4/0 vs #4

4/0 vs #4 The President of the Dominican Association of Milk Producers (Aproleche), Eric Rivero, highlighted Thursday the strength of Dominican livestock, which he said is not casual but due to the national producers’ work, coherence, and unity. He said that it has been possible to identify real leaders in each of the communities “who today fill with pride and commitment to those of us who have this as a mandate that has given us even something beyond the natural because we assume it with an intensity among all that sometimes we are even branded as crazy. He said that the current leadership and members of Aproleche should feel proud of the leadership shown by the presidents of federations and associations, whom he described as committed and supportive people who are an example of work. He said that the grassroots cattlemen have been able to stand up thanks to the work they do and a lot of effort. He affirmed that thanks to this unity, today we can show achievements, such as the fact that the State has recognized that milk for school breakfast must be of national production. “We must continue to identify leaders committed to our cause so that livestock farming always has someone to defend it and speak for it,” said Rivero, re-elected as President of Aproleche for a new two-year term. The activity occurred at the Livestock Fair’s Doctora Mireya Schécker auction pavilion. The members present came from as far away as Duvergé, Nisibón, Santiago Rodríguez, Puerto Plata, Cotuí, La Vega, and El Seibo, among others. “From the federations, Aproleche and the institutions of the government of President Luis Abinader that have an impact on livestock, we have reaffirmed our commitment to improve the quality of life, our productivity, our production,” said Rivero, also an agricultural advisor to the Executive Branch. He highlighted Aproleche’s good financial management and said that the external auditors recommended that the union continue to manage without any problem with the resources because there is a surplus of 32 million pesos, which so far has not been used. “This is how this directive has been managed,” he emphasized. He mentioned that the Livestock Improvement Program (Promegan) is part of the public policies implemented and pointed out that Aproleche’s work team has visited more than 220 livestock associations throughout the country, intervened in more than 250,000 pastures, and inseminated more than 28,000 cows throughout the country, among other things. He announced that a program to support cheese dairies will soon be put into effect and that in January, a pilot plan will begin to distribute yogurt of national production in two schools of the National District, “which is being assumed by Conaleche with the costs in order to show that we will have a snack and a food supplement of quality and local production.” He asked the leaders and livestock partners to monitor their sector, understanding that the guild does this work. “We must be aware of some misconduct, and from here, I denounce: based on the whim of some, genetics are being brought here from countries that are not authorized, that put our health at risk, and that put at risk the most historic of our activities, which is livestock,” he said. The treasurer’s report, corresponding to the period October 2023 to September 2024, read by the secretary Minerva Then and prepared by the auditing firm D&P Consulting, SRL, showed that the total net income was RD$139,828,063; merchandise in stock was $105,299,583, with a gross result of $34,528,480. The general and administrative expenses were of the order of $33,649,824. Apart from Rivero, the other members of the new board of directors, unanimously approved by the concurrence of the members, are Rolando de Jesús Peralta, first vice-president; Arismendy Rodríguez, second vice-president; Juan Recio Hernández, treasurer, and as members Domingo Espinal, Felipe Troncoso Brea, José Antonio Peña, Bienvenido Ripoll, Francisco Matos, Franklin Espinal, Berty Chireno, Abel Madera, Pedro Castillo and Pedro Aníbal Thomas. During the activity, Aproleche presented awards to the President of the Senate, Ricardo de los Santos, for his support of the agricultural sector. Also, to the farmers Apolinar Suero, Daniel Valerio, Berty Chireno, Minerva Then, Juanito Belén, Bienvenido Ripoll, Roberto Ignacio Tavárez, and Pedro Castillo Areché. Pedro Aníbal Thomas, President of the Cooperativa de Ganaderos de la Línea Noroeste; Raúl Antonio García, who set up the union’s supply store.American Consumer Awards (ACA) Unveils "Sports & Leisure" Category Winners for California, Hosted by the American Consumer Right Association (ACRA)

Dell Technologies Q3 revenue falls short of estimates as weak PC demand weighsANGERED drivers had a rude awakening on Monday after their cars were abruptly towed under a new parking crackdown. The new traffic law left several Illinois residents reeling over massive $235 fines that needed to be paid immediately. Every winter in Chicago , a winter parking ban is enforced to protect cars on the side of the road from being trapped by snow plows. The law covers 107 miles of main street throughout the city and is in effect between December 1 and April 1 from 3 to 7 am. The city gave drivers a day-long grace period on Sunday to account for the holiday weekend - but residents were hit with tickets on Monday. The fines cost a minimum of $235 thanks to a $150 towing fee, a $60 ticket, and a $25 storage fee. READ MORE ON PARKING RULES The number goes up by $25 each day due to the daily storage fee. "Taking our cars for no reason at all," Miguel Rivera, whose car was towed, told ABC affiliate WLS . "It ain't fair. We are poor people we ain't rich," he added. There are signs posted along the affected streets to warn drivers about the parking ban, but Chicago residents have still been left furious by the tickets. Most read in Motors "I came out and I was like where is my car? And it was gone," Martin Wauson, whose car was towed, said. "I was freaking out. Had to Uber to work. "Not a great way to start the day ya know?" The crackdown is in effect every single day for the winter months, whether it snows or not. The parking ban makes sure snow plows, public transportation buses, and emergency vehicles can move through Chicago's busy streets if snow starts falling. Residents who wake up to find their car towed can try calling 311 to find out where their vehicle was taken. Vehicles towed overnight are taken to one of two impound lots in the city. Wrongfully or not, retrieving a towed vehicle can be a hassle. If your vehicle is towed after parking in a "No Parking" zone or other legitimate reason, there are a few steps to take to get it back. Steps to take when your car is towed: Try to figure out why your car was towed. Did you not see a posted "No Parking" sign? Did you miss a car payment? Did you return to a lot where you have unpaid citations? Finding the reason can narrow down the phone numbers to dial. Locate the vehicle. Most states, cities, or counties require towing companies to leave some form of contact information via a posted sign or sent by mail. Recovery dates and times depend on the company that towed the vehicle, but those times will be posted to the website or can be recited by a representative. Pay the fees. Be careful to be as prompt as possible, as some tow yards may charge storage fees by the day. If you feel your vehicle was wrongfully towed, contesting the action can be done with the following steps: Be prompt - many states have a small window of time where it's acceptable to file a complaint against a company that wrongfully towed the vehicle. Gather supporting documents: photos, emails, receipts, police reports, and witness statements if applicable. The more evidence, the better. Get familiar with your local laws, as laws for towing companies vary per state. Try speaking with the towing company. Sometimes it may have been a simple oversight, and the matter can be resolved quickly. Contact the Justice of the Peace in your area, as they may have more insight or resources to help. They are often utilized for towing cases. Talk to a lawyer. Many lawyers have free case consultations, and depending on the case, it may be worth it to utilize a lawyer. Source: Oregon Department of Justice , National General , Rak Law Firm When two or more inches of snow are expected, the parking rule expands to ban parking on 500 miles of city streets. When the two-inch snow ban is activated, cars illegally parked can be ticketed or relocated. ANOTHER PARKING BAN The overnight parking ban comes as another law is set to hit Chicago drivers on December 5. The city's Smart Streets initiative will bring automatic tickets to residents who park in bus or bike lanes. Read More on The US Sun Drivers will be slapped with $250 fines for illegal parking - and cops don't even have to be present to write the ticket because the violations will be caught on the city's cameras. Written warnings will be issued for the first 30 days of the new measures. Parking on a public street is generally legal, even in front of someone's house, experts say. Unless the home is in an HOA subdivision, an apartment complex with assigned spaces, or there are posted laws against parking during certain days or hours, it is not illegal to park a vehicle in front of someone's home on a public street. "Generally speaking, an individual citizen does not 'own' or have any ongoing exclusive right to use a parking space on a public street," wrote Nolo Legal . "These spaces are open to the public on a first-come, first-serve basis." Most states do have rules against vehicles being parked in the same spot for 72 hours, or blocking fire hydrants, driveways, and sidewalks, as a parked vehicle in those spaces presents a safety hazard.

Robots have progressed over the years from clunky hunks of metal to complex, AI-enabled machines capable of running, speaking, and even . But even with all those advances humans still can’t help but place robots in bizarre and uncomfortable situations. This year, researchers took advanced robots and had them clean up , , , and . Two-legged, humanoid robots, which could one day work on factory floors, and . Here are just a few of the oddest things we did to robots this year. Having pets can add a layer of joy to life that’s irreplaceable. That is, except for the one to two times per day that furry new bundle of joy leads you to bend over and scoop excrement off of hot concrete. A Corgi-owning Minnesota man named Caleb Olson is all too familiar with this dilemma and believes he may have created a solution: . He calls his invention the “Poopcopter.” The quadcopter is programmed to fly around a backyard or other predetermined area and use real-time computer vision to scan for signs of poop. Once detected, the “doo doo drone” as Olsen sometimes refers to his invention, will soar down right above its target, rotate around 30 degrees and then use a custom design 3D-printed scooper to grab and remove the waste. In his demonstration, Olson said the packaged poo could then be dispersed in a detected garage area or maybe even on a neighbor’s roof. “Whenever it detects she [Olson’s dog named Twinkie] is pooping it keeps a log of when she poops and stores an image and over time stores a location,” Olsen . “Which is really nice in the winter when snow covers it.” Smoking cigarettes isn’t just rough on the body: they can also make a mess of the planet. In the US in 2021, show there were 9.7 billion cigarette butts discarded on the ground. That’s reportedly around 20% of all litter for the year. Researchers from the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in an effort to shrink that growing mountain of butts down. The VERO, or “Vacuum-cleaner Equipped Robot,” has a 3D-printed nozzle equipped on each of its feet which allows it to suck up cigarettes. VERO uses a neural network to interpret visual data from the robot’s onboard cameras. Once it detects a butt, it then quickly runs a calculation to determine the best way to angle itself to vacuum the butts. In theory, a VERO could be deployed on public beaches or other outdoor areas where people tend to flick their spent smokes. Humans don’t have the best track record when it comes to showing kindness to robots. There’s a long history of engineers and everyday people, kicking, , and with cold-hearted detachment. But one researcher from Radboud University Nijmegen named Marieke Wieringa wanted to see if that same dynamic would play out if the robots being tortured could scream out in pain. In an experiment, she has people . In some cases, nothing more would happen but other times the robot would emit a pitiful whimpering sound from its speakers. An artificial pair of eyes would attempt to convey sadness. The human subjects are more likely to feel guilty when the robot cries out. In an additional experiment, Wieringa gave subjects the option of performing a boring task or shaking the robot. The crying robot was a decisive factor in whether people performed the task or not. “Most people had no problem shaking a silent robot, but as soon as the robot began to make pitiful sounds, they chose to do the boring task instead,” Wieringa said in a statement. There’s still no compelling evidence that machines are “conscious” or “sentient” in the way a human is but that hasn’t stopped many from running with the idea. In one of the odder, more esoteric examples of this, artists asked an AI-enabled humanoid robot what type of painting it would hypothetically make in relation to the phrase “AI for Good.” The robot, called Ai-Da, . The robot created multiple portraits which were later called “AI God.” The painter robot was created by Oxford University researchers and the robotics company, Engineered Arts. It captures images using front-facing cameras and then uses onboard graphics algorithms to generate images. A pair or robotic arms controlling paintbrushes then translates those generated images onto paper. Whether you personally appreciate the work or not, someone found it compelling. AI God this year following a bidding war between 27 people. Robots designed to resemble humans already have a tendency to make some people feel uncomfortable. Researchers from the University of Tokyo took that uneasy feeling to the next level, however, by creating lab-grown “skin” bioengineered from human cells. They then . The result is an utterly horrifying, pink, goopy blob. If that wasn’t enough, they also used mechanical actuators to make it look like the pink slop was smiling. Mind-controlling mushrooms might not be as unlikely as it may sound. Earlier this year, researchers from Cornell University and the University of Florence in Italy demonstrated how could cause movements in a starfish shaped connected robot. In a nutshell, the team would shine the mycelium (which naturally doesn’t like light) with flashing UV strobes. The reaction from the fungus to the light would then trigger the squishy robot to move its leg. The mycelium, in other words, was controlling the robot’s “brain.” In practical terms, researchers believe these kinds of robotic biohybrids could one day analyze agricultural fields on their own to monitor for potentially harmful changes in soil chemistry. Human-looking bipedal robots are becoming increasingly popular, with several companies including Tesla collectively spending billions to make them a reality. But it’s still not entirely clear what they will end up doing. Supporters say they could work in factories, perform dangerous tasks, or even do your laundry. One humanoid robot company called Unitree recently showed off different use cases: . In a , the company showed its oddly flexible ‘G1 Humanoid Agent’ contouring itself into pretzel shapes and performing a variety of seemingly useful and semi-useful tasks. At one point, a researcher straps on a red boxing glove and gives the robot a few hefty jabs to the chest. It stumbles but never falls. Robots are getting . But just like human doctors, robots also can’t just operate on humans without practice. In an odd example this year, scientists taught this surgical robot to use a small pair of tweezer-like grabbers to . If that doesn’t sound all that impressive on its own, consider that the robots were able to perform this test surgery after simply analyzing prior video footage from real medical experts. The researchers behind the robot were surprised at just how well their training method, which is similar to the process powering large language models like ChatGPT, worked in practice. “All we need is image input and then this AI system finds the right action,” postdoctoral researcher Ji Woong Kim said. “We find that even with a few hundred demos, the model is able to learn the procedure and generalize new environments it hasn’t encountered.” Researchers from Google DeepMind actually realized the dream of many sports-living kids: . Using deep reinforcement learning, the researchers were able to train a pair of robots in simulations on soccer-related training data. This process is similar to the way DeepMind previously trained AI models to beat humans at games like Chess, Go, and . But unlike those cases, the researchers now had to apply those learning to a physical robot body. It took some time but eventually, the pair of robots were able to dribble, defend, and even shoot goals though not without the occasional tumble here and there. The Large Hadron Collider in Geneva is the source of important scientific discoveries but it’s also exceptionally dangerous. The powerful particle accelerator smashes protons at nearly the speed of light which results in radiation. That radiation is harmful to humans, but not to robots. Scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) realized that and specifically designed to crawl and scurry its way through otherwise impenetrable areas of the facility. Once inside, the Good Boy could autonomously patrol and monitor for signs of fires or other potentially dangerous hazards. No one has made a bigger name for themselves by than Boston Dynamics. The company repeated that trend this year with its new, smaller Atlas humanoid robot. In a demonstration of its practical abilities this year, the company released a video of it grabbing and moving engine covers, all autonomous. And because it was Halloween, it did all this while wearing a hot dog outfit. Just a month later Atlas made another festive appearance, . In that video, Atlas performed a slightly terrifying backflip reminiscent of its older, beefier predecessor. It’s unclear what the practical application of robot backflips is, but they certainly are memorable.