Observing Sustainable Tourism In Antarctica
“Antarctica is the ultimate destination for anyone interested in natural history but it also challenges those people who visit to think broadly about our responsibilities to all life on Earth.” That’s the view of Dr. Robert Lambert, a lecturer on Tourism and the Environment at The University of Nottingham, who has just returned from the Antarctic in his role as an Observer for the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO). Dr. Lambert, who is a member of the business School’s Christel DeHaan Tourism and Travel Research Institute, says the relationship between nature and people is complex and constantly changing and great positives can come from tourism in Antarctica. He believes those lucky enough to experience it could become ambassadors for the region to help develop a ‘constituency’ of support for Antarctica. He said: “Few people get the opportunity to visit this extraordinary place, and those who experience it first hand return home with a powerful sense of wonder and concern for the myriad threats that it faces. I believe there’s a huge sense of goodwill for the region that could be passed on by these tourist ambassadors to the rest of society.” Dr. Lambert, who is based at the Nottingham University business School and the School of History, spent 12 days onboard a cruise ship making its first voyage to Antarctica. His job was to monitor the running of the ship and the conduct of its crew and passengers as they sailed through one of the largest and most fragile wildernesses on earth. Dr. Lambert, who was appointed as an Observer for IAATO in 2005, has a particular interest in seabirds and cetaceans. He said: “Serving as an IAATO Observer is the best kind of public service, where I am confident that the sustainable tourism report I compile will make a difference.” The Antarctic tourist season runs from October to April and has flourished in the last thirty years - growing from around 6,000 visitors in the mid-1990s to 35,000 in 2006. In 1991, in recognition of the potential environmental impact, IAATO was set up promote the highest possible standards of travel. It now has 100 members from 15 different countries. The Antarctic supports immense marine biodiversity, including numerous species of seabirds and iconic penguin and albatross species, as well as seals, whales and countless billions of marine invertebrates that fuel the food chain. The region was afforded special protection under the 1959 Antarctic Treaty and the adoption in 1991 of the Environmental Protocol. This designates Antarctica as a natural reserve devoted to peace and science and seeks to ensure that human activities, including tourism, do not have adverse impacts on the Antarctic environment, or on its scientific and aesthetic values. IAATO’s observer scheme was established just over ten years ago. Their Observers sail onboard ships making their maiden voyage to Antarctica. Denise Landau, Executive Director of IAATO said: “Effective self-regulation and the development of best practices by industry, government and the science community are necessary in order to protect the Antarctic environment. IAATO is a member organization founded in 1991 to advocate, promote and practice safe and environmentally responsible private-sector travel to the Antarctic. Over the last 17 years we have developed a system of management principles and guidelines which have successfully mitigated environmental impacts and provided a framework for sustainable travel in the Antarctic.” Dr. Lambert is an expert on the relationship between tourism and the environment. His job onboard was to ensure that rigorous IAATO guidelines are upheld. This included everything from waste disposal, the details of crew and staff briefings to contingency and emergency medical evacuation plans. The regulations stop anything from cigarettes and food, even golf balls, going overboard. This was Dr. Lambert’s second trip in his role as Observer for IAATO. In 2005 he served onboard the Argentinean-owned tourist cruise ship MV Ushuaia. He said passengers on that cruise experienced a powerful environmental awakening and his own experience had real benefits for his teaching and research. He has found that this direct experience allows him to speak to his popular undergraduate module on ‘Managing Tourism and the Environment’ with greater authority and clarity on the complex issues around the development of sustainable tourism initiatives in Antarctica.
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STOP Terrorism Software
Researchers at the University of Maryland’s Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS) have developed the SOMA Terror Organization Portal (STOP) allowing analysts to query automatically learned rules on terrorist organization behavior, forecast potential behavior based on these rules, and, most importantly, to network with other analysts examining the same subjects. SOMA (Stochastic Opponent Modeling Agents) is a formal, logical-statistical reasoning framework that uses data about past behavior of terror groups in order to learn rules about the probability of an organization, community, or person taking certain actions in different situations. In a unique collaboration between computer scientists and political scientists, SOMA has generated tens of thousands of rules about the likely behavior of each of about 30 groups (including major terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and Hezb-I-Islami). “SOMA is a significant joint computer science and social science achievement that will facilitate learning about and forecasting terrorist group behavior based on rigorous mathematical and computational models,” said V.S. Subrahmanian, computer science professor and UMIACS director who heads the STOP project. “But even the best science needs to work hand in hand with social scientists and users. In addition to accurate behavioral models and forecasting algorithms, the SOMA Terror Organization Portal acts as a virtual roundtable that terrorism experts can gather around and form a rich community that transcends artificial boundaries.” Funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the SOMA Terror Organization Portal currently has users from four defense agencies. The users, in addition to performing queries and running a prediction engine, can mark rules as useful or not useful and leave comments about the rules. They can learn what others have found useful and identify interesting rules and comments to. In combating asymmetric threats like terrorism, this last feature is particularly important according to Aaron Mannes, UMIACS researcher and author of Profiles in Terror: The Guide to Middle East Terrorist Organizations. “Security analysts need more than piles of data.” Mannes explained, “It takes a network to fight a network. Analysts need to learn from other analysts. This system allows multiple users to arrive at a shared understanding of how a terror group operates and what it might do in the future. Using the queries analysts can examine the underlying data and then, using the forecasting capabilities, test their theories.”
Killer Military Robots Pose Latest Threat To Humanity
A robotics expert at the University of Sheffield will today (27 February 2008) issue stark warnings over the threat posed to humanity by new robot weapons being developed by powers worldwide. In a keynote address to the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), Professor Noel Sharkey, from the University’s Department of Computer Science, will express his concerns that we are beginning to see the first steps towards an international robot arms race. He will warn that it may not be long before robots become a standard terrorist weapon to replace the suicide bomber. Many nations are now involved in developing the technology for robot weapons, with the US Department of Defence (DoD) being the most significant player. According to the Unmanned Systems Roadmap 2007-2013 (published in December 2007), the US propose to spend an estimated $4 billion by 2010 on unmanned systems technology. The total spending is expected to rise above $24 billion. Over 4,000 robots are currently deployed on the ground in Iraq and by October 2006 unmanned aircraft had flown 400,000 flight hours. Currently there is always a human in the loop to decide on the use of lethal force. However, this is set to change with the US giving priority to autonomous weapons — robots that will decide on where, when and who to kill. Others are now embarking on robot weapons programmes in Europe and other allied countries such as Canada, South Korea, South Africa, Singapore and Israel. China, Russia and India are also embarking on the development of unmanned aerial combat vehicle. The US DoD report is unsure about the activity in China but admits that they have strong infrastructure capability for parallel developments in robot weapons. Professor Sharkey, who is famously known for his roles as chief judge on the TV series Robot Wars and as onscreen expert for the BBC s TechnoGames, said: “The trouble is that we can’t really put the genie back in the bottle. Once the new weapons are out there, they will be fairly easy to copy. How long is it going to be before the terrorists get in on the act”” “With the current prices of robot construction falling dramatically and the availability of ready-made components for the amateur market, it wouldn’t require a lot of skill to make autonomous robot weapons.” Professor Sharkey is reluctant to explain how such robots could be made but he points out that a small GPS guided drone with autopilot could be made for around 250. The robotics expert is also concerned with a number of ethical issues that arise from the use of autonomous weapons. He added: “Current robots are dumb machines with very limited sensing capability. What this means is that it is not possible to guarantee discrimination between combatants and innocents or a proportional use of force as required by the current Laws of War. “It seems clear that there is an urgent need for the international community to assess the risks of these new weapons now rather than after they have crept their way into common use.” Professor Sharkey’s talk will be at a one-day conference at RUSI in Whitehall on 27 February 2008.
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