re believed to help against arthritis, impotence, cancer, and frequent urination. They’re also used in oils, creams, tinctures, and cosmetics.
An Exploding Sea Cucumber Market
In the past, sea cucumbers were the preserve of the very rich, who presented each other with ornate boxes of the luxury product in dried form. However, the burgeoning of China’s middle classes since the 1980s has led to an exponential increase in demand, with ripple effects all over the world.
In the 1980s, a kilogram of sea cucumbers (or bêche-de-mer or trepang, if you’re into the whole culinary nomenclature thing) would set you back about $70. Now, it’s closer to $300 and up to $3,500 for the rarer species—for example the Japanese sea cucumber, whose spikes make it look like a dragon.
Since then, global populations of the most expensive species have dropped by as much as 60 percent. As the net gets emptier, it is cast wider. From 1996 to 2011, the number of countries exporting sea cucumbers rose from 35 to 83. But the sea cucumber populations simply can’t handle that much strain. In the sea cucumber fields off Yucatán, for example, yields dropped by 95 percent from 2012 to 2014. And between 2000 and 2016, standing stocks of various sea cucumber species near the Egyptian Red Sea port of Abu Ghosoun fell by 87 percent due to overfishing.
The Seafood Mafia
As sea cucumbers get rarer, they get more valuable, which in turn encourages more illegal fishing. The average global price went up by 17 percent from 2011 to 2016. That drives the competition for the remaining specimens to dangerous heights—or rather, depths. According to the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute in Kochi (Kerala, India), the species dwelling in shallow waters have been depleted to such an extent that divers are now targeting those in deeper waters. Without proper gear and training, that is potentially deadly, and not just in Indian waters. Back in Yucatán, at least 40 divers have lost their lives harvesting sea cucumbers, most from decompression sickness.
The situation in the waters off India and Sri Lanka is complicated by both countries’ different legal approaches to sea cucumber scarcity. In 2001, India banned the trade and export of sea cucumbers. As per Schedule 1 of the Wildlife Protection Act, they now enjoy the same level of protection as India’s lions and tigers.
A stew of braised shark fin skirt, sea cucumber, and shiitake mushroom.
Meanwhile in Sri Lanka, which has seen its sea cucumber grounds to the south and east collapse and shrink to just the northern side of the island, fishing for sea cucumbers remains legal but is subject to licenses to try to prevent overexploitation.
Having a legal market for sea cucumbers right next to an illegal one offers the “seafood mafia” two lucrative courses of action. First, harvest the dwindling stock of sea cucumbers right from under the noses of the Sri Lankan divers and fishermen. Second, smuggle the illegally caught ones from India into Sri Lanka, where they can be sold as if they were caught legally—a form of “seafood laundering,” if you will.
As the map shows, both countries are stepping up their efforts against sea cucumber crime. Moreover, in 2020, Lakshadweep inaugurated the Dr. K.K. Mohammed Koya Sea Cucumber Conservation Reserve. Centered on the Cheripanyi Reef, an uninhabited atoll, the 149-square-mile (239-square-kilometer) reserve is the first of its kind in the world.
The Dr. K.K. Mohammed Koya Sea Cucumber Conservation Reserve, from the document that established it. UNION TERRITORY OF LAKSHADWEEP ADMINISTRATION/GOVERNMENT OF INDIA
The union territory also set up a Sea Cucumber Protection Task Force, which has seized considerable amounts of illegally harvested sea cucumbers, including a haul of 1,716 creatures weighing a total of almost a ton (882 kilograms), which could have netted as much as 42.6 million rupees ($854,000) on the market.
Save the Sea Cucumbers!
While conservation efforts are commendable, the increasing scarcity and rising prices of sea cucumbers will continue to prove irresistible to the seafood mafia. There is some hope in aquaculture, with projects underway in China and elsewhere. However, only a small share of sea cucumber larvae make it into adulthood, a process that can last up to six years.
Sea cucumbers recently also have appeared on the radar of multinational pharmaceutical companies. It may yet turn out that some of their reputed medicinal qualities are more than just folk tales, and some chemicals they contain could help treat cancer and joint pain. It remains to be seen whether this additional source of attention will be a lifeline for the sea cucumbers or the kiss of death.
