Rounding Cape Horn you're in a very dramatic place that's historic and you think about the sailors that have been there.
The Vendée Globe is a round-the-word single-handed yacht race, sailed non-stop and without assistance. When the rest of us are being bombarded with Presidential election advertising and mud slinging, Rich Wilson will once again attempt to sail solo around the world for the second time as one of 30 Vendée Globe competitors in the fall of 2016. He will officially be a senior citizen and likely the oldest competitor in the race, the oldest that has ever started, and the only American.
In 2008, Wilson finished the Vendée Globe in 121 days and is one of only 50 sailors who have sailed solo around the world. Next fall, in the Vendée Globe 2016, held every four years, he hopes to cut off 14 days from his race. A major motivation for his sail is his non-profit sitesAlive. Funded by some of his Harvard Business School classmates who are also approaching the realm of senior citizenship, their sitesAlive program involves a school curriculum he has created for each race and shared with teachers and newspapers across the US and around the world. In 2008, he had 250,000 students around the world following he and his single hull 18-meter boat along the race.
I sat down with Wilson to understand what compelled him to take on this courageous (or extreme) act of self-reliance on the great seas, to learn why the number one sporting race in France is barely known in the US, and ask him about the loneliness, what natural beauty he may see, how he musters up the necessary tenacity and hear about the exuberance at the docks. We have included a video of his rounding of Cape Horn, which I think is pretty cool.
You say this is France's largest sporting event in terms of marketing impact with more exposures than the Tour de France. And you noted that the French love sailing. How do you think they see it differently than Americans?
In France, there are many sailing clubs, schools and sailing associations and access to boats is easier through marinas. In quite a bit of the US, at least on the East Coast, access to boats is through mooring which means you really have to have a yacht club here, but I also think that there's much more of a maritime culture there.
There used to be a maritime culture in the US but a lot of that's been lost. People don't think about the oceans or about going to sea as much. It's a challenge for any smaller port to get noticed by the general media when you have 'the big four': football, baseball, hockey and basketball.
How do you keep sane on the sea when you're alone so long?
One builds up to the Vendée Globe. The Vendée Globe is the pinnacle. I've sailed my whole life but in 2016, I'll be 66 years of age and I'll likely be the oldest skipper in the race and likely the oldest that's ever started.
You have to build up mileage at sea and that's how you end up having experiences of bad storms, or mechanical failures. You learn how to try to solve those problems on the water so that when you prepare the boat for the next time, you solve that problem in anticipation of that problem occurring again.
How does fear come into play?
There are certain specific things that invoke fear. I was always afraid of having to go up the mast alone in the South and eventually it did happen on a trip. I didn't have to go to the top of the mast but I had to go two-thirds of the way up the mast and it was traumatic but I was able to pull it off. There have been some stories of sailors in the Vendée Globe that have had to go up the mast and things have gone wrong with the boat that put them in a worse situation than actually being up the mast.
Are the boats pretty technical?
Yes, they are very technical.
They have an autopilot that will steer the boat but you can't really go around the world that way. You have to keep making adjustments all the time to the boat.
Are you always tethered to the boat?
Most of the time. Some say the French don't pay too much attention to it. Some of them do and some of them don't. There are certain times when it's more dangerous to be tethered to the boat such as if you're on the foredeck and you're trying to make a sail change in the middle of the night: Sails are swinging around and there's water coming aboard. The main thing you want to do, to use the basketball phrase, is that, 'you want to go hard to the hoop.' You want to go fast. You want to do it accurately. Your brain is full on. Your body is 100% full on and you want to get that task done and sometimes the tether can get hooked on things and confuse the issue. In those cases, it's better to untether and go hard and finish the task.
Do you like high-pressure situations?
That's what makes it interesting. If you go off on a boat with twenty-six other guys on these huge 100 feet long boats that are being built today, and race for three or four days, people think that's like a big deal. But there are twenty-five other guys on the boat! It's like, 'here's your winch, learn to love it' because that's all you going to get to do. You're not going to navigate. You're not going to steer. You're not going to cook. With solo sailing, in particular with a boat that's as big as the open sixties, you have to do everything.
Why is self-reliance so important to you?
I think it's one of the great things about sailing. For young kids who are learning how to sail and going out in these tiny little box boats with square bows, called Optimists, it's the ultimate.
I don't know how many there are in the world but there are tens-of-thousands if not hundreds-of-thousands of them being sailed today by kids. What other sport does a kid once they leave the dock get to be on their own? They're responsible for themselves. They're responsible for the boat. They're responsible for all their decision-making: Tending to the boom and tipping the boat over. They don't have those chances in other sports. With field sports, the sideline's right there and there's somebody to help. Mom and dad are standing there and the coach is there and the doctor's there if anything goes wrong. That doesn't happen in sailing. That's why it's such a magnificent sport for young people because of that self-reliance.
Was the last round the world Vendée Globe a spiritual experience for you?
No. I'm always a little leery of 'spiritual.' I'm not religious. I believe in King Neptune but when you round Cape Horn, I will say, that's something. It's not often that you have a chance to muse about that sort of thing. But rounding Cape Horn you're in a very dramatic place that's historic and you think about the sailors that have been there. We're in the Drake Passage where Sir Francis Drake passed or the Straits of Magellan are just up the continent a little bit, the Beagle Channel where Charles Darwin studied is right there and Captain Bligh couldn't get around Cape Horn going East to West and so there we are and we're in the same place. How many clipper ships were lost going one way or the other going around there? That's something.
Why do you say 'we'?
All the solo sailors do and it's 'we' – 'we at sea' is the boat and me – that's us.
Do you see other sailors as you go around the world on the Vendée?
I saw one boat when we passed the equator going south. After the first afternoon, you don't see anybody. You probably won't see anybody all the way around the world and you might not see land. I fully anticipated not seeing any land all the way around the world.
How's technology changing your boat for the voyage now compared to 2008?
Last time we had a 2000-generation boat and we knew we were going to be off the pace, but that's okay. It's the Vendée Globe and the French are quite explicit about it that if you finish this race, you're a winner. They don't care where you finish in the race.
No one in American sailing, unless they've seen the Vendée Globe, has ever seen anything like what happens at the start of the Vendée Globes. I've never seen any other sport event in the United States that can compare with the action, the humanity, and the emotion at the start of the Vendée Globe. It's incredible when 300,000 people come down to cheer the fleet off as it is towed single file out to the start of the race.
How many boats do you predict will there be in 2016?
They cap it at thirty?
They actually cap it at twenty-seven boats but thirty were ready to go so they allowed the extra three.
When I speak to an American journalist, they eventually get around to the question of, 'well, are you going to win?' and of course if they'd done fifteen minutes worth of homework, they'd realize that of course I am not going to win! I have a third generation boat. I'm the oldest skipper. I'm American.
You never get that from the French. The cynic might say, 'that's because they knew you weren't going to win' but that's not it at all. They just say, 'we're glad you're here.' A ten-year-old boy came up to me on the madhouse that is the dock of the Vendée Globe and said to me in French, 'the important thing is to participate.' And that's exactly right.
You go to participate. You do your best and you tell people on shore what it's like at sea and then you try to come home. And that's not an offhand comment. There have been three sailors – two within the last race – who ran into trouble.
When American Mike Plant sailed across the Atlantic delivering Coyote from New York Harbor to Les Sables-D'Olonne for the starting line of the '92 race – his keel broke off. The boat turned upside down. They never found him. There are obvious risks involved in this. In the race, there was a young French skipper who was a fabulous sailor who was very severely injured in the Vendée Globe with a broken femur, pelvis and back in an accident on the boat. The Vendée Globe is very different from what most people envision as the nice, sweet sport of afternoon day sailing with sunshine and a rum and tonic.
What's the mariner's code in the Vendée Globe race?
The code goes beyond the Vendée Globe. It's the tradition on the sea to go to the aid of a mariner in distress without discussion, without debate. If somebody's in trouble, you go and you do whatever you can do to help.
That came to the fore in the 2008 Vendée Globe when Yann Elies was hurt so severely, the race office called the Australian navy. Yann was 800 miles south of Australia. They immediately deployed a frigate to go get him. It was going to take forty-eight hours to get there and they also told the next two closest boats in the race that Yann was in trouble. Mark Guillemot was about sixty/seventy miles ahead but he stopped his boat, turned around, and went back upwind to Yann. Meanwhile, Samantha Davies, a young British skipper, was 100 miles away and she stopped racing and went in to fast mode to get to where he was so that she'd have some extra rest along the way and the brief by the race doctor to both those skippers was to lend emotional support, not to try to get off their boats and actually help because then the other skipper might get injured as well. They instantly stopped racing and headed towards Yann's position and then his keel broke off just before Cape Horn, about 200 miles west of Cape Horn and his boat turned upside down immediately.
The next boat to get there was Vincent and he started circling the boat, hoping that Yann would come out from under the upside down boat. Eventually he did in a survival suit. In between Mark arrived as well and they were taking turns circling because sailing these boats is a big challenge and if you have to go back in one position, that's just an enormous physical effort and when Yann came out, Vincent sailed by and threw him a line and tried to get it to him. The idea was for Yann to tie it around himself and jump in the water and then Vincent would winch him across to his boat. He missed the first time and had to sail around in a circle that included two sail maneuvers.
He can't swim to him to help?
No. Risky. Then he's 200 miles off Cape Horn swimming in a survival suit. Better to try to make a solid contact. He comes back the second time, throws again, misses again, and then the third time and misses again, and then the fourth time, getting desperate, he goes desperately close to make sure he gets the line to Yann. He ties it around and jumps in the water, Vincent winches him across, drags him on board and puts him in the cockpit. Then they notice he'd gone so close that one of the outriggers that holds up the mast had hit the fin of the overturned boat and cracked the carbon tube and the next day, Vincent's own mast broke and came down. So, Vincent, the defending champion from the 2004 race, sacrificed his race to save his friend and it was an incredible story. So now he's out of the race and had been in third place, easily able to make time to first.
Wow. Did you have any intense experiences like that in the race?
Mine was less dramatic but it's another example of the mariner's code. When we entered the Indian Ocean there was a group of about five boats. They were all older boats and there were about a hundred miles between each of us spread out over 500 miles. One by one across the Indian Ocean we hit a series of seven gales. All of the other boats except me dropped out of the group and I went past New Zealand heading into the Pacific where there are no islands. There's nothing out there in the Deep South. It's 5,000 miles and takes me about three weeks to cross. It's a long stretch and there's nothing there. Heading into it, I knew that there was only one ship along that route about every eight-to-ten days too. I had a lot of trepidation heading out because if the injury to Yann had happened to me in the middle of the Pacific, it wouldn't be two days before a ship could get there… It would be seven.
Now there was a big gap between the next boats and me in the race – about 900 miles ahead and 1,000 behind – and so I was nervous. About two days into this, I get an email from Samantha Davies who was way up ahead of me and she said, 'hi, Rich. I see you lost your last running mate from your group. It won't be much fun to sail the Pacific alone. So, I'll be your virtual running mate and I'll check in with you every couple of days.' That meant a lot to me and she did keep checking and it was an astute observation by a young skipper whom, best of all, acted on her observation and reached out to help.
How do you organize food and water since you can't dock?
You take the food with you. The target is 6,000 calories a day, which is triple the normal intake. That alone defines the caloric expenditure of actually sailing in an open 60 alone. For water, we and we have a desalinator on board. I make fresh water from seawater.
What kind of food do you bring?
I would have four full meals a day, every six hours: granola for breakfast at 6 am and we found a line of Bumblebee foil-pack salmon steaks, freeze dried for dinner and always enough for two people and then I would have ramen noodles and oatmeal at midnight. The humorous part of it all was that that still didn't get to 6,000. You get sick of high energy foods pretty quickly because they're too sweet but I don't get sick of is Fig Newton's. I would eat an entire sleeve of Fig Newton's every single day.
Yeah, 825 calories of Fig Newton's a day for four months.
Do you know which boat you're sailing in 2016?
Yes, we have the boat. It's new for us but it's 2006 generation. It will still be ten years old when we sail. It's been in four around the world races and it's finished two and made it halfway in two before there was a keel problem and a mast problem.
The Great American Four. It's a series. I sailed The Great American Three for Vendée Globe in 2008. When I finished that race, I thought, without being dramatic about it, there was some chance that I might never go sailing again. I was beat up physically, mentally and emotionally. I was done.
The French were actually the ones brought me back towards thinking about doing it again. Here to the US, a lot of my sailing friends would say, 'congratulations. You're not going to do that again, are you?' While the French have an entirely different attitude about life: If you're reasonably good at this and you were because you finished this race, and only eleven out of thirty boats finished, and you have a good objective (they knew about our school program.) Then you do this and the rest of it's a calculated risk. The French really feel that life is to be lived.
Will there be another American sailor in the race along with you in 2016?
It doesn't look like it at the moment. I know that there are a couple of people who'd like to be able to go but I don't think so.
There's an incredible missed opportunity with both corporate America and with the general media in the US because this race is so compelling for people who get hooked on it. When we did the 2008 race, it wasn't people in San Francisco or Boston or Newport, where sailing is a dominant sport, who were into this. Our main distribution channel for sitesAlive has been through newspaper and education programs across the world. We have fifty newspapers in the US who signed on to do this because they all get the point. Some of the most imaginative educators I've seen in the entire panoply of K12-education have been the education managers in newspapers. We had twenty-five newspapers in that landlocked state of Missouri all following the race. If twenty-five newspapers in the state of Missouri were following us last time, then corporate America can be absolutely assured that the general public will be completely psyched about this once they're exposed to it.
How were people following you in 2008?
Online, mostly. Through both the website and as well through the newspapers. It was a fifteen-part-weekly series with essays that I would write from sea on the topics of the week that we had designed in the teacher's curriculum guide. The whole reason for me to do these kinds of events is to create a live-interactive-education program. It is an exciting, real world context for science, geography, math, and history.
When people are following you, are you very mindful that you're trying to run curriculum?
Yes. Every day there's an audio report, ship's log data, skipper's journal and three times a week there'd be pictures, videos and I would do ten Q & A. Students could send questions in and they'd be relayed to me through the satellite system and I would answer them while at sea.
It was just an extraordinary thing to have fifteen highly accomplished professionals from a wide diversity of fields contributing to the school program. Students heard from a ship captain on board a ship in the South China Sea, from the head maritime administrator in Washington, from the emergency doctor who was on call for me, my asthma doctor, a climate specialist, a history specialist, a professor of aeronautical engineering at MIT, a tanker broker on Wall Street, and the head of the Museum of Science in Boston.
What interests me is to have teacher-led classroom discussions about weather systems, about fisheries depletion, about climate change, about marine transportation, and about nutrition, That is why we do this. If we have 100 million people who check to see if I'm going over 14 knots and that's all they care about, then that doesn't do it for me. I'm not interested.
Where will your team be based?
Based here in Marble Head north of Boston but the boat is up in Portland, Maine right now for a refit. We have an English team of experts who come over in the fall and spring. I've known the designer of this boat for about twenty-five years.
This is a professional sport. This is like stepping into NASCAR in offshore sailboat racing. It's exactly the same kind of thing. It's highly sponsored in France and in England. It's the biggest sports event in France – bigger than the Tour de France by 50% in marketing terms in France.
I have a great trainer who was an all American distance runner and she trained at Boston University. She trained with (Joan Benoit Samuelson) who was the first marathon winner in the Olympics. She's become a cyclist and a world time trial champion cyclist. Her name is Marti Shea. She's right here in Marblehead, amazingly. There's a cycling race in Mount Washington and she's won it eleven times in a row. So, she's great.
What are some of the amazing things you see in nature when you sail around the world?
The albatross fly along with you across the South and you might see flying fish, which the kids always love. They actually come aboard in the tropics. In fact, I wore a helmet the whole way around the world with a Lexan visor because I got knocked in the head pretty hard going into the Indian Ocean in the first gale that we had and so I wore a helmet the rest of the way on deck all the way back to France but you also wear that in the tropics even though it's hot inside the helmet to protect your eyes from the flying fish.
What's it look like between Australia and America?
It is just big. If you take a globe in your hand and you center it on 15 degrees south latitude and 155 degrees west longitude, then all you will see for land is New Zealand down in one corner and the Aleutian Islands in the other corner. You won't see any other land. You'll see a little of Antarctica. That entire hemisphere is water. There are a bunch of islands in the Pacific Ocean but there's no solid land. It's just gigantic.
When I went past New Zealand, I saw an island for ten minutes in the distance, called Adams Island, and by accident I was close enough to see it for ten minutes but from there to Cape Horn is 5,000 miles and I didn't see anything: no ships, no fishing boats, nothing.
How many days is that?
That was about three weeks. The nearest people on Planet Earth are in the space station.
I could call anybody at any time but you know that there is nobody around to help. There is nobody that can come and help if you get in trouble for some extensive period of time. Maybe there's a fishing boat fifty miles away but that fishing boat may also be 800 miles away. That's the hard part. You stay in touch with close friends and I'm always writing for the school program. I would spend two hours a day on the school program while I'm at sea, particularly writing those teaching essays because if you have the chance to write for seven million readers… you don't send them your first draft. You send them the ninth draft. You make it perfect and you work at it. The kids will help bring me home.
Is it harder physically or mentally?
I think equally and they bear on each other when you're that physically tired. It bears on your mental state. I think that the mental part of it, the emotional part, is toughest. When you're that tired but you know you have to do something with the boat or you should put up more sail, or you should take a reef in – particularly in the South where it's so cold. If it's 45 degrees in the cabin but the wind chill outside is ten degrees, you have to muster the effort to do it because you somehow internally know that you must but there's a reluctance to do it. You rely on support of your friends back home.
I remember when I was coming up the Atlantic and it was so bad and I had a very bad hallucination about the anchor, I called a couple of people. One was the guy up in Maine, who's the only guy in Maine who's worked on these sorts of boats in the US, named Brian Harris. I called Brian and I said, 'Brian, you've been through all this stuff before. Can I call anytime to talk?' He said, 'of course' and then I called the emergency doctor and said, 'you got me through the broken ribs on races. You got me through the big eye gash. You got me through the crunched neck when I fell on my head. Now you have to turn into a shrink and help get me home because I'm really having a hard time out here.' Friends once I got home would say, 'you were having a hard time those last few weeks. We could tell in your voice' and so it's a huge, huge effort that way but that's what makes it so compelling to attempt.
I always think of the American story we tell ourselves of frontiersman overcoming barriers… out there on the range alone, pressing ahead, and when things go wrong, Americans still keep pressing ahead. But what we do now is these big team sports where people aren't alone pressing ahead on their own. This race is absolutely the epitome of that ethos, of that sort of story we tell ourselves and that's what makes it so compelling.
(Wikipedia) The race was founded by Philippe Jeantot in 1989, and since 1992 has taken place every four years. The 2016–2017 edition is planned to start on Sunday, 6 November 2016. As the only single-handed non-stop round-the-world race (in contrast to the VELUX 5 Oceans Race, which is sailed in stages), the race is a serious test of individual endurance, and is regarded by many as the ultimate in ocean racing.


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Review of John Glad's "Jewish Eugenics"
May 15, 2011 /147 Comments/in Eugenics, Featured Articles, Jewish Double Standards on Immigration and Multiculturalism in Israel vs. the Diaspora, Jewish Influence, Jewish Intelligence, Jewish Support for Multiculturalism, Jews as a Hostile Elite, Population Genetics: Jewish, Racial Zionism /by Kevin MacDonald
Jewish Eugenics, by John Glad. Washington, DC: Wooden Shore Publishers, 2011; 464pp. (Downloadable at either www.whatwemaybe or www.woodenshore.org. These sites also have Glad's Future Human Evolution.)
John Glad begins Jewish Eugenics by noting that "much of what might be termed 'accepted eugenics narrative' is in crass discordance with the historical facts" (p. 8). In other words, we are about to enter one of those academic minefields where "truth" is rigorously cleansed to make sure it is compatible with ethnic interests. Indeed, "writing books about Jews used to be a far easier undertaking than it is today, with Jewish anxieties over 'anti-Semitism' having been so elevated as to render dispassionate scholarly discourse nearly impossible" (p. 8).
I am not so sure that dispassionate scholarship is impossible, but it is surely the case that findings that diverge from the self-image desired by any ethnic group will surely be vigorously contested by academic activists or, more probably, consigned to oblivion. Dr. Glad assures me that in his case, it is the latter, writing of his frustration at the silence that has greeted his work. Welcome to the club.
As a university professor, Glad is quite attuned to the politics of having a good career. Critics of eugenics, like the notorious Ashley Montagu (a disciple of Franz Boas), get fat honoraria for delivering superficial, factually challenged lectures sponsored by numerous academic departments and programs. (Glad characterizes a lecture by Montagu as "an impressive demonstration of indoctrination" [p. 91].) On the other hand, those who defend eugenics "are subjected to academic shunning" (p. 91), their books are not used in classes and not purchased by academic libraries. They get no invitations to attend conferences or deliver lectures. Read more
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png 0 0 Kevin MacDonald https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png Kevin MacDonald2011-05-15 14:01:372013-01-16 22:57:45Review of John Glad's "Jewish Eugenics"
Scandza Forum New Year's Show: It's Gonna Be Alright (Maybe)
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The Royal Asiatic Society China, Beijing.
FEB 5, THURSDAY: HUANG YONGSONG TALK ON "THE YEAR OF THE SHEEP"
FEB 5, THURSDAY: FOLKLORIST HUANG YONGSONG ON "THE YEAR OF THE SHEEP"
You're invited to a talk by well-known Taiwanese publisher and folklorist Huang Yongsong about cultural beliefs and expectations for the coming Year of the Sheep. In 1971 Huang co-founded the English-language magazine ECHO to promote traditional Chinese culture; the publication appears in Chinese as Hansheng, or "Chinese Voice", and was named "Best in Asia" by TIME magazine in 2006. The talk will be in Chinese, with translation, and is co-organized by the Courtyard Institute and the Royal Asiatic Society China, Beijing Chapter.
HOW MUCH: RMB 30 for members, RMB 50 for non-members. IF YOUR MEMBERSHIP HAS EXPIRED, YOU CAN RENEW AT THE TALK AND ENJOY THE MEMBERS' TICKET PRICE.
RSVP: email membership@rasbj.org and let us know how many seats to reserve for you.


Panoramic Views! 4th floor balcony overlooks the the lagoon and Aransas Bay!
Welcome to Destination Relaxation! Completely remodeled 1 bedroom 1 bathroom condo located on the 4th floor of Laguna Reef at Rockport. Enjoy the private balcony with panoramic water views and the natural shoreline with a lagoon and an abundance of bird life from the balcony and the living room. There is patio furniture available to you as a guest to use during your stay. And make sure to keep those curtains open on large picture windows and patio doors. You will definitely enjoy that view from comfortable living room and watching the large flat screen television. There is plenty of seating for everyone. The dining table will seat four guests.
The kitchen is fully stocked with all cookware and has new. There is also an icemaker, microwave and dishwasher and coffee maker. The kitchen has a bar that opens it up to the rest of this beautiful condo. You will be able to visit with friends or family while cooking or just enjoy the view. The master bedroom has a king size bed and large closet and dresser for your vacation gear. The bedroom has a flat screen television with basic cable. A queen size sleeper sofa is also provided in the living room for 2 more guests. There is also internet and wifi available at Destination Relaxation.
As a guest of Destination Relaxation you will have access to the swimming pool, hot tub, 1000 ft. fishing pier with fishing lights, several shared charcoal grills, and the beautiful lagoon area at the water. There are also 3 large ice machines located on the first, second and third floors. There are also coin operated washers and dryers on the second and fourth floors in the same room as the ice machines.


text:
\section*{INTRODUCTION}

Because of their near-unity system detection efficiency (SDE)~\cite{marsili2013detecting,zadeh2017single, you93, reddy_exceeding_2019, reddy_superconducting_2020,chang_detecting_2020,hu_detecting_2020}, low dark-count rate (DCR)~\cite{hochberg_detecting_2019}, high count rate~\cite{zhao_counting_nodate,munzberg2018superconducting, tao_high_2019,zhang_16-pixel_2019}, excellent timing resolution~\cite{korzh_demonstration_2020,esmaeil_zadeh_efficient_2020}, and broad working spectral range~\cite{marsili_efficient_2012,verma_towards_2019,chen_mid-infrared_2020,zhang_superconducting_2016}, superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs)~\cite{goltsman_picosecond_2001} have been widely used in classical and quantum photonic applications~\cite{hadfield_single-photon_2009}, ranging from LiDAR~\cite{taylor2019photon}, detection of luminescence from singlet oxygen~\cite{gemmell2013singlet}, quantum key distribution (QKD)~\cite{yin2016measurement}, to quantum computing~\cite{wang2019boson, quantum2020}. Indeed, these detectors have become indispensable tools and enabling components in the systems requiring faint-light detection. However, the prevalent design based on meandering nanowires yields polarization-dependent SDE, which could be problematic if information is encoded in polarization states. In particular, when the polarization states of the photons are unknown, time-varying, or random, it may not be possible to rotate the polarization states to maximize SDE of SNSPDs. Therefore, the major merit of these detectors would get severely compromised; and this compromise could be detrimental for many photon-starved applications that stringently require high SDE. For photon-number-resolving detection or coincidence photon counting, the fidelity to resolve $n$ photons or the $n$-fold coincidence count rate scales with SDE$^{n}$~\cite{zou2020superconductingPR,zou2020superconductingPRApplied}, which quickly drops if SDE decreases. In a QKD system using SNSPDs, the  polarization-dependent mismatch of SDE makes the system vulnerable for quantum hacking~\cite{wei2019implementation}. Furthermore, the subtle trade-offs between SDE and timing resolution~\cite{meng_fractal_2020} make their simultaneous optimization challenging. Recently, 85$\%$ SDE at the wavelength of 915~nm and 7.7~ps device timing jitter~\cite{esmaeil_zadeh_efficient_2020}, and 98\% SDE at the wavelength of 1425~nm and 26~ps system timing jitter~\cite{chang_detecting_2020}, were demonstrated on meandering SNSPDs, but the SDEs were still polarization-dependent.

To address the issue of polarization dependence of SDE, several approaches have been proposed and demonstrated, including spiral SNSPDs~\cite{dorenbos_superconducting_2008,huang_spiral_2017}, two orthogonal side-by-side meanders~\cite{dorenbos_superconducting_2008}, double-layer orthogonal meanders~\cite{verma_three-dimensional_2012}, SNSPDs involving compensating high-index materials~\cite{xu_demonstration_2017, mukhtarova_polarization-insensitive_2018}, specially designed SNSPDs with low polarization dependence at a certain wavelength~\cite{verma_high-efficiency_2015, reddy_exceeding_2019}, and fractal SNSPDs~\cite{meng_fractal_2020, Gu_fractal_2015, chi_fractal_2018}. These demonstrations all have successfully reduced the polarization sensitivity (PS, the ratio of the polarization-maximum SDE, SDE$_{\textrm{max}}$, over the polarization-minimum SDE, SDE$_{\textrm{min}}$~\cite{PSnote}) of SNSPDs; however, none of them could simultaneously preserve other major merits, in particular, high SDE and excellent timing resolution. Among these demonstrations, amorphous SNSPDs, made of WSi or MoSi, have exhibited over 80\%~\cite{verma_three-dimensional_2012, verma_high-efficiency_2015} and even over 90\% SDE~\cite{reddy_exceeding_2019}, however, their timing jitter ranges from 76~ps to 465~ps; on the other hand, polycrystalline SNSPDs, made of NbN or NbTiN, have shown better timing resolution, however, so far, the highest SDE demonstrated on polycrystalline SNSPDs with low-PS designs is 60\%~\cite{meng_fractal_2020}, still significantly lower than the state-of-the-art SDE$_{\textrm{max}}$ of meandering SNSPDs, which is over 90\% demonstrated by several research groups~\cite{marsili2013detecting,zadeh2017single, you93, reddy_exceeding_2019, reddy_superconducting_2020,chang_detecting_2020,hu_detecting_2020}. Therefore, it remains an outstanding challenge how to boost the SDE of SNSPDs with low PS to the level comparable to the SDE$_{\textrm{max}}$ of their meandering counterparts while simultaneously optimizing the timing resolution.

Although the geometry of the fractal SNSPDs \cite{chi_fractal_2018,meng_fractal_2020} eliminated the global orientation of the nanowire, and therefore, significantly reduced PS, it was also this geometry that brought the major obstacle for further enhancing SDE and timing resolution. The fractal design contains a plethora of U-turns and L-turns that may limit the switching current, $I_{\rm sw}$, due to the current-crowding effect~\cite{clem_geometry-dependent_2011}, which may further affect SDE and timing resolution. In the past, we demonstrated fractal superconducting nanowire avalanche photodetectors (SNAPs)~\cite{meng_fractal_2020} with 60\% SDE, 1.05 PS, and 45~ps timing jitter. However, it is still elusive whether this route, using fractal geometry, is a practical one to combine high SDE, low PS, and low timing jitter.

In this paper, we report on our design and demonstration of a fiber-coupled fractal SNAP, fully packaged in a 0.1-W  closed-cycle  Gifford-McMahon (GM) cryocooler with the base temperature of 2.0~K,  achieving 84$\pm$3$\%$ SDE, 1.02$^{+0.06}_{-0.02}$ PS at the wavelength of 1575~nm, and 20.8~ps timing jitter. An enabling innovation is that we used an arced fractal geometry~\cite{su_superconducting_2008} for the nanowire to successfully reduce the current-crowding effect and therefore, increased $I_{\rm sw}$ to a level comparable to that in the meandering structure with the same nanowire width, thickness, and fill factor, achieving saturated, near-unity internal quantum efficiency, \textit{P}$_{\textrm{r}}$. We integrated the arced fractal nanowire with an optical micro-cavity, supported by dielectric distributed Bragg structures, for enhancing the optical absorptance, \textit{A}, of the nanowire~\cite{you93, zichi_optimizing_2019,hu_detecting_2020, reddy_superconducting_2020}.

\begin{figure*}[htbp]
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{fig1.pdf}
\caption{\label{fig1}Design, fabrication, and packaging of arced fractal superconducting nanowire avalanche photodetectors (AF-SNAPs). (a) A schematic of the optical structure of an AF-SNAP. The nanowire is sandwiched in an optical micro-cavity supported by distributed Bragg structures, which are composed of dielectric alternating layers of silicon dioxide (SiO$_{2}$) and tantalum pentoxide (Ta$_2$O$_5$). The detector is illuminated from top and the red line presents the simulated distribution of the light intensity, assuming the absence of the nanowire. The nanowire is positioned in the micro-cavity where the light intensity is the strongest. (b) A false-colored scanning-electron micrograph of an AF-SNAP, in which the photosensitive nanowires are colored in red and blue, and the auxiliary structures are colored in orange. (c) A zoom-in micrograph of the region enclosed in the green-dashed box in (b). The width of the nanowire was measured to be 40~nm. (d) Simulated and normalized distribution of supercurrent density, $\lvert \textbf{\textit{J}} \lvert$, at the proximity of an L-turn and a U-turn, denoted in (c) as 1 and 2, respectively. (e) Simulated normalized switching currents, $I_{\rm sw}/I_{\rm c}$, of the arced fractal (red), standard fractal (orange), and meandering (blue) nanowires, as functions of the fill factor. The simulated optical absorptance (black) of the arced fractal nanowire is also presented as a function of the fill factor. The fill factor used in this work is 0.31. (f) Simulated optical absorptance of the AF-SNAP for two orthogonal linear polarization states, transverse-electric (TE) and transverse-magnetic (TM) states, as functions of the wavelength, $\lambda$. (g) Equivalent circuitry of the AF-SNAP, which is composed of 16 cascaded 2-SNAPs.  (h) A photograph of the chip package. Inset: a photograph of the keyhole-shaped chip.}
\end{figure*}

\section*{RESULTS AND DISCUSSION}

Figure 1 (a) presents a schematic of the optical structure of an arced fractal SNAP (AF-SNAP). Six pairs of alternating silicon dioxide (SiO$_{2}$) and tantalum pentoxide (Ta$_2$O$_5$) layers were deposited on a silicon substrate, functioning as the bottom Bragg reflector; three pairs formed the top reflector; in between a SiO$_2$ defect layer was sandwiched. The thicknesses of a SiO$_2$ layer and a Ta$_2$O$_5$ layer in the Bragg reflectors are 264~nm and 180~nm, respectively; and the thickness of the SiO$_2$ defect layer is 529~nm, targeting for the wavelength of 1550~nm with optimal optical absorptance. The red line in Fig.~\ref{fig1} (a) shows the simulated distribution of the light intensity in the dielectric stacks (without the nanowires) at the wavelength of 1550~nm for top illumination; and the NbTiN nanowires were designed to locate in the middle of the defect layer of the optical micro-cavity where the light intensity is the strongest. The thickness of the NbTiN film used in this work was 9~nm. Fig. 1 (b) presents a false-colored scanning-electron micrograph of a fabricated AF-SNAP, before the top Bragg layers were integrated. The photosensitive region of the detector was 10.2~µm by 10.2~µm, and the width of the nanowire was measured to be 40~nm [Fig. 1 (c)]. The photosensitive region of the detector is composed of 64 second-order arced fractal Peano curves~\cite{su_superconducting_2008} that are electrically connected according to the circuitry in Fig. 1 (g). In comparison to the the standard Peano fractal curve~\cite{chi_fractal_2018,meng_fractal_2020}, the arced Peano fractal curve~\cite{su_superconducting_2008} reduced the current-crowding effect at the turns. We simulated the normalized distribution of the supercurrent density, $\lvert \textbf{\textit{J}} \lvert$, at the proximity of an L-turn and a U-turn [Sec. S1 of Supporting Information (SI)], which are presented in Fig. 1 (d). Fig. 1 (e) further presents the simulated $I_{\textrm{sw}}$, normalized to the critical current of a straight nanowire with the same width and thickness, $I_{\textrm{c}}$, of the meandering, standard fractal, arced fractal nanowires, and the optical absorptance of the arced fractal nanowires, as functions of the fill factor. We used a commercial software COMSOL Multiphysics based on finite-element method for these simulations. At the fill factor of 0.31 used in this work, the simulated optical absorptance  for the plane wave at the wavelength of 1550~nm is 96$\%$, and the normalized switching current of the arced fractal nanowire is 0.81. As a comparison, with the same fill factor, 0.31, the normalized switching currents of the meandering nanowire and the standard fractal nanowire, are 0.82 and 0.67, respectively, further evidencing that the current-crowding effect in the arced fractal nanowire is significantly reduced, compared with that in the standard fractal one.  Detailed comparison of the distribution of the supercurrent density of these three types of geometry is presented in Sec. S1 of SI. Fig. 1 (f) presents the simulated optical absorptance, \textit{A}, of the AF-SNAP  for the plane wave as functions of wavelength for two orthogonal linear polarization states, denoted as transverse-electric (TE) and transverse-magnetic (TM) states. \textit{A} peaks at 1550~nm and remains above 50\% in the wavelength range from 1490~nm to 1610~nm. The simulation shows that \textit{A} is completely polarization-independent.  To investigate the coupling efficiency, $\upeta_{\rm c}$, we simulated the optical modes of the optical micro-cavity without the nanowires. The simulated mode-field diameter (MFD) at the plane of nanowires coupled with a Corning high-index optical fiber (HIF, HI 1060 FLEX) used in this paper was 6.8~\textmu m, which ensured the $\upeta_{\rm c}$ of 99\% assuming perfect alignment. In comparison, the MFD at the plane of nanowires coupled with a Corning SMF-28e+ optical fiber (SMF) was 10.7~\textmu m and the corresponding coupling efficiency is 89\%. The detector coupled with HIF is more tolerable to spatial misalignment than the detector coupled with SMF. Detailed simulation regarding optical modes of the cavity is presented in Sec. S2 of SI. Electrically, the detector was composed of sixteen cascaded 2-SNAPs, as we used previously~\cite{meng_fractal_2020}, and Fig. 1 (g) presents the equivalent circuit diagram. The chips were etched into the keyhole shape by Bosch process for self-aligned packaging~\cite{miller_compact_2011}. Detailed fabrication process is presented in Sec. S3 of SI. Fig. 1 (h) shows a photograph of the resulting chip package and the inset presents a photograph of a keyhole-shaped chip. In this package, the detector was self-aligned and directly coupled with a HIF, with a MFD of 6.3$\pm$0.3~\textmu m, which was connected to SMF, with a MFD of 10.4$\pm$0.5~\textmu m, through an in-line mode-field adapter (Sec. S4 of SI).

\begin{figure*}[htbp!]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{fig2.pdf}
\caption{\label{fig2}Measured system detection efficiency (SDE) and polarization dependence of an arced fractal superconducting nanowire avalanche photodetector (AF-SNAP). (a)~Measured $\rm SDE_{\rm max}$, $\rm SDE_{\rm min}$, $\rm SDE_{\rm max}^{*}$ and $\rm SDE_{\rm min}^{*}$ as functions of the bias current, $I_{\rm b}$. (b) Zoom-in view of (a) at the high-bias regime with $I_{\rm b}$ exceeding 17.5~\textmu A. (c)~Polarization sensitivity, PS, calculated from the measured $\rm SDE_{\rm max}$ and $\rm SDE_{\rm min}$. (d) ~Polarization sensitivity, PS$^{*}$, calculated from the measured $\rm SDE_{\rm max}^{*}$ and $\rm SDE_{\rm min}^{*}$.(e) Measured spectrum of $\rm SDE_{\rm max}$, at the bias current of 21.17~\textmu A. (f) Zoom-in view of the $\rm SDE_{\rm max}$ spectrum near the central wavelength of 1575~nm. }
\end{figure*}

We used the experimental setup, schematically presented in Sec. S4 of SI, to measure system detection efficiency and the polarization dependence. The base temperature for these measurements was 2.0~K. At this temperature, $I_{\rm sw}=21.67$~\textmu A. A cryogenic, low-noise microwave amplifier was mounted on the 40-K stage and used to amplify the output pulses. We first measured the DCR as a function of the bias current (Sec. S5 of SI). Then, we biased the detector at 21.17~\textmu A, tuned the laser wavelength and found that the system detection efficiency peaked at 1575~nm for this particular detector. The wavelength deviation from the designed wavelength with the maximum optical absorptance is presumably due to deviations of the thicknesses of the deposited dielectric layers and the refractive indices. We then fixed the wavelength at 1575~nm and scanned the polarization states of the input light over the Poincaré sphere, and found the polarization states corresponding to $\rm {SDE}_{max}^{*}$ and $\rm SDE_{min}^{*}$; at these two polarization states, we measured $\rm {SDE}_{max}^{*}$ and $\rm SDE_{min}^{*}$ as the functions of the bias current [Fig. 2 (a)]. To accurately measure the SDE*, we calibrated each optical attenuator at each polarization state and each wavelength for these measurements (Sec. S6 of SI). In the high-bias regime ($I_{\textrm{b}}>20.17\ $\textmu A), as shown in Fig. 2 (a) and (b), the $\rm {SDE}^{*}$-$I_{\rm b}$ curves go upward, showing additional false counts other than the dark counts and showing unrealistic $\rm {SDE}^{*}$. Similar observations have previously been reported on meandering SNAPs~\cite{miki2017stable} and also SNSPDs~\cite{chen2015dark}.  We re-measured the $\rm {SDE}_{max}$ and $\rm {SDE}_{min}$ using the method based on time-correlated photon counting \cite{chen2015dark} to exclude the false counts. Note that we use SDE* to refer to the system detection efficiency directly measured with the CW laser [Fig. S5 (a) for the experimental setup], excluding the dark counts; and we use SDE to refer to the system detection efficiency measured by time-correlated photon counting, excluding all false counts [Fig. S5 (b) for the experimental setup]. The values of SDE and SDE* in Fig. 2 (a), (b), (e), and (f) take into account the fiber end-facet reflection that occurred when we used the optical power meter to measure the optical power coming out from the fiber to avoid under-calculating the optical power delivered to the cryogenic AF-SNAP system and, therefore, to avoid over-calculating SDE and SDE*~\cite{chang_detecting_2020} (Sec. S7 of SI). In Fig. 2, the associated error bars present the uncertainties with 68\% confidence ($k=1$)~\cite{gerrits2019calibration} of the measurements (Sec. S8 in SI). At the bias current of 19.83~\textmu A, $\rm {SDE}_{max}$ was measured to be 84$\pm$3$\%$, $\rm {SDE}_{min}$ was measured to be 82$\pm$3$\%$, and the resulting PS ($\rm {SDE}_{max}$/$\rm {SDE}_{min}$) was 1.02$^{+0.06}_{-0.02}$.  $\rm {SDE}_{max}^{*}$ and $\rm {SDE}_{min}^{*}$ were measured to be both 85$\pm$2$\%$, and the resulting PS* was 1.00$^{+0.03}_{-0}$. At this bias current, DCR  and false-count rate (FCR) were measured to be $2.1\times 10^{3}$~cps and $2.2\times 10^{3}$~cps, respectively (Sec. S5 of SI). At the bias current of 17.83~\textmu A,
$\rm {SDE}_{max}$ and $\rm {SDE}_{min}$ decreased to 80$\pm$3$\%$ and 78$\pm$3$\%$, respectively; $\rm {SDE}_{max}^{*}$ and $\rm {SDE}_{min}^{*}$ decreased to both 81$\pm$2$\%$ [Fig. 2 (b)]; and the measured FCR and DCR at this bias current were 3.7$\times10^2$~cps and 3.0$\times10^2$~cps, respectively. In the low-bias regime, $I_{\textrm{b}}<$15.83~\textmu A, the detector was unstable~\cite{marsili2012afterpulsing}, generating multiple false pulses with low amplitudes after detecting one photon [Sec. S9 of SI], and resulting in the pronounced deviation of SDE* from SDE. PS and PS$^{*}$, as functions of the bias current, were calculated and presented in Fig. 2 (c) and (d). Fig. 2 (e) presents $\rm {SDE}_{max}$ as a function of the wavelength, $\uplambda$, at the bias current of 21.17~\textmu A. The full width at half maxima (FWHM) of the spectrum of $\rm SDE_{max}$ is 110~nm, which is slightly smaller than the FWHM, 120~nm, of the designed spectrum of the optical absorptance [Fig. 1 (f)]. Fig. 2 (f) presents a zoom-in view of the $\rm {SDE}_{max}$ for the wavelengths ranging from 1560~nm to 1595~nm, in which SDE$_{\textrm{max}}>$75\%. We note that here, the measurements of SDE and SDE* were performed at relatively low average input-photon rates going into the cryogenic AF-SNAP system, 1.79$\times10^5$~s$^{-1}$ and 1.82$\times10^5$~s$^{-1}$, respectively.

\begin{figure}[htbp]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=6.5cm]{fig3.pdf}
\caption{\label{fig3}Timing properties of an arced fractal superconducting nanowire avalanche photodetector. (a) Measured $\rm SDE_{\rm max}$ and the switching current, $I_{\rm sw}$, as functions of the average input-photon rate. (b) Measured timing jitter as a function of the bias current, $I_{\rm b}$. Inset: measured time-delay histogram at the bias current of 21.67~\textmu A and the exponentially modified Gaussian (EMG) fitting, showing a full width at half maxima of the EMG fitting of 20.8~ps.}
\end{figure}

As the flux of the input photons increases, SDE would decrease. To characterize the SDE of the AF-SNAP at various input-photon rates, we measured the $\rm {SDE}_{max}$ as a function of the average input-photon rate (Sec. S10 of SI). Note that we used the oscilloscope  to measure the $\rm {SDE}_{max}$ in Fig.~3 (a) with the sampling rate of 2.5~Gsample/s and the time span per frame of 1~ms, because the maximum count rate of the input channel of the TAC is 12.5~Mcps, smaller than the photon-count rate we needed in this measurement. As the flux of the incident photon increases, the switching current decreases.  Each value of $\rm {SDE}_{max}$ in Fig.~3 (a) was measured at the bias current of 0.99$I_{\textrm{sw}}$.  The results show that when the average input-photon rate increases to 5.47$\times 10^7$~s$^{-1}$, $\rm {SDE}_{max}$ drops to 59\%, and the corresponding photon-count rate with FCR excluded was 26~Mcps.

Figure 3 (b) presents the measured timing jitter of the AF-SNAP by using a mode-locked fiber laser with the central wavelength of 1560~nm, a fast photodetector with 3-dB bandwidth of 40~GHz, and a real-time oscilloscope with bandwidth of 4~GHz. The experimental setup is schematically presented in Sec. S11 of SI. Each data point in Fig. 3 (b) is the FWHM of the exponentially modified Gaussian (EMG) fitting~\cite{sidorova2017physical} to the time-delay histograms [Fig. S12 (b)]. The lowest value of timing jitter was 20.8~ps at 21.67~\textmu A. The time-delay histogram and the EMG fitting is shown in the inset of Fig. 3 (b). Timing jitter monotonically increased with decreasing the bias current in the avalanche regime; for example, at $I_{\textrm{b}}=19.67$~\textmu A, timing jitter increased to 25.6~ps. As for other temporal properties, in the avalanche regime, the exponential fitting to the recovery edge of the output pulse shows a 1/$e$ time constant of 8.68~ns [Sec. S9 of SI].

We estimated the highest possible SDE for the current configuration of our system. The total transmittance of the two types of optical fibers connected through the mode-field adapter was measured to be 98\% at ambient temperature; the coupling efficiency, $\upeta_{\textrm{c}}$, between the high-index optical fiber and the photosensitive area was calculated to be 99\%, assuming perfect alignment; the optical absorptance, $A$, was simulated to be 96\% at the wavelength of 1550~nm; and the internal quantum efficiency, $P_{\rm{r}}$, was assumed to be 100\%. The product of these numbers gives an estimation of the highest possible SDE to be 93\%. The measured SDE, 84\%, is less than this estimation of the highest possible SDE presumably because (1) certain misalignment between the optical mode and the photosensitive area existed in the package and (2) $P_{\rm{r}}$ was less than 100\%.

\begin{figure*}[htbp]
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{fig4.pdf}
\caption{\label{figS7} Simulated visible, near- and mid-infrared spectra of optical absorptance and the polarization dependence for the meandering and arced fractal SNSPDs. (a) Simulated optical absorptance of meandering SNSPDs for TE- and TM-polarization states. (b) Simulated optical absorptance of arced fractal SNSPDs for TE- and TM-polarization states. (c) Calculated absorptance ratios of TE- and TM-polarization states for meandering and arced fractal SNSPDs.}
\end{figure*}

The geometry of arced fractal nanowires can be applied to SNSPDs/SNAPs targeted for other interesting wavelengths by similarly re-designing the optical structures of the devices.  In particular, the polarization dependence of SDE becomes more severe at longer wavelengths for meandering SNSPDs, and we think that the geometry presented in this work would be useful for creating SNSPDs working in the mid-infrared with low PS. We simulated and optimized the optical absorptance of meandering [Fig. 4 (a)] and arced fractal SNSPDs [Fig. 4 (b)] at some additional wavelengths, 0.6~\textmu m, 0.9~\textmu m, 1.3~\textmu m, 2~\textmu m, 3~\textmu m, 4~\textmu m, and 5~\textmu m, for TE and TM polarization states. The optical structures are similar to that in Fig. 1 (a) except for that two, rather than three, pairs of alternating top layers maximize the optical absorptance of a meandering SNSPD for TE polarization and except for the modified thicknesses of the dielectric layers for different wavelengths. The simulation took into account the wavelength dependence of the refractive indices of the materials~\cite{palik1998handbook,hu2011efficient,bright2013infrared}, which are listed in Sec. S12 of SI. The calculated absorptance ratios of these two polarizations are presented in Fig. 4 (c). At the longer wavelengths, the absorptance ratio for the meandering SNSPD increases whereas the absorptance ratio for the arced fractal SNSPD remains constantly 1. As the polarization-dependent optical absorptance is the dominant contributor to the PS, and as this work demonstrates that the AF-SNAPs can reach high SDE and high timing resolution at the near infrared, we think that arced fractal SNSPDs/SNAPs should be good device structures for polarization-insensitive single-photon detection in the mid-infrared, as well as the visible, spectral ranges.

\section*{CONCLUSION}

In conclusion, we demonstrated a fiber-coupled AF-SNAP with 84$\pm$3$\%$ SDE, 1.02$^{+0.06}_{-0.02}$ residual PS at the wavelength of 1575~nm, and 20.8-ps timing jitter. The SDE was boosted to the level comparable to the amorphous SNSPDs/SNAPs with low PS~\cite{reddy_exceeding_2019, verma_three-dimensional_2012,verma_high-efficiency_2015}, but the timing resolution of the NbTiN AF-SNAP exceeded (See Sec. S13 of SI for the comparison; we also note that at their reported SDEs, amorphous SNSPDs/SNAPs listed in Sec. S13 of SI exhibited lower DCR than the FCR and DCR of the NbTiN AF-SNAP that we report in this paper, but amorphous SNSPDs/SNAPs require lower temperatures). These combined properties have not been achieved with any single-photon detectors reported previously and are enabled by our comprehensive device design. In particular, the arced fractal geometry of the nanowires is the key, enabling innovation that reduces the current-crowding effect and increases the switching current to the level comparable to that in the meandering SNSPDs and therefore, enhances both SDE and timing resolution. Since fractal SNSPDs were introduced in 2015~\cite{Gu_fractal_2015}, although we kept enhancing their performances~\cite{meng_fractal_2020, chi_fractal_2018}, it had been elusive whether the fractal designs of the nanowires could be practical device structures; it is this work that gives a positive and unambiguous answer by showing that fractal SNSPDs are practical devices with excellent comprehensive performances, comparable to meandering SNSPDs, on top of which low PS is added.  The arced fractal geometry is equally  applicable  to  designing  SNSPDs  working  in  other  spectral  ranges, in particular, mid infrared. This demonstration is a detector coupled with a single-mode optical fiber, but the same geometry can be used for detectors coupled with few- or multi-mode optical fibers and for detecting single photons coming from free space. Additionally, the negligibly small PS of the arced fractal SNSPDs/SNAPs would eliminate the security loophole, due to polarization-dependent mismatch of SDE, in the QKD systems~\cite{wei2019implementation}. We believe that this work paves the way for polarization-insensitive single-photon detection with high SDE and high timing resolution.

\begin{acknowledgments}
The authors would like to thank Prof. Qing-Yuan Zhao at Nanjing University and Dr. Jin Chang at TU Delft for helpful discussions. This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (62071322, 11527808, 61505141); National Key Research and Development Program of China (2019YFB2203600); Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin City (19JCYBJC16900).\\
\end{acknowledgments}

\section*{Author Contributions}
X. H., Y. M., and K. Z. conceived the project. Y. M., K. Z., N. H., and X. H. designed the devices and performed numerical simulation. S. S., S. G., and V. Z. sputtered NbTiN films. K. Z., N. H., and X. L. fabricated the devices. Y. M. and L. X. performed the measurements. X. H., Y. M., K. Z., and N. H. analyzed the data and wrote the paper. All authors commented and revised the paper. X. H. supervised the project.\\

\section*{COMPETING INTERESTS}
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


text:
Amazon has attracted widespread criticism for poor working conditions by both current employees, who refer to themselves as Amazonians,[178] and former employees,[179][180] as well as the media and politicians. In 2011, it was publicized that at the Breinigsville, Pennsylvania warehouse, workers had to carry out work in 100 °F (38 °C) heat, resulting in employees becoming extremely uncomfortable and suffering from dehydration and collapse. Loading-bay doors were not opened to allow in fresh air, due to the company's concerns over theft.[181] Amazon's initial response was to pay for an ambulance to sit outside on call to cart away overheated employees.[181] The company eventually installed air conditioning at the warehouse.[182]
In July 1995, the company began service as an online bookstore.[31] The first book sold on Amazon.com was Douglas Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought.[32] In the first two months of business, Amazon sold to all 50 states and over 45 countries. Within two months, Amazon's sales were up to $20,000/week.[33] In October 1995, the company announced itself to the public.[34] In 1996, it was reincorporated in Delaware. Amazon issued its initial public offering of stock on May 15, 1997, at $18 per share, trading under the NASDAQ stock exchange symbol AMZN.[35]
That's a lot of people to compete with, but it can pay off. While smaller items like clothing, consumables, and books won't see that large of a price cut, Black Friday is still worth the pre-dawn alarm if you're after deals on big-ticket items. Think: Household appliances, grills, TVs, and other electronics. "Stores use the doorbusters to whip you into a bargain-shopping frenzy in hopes that you'll buy more than the advertised bargains," says Lisa Lee Freeman, co-host of the Hot Shopping Tips podcast. "The stores often barely break even or even lose money on doorbuster specials, but they make it back when shoppers stick around and buy other items that may not be such great deals."
Use this promo code and get a whopping $25 off and when you sign up for AmazonFresh (new customers) and place your first order for $100 or more. Try Amazon Fresh for 30 FREE days when you sign up today! With AmazonFresh, customers can combine grocery and other shopping into one seamless experience that easily fits into their busy lives. Customers can order a wide range of items, including everything from fruits, vegetables, meat, seafood, baked goods, and dairy products to beauty products and household goods. AmazonFresh offers same-day or next-day delivery!
Barnes & Noble sued Amazon on May 12, 1997, alleging that Amazon's claim to be "the world's largest bookstore" was false because it "...isn't a bookstore at all. It's a book broker." The suit was later settled out of court and Amazon continued to make the same claim.[36] Walmart sued Amazon on October 16, 1998, alleging that Amazon had stolen Walmart's trade secrets by hiring former Walmart executives. Although this suit was also settled out of court, it caused Amazon to implement internal restrictions and the reassignment of the former Walmart executives.[36]
Now when you shop with Amazon.com, a portion of your purchase will help support the work of the American Institute for Cancer Research. Through AmazonSmile, a website operated by Amazon, you can enjoy the same wide selection of products, low prices, and convenient shopping features as on Amazon.com. The difference is that when you shop on AmazonSmile, the AmazonSmile Foundation will donate 0.5% of the purchase price to AICR.
Perhaps the most prominent Prime perk, however, is access to Amazon Prime Video. The video on-demand service started in 2006 as Amazon Unboxed, but was rebranded in 2008 and integrated into the Prime service three years later, where it became a huge selling point for Amazon's annual subscription. It now boasts thousands of free TV shows, films, and games, all accessible on pretty much every screen available.
Make sure there are enough funds in the account. Amazon tends to cancel orders until all funds can be paid out of your account. Contact Amazon for full details of what you can do to help them create the order, so you can get it to ship. Amazon doesn't take any money from you until the item ships. For those that are not "fulfillment by Amazon," you'll have to wait at least 30 minutes for the item to complete the transaction - These Marketplace sellers don't see any of your order until that window is clear.
That same year, the company launched Dash buttons for instant reordering of products like laundry detergent, and it's more recently been investing in new services that let package-carrying couriers unlock the truck of your car and even your front door. Most recently, Amazon has signaled an intention to disrupt health care by purchasing online pharmaceutical startup PillPack. All of this has helped Amazon grow its North American retail operation at an unbelievable pace; annual sales for the division more than doubled from $50.8 billion in 2014 to $106.1 billion last year.
In September 2017, Amazon announced plans to locate a second headquarters in a metropolitan area with at least a million people.[45] Cities needed to submit their presentations by October 19, 2017 for the project called HQ2.[46] The $5 billion second headquarters, starting with 500,000 square feet and eventually expanding to as much as 8 million square feet, may have as many as 50,000 employees.[47] In 2017, Amazon announced it would build a new downtown Seattle building with space for Mary's Place, a local charity in 2020.[48]
The main con is obviously the cold, crowds, and chaos. But just because Black Friday traditionally means in-store shopping, doesn't mean that many retailers won't offer sales online. Last year, online sales hit 19.62 billion over the five-day period from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday. So if you don't want to wake up in the middle of the night to battle crowds and wait in long lines, check with your favorite stores to see if you can do it all from the comfort of your home.
Aside from creating the logo, A.J Khubani actually played a huge role in the advent of the infomercial as we know it today, which started with his Amber Vision sunglasses in 1987. More recently, his company sold the PedEgg, another As Seen On TV product which has sold 50 million units (in addition to other successful products like the As Seen On TV mop and the As Seen On TV hose). Anyone looking for the same level of success with their own product can pitch their idea to both Telebrands and As Seen On TV, Inc. although they only accept a few submissions each year.
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text:
Glacial Lake Davenport – 7-10-16
"I will never kick a rock"
Sam's Point in the Shawangunk Mountains May 24, 2018
Published on May 24, 2018 in Uncategorized by Robert Titus
Visions of a Hudson Valley geological past: Glaciers at Sam's Point
Watch out for moving ice
Robert and Johanna Titus
The Shawangunk Mountains are certainly among the most scenic locations in our region, and uniquely so. This ridge of resilient quartz sandstone towers above the Hudson Valley. One of its most popular locations is Sam's Point Preserve, near the south end of the mountains. It's thousands of acres are perched atop the mountains at elevations well above 2,000 feet. It's owned by the Open Space Institute and managed by the Nature Conservancy. In the past there were commercial uses of this land. There were abundant blueberries here, and people were hired, every summer, to come and pick them. Then, in addition, there have been several resort hotels.
But we came here to learn about the geology. How had the area's geological history given rise to this scenic wonder? We headed up the trail. It didn't take long to figure out why the Shawangunks are even there. All along the trail were massive outcrops of quartz sandstone and conglomerate. Quartz is very resistant to weathering and a mountain made out of such rocks will stand out as all other bedrock around it erodes away.
We got up to Sam's Point itself and soon learned much more about the geological history that went into creating the landscapes we see today. We arrived at the easternmost of two sandstone platforms, each seemingly designed for sight-seeing. Naturally, we were more interested in looking down at the rocks than gazing at the distant scenic views. There was some special things that caught our eyes.
We saw a polished sheen and faint scratches on the surface of the rock. We quickly recognized these to be common ice age features. Sam's Point has had a long ice age history, probably going back to the time when glaciers first came down the Hudson Valley. At that time this site had ice passing across it. The ice was dirty, carrying a great deal of sand along with it, mostly concentrated at its base. The sand, probably mixed with a lot of silt and clay, actually polished the bedrock. It sanded it down and planed it off.
There was more. The glaciers carried with them a large number of cobbles and boulders. As these were dragged across the surface, they gouged scratches into the bedrock. Geologists call these glacial striations. We have seen such surfaces many times so it was hardly a great revelation, but it did speak clearly to us of the fact that there had once been a sizable glacier here. Then we saw more.
We looked up and there was Sam's Point itself. It is another natural platform of quartz sandstone, but this one is bounded by a vertical cliff, a big one. Most people would enjoy it as a fine scenic overlook, but our eyes took us back into the Ice Age. Geologists call features like Sam's Point scour and pluck topographies. These are common and each is the product of the passage of the ice. The Hudson Valley glacier advanced from the north and, as it crossed Sam's Point, it scoured and striated that platform at the top of the cliff. That's the scour part. Then, as the ice continued south, it stuck to the bedrock and then yanked enormous masses of it loose and carried them off. That left gaping scars in the mountaintop and one of them is the cliff of Sam's Point. That is also the pluck part of this landscape. The cliff faces a compass direction of south-30 degrees-west. That, presumably, was the direction the glacier was traveling. We looked at the striations beneath us, and we had a compass. They had the same orientations.
Now we had a nice, coherent explanation for the topography of Sam's Point. That's what scientists call an elegant solution to a scientific problem. We would have been flushed with pride at having made such marvelous discoveries, were it not for the fact that thousands of other geologists had preceded us here, and they had, no doubt, all come to the very same conclusions.
Reach the authors at randjtitus@prodigy.net. Join their facebook page "The Catskill Geologist."
Robert Titus
Lake Schoharie at Vroman's Nose 1-16-20
Glacial Lake Albany 1-9-20
Jimmy Dolan Notch Jan. 2, 2020
Name that Tomb 12-27-2019
A River of Rock 12-19-19
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The top of a nose, the bottom of a lake? The Catskill
Glacial Lake Albany The Greenville Press; Mar. 20, 2003 Updated by Robert
JIMMY DOLAN NOTCH On the Rocks, The Woodstock Times Nov. 9, 1996
WHAT'S REALLY BURIED IN THE COLONEL'S TOMB? On the Rocks The Woodstock
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©The Catskill Geologist All Rights Reserved 2016


When choosing a career, you should always plan carefully and strive toward a definite goal to maximize your chances of landing a good job. This is very sane and reasonable advice that has been followed by few people that I know.
What I'm going to write about here is something a bit different: the idea that, in some cases, it might be better to figure it out along the way, starting from jobs that are more within reach. Rather than aiming directly for a specific new career when you're fresh out of academia, you might instead start with the more familiar work and then make your way toward that new career, testing your assumptions about it as you go: that is, to make your career path an experimental one.
Let's say you wanted to work in social media marketing. One avenue would be to apply directly for jobs or internships in that field. Another would be to apply for jobs closer to your current skill set – say at a university writing center, if you're an English PhD – that would allow you enough flexibility so that you could try out related skills on the job; you could try engaging your student population and marketing your services using social media, for example. It's possible you may find that you don't actually like the work as much as you thought, or that in the course of your job or interactions with others, you may find other, more interesting avenues.
My own story follows this latter thread, and this is also the case for many others I've encountered since leaving academia. As my PhD studies were winding down and I was stuck in a few months of unemployment, the one constant I heard over a couple dozen informational interviews – most of them with people outside of academia – was that not many people really understood or could explain how they landed in their current position. Their career searches weren't haphazard, but serendipity and nearby opportunities seemed much more determinant of where they landed than what they had studied, or where they had planned to be.
Not everyone has that experience, of course. When I worked as a staff member at UC Irvine, a significant share of fellow employees seemed to have degrees related to what they were doing, perhaps because of a big talent pool of graduates nearby and a strong belief in the importance of formal education. This is not always the case where I currently work – at Kiva.org, a global platform for microfinance and social enterprises.
It's a place where a lot of people made career moves that sound silly on paper, like abandoning good private sector jobs to wander around the globe on a small budget. Big transitions are far from exceptional, and a lot of my co-workers have even pursued academic careers at some point, either completing advanced degrees or dropping out. These include a biologist who became a relationship manager with our field partners, a linguistics PhD who became a software engineer, and a classical archaeologist who became a portfolio risk manager.
People don't usually make transitions like this immediately, however, and I think that is one of the traps of the non-academic PhD employment process: because your skills and experience are likely well behind top candidates for other jobs that you want, it's tempting to try and catch up by focusing, training, and building knowledge in those areas, because that is how you're used to working. You want to make the biggest first move that you reasonably can toward your new goal, but the reality is that you may need to retrain, or string together a series of jobs that take on more and more of the roles and tasks that you want to have.
The trouble is not just the amount of catching up; it's also whether you will actually like doing the work for 40-50 hours a week. Experience requirements are usually a hedge against risk for the employer, but they're also an important consideration for yourself: while having any job might sound good at times, there are still many things that can go wrong when you have a full-time position. Enjoyment of a job can be hard to predict, since it is determined not only the tasks but also the work environment (supervisors, culture, co-workers, even the office or commute).
After several months of frustrated pre- and post-PhD job searching, followed by a few months of unemployment, I found myself with a choice: take a tutoring job that drew on my experience as a writing instructor, and which I had some hesitation about, or keep training and pushing forward toward a new career that I hadn't really worked in yet, but had the some of the necessary skills for, and which sounded fun and cool. I took the first option with some ambivalence, but the ambivalence couldn't have been more misguided. I ended up loving the job, due to wonderful supervisors, co-workers, and an unexpected amount of flexibility and interesting side projects to work on.
Importantly, getting back in a full-time job exposed me to many different kinds of roles and tasks. With most, my interest waxed and then fairly quickly waned. But soon, I found a curious, durable passion that took me back to my days of coding as a kid: data science. It was an interest that meshed with a lifetime programming hobby, going up through a digital humanities dissertation focusing on the role of code in the interpretation of digital art, and also satisfied the thirst for knowledge and sense of discovery inculcated by my graduate study. By refocusing in this area, I was able to make a transition to another job more centered on data analysis, with the help of the ACLS Public Fellows program. In my next move, I could perhaps push further still.
When going through a career identity crisis, it's easy to get wrapped up in what you want to "be" rather than what you want to do. Even if I had known how much I enjoyed data analysis, I couldn't have applied for analyst jobs straight out of grad school; I certainly never would have been considered by any hiring committee, even if I had taken a few months of courses. By being reluctant to take offers that were closer to my current skill set in pursuit of some farther-off career, I almost closed myself off to important opportunities to experiment and grow.
The non-academic job search is paradoxical. You have no hope but to specialize if you want to compete with job candidates in a new field, and yet this pursuit may close you off to important experimentation and finding processes that are much more informative for your own career goals. If you can find opportunities using your networks that are more within reach, and will allow you some flexibility – even if they're not quite the transition you'd hoped for – they will provide you with valuable insight.
In fact, you might like your new job so much that you decide to stick around.
Rob Schoenbeck graduated from UC Irvine in 2012 with a PhD in English, specializing in interactive digital art and the digital humanities more broadly. He came to Kiva.org in the fall of 2014 as Partnerships Evaluation Manager, where he designs impact assessments, sets standards for the organization's global development research process, grinds up data on Kiva's global impact and operational sustainability, and (most recently) has begun work migrating Kiva's data models to a new analytics platform.


Not only the appeal of the sun, natural, and historical beauties but also architectural features and business advantages of the accommodation facilities emerge as important factors in tourism development. Holiday villages differ from other types of accommodation facilities in terms of their functions and services. It is important to provide tourists acceptable levels of comfort in holiday villages offering various functions. One of these comfort conditions is acoustic comfort, which involves noise control. Noise emitted from various indoor and outdoor facilities is the main component impacting acoustic comfort in holiday villages. In this study, a holiday village in Antalya, Turkey with an open area of 120,000 m2 was examined to identify noise exposure conditions of outdoor areas. Pools, restaurants, animation areas, playgrounds, and courts are the main outdoor noise sources in this holiday village. The noise emitted by these sources during daytime (Ld) and evening time (Le) are shown in noise maps. The open areas affected by 65 LAeq noise level extend to an area of 55,500 and 21,000 m2 during Ld and Le, respectively. With the noise barriers around the main noise sources, impacted open areas are reduced by 13% in Ld and 12% in Le. The results of this study clearly reveals the importance of resolving the issue of environmental noise in the most efficient and cost-effective way in terms of settlement and planning, especially in areas with dominant noise sources like holiday villages.
Danish EPA (1984) Danish environmental protection agency guideline no. 5/1984. http://eng.mst.dk/media/mst/Attachments/8750352874_Vejledningframiljostyrelsen_eksternstoj.pdf. Accessed 10 April 2018.


The Thiry Day Challenge - Amazing!
Have you heard of The Thirty Day Challenge?
This is truly one amazing program if you are looking to make money online. Everyday for thirty days you get emails that take you step by step from developing your idea to a building a website and then to marketing your site to the world.
These guys from the 30 Day Challenge share incredible information. Their goal is to teach you how you can make your first $10 online within 30 days.
Yes! Is that the program by Ed Dale? I found him and the 30 Day Challenge on YouTube. It is fantastic. I`ve learned so much just from the few videos I`ve watched. I opted in and keep his daily email links in a folder on my browser for future viewing.
You can poke around and watch some of the videos. Highly recommend them.
I heartily recommend the 30 Day Challenge to anyone interested in internet marketing. I would recommend this to both novices and advanced members of the internet marketing community. I have never met Ed Dale, but I have listened to hours of his material. He (and his team) are responsible for putting some very effective tools in the hands of the willing/able internet marketers. Hats off to you Ed.
I`ve never heard of it - but now i have!


Talking with Chanel Matney, a neuroscience graduate student in the Brown Lab, can send your mind racing in many different directions as she discusses her passions and interests and gives sage advice. A native Marylander from a family with diverse career paths ranging from medicine to performance art, Chanel is the sole basic science researcher. Though her family has a difficult time differentiating a neuroscientist from a neurologist, she is remarkably adept at describing the questions and interests that drive her.
To answer these questions, Chanel studies how neural pathways guide sensory information. Specifically, she is interested in the pathway between the cerebral cortex and the thalamus, a pathway known to be integral in the processing of incoming sensory information. Currently, through a variety of techniques, she is testing the hypothesis that the neurons in this pathway are not a homogenous group but rather fall into a number of subpopulations, each of which have their own function in information processing.
This project is fitting for Chanel, as it is obvious that her own interests, like the very neurons she studies, are not of the same group. Each passion is rooted in a different field, including law, neuroscience and the arts, creating a unique part of Chanel and giving rise to a beautiful network of ideas.
Interested parties stay tuned; she is working on a podcast and blog!
One Comment on "Neuroscience Graduate Student Driven by How the Brain 'Sees'"
You have captured this young lady but definitely. I am proud to know her and call her a dear relative. My guess is that we will be reading more and more about her and her research for a long time to come.


LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Assured Guaranty (Europe) plc (AGE)* announced that it has guaranteed principal and interest payments on approximately £90 million of bonds issued by Mount Oswald Colleges LLP. The bond issuance will finance the construction of two new colleges designed for student residence at Durham University (the University)**. As a result of the guarantee from AGE*, the bonds are rated AA by S&P Global Ratings.
The 46-year inflation-linked bond, whose pricing on 14 August 2018 took advantage of low long-term rates, was issued as a private placement into the UK market.
Interserve will build the halls within two years, and Campus Living Villages (CLV) will undertake facilities management services over the project term. Equitix is the main sponsor of the project company, with CLV as a co-sponsor. The University has a 15% stake in the project company.
The two new colleges financed by the bonds will provide a total of approximately 1,000 new bedspaces for Durham students. Both colleges will be located on campus, next to existing colleges, and are designed to house both undergraduate and postgraduate students in a mix of en-suite and townhouse units.
AGE* guarantees timely payment of scheduled principal and interest to bondholders throughout the life of the bonds, in accordance with the terms of its financial guarantees.
The advisers of AGE* on the deal were Ashurst (legal adviser), Aecom (technical adviser), Cushman & Wakefield (demand adviser) and Willis (insurance adviser). Traderisks acted as bond lead manager.
** THE BONDS WERE NOT FOR SALE IN THE UNITED STATES, CANADA, AUSTRALIA OR JAPAN NOR SOLD FOR BENEFICIAL OWNERSHIP BY PERSONS IN THOSE JURISDICTIONS.
Any forward-looking statements made in this press release reflect Assured Guaranty's current views with respect to future events and are made pursuant to the safe harbour provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth in these statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those resulting from Assured Guaranty's inability to execute its strategies; the demand for Assured Guaranty's financial guarantees; further actions that the rating agencies may take with respect to Assured Guaranty's financial strength ratings; adverse developments in Assured Guaranty's guaranteed portfolio; and other risks and uncertainties that have not been identified at this time, management's response to these factors, and other risk factors identified in AGL's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which are made as of 17 August 2018. Assured Guaranty undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.