Odile Sullivan-Tarazi

This is a select portfolio of pieces I’ve written myself or marshaled through the process as editor. The context is often corporate.

As editor, I may have provided direction by developing the brief or the content guidelines, or both. I may have reshaped the initial outline or draft to more closely match assignment and context, or I may have sent it back, along with notes, for the writer to do so...

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Late one afternoon in the spring of 1986, LauraGoodkind slid into this world squalling, three months too soon, weighing just over three pounds. Her chances of survival were slim. She spent her first eight weeks in the NICU, in an incubator, connected to various support systems. There was the positive pressure device to help sustain her breathing, the feeding tubes to bypass her digestive system, as it was not working properly, and several blood transfusions. The doctors warned Laura’s parents that with this tough start, she would be vulnerable to a host of medical conditions.

Alice follows the double at a slight distance, wheeling her launch around now to move from starboard to port. “Match hands out of bow,” she calls to the scullers. “Stay long.”

The scullers move in unison, arms and body forward, body and arms back. Up to the catch, blades through the water, release. The movement is easy, familiar. Unless you look closely, you may not realize what’s very different in this boat: these scullers are rowing “dead slide.” The seat is fixed. There is no power coming from the legs, the traditional powerhouse of rowing.

It’s that time again, time to reflect on the successes of the past year and to look forward to what’s yet to be done.

As a state, we’re facing an opportune moment in time. The federal reauthorization of the Child Care Development Block grant in 2014 gave states around the country the opportunity to enhance what’s being done for families. And organizations like 4Cs are building on that. As we look around us in the world, we see that the countries that are thriving are those investing in early childhood education, which paves the way for a well- educated nation . . .

The rush to the cloud is accelerating, as the benefits of a move to the cloud increase. To make that transition smooth and successful, however, your organization will need to do some careful preparation. You’ll want to align your cloud strategy with your larger organizational strategy and to consider also how your business will transform as a result of this technological change.

Moving to the cloud offers enormous benefits for businesses. Yet there are risks as well. The challenge is multidimensional, with far-reaching implications not just for the solutions that will run in the cloud, but also for the technologies that support them, the people who need to implement them, and the processes that govern them. The rubric of people, process, and technology is a familiar one. But how do you harness it to move forward?

Games have always been a popular domain of AI research, and they have been used for many recent competitions. Reaching human-level performance, however, often either focuses on comprehensive world knowledge or solving decision-making problems with unmanageable solution spaces. Building on the popular Taboo board game, the Taboo Challenge Competition addresses a different problem — that of bridging the gap between the domain knowledge of heterogeneous agents trying to jointly identify a concept without making reference to its most salient features.

The first microRTS (µRTS) AI competition was hosted at the IEEE Computational Intelligence in Games (CIG) 2017 conference. The goal of the competition is to spur research on artificial intelligence techniques for real-time strategy (RTS) games.

RTS games are a genre of video games that are notoriously difficult for AI techniques (Buro 2003) since, compared to traditional board games such as Chess or Go, they have a very large state space and a very large branching factor. Additionally, these games are executed in real time, which leaves little time to decide a move...

Humanity is at an inflection point. Climate change, population growth, security, and inequality are among the most critical challenges of our time.

How will the world support the one and a half billion people predicted to be added to the global population by 2050 when we already exceed the sustainable limits of our planet? We are placing ever-increasing burdens on our resources and ecosystems. At the same time, technology is transforming the way we live and work in very positive ways...

The fourth-largest city in India, Chennai (the former Madras) is a vibrant metropolis brimming with energy. The population is exuberantly friendly; the cuisine, sizzling and spicy. And there are wonderful things to see in Chennai and plenty to do.

Attractions in Chennai are centered around a striking mix of ancient Indian landmarks and the remnants of colonial rule. Perhaps the perfect place to start is the Government Museum, also known as the Madras Museum, housed in the six-building Pantheo...

Frenetic and fun, colorful and crowded, Bangkok is a dynamic city. This sprawling, street-food-packed metropolis teems with colors and flavors, making a visit here a thrilling treat for the senses. Bangkok’s appeal lies in its many contradictions: it’s a bustling city with pockets of peaceful retreats, an intricate network of highways and high-speed trains that is nevertheless grounded in tradition and steeped in civility, hospitality and old-world charm.

This is a city where the orange-clad ...

A city both age-old and on the cutting edge, Tokyo is a study in contrast. Hushed, mist-shrouded Shinto shines and meticulously manicured classical gardens sit within arms’ reach of psychedelic neon alleys, futuristic skyscrapers, and squeaky clean transit stations featuring the fastest and sleekest trains ever built.

It’s also a city of immense civility and quiet calm. The Japanese obsession with perfection and mastery of skill infuses everything here, from humble street food to high-end fas...

Tall and sinewy, Russell Gernaat looks out over the deserted boatyard at the late afternoon water beyond. “I’d always wanted to row,” he says. “I’m talking, you know, ten years or more.” Gernaat became intrigued with rowing after trying out the rowing machines in the gym as a kind of warm-up, and liking the exercise. What might it be like to take that out onto the water?, he wondered. But with his work schedule, with young children at home, he hadn’t the time or the funds to take up the sport...

We bundle the dog into the car, my husband and I, and fill up the trunk: books for one sister, the teapot my mother wanted, an article for my father, something for the baby. The trip down will take us two hours, three in heavy traffic, and the familiar terrain — the cattle on the hillsides, the billboards, the iron-worked toll bridge — slips by as we play our versions of Botticelli and Ghosts. As we cross the Bay Bridge, he snaps off the air conditioning and I open the windows. The dog perks up . . .

So, you’re convinced (as who wouldn’t be?) that commercial dog food is best avoided. If you’re the thoughtful type, wanting to do what’s best for the dog in your care, you’ll likely find yourself now deep in the knotty issue of whether to go raw or keep on cooking.

It feels like raw would be healthier and more natural. It’s real food, right? Pure and unadulterated. It’s the food that wolves and other wild members of the family Canidae thrive on. So, why shouldn’t our . . .