All posts tagged: fully

DfE won’t fully fund unexpected enrolments

DfE won’t fully fund unexpected enrolments

Published by skeptic

Squeezed school budgets are set to take another hit after the government revealed it won’t fully cover growth funding for the “unprecedented” rise in the number of post-16 pupils. Instead, the Department for Education will only cover two-thirds of what schools and sixth-form colleges expected as student increases have leapt above the levels ministers had budgeted for. Sector leaders are urging the government to correct “years of underinvestment in post-16 education” to ensure schools cope with the continued growth in numbers. “In-year growth funding” plugs gaps between expected pupil numbers in post-16 settings – used to calculate initial allocations – and the number actually in class as of November. It is meant to help with cashflow for schools and colleges that end up taking on more students than they were expecting. ‘Very large’ increase in older students But in an update published this week, the DfE noted that while the “very large” increase in 16 to 19-year-olds in education this year was “positive”, it was “significantly above the budget for in-year payments”. “The current growth …

Trump Orders Musk to Get Air Force One Finished Quickly, Even If It Isn’t Fully Safe Yet

Trump Orders Musk to Get Air Force One Finished Quickly, Even If It Isn’t Fully Safe Yet

Published by José

What’s the worst that could happen? President Donald Trump is running out of patience with Boeing, which was supposed to deliver two new Air Force One planes by the end of his predecessor’s term. And guess who he’s turning to to speed things up? Elon Musk, who Trump has “empowered” to take measures to get the beleaguered aerospace company to stop dragging its feet, the New York Times reports. Trump’s pick for the task isn’t surprising, since he’s asked the world’s richest man to do everything short of fixing the White House’s plumbing in his ostensible mission of making the federal government more “efficient.” If Musk can fly a rocket, Trump reportedly told associates, per the NYT, he can probably fly an airplane. But the lengths that Trump is letting Musk go here are alarming. According to the NYT, Musk has questioned the amount of time needed to flight test the planes, and is also considering lowering the security clearance required to work on the new jets, which are armed with a bevy of sensitive systems …

University’s farm goes fully regenerative in a bid to tackle the effects of climate change

University’s farm goes fully regenerative in a bid to tackle the effects of climate change

Published by skeptic

The Royal Agricultural University (RAU) has joined forces with an award-winning local regenerative farming business to make the University’s teaching farm fully regenerative. Coates Manor Farm sits next door to the University’s main Cirencester campus. The 457-acre arable farm is now being farmed in a new collaboration between the university and local farmer SS Horton and Sons, run by RAU alumnus Ed Horton. This change in farming system – which includes a more diverse crop rotation, a range of cover crops, grazing cover crops with livestock, and direct drilling – has enabled RAU students to gain experience in a wider range of farm management techniques including growing peas, beans, and spelt wheat, as well the management of over winter cover crops. RAU Agriculture Professor Nicola Cannon, who oversees the teaching at Manor Farm, said: “In addition to using the farm as a base for practical field classes and environmental planning, it also allows us to teach students the more traditional agricultural skills, such as crop and livestock monitoring and evaluation, understanding a range of husbandry …

New “Honey Badger” Robot Dog Can Walk Fully Underwater

New “Honey Badger” Robot Dog Can Walk Fully Underwater

Published by José

The sound it makes it absolutely horrifying. Water Boy Engineers have developed a hardy quadripedal robot dog that can go for a brisk walk — across the bottom of a pool. The robot, dubbed the Honey Badger, is the creation of a Polish robotics company called MAB Robotics, which developed it to aid during underwater inspections and provide “maintenance services in flooded areas,” according to a LinkedIn update by MAB Robotics CTO and cofounder Jakub Bartoszek. A video shared by the company last week shows the robot stretching its legs as it clambers across the tiled floor of a swimming pool, producing an eerie sound that’s not unlike an unsettling horror movie soundtrack. As if terrifying robot dogs with machine guns strapped to their backs weren’t dystopian enough, in other words, now not even fleeing over a body of water can save us.   Dog Wash In case you were wondering why the company opted for a legged and not a finned swimming robot, the company claims on its website that the design is more …

After vote to repeal LGBTQ bans, many gay Methodists are now fully out

After vote to repeal LGBTQ bans, many gay Methodists are now fully out

Published by Sam

DURHAM, N.C. (RNS) — On the same day that United Methodist delegates voted to repeal their denomination’s condemnation of homosexuality from its rulebook, the Rev. Charles Daly drove a big hulking church bus to the Charlotte Convention Center with a handful of church members in tow. Maneuvering the bus into a parking lot that Thursday was tricky. The bus was too tall to clear the overhang at the entrance to one lot, and he had to carefully back out, allow his passengers to step off, and search for another lot. The end run appeared in his Sunday (May 5) sermon at Epworth United Methodist Church, a suburban congregation in Durham, as a metaphor for his denomination’s predicament. “After an unbelievable amount of moving traffic and backing and forthing, finally, the General Conference of the United Methodist church was pulling around and driving out of a place that had been stuck for 52 years,” he told his congregation. “The big bus of the denomination is now free from the alley that it backed itself into.” In …

Indie artist Washed Out’s new music video was fully AI-generated

Indie artist Washed Out’s new music video was fully AI-generated

Published by skeptic

A chillwave musician last week uploaded the first entirely artificial intelligence-generated music video created by OpenAI’s text-to-video model, Sora. Washed Out’s latest song, “The Hardest Part,” was released Thursday, complete with a four-minute music video following a couple’s romance from high school through the rest of their adult lives together — speeding through scenes alluding to a wedding, child-rearing and eventual death. The video’s director, Paul Trillio, wrote in a statement shared by Washed Out’s record label, Sub Pop, that he had wanted to film such an “infinite zoom” concept for a decade now but never attempted it because he believed it would be too ambitious. “I was specifically interested in what makes Sora so unique. It offers something that couldn’t quite be shot with a camera, nor could it be animated in 3D, it was something that could have only existed with this specific technology,” Trillio wrote. “The surreal and hallucinatory aspects of AI allow you to explore and discover new ideas that you would have never dreamed of.” Sora, which is not yet …

Milan’s Pioli fully focused on season end

Milan’s Pioli fully focused on season end

Published by Sam

AC Milan’s disappointing campaign has put Stefano Pioli under scrutiny, but he is fully concentrated on a positive end to the season despite speculation regarding his future and protesting fans, the manager said on Saturday (May 4). Milan are second in the Serie A standings, but are 19 points adrift of champions Inter Milan, and their fans suffered witnessing their arch-rivals secure the Scudetto in the recent derby win at the San Siro. That has only increased media reports about Pioli’s dismissal once the season ends. “My task shouldn’t be complicated, there are four games left,” Pioli told a press conference before Sunday’s home game against Genoa. “It’s true that outside they talk about everything except the games, but not us. We have a great sense of responsibility. Then we’ll see what the future is at the end of the season.” Pioli was asked about reports linking him with the Napoli job. “No thoughts, other than the next four games. At the end of the season, I’ll meet with Milan and we’ll see what to …

Despite recent successes, IPO market still won’t fully open until 2025

Despite recent successes, IPO market still won’t fully open until 2025

Published by skeptic

This year already proved that startups are willing to go public in a less-than-ideal market — and get rewarded for it, too. But bankers, lawyers and investors said the recent IPO successes aren’t enough to foster more than a dozen tech IPOs this year. “I don’t think we will have the floodgates open like I might have thought,” Greg Martin, co-founder and managing director at Rainmaker Securities, told TechCrunch. “The trickle was delayed; I thought it would happen sooner in Q1. Because of that, I think the floodgates can’t open til 2025, but we could have a healthy flow of 10 to 15 companies for the year.” Jeremy Glaser, a lawyer and co-chair of Mintz’s venture capital and emerging companies practice, said that despite how the recent IPOs have performed thus far, people need more data than just a few weeks, or a month, of trading to feel confident. Looking at how Klaviyo and Instacart are performing today shows why people remain cautious. Klaviyo is currently trading at a $5.94 billion market cap, down from …

Labour’s ‘new deal for workers’ will not fully ban zero-hours contracts | Labour

Labour’s ‘new deal for workers’ will not fully ban zero-hours contracts | Labour

Published by skeptic

Labour is facing criticism over plans for a loophole that would allow employees to work under zero-hours contracts, despite the party having pledged to ban them entirely. Keir Starmer’s party is preparing to announce details of its promise to overhaul workers’ rights if it gets into power – a centrepiece of its early plans for government, but subject to fierce lobbying from businesses. Labour has repeatedly promised to ban zero-hours contracts, under which an employer is not obliged to provide any minimum number of working hours. But as part of its revised plans, although employers would be required to offer a contract based on regular hours worked, workers could opt to stay on zero hours. The move has triggered fears of a power imbalance that employers could exploit to pressure workers into accepting insecurity around pay and working hours. The IWGB union, which represents gig economy workers, said they feared anything less than an outright ban on the practice would leave scope for exploitation. “Workers are often forced to accept poor conditions and precarious contracts …

Many judges fail to fully disclose free luxury trips, NPR finds

Many judges fail to fully disclose free luxury trips, NPR finds

Published by skeptic

Many federal judges receive free rooms and subsidized travel to luxury resorts for legal conferences. NPR found that dozens of judges did not fully disclose the perks they got. Chelsea Beck for NPR hide caption toggle caption Chelsea Beck for NPR Many federal judges receive free rooms and subsidized travel to luxury resorts for legal conferences. NPR found that dozens of judges did not fully disclose the perks they got. Chelsea Beck for NPR Dozens of federal judges failed to fully disclose free luxury travel to judicial conferences around the world, as required by internal judiciary rules and federal ethics law, an NPR investigation has found. As a result, the public remained in the dark about potential conflicts of interest for some of the United States’ top legal officials. Federal judges — occasionally with family members or even their dog in tow — traveled to luxury resorts in locations as far-flung as London; Palm Beach, Fla.; Bar Harbor, Maine; and the outskirts of Yellowstone National Park for weeklong seminars. The judges received free rooms, free …