Adrian Lamo, a Colombian-American threat analyst and former hacker, died in Sedgwick County, Kansas on Friday, at the age of 37. He was best known for passing on information that led to the arrest of Chelsea Manning.

    Lamo first gained media attention in the early 2000s for breaking into several high-profile computer networks, including those of The New York Times, Yahoo, and Microsoft, ending in his 2003 arrest when he eventually turned himself in.

    However, Lamo gained worldwide ill reputation in 2010 for disclosing to the FBI that the U.S. soldier, Chelsea Manning had leaked confidential information to Wikileaks. Manning had reached out to Lamo via a messaging app and told him that he had gained access to hundreds of thousands of classified documents and had leaked to Wikileaks a video of U.S. military forces in a helicopter machine madly gunning down journalists and Iraqi civilians. But, Lamo chose to report him and informed the U.S. military of the leak.

    Held responsible for the biggest leak of classified data in U.S. history, Manning was declared guilty by court martial and was sentenced to 35 years in prison, but was granted mercy by former President Barack Obama, who said his prison term was "disproportionate".

    Looking back on his decision to give up Manning, Lamo told US News and World Report in 2017 that it was "not his most honorable moment".

    However, he added that he had learned a lot from the experience, including that "you can't really know a person or their motives unless you've sat where they sat and seen the situation through their eyes, no matter how much you believe you do".

    A European Union program is letting blind people experience famous paintings for the first time. It uses three dimensional (3-D) printing to re-create famous paintings so that they can be touched.

    One painting printed with the new technology is Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss." It is a popular attraction at the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, Austria. The painting shows a man and a woman standing in a field filled with flowers. They are wearing gold robes and have their arms around each other. The man leans down to kiss the woman.

Klimt finished the painting in 1908. Until now, people who have trouble seeing can not enjoy the artwork. But thanks to the reproduction (复制品) they can touch the piece and feel the ridges (隆起) and depressions (凹地). Andreas Reichinger started making 3-D versions of artwork in 2010. He said this reproduction was his most difficult project because the couple's robes are so detailed (精细的).

    Dominika Raditsch is a blind museum visitor. She touched the reproduction. As she moved her hands around it, she said, "Exactly, can you see these? There are so many details." Raditsch said she can imagine what the original painting looks like when she touches the reproduction. "It's somehow round. You can feel it. It comes with it. And in many places it's so smooth. And then I think to myself: it probably shines too!" Raditsch said.

    The Belvedere is not the only museum to have 3-D versions of its artwork. Some of the pieces at the Prado, in Madrid, Spain, have reproductions that can be touched. But the piece in Vienna has one special part: it is made with widely available 3-D printing technology. That means one day, blind art fans anywhere in the world could download the source files and print the reproductions themselves.

Chanukah Festival

    Activities for kids of all ages

    Sunday, December 17   9: 00 a. m.-4: 00 p. m.

    Join us on December 17th, 2017 (2nd day of Hanukkah) for our annual Hanukkah Family Fun Fest for an exciting day of fun activities for the whole family. The Hazimir Choir will provide holiday musical entertainment. Drum Tales will present "The Hearty Story of Hanukkah" show. There will be ceramic (陶瓷) painting of dreidels. Menorahs (烛台), and other Hanukkah items for the kids. And fun foods, crafts and activities will be happening throughout the day. Bring the whole family and enjoy a fun—filled day!

    11: 30-Jolly Follies puppet show Ages 2-12

    A fun Muppet (提线木偶) style musical holiday story followed by a Hanukkah sing a song featuring the "Chipmunks" and other favorite characters. Adult: $7 Child $5

    1: 30-Hazamir Teen Choir

    Sponsored by the Berman and Lerner families in memory of Cantor Moses L. Snyder

    3: 15-Drum Tales presents The Hearty Story of Hanukkah

    Drum Tales is fun, interactive percussive (打击乐) and musical. It is much like the traditional drum circle concept. It combines story telling, musical instrumentation and song. Each participant is given a percussive instrument which becomes their media of transportation to far away lands and exotic (异国情调的) places, to ride the waves of mystery of an unfolding plot, and into the deep realm of imagination and the colorful beyond. Drumming, rhyming, rapping, clinking, shaking and clapping, this performance will leave you feeling refreshed after having returned from a journey through these stories! Adult $7 Child $5

    Plus food and fun for the entire family

    Crafts with BBYO and Young Judea

    Ceramic painting with Jack and Jill

    T-Shirt fun with Computer Adventures

    Fun with Cyber—Connection

    Vendors

    Special visit by "Chanukah Bubby"

    Helen Keller was one of America's best-known women. She was admired for her courage and achievements although she couldn't see or hear. She was also known throughout the world for herself-sacrificing work to improve the condition of the blind, the deaf and the speechless. When she died on June 1, 1968, the newspaper Washington Post wrote: "Her life was truly one of the most remark able phenomena of our time and her death just short of the age of 88 leaves the whole world poorer."

    Helen Keller was born on June 27th, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama. For the first 19 months of her life, she was a pretty and happy baby, normal in every way. Then a sudden illness destroyed her sight and her hearing. Because she could not hear sounds to imitate(模仿), she could not speak. Helen used to say that her real birthday was not June 27th, 1880, but March 3rd, 1887—the day when Anne Sullivan entered her life. It was Anne Sullivan who taught Helen to spell certain words by a special system, Braille, and even to talk.

    Anne Sullivan could not teach Helen Keller to speak until some other important things had been learned. The little girl had to learn to control her actions and feelings. She had to learn that she could not always do what she wanted to do. She had always been able to get what she wanted by using force. The teacher had to change such habits without breaking the child's spirit.

    Miss Sullivan's battle began. Sometimes, there was real fighting between the wild child and the strong young teacher. At last, however, the battle was won by Miss Sullivan, who succeeded in showing Helen that she loved her and wanted to help her. The child and her teacher became friends. They continued to be friends until the teacher's death, fifty years later.

    The day on which Helen finally accepted Miss Sullivan as her friend and teacher was a great day in Helen's life. After that, the teacher could begin to teach the child language.

Whether in the home or the workplace, social robots are going to become a lot more common in the next few years. Social robots are about to bring technology to the everyday world in a more humanized way, said Cynthia Breazeal, chief scientist at the robot company Jibo.

While household robots today do the normal housework, social robots will be much more like companions than mere tools. For example, these robots will be able to distinguish when someone is happy or sad. This allows them to respond more appropriately to the user.

The Jibo robot, arranged to ship later this year, is designed to be a personalized assistant. You can talk to the robot, ask it questions, and make requests for it to perform different tasks. The robot doesn't just deliver general answers to questions; it responds based on what it learns about each individual in the household. It can do things such as reminding an elderly family member to take medicine or taking family photos.

Social robots are not just finding their way into the home. They have potential applications in everything from education to health care and are already finding their way into some of these spaces.

Fellow Robots is one company bringing social robots to the market. The company's "Oshbot" robot is built to assist customers in a store, which can help the customers find items and help guide them to the product's location in the store. It can also speak different languages and make recommendations for different items based on what the customer is shopping for.

The more interaction the robot has with humans, the more it learns. But Oshbot, like other social robots, is not intended to replace workers, but to work alongside other employees." We have technologies to train social robots to do things not for us, but with us," said Breazeal.