If you haven’t already, you need to check out the Spark Cafe, which is located on the second floor next to the Research Library. The cafe is open in the mornings from 8:15 – 11:15 and in the afternoons from noon to 1:30. You can buy drinks, such as hot chocolate and flavored lattes, as well as breakfast and lunch items. The hot lunch on the menu that day is available but not the burrito bowl option. Be aware, too, that the Research Library is open in the mornings starting at 7:30.
The Academies of Loudoun opened its doors for the new academic year on Wednesday, August 21st, for an orientation so students could meet teachers and get comfortable with the layout of the school and find their classrooms. Students received their printed schedules and had a chance to congregate in the numerous open spaces with friends, as well as in the library where there were fun activities set up for the students. It was a nice welcome to the start of the second academic school year at the Academies, which officially started on the 22nd.
ADVERTISEMENT DESIGN CONTEST
2nd Paravi Das
3rd Julia Spewak
4th Madison Tran
5th Sarah Shekihnureldin
GRAPHIC COMMUNICATION TECHNICAL EXAM
3rd Nabiah Haque
STATE PIN DESIGN 2019
2nd Julia Spewak
3rd Paravi Das
STUDENTS OF THE YEAR
1st Paravi Das
PAST STATE OFFICERS
Paravi Das – State President
Julia Spewak – Region 1 Vice President
CHAPTER OF EXCELLENCE PROGRAM: Quality Chapter and Gold Chapter:
President Sarah Shekihnureldin & Vice President Sydney Velandria
100% SKILLSUSA MEMBERSHIP AWARD
Graphic Communications, Academies of Loudoun
SKILLSUSA Virginia Board member
Pam Smith
The SKILLSUSA 55th Annual National Leadership and Skill Conference will be held June 24-28, 2019, in Louisville, Kentucky.
Lead Voting Delegate for Virginia – Paravi Das
National Anthem singer, Opening session – Paravi Das
National Pin Design – 1st Place – Paravi Das
SkillsUSA Professional Development Program #6 International Degree – Deborah Tripp
TA DA!!! It’s finished! The Academies’ new pizza oven!
By Ms. Frances Roberts
“People think that data is in the cloud, but it’s not,” said Jayne Stowell, who oversees construction of Google’s undersea cable projects. “It’s in the ocean.”
It kind of boggles the mind when you really think about the Internet. Do you even know what it is? While most of us experience the Internet through Wi-Fi and phone data plans, those systems eventually link up with physical cables that swiftly carry information across continents and even oceans.
The Internet is made up of tiny bits of code – called data – that move around the world, traveling along wires that are as thick as a strand of hair and long enough to stretch across the ocean floor. And, these bits of code move amazingly fast. The data is somehow able to zip from New York to Sydney or from Hong Kong to London in less time than it took you to read this paragraph!
A great deal of cable has already been laid to connect the continents and support our insatiable demand for information, communication and entertainment. In fact, 750,000 miles of it. In the modern era, it was the telecommunications companies that first took on the task of laying out most of the cable, but in the last ten years, American technology giants have started taking over. In the beginning, they created a consortium to pool their resources and build – and then own – the subsea cables. Think of it as building a freeway for them all to use. Google has backed at least 14 cables globally, and Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft have invested in others. These content providers now own or lease more than half of the subsea bandwidth.
A more recent option is for a company to take on an subsea cable project alone, and Google recently announced its newest one that will connect the United States to Chile, which is where the company’s largest data center is located. Google has invested $290 million in its Chilean data center to help develop its capacity in artificial intelligence and machine learning, as well as to deliver cloud applications like Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, and Waze.
This undersea cable project will be no easy task. Although a 456-foot ship named Durable is set to deliver the cable to sea, the cable will first need to be assembled inside a large factory in Newington, New Hampshire. The factory is owned by SubCom and is filled with specialized machinery that is used to maintain tension in the wire and encase it in protective skin. The cable will have plastic, steel and tar added to help it withstand unpredictable ocean environments, and when finished, it’ll end up the size of a thick garden hose. It takes a year of planning to chart the cable route so as to avoid underwater hazards, but the cables themselves will still have to withstand heavy currents, rock slides, earthquakes and interference from fishing trawlers. Google estimates the cable will last up to 25 years.
When the cable is ready to be installed, it will take about a month to carefully load it onto the Durable before the ship hits the open sea. Building and laying the infrastructure of our digital world is a labor-intensive job. The Durable will have to carry enough supplies to last at least 60 days at sea at a time with the 80 crew members switching off 12-hour shifts. The work is slow and plodding with the ship moving about six miles per hour, as the cables are pulled from the giant basins out through openings at the back of the ship. In areas closer to shore where there would be a higher risk of damage, an underwater plow is used to bury the cable in the sea floor.
After the Latin American project is completed, Google then plans to start on another undersea cable project called Durant, named after the first Nobel Peace Prize winner and Red Cross founder Henry Durant. The cable will stretch from Virginia Beach in the U.S. to the French Atlantic coast and will enable major expansions in their global cloud infrastructure. This cable is needed to help assure connectivity between its many other data centers around the world, including the Netherlands, Montreal, Finland and Los Angeles. Google currently has 13 data centers around the world and 8 more under construction. By building the massive subsea cable themselves, Google will then own the connectivity between its data centers and won’t have to share the bandwidth for the life of the nearly 4000-mile cable.
Durant will be expensive, to say the least. These subsea cable projects can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for not only the cost of the cable itself, but also for the specialized surface facilities needed at both ends of the cable. Google has hired TE SubCom, an industry pioneer in undersea communications technology, to design, manufacture and lay the cable for Durant. This project will add network capacity across the Atlantic, supporting one of the busiest routes on the Internet, as well as the growth of Google Cloud. The Durant cable is expected to be completed in late 2020.
The demand for subsea cables will only increase as more businesses rely on cloud computing services. Also, new technologies, such as powerful artificial intelligence and driverless cars, will also require such fast data speeds. New areas around the globe are gaining access to the Internet, and the United Nations has now reported for the first time that more than half the global population is online. All that growth and its accompanying data will require more and more subsea cables to be built. It’s truly a modern day phenomenon to imagine these many freeways under the sea.
SOURCES
Graham, K. (2018, July 18). Google building its own subsea cable from Virginia to France. Retrieved from http://www.digitaljournal.com/internet/google-building-its-own-subsea-cable-from-virginia-to-france/article/527402
Satariano, A. (2019, March 11). How the Internet travels across oceans. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/10/technology/internet-calbes-oceans.html
Stowell, J. (n.d.). Delivering increased connectivity with our first private trans-Atlantic subsea cable. Retrieved from https://www.blog.google/products/google-cloud/delivering-increased-connectivity-with-our-first-private-transatlantic-subsea-cable/
21760 Beaumeade Circle, Unit 120
Ashburn, VA 20147
(571) 442 8844
Rupa Vira is a vegetarian based restaurant located in Beaumeade Circle on Loudoun County Parkway. This is one of the ONLY purely vegetarian Indian restaurants in the Ashburn area, making it unique dining experience in the area. Chef Rupa Vira brings to diners the authentic taste and flavor of India in her signature style. Not only serving North Indian food, it also caters a variety of Indo-Chinese foods, such as “Gobi Manchurian” and “Hakka noodles,” and South Indian food,s such as “dosas” and “idlis”, all of which are scrumptious.
Rupa Vira was established as a catering-based restaurant approximately 2-3 years ago and has found great success serving customers in Maryland, Virginia and DC.
The Signature has a very efficient and fast service, approximating a 20 minute wait time for a meal. Its staff is hospitable and kind to the guests. This restaurant is also accommodating of certain allergies and dietary restrictions. Along with the delicious food, they also offer a variety of Indian drinks, such as “lassi” and a “pan milshake”.
As a customer told me, “Rupa Vira gives me that homey sense as I myself am a vegetarian, and the staff always makes me feel at home here!” While many people in Loudoun County might not vegetarians, there is still a lot to love at Rupa Vira, and the restaurant offers a sense of home for all people no matter their dietary restrictions. Go visit it sometime!
Graham Moore’s novel The Last Days of Night, set primarily in New York City of the late 1880s, revolves around a fascinating cast of characters who are all in some form tied to the War of Currents, which will decide who will have the legal rights to sell the spectacular technology humans have recently learned to harness -– electric light. Fame and wealth are at stake for the companies involved, but so is the progression of science and technology for the benefit of humanity. As Moore makes clear, the better-established electrical company Thomas Edison has built up that uses DC may not have the technology most ready for use by consumers when compared to his challenger in the courts, George Westinghouse.
On Team Westinghouse, which boasts the technology to transmit electricity of the AC variety that still powers households today, is the entrepreneur and engineer himself, George Westinghouse. Nikola Tesla, the disgruntled inventor who previously worked with Edison, is also recruited to this side, and a mood of optimism blossoms as this figure, whose name evokes for readers awe-inspiring innovation, is introduced. Indeed, his genius and dedicated efforts in the laboratory offset his eccentric tendencies and prove to be great weapons for Westinghouse in the war. There’s also the protagonist of the book -– Paul Cravath. He’s a young, highly talented lawyer who takes on the colossal task of securing for the side of AC the right to maintain and advance revolutionary technology that aims to illuminate cities across America, a difficult endeavor on its own. As it happens, this war is against Edison, whose resources and reputation among the public are intimidating.
Throughout the book, it seems that even all these men, giants in their respective fields and generations, are not potent enough to stop Edison. To have any chance of winning a future for Westinghouse’s company, Paul Cravath thinks heavily on what angle he can approach the matter of intellectual property and how he can demonstrate that AC is superior from the perspective of safety. His strategy depends on heavy manpower, sifting through thousands of documents for light bulb design records, as well as on luck and chance encounters. Later on, Paul also enlists the help of the charming, well-connected opera singer Agnes Huntington, who remains undaunted in the face of the exhausting obstacle course of wearing down Edison in the patent battles. As she comes to play a major role in the mystery that develops amidst the execution of Paul’s plans stemming from desperation to gain an advantage over Edison, she expands the setting of the novel to exclusive parties of the intellectuals and artists of the era. Moore also focuses on the evolution of Paul’s personal desires as he falls in love with Agnes.
Before the final chapter of the book -– which adeptly serves as reflection on the special flowering of genius and industry in the late 1800s -– there is sabotage and romance as well as expertly researched historical fiction and accurate descriptions of the innovations from the era -– something for everyone. Readers familiar with the story of electricity’s commercial beginnings can anticipate the plot resolution, but they will most likely find something fresh in the author’s imaginative narrative, telling of the struggles, ambitions, and thrills embedded in the process. The writing maintains the suspense; while the different strengths of the characters are quickly apparent, it is difficult to discern which combination of wit, deceit, and charisma will win out in the end. The writing also does much to convey the whimsical and wondrous atmosphere of this time of such radical change, when electrical appliances had the ability to transform workplaces and homes, holding off the incursion of nighttime, but also the ability to kill if mishandled.
The Last Days of Night offers amazing insight into the brilliant characters and all the things that make them tick. What is inviting about the book is that, while it is heavily guided by the author’s secondary research into this exciting time in history, there is also plenty of interpretation of the facts in the form of interesting, imagined interactions between characters through which the author investigates their inner motivations and offers suggestions about how their respective successes and failures came to be. The main characters like Edison and Tesla have invented dialogues and actions that seem so real you get the feeling that you have dropped into one of their offices and have the pleasure of watching them enthralled in their work. By placing them in action in their daily lives, exerting efforts into projects they can feel are on the brink of reaching something revolutionary, Graham Moore also illustrates the different categories of influential people in every time of great innovation. There are those like Tesla who are completely driven by a love for such innovation, who devote all for the advancement of knowledge. Individuals like Edison are crucial to assembling the talents into factories for invention and to kindling the public’s interest in a scientific phenomenon that otherwise might seem like interesting but not immediately practical discoveries.
Reading the novel gives you a good understanding of why America is powered the way it is today, and it can leave you drawing connections between our world and that of Edison and Westinghouse. The book is interspersed with quotes from innovators of our own time, like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, making the common threads about business and invention more visible. The message about focusing on the quality of technology and ultimately, of the product, in the midst of legal battles to best serve the consumer is still relevant. Even the smaller connections between past and present, such as Tesla Motors taking its name from the inspirational visionary highlighted in the book, demonstrate that, in parallel times of technological advancement undertaken by massive corporations, the legacy of the former era extends into our own to guide our aspirations.