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River of waste 'visible for miles' dumped at mountain beauty spot

BBC News

River of waste'visible for miles' dumped at mountain beauty spot A farmer says she is devastated by a disgusting river of fly-tipped waste dumped down the side of a mountain. Katie Davies, whose family has owned land on Bwlch Mountain in Treorchy for 90 years, said the clean up could cost thousands of pounds and could also harm her sheep which graze on the land. Travel blogger Nathan Dixon, who captured drone footage showing the scale of the discarded waste, said the mess could be seen from three to five miles away, adding that it sticks out like a sore thumb. Rhondda Cynon Taf council said it always took action to hold those responsible for fly-tipping to account, while Natural Resources Wales (NRW) said fly-tipping was a serious crime. Davies, who runs small family business Nantymoel farm which produces Welsh beef and lamb, said the mess keeps me up at night.


The 3,500-mile love story that started in an online horror game

BBC News

It is an online romance that has overcome a 3,500-mile distance, and also the Covid pandemic - which meant they had to get married virtually. Welsh cheesemaker Lewis Relfe struck up a relationship with Ameila Henderson, from Virginia, USA, while playing the Friday the 13th horror video game in 2017. She made a number of visits across the Atlantic, including one for six months, and he proposed on Aberystwyth Pier, dressed as the game's main character, Jason Voorhees. While they admit to seeing the humour in being the couple that met and married virtually, they now live together in Ceredigion, with daughter Evelyn. But because of parental responsibilities, they no longer get to enjoy the thing that brought them together.


Drones used to carry blood in trial aimed at saving lives

BBC News

Specially commissioned drones will be used to fly blood donations as part of a new trial. Currently, blood donations are processed in south Wales then transported by road, a journey that can take hours. The ultimate ambition of the Dragon's Heart project is to fly life-saving blood samples to the scenes of accidents using drones weighing about 55lb (25kg) and 5.5ft wide (1.7m). The pilot, which is due to start in early 2026, was described as significant and exciting by the Welsh Blood Service. A hatch in the top means the blood sits in the body of the drone, helping to control the temperature of the blood and minimise vibrations.



Wikipedia Co-founder Jimmy Wales on Rebuilding Trust Online and Off

TIME - Tech

Booth is a reporter at TIME. Booth is a reporter at TIME. Jimmy Wales describes himself as a "pathological optimist." And yet, when the co-founder of Wikipedia spoke with TIME in October, he still seemed somewhat surprised that his online encyclopedia actually worked. "Wikipedia is very trusting, in a way that always seemed a bit crazy," Wales says.


'People thought I was a communist doing this as a non-profit': is Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales the last decent tech baron?

The Guardian

'People thought I was a communist doing this as a non-profit': is Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales the last decent tech baron? In an online landscape characterised by doom and division, the people's encyclopedia stands out - a huge collective endeavour giving everyone free access to the sum of human knowledge. But with Elon Musk branding it'Wokipedia' and AI looming large, can it survive? W ikipedia will be 25 years old in January. Jimmy Wales's daughter will be 25 and three weeks. It's not a coincidence: on Boxing Day 2000 Wales's then wife, Christine, gave birth to a baby girl, but it quickly became clear that something wasn't right. She had breathed in contaminated amniotic fluid, resulting in a life-threatening condition called meconium aspiration syndrome. An experimental treatment was available at the hospital near where they lived in San Diego. Did they want to try it?


What lies beneath: Scientists discover a giant granite slab half the size of WALES hidden under the West Antarctic Ice Sheet

Daily Mail - Science & tech

Melania Trump accused of'calculated campaign to destroy' notorious biographer in lawsuit claiming she sabotaged tell-all on First Lady Young Americans identifying as trans or nonbinary in FREEFALL as experts pinpoint what's behind the shift Prince Andrew will be summoned to give evidence on Jeffrey Epstein to US Congress committee as victim says shamed royal should'do right' by Virginia Guiffre and testify What Britney Spears is really like behind closed doors: For first time, Kevin Federline reveals secrets he refused to spill even for $1 million... including'terrifying' acts that left their children running to him The real story behind Jim Carrey's disappearance: He once made $20m per film. Now insiders tell TOM LEONARD about the mysterious suicide of his married lover and claims of autism'cure' at the heart of his Hollywood downfall Is Meghan about to launch a new'Kardashian-style' mega brand? Duchess cosies up to CEO behind Kim Kardashian's wildly successful Skims range as speculation about her new venture grows Women's tennis in'manliness' row: World's No 1 and 2 come under fire from rival for their'high testosterone' - before Aryna Sabalenka appears to fire back after being labelled a'big' player Harvey Weinstein's ex-wife Georgina Chapman is facing foreclosure on $2.5 million NYC home Suzanne Somers' widower shocks fans as he resurrects star in'AI clone' format: 'You can't tell the difference' Vicious catfight erupts between Trump's leading ladies. Feud is talk of White House: 'It's real and it's personal' Karoline Leavitt goes scorched earth on'bitter' Biden press secretary over'deplorable' comments Three brutal words in my best friend's wedding invite cut like a knife. Meghan's hit a trashy new low.


Panasonic plant in U.K. to go fully renewable

The Japan Times

Panasonic has started a test run of facilities installed at a microwave oven plant in the United Kingdom to allow the plant to run solely on renewable energy. Panasonic installed a system to generate power using green hydrogen, produced without causing carbon dioxide emissions. It is the world's first power generation system using pure hydrogen fuel cells that run on green hydrogen, according to the company. At the plant in Cardiff, Wales, operations powered solely by renewable energy will begin in March next year. Using hydrogen sourced in Wales, the power generation system combines 21 fuel cell generators, two lithium storage batteries and existing solar panels.


A Stochastic Analysis of the Linguistic Provenance of English Place Names

Dalvean, Michael

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

In English place name analysis, meanings are often derived from the resemblance of roots in place names to topographical features, proper names and/or habitation terms in one of the languages that have had an influence on English place names. The problem here is that it is sometimes difficult to determine the base language to use to interpret the roots. The purpose of this paper is to stochastically determine the resemblance between 18799 English place names and 84687 place names from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Ancient Rome. Each English place name is ranked according to the extent to which it resembles place names from the other countries, and this provides a basis for determining the likely language to use to interpret the place name. A number of observations can be made using the ranking provided. In particular, it is found that `Harlington' is the most archetypically English place name in the English sample, and `Anna' is the least. Furthermore, it is found that the place names in the non-English datasets are most similar to Norwegian place names and least similar to Welsh place names.


Physics-Inspired Interpretability Of Machine Learning Models

Niroomand, Maximilian P, Wales, David J

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

The ability to explain decisions made by machine learning models remains one of the most significant hurdles towards widespread adoption of AI in highly sensitive areas such as medicine, cybersecurity or autonomous driving. Great interest exists in understanding which features of the input data prompt model decision making. In this contribution, we propose a novel approach to identify relevant features of the input data, inspired by methods from the energy landscapes field, developed in the physical sciences. By identifying conserved weights within groups of minima of the loss landscapes, we can identify the drivers of model decision making. Analogues to this idea exist in the molecular sciences, where coordinate invariants or order parameters are employed to identify critical features of a molecule. However, no such approach exists for machine learning loss landscapes. We will demonstrate the applicability of energy landscape methods to machine learning models and give examples, both synthetic and from the real world, for how these methods can help to make models more interpretable.