Arm is the industry's leading supplier of microprocessor technology, offering the widest range of microprocessor cores to address the performance, power and cost requirements for almost all application markets. Combining a vibrant ecosystem with more than 1,000 partners delivering silicon, development tools and software, and over 90 billion processors shipped, our technology is at the heart of a computing and connectivity revolution that is transforming the way people live and businesses operate.

In the role you are a part of the Austin-based CPU performance architecture team, which is part of Arm's worldwide CPU development group. This diverse engineering-centric team defines, designs, and validates Arm processor IP. Arm-based processors are the brains in billions of diverse electronic devices and we collaborate with the world's leading technology companies.

As an authority —think Senior/Staff/Principal type engineer-- on our team of about a dozen senior engineers, you tackle next-generation Arm Cortex-A class CPU microarchitecture design and performance analysis. You will be a part of a growing organization with a validated business model and a strong plan for continued future growth. Your team focuses on engineering using the latest tools and methodologies with an eye for innovation and creative problem solving.

If you consider yourself creative, innovative, a problem solver and you would like to influence and contribute to defining the next-generation CPUs that will be used in billions of devices worldwide, you will enjoy working and developing your professional career with us.

We are looking for graduate engineers who are passionate about understanding the workloads of the future to join our CPU benchmarking team.

Our benchmarking team is in charge of interacting with product managers, partners, CPU leads and performance modelling leads to understand the most relevant applications industry will use in the future and help to characterise and reproduce them on cutting-edge environments ranging from simulation to emulation or FPGA. The team is also responsible for investigating novel techniques to facilitate the utilisation of benchmarks that are relentlessly growing in complexity and make them suitable for the exploration of next generation CPU cores and systems.

As part of the CPU team, we will collaborate to innovate and find engineering solutions to the challenges of tomorrow in areas like IoT, automotive, servers or mobile; we will make devices smarter and more useful to society. Your contributions will help to build new technology that will influence the lives of billions of people!

Graduate on CPU Benchmark Role at Arm

We have exciting opportunities in the CPU group, where you will be part of a highly motivated team that helps define new generations of mainstream processors.

You will have real responsibilities from day one and you will get support and mentorship from specialists that will help you succeed and develop your career. Through teamwork, training, and dedication to personal development, we ensure that every graduate matures to become a specialist in the field.

You will work in a multi-site, multi-cultural environment and will have the opportunity to work on different projects.

What will your role be?

• You will contribute to the definition of the next generation of Arm’s IP products, identifying and enabling new benchmarks, and proposing new insights on methodologies that could improve current practice in benchmark characterisation and simulation.
• Together with marketing, technical leads, modelling leads and partners we will align on applications that will represent market requirements for future products.
• You will propose, develop and maintain innovative ways of making relevant applications and benchmarks suitable for sophisticated simulation platforms.
• You will collaborate with technical leads, performance modelling engineers and designers while doing performance analysis on existing and future designs.
• Explore new methodologies and novel software techniques that will improve modelling efficiency.

Are you creative, innovative, and passionate about new technologies?

Would you like to help us continue deploying billions of successful devices around the world, many of them enabling safety critical environments such as automotive or robotics?

We are looking for outstanding graduates to be part of our STL (Software Test Library) development team within our CPU group in Cambridge, UK. As part of your responsibilities, you will develop safety-critical software (often written in assembly and C) tightly couple with the internals of CPU design. You will also identify and build creative hardware features inside the CPU that improve the effectiveness of our solutions for segments where safety is of paramount importance without negatively affecting the power, performance and/or area of the core.

STLs execute opportunistically when the hardware is not fully utilized and perform continuous in-depth hardware diagnostics while the system is in operation. It identifies and notifies about functional misbehaviors derived from permanent faults triggered by natural hardware wear-out, or other uncontrollable factors before they may translate into catastrophic system failures with undesirable and even dangerous consequences.

If you are passionate about understanding the interaction between hardware and software, have used some HDL language (Verilog or VHDL) and can program on assembly and/or C, this could be an excellent opportunity to start your career with an exciting challenge. We work on a multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary environment that will motivate you to further improve your skills and also contribute and get deep knowledge on Arm CPU designs and development processes. Engineers with large experience in the field will coach you and help you navigate and learn the complexities of the CPU internals and the mechanisms to meet expectations on safety from emerging markets.

STL is a fundamental piece of the development strategy for sectors with strong safety requirements like automotive, health or robotics. Working with us, you are going to deeply influence and interact on the development of successful solutions for this sectors in conjunction with our multidisciplinary team.

We are an equal opportunity employer with an open culture and value diversity. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

Role Responsibilities

We have exciting opportunities in the CPU group for graduates, where you will become part of a highly motivated team that develops the STLs for Arm CPUs.

You will have real responsibilities from day one and you will get support and guidance from experts that will help you succeed and develop your career. Through teamwork, training, and dedication to personal development, we ensure that every graduate matures to become an expert in the field.

You will work in a multi-site, multi-cultural environment and will have the opportunity to work on different projects.

As a member of the team we will share the following responsibilities:

• We will define the STL design specifications, verification plan and the safety documents as per ISO26262 and IEC61508.
• We will build diagnostic software to target CPU sub-units like ALU, pre-fetchers, branch predictors, cache controllers, memory systems, etc.
• We will envision hardware design features aiming to improve STL effectiveness on ongoing and future CPU developments. We will also get along with the rest of the designers to implement them with minimum impact on area, performance and power.
• We will prove that the software as well as the STL-specific hardware features meet the specifications and work properly on different CPU configurations.
• We will generate the safety analysis of the STLs.

From foundry-inspired knobs to playful wall hooks, Viefe's new hardware makes it easy to add the finishing touches to a space.

Shakespeare’s Globe’s Richard III, directed by Elle While, is an entertaining, poignant, and timely rendition of a history play...

The Latino Christian vote shifted strongly in support of President-elect Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, according to exit polls.

Richard Russo is the Pulitzer prize-winning author of Empire Falls and Nobody’s Fool - both were adapted into films starring Paul Newman. He returns to the fictional working class town of North Bath for his most recent novel, Everybody's Fool. We sat down with him on the darkened stage of an eerily empty theater before an extended interview at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, NH. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this electrifying novel, Richard Price, the author of Clockers and a writer on The Wire , gives us razor-sharp anatomy of an ever-changing Harlem. East Harlem, 2008. In an instant, a five-story tenement collapses into a fuming hill of rubble, pancaking the cars parked in front and coating the street with a thick layer of ash. As the city's rescue services and media outlets respond, the surrounding neighborhood descends into chaos. At day's end, six bodies are recovered, but many of the other

14-year-old figure skater Maria Simonova was rushed to hospital after she fell on ice hard during a tournament in Moscow. Male skater dropped Simonova while holding her on support. The girl fell hard on ice and hit her head. After the fall, she was able to get up and finish the programme. She did not come to the traditional kiss-and-cry room after the performance and asked for help.

The English language is challenging due to complicated grammar, inconsistent sentence structure and colloquial idioms that it doesn't share with related languages. However, English is a target language that sees significantly more resources and opportunities for immersion than many other languages.

You're driving out of a parking lot when you suddenly feel that you're having problems with the power steering. Learn about how to diagnose power steering problems in this article.

Challenge yourself with some of the hardest riddles we could find so you can keep your mind sharp! As you tackle these tricky brain teasers, you'll engage your mind in a way that few other activities can.

Luckily, your paint spills do not have to taunt you forever. Here are a few easy methods to remedy that painting accident on your hardwood floors.

To fully exploit ultra-short X-ray pulse durations routinely available at X-ray free-electron lasers to follow out-of-equilibrium dynamics, inherent arrival time fluctuations of the X-ray pulse with an external perturbing laser pulse need to be measured. In this work, two methods of arrival time measurement were compared to measure the arrival time jitter of hard X-ray pulses. The methods were photoelectron streaking by a THz field and a transient refractive index change of a semiconductor. The methods were validated by shot-to-shot correction of a pump–probe transient reflectivity measurement. An ultimate shot-to-shot full width at half-maximum error between the devices of 19.2 ± 0.1 fs was measured.

In the scope of the latest upgrade of the Swiss Light Source, five hard X-ray beamlines will be constructed or rebuilt. To use synergies between these beamline projects, a concept is developed here for hard X-ray beamlines that is tailored to the new storage ring. Herein, this concept is described from the source, via the front end, to the beamline optics. The latter will be outlined in detail, including a new and modular concept for hard X-ray monochromators, focusing optics and heat-load management. With a simple, easy-to-operate and robust beamline design, the new beamlines will greatly profit from the increased brilliance of the new storage ring. The performance increase is up to four orders of magnitude, while the beamline concept allows for the broad application of experimental techniques, from propagation-based methods, such as phase-contrast tomography, to imaging techniques with nanometre resolution. At the same time, spectroscopy experiments are possible as well as high-performance serial X-ray crystallography.

Nanoscale structural and electronic heterogeneities are prevalent in condensed matter physics. Investigating these heterogeneities in 3D has become an important task for understanding material properties. To provide a tool to unravel the connection between nanoscale heterogeneity and macroscopic emergent properties in magnetic materials, scanning transmission X-ray microscopy (STXM) is combined with X-ray magnetic circular dichroism. A vector tomography algorithm has been developed to reconstruct the full 3D magnetic vector field without any prior noise assumptions or knowledge about the sample. Two tomographic scans around the vertical axis are acquired on single-crystalline Nd2Fe14B pillars tilted at two different angles, with 2D STXM projections recorded using a focused 120 nm X-ray beam with left and right circular polarization. Image alignment and iterative registration have been implemented based on the 2D STXM projections for the two tilts. Dichroic projections obtained from difference images are used for the tomographic reconstruction to obtain the 3D magnetization distribution at the nanoscale.

X-ray gas monitors (XGMs) are operated at the European XFEL for non-invasive single-shot pulse energy measurements and average beam-position monitoring. The underlying measurement principle is the photo-ionization of rare gas atoms at low gas pressures and the detection of the photo-ions and photo-electrons created. These are essential for tuning and sustaining self-amplified spontaneous emission (SASE) operation, machine radiation safety, and sorting single-shot experimental data according to pulse energy. In this paper, the first results from XGM operation at photon energies up to 30 keV are presented, which are far beyond the original specification of this device. Here, the Huge Aperture MultiPlier (HAMP) is used for single-shot pulse energy measurements since the standard X-ray gas monitor detectors (XGMDs) do not provide a sufficient signal-to-noise ratio, even at the highest operating gas pressures. A single-shot correlation coefficient of 0.98 is measured between consecutive XGMs operated with HAMP, which is as good as measuring with the standard XGMD detectors. An intra-train non-linearity of the HAMP signal is discovered, and operation parameters to mitigate this effect are studied. The upper repetition rate limit of HAMP operation at 2.25 MHz is also determined. Finally, the possibilities and limits for future XGM operation at photon energies up to 50 keV are discussed.

The Biomedical Imaging and Therapy facility of the Canadian Light Source comprises two beamlines, which together cover a wide X-ray energy range from 13 keV up to 140 keV. The beamlines were designed with a focus on synchrotron applications in preclinical imaging and veterinary science as well as microbeam radiation therapy. While these remain a major part of the activities of both beamlines, a number of recent upgrades have enhanced the versatility and performance of the beamlines, particularly for high-resolution microtomography experiments. As a result, the user community has been quickly expanding to include researchers in advanced materials, batteries, fuel cells, agriculture, and environmental studies. This article summarizes the beam properties, describes the endstations together with the detector pool, and presents several application cases of the various X-ray imaging techniques available to users.

The diagnostics of X-ray beam properties has a critical importance at the European X-ray Free-Electron Laser facility. Besides existing diagnostic components, utilization of a diamond sensor was proposed to achieve radiation-hard, non-invasive beam position and pulse energy measurements for hard X-rays. In particular, with very hard X-rays, diamond-based sensors become a useful complement to gas-based devices which lose sensitivity due to significantly reduced gas cross-sections. The measurements presented in this work were performed with diamond sensors consisting of an electronic-grade single-crystal chemical-vapor-deposition diamond with position-sensitive resistive electrodes in a duo-lateral configuration. The results show that the diamond sensor delivers pulse-resolved X-ray beam position data at 2.25 MHz with an uncertainty of less than 1% of the beam size. To our knowledge this is the first demonstration of pulse-resolved position measurements at the MHz rate using a transmissive diamond sensor at a free-electron laser facility. It can therefore be a valuable tool for X-ray free-electron lasers, especially for high-repetition-rate machines, enabling applications such as beam-based alignment and intra-pulse-train position feedback.

The development of hard X-ray nanoprobe techniques has given rise to a number of experimental methods, like nano-XAS, nano-XRD, nano-XRF, ptychography and tomography. Each method has its own unique data processing algorithms. With the increase in data acquisition rate, the large amount of generated data is now a big challenge to these algorithms. In this work, an intuitive, user-friendly software system is introduced to integrate and manage these algorithms; by taking advantage of the loosely coupled, component-based design approach of the system, the data processing speed of the imaging algorithm is enhanced through optimization of the parallelism efficiency. This study provides meaningful solutions to tackle complexity challenges faced in synchrotron data processing.

To date, accurate modelling of the solvation process is challenging, often over-simplifying the solvent–solute interactions. The interplay between the molecular arrangement associated with the solvation process and crystal nucleation has been investigated by analysis of the piezo-solvatochromic behaviour of Reichardt's dye, ET(1), in methanol, ethanol and acetone under high pressure. High-pressure single-crystal X-ray diffraction and UV–Vis spectroscopy reveal the impact of solute–solvent interactions on the optical properties of ET(1). The study underscores the intricate relationship between solvent properties, molecular conformation and crystal packing. The connection between liquid and solid phases emphasizes the capabilities of high-pressure methods for expanding the field of crystal engineering. The high-pressure environment allowed the determination of the crystal structures reported here that are built from organic molecules fourfold solvated with ethanol or methanol: ET(1)·4CH3OH and ET(1)·4C2H5OH·H2O. The observed piezo-solvatochromic effects highlight the potential of ET(1) in nonlinear optoelectronics and expand the application of solvatochromic chemical indicators to pressure sensors.

Light–oxygen–voltage (LOV) domains are small photosensory flavoprotein modules that allow the conversion of external stimuli (sunlight) into intra­cellular signals responsible for various cell behaviors (e.g. phototropism and chloro­plast relocation). This ability relies on the light-induced formation of a covalent thio­ether adduct between a flavin chromophore and a reactive cysteine from the protein environment, which triggers a cascade of structural changes that result in the activation of a serine/threonine (Ser/Thr) kinase. Recent developments in time-resolved crystallography may allow the activation cascade of the LOV domain to be observed in real time, which has been elusive. In this study, we report a robust protocol for the production and stable delivery of microcrystals of the LOV domain of phototropin Phot-1 from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii (CrPhotLOV1) with a high-viscosity injector for time-resolved serial synchrotron crystallography (TR-SSX). The detailed process covers all aspects, from sample optimization to data collection, which may serve as a guide for soluble protein preparation for TR-SSX. In addition, we show that the crystals obtained preserve the photoreactivity using infrared spectroscopy. Furthermore, the results of the TR-SSX experiment provide high-resolution insights into structural alterations of CrPhotLOV1 from Δt = 2.5 ms up to Δt = 95 ms post-photoactivation, including resolving the geometry of the thio­ether adduct and the C-terminal region implicated in the signal transduction process.

Owing to their exceptional properties, hard materials such as advanced ceramics, metals and composites have enormous economic and societal value, with applications across numerous industries. Understanding their microstructural characteristics is crucial for enhancing their performance, materials development and unleashing their potential for future innovative applications. However, their microstructures are unambiguously hierarchical and typically span several length scales, from sub-ångstrom to micrometres, posing demanding challenges for their characterization, especially for in situ characterization which is critical to understanding the kinetic processes controlling microstructure formation. This review provides a comprehensive description of the rapidly developing technique of ultra-small angle X-ray scattering (USAXS), a nondestructive method for probing the nano-to-micrometre scale features of hard materials. USAXS and its complementary techniques, when developed for and applied to hard materials, offer valuable insights into their porosity, grain size, phase composition and inhomogeneities. We discuss the fundamental principles, instrumentation, advantages, challenges and global status of USAXS for hard materials. Using selected examples, we demonstrate the potential of this technique for unveiling the microstructural characteristics of hard materials and its relevance to advanced materials development and manufacturing process optimization. We also provide our perspective on the opportunities and challenges for the continued development of USAXS, including multimodal characterization, coherent scattering, time-resolved studies, machine learning and autonomous experiments. Our goal is to stimulate further implementation and exploration of USAXS techniques and inspire their broader adoption across various domains of hard materials science, thereby driving the field toward discoveries and further developments.

A hard X-ray single-shot spectrometer comprising thin, bent Si crystals has been developed for the Pohang Accelerator Laboratory X-ray Free-Electron Laser (XFEL), for detailed analysis of ultrafast 4.5–17 keV XFEL pulses with a high spectral resolution. This instrument facilitates shot-to-shot spectral structure monitoring and optimization of the operating conditions of the XFEL owing to its ability to provide comprehensive data on the spectral properties and fluctuations of self-amplified spontaneous emission, monochromatic and seeded XFEL modes.

we introduce a novel approach for a real-time dual-frequency feedback system, which has been firstly used at the hard X-ray nanoprobe beamline of SSRF. The BiBEST can then efficiently stabilize X-ray beam position and stability in parallel, making use of different optical systems in the beamline.

Here, a recently commissioned five-analyzer Johann spectrometer at the Inner Shell Spectroscopy beamline (8-ID) at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II) is presented. Designed for hard X-ray photon-in/photon-out spectroscopy, the spectrometer achieves a resolution in the 0.5–2 eV range, depending on the element and/or emission line, providing detailed insights into the local electronic and geometric structure of materials. It serves a diverse user community, including fields such as physical, chemical, biological, environmental and materials sciences. This article details the mechanical design, alignment procedures and data-acquisition scheme of the spectrometer, with a particular focus on the continuous asynchronous data-acquisition approach that significantly enhances experimental efficiency.

We present first hard X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (HAXPES) results of aqueous salt solutions and dispersions of gold nanoparticles in liquid cells equipped with specially designed microfabricated thin silicon nitride membranes, with thickness in the 15–25 nm range, mounted in a high-vacuum-compatible environment. The experiments have been performed at the HAXPES endstation of the GALAXIES beamline at the SOLEIL synchrotron radiation facility. The low-stress membranes are fabricated from 100 mm silicon wafers using standard lithography techniques. Platinum alignment marks are added to the chips hosting the membranes to facilitate the positioning of the X-ray beam on the membrane by detecting the corresponding photoemission lines. Two types of liquid cells have been used, a static one built on an Omicron-type sample holder with the liquid confined in the cell container, and a circulating liquid cell, in which the liquid can flow in order to mitigate the effects due to beam damage. We demonstrate that the membranes are mechanically robust and able to withstand 1 bar pressure difference between the liquid inside the cell and vacuum, and the intense synchrotron radiation beam during data acquisition. This opens up new opportunities for spectroscopic studies of liquids.

Hard X-ray microscopes with 20–30 nm spatial resolution ranges are an advanced tool for the inspection of materials at the nanoscale. However, the limited efficiency of the focusing optics, for example, a Fresnel zone plate (ZP) lens, can significantly reduce the power of a nanoprobe. Despite several reports on ZP lenses that focus hard X-rays with 20 nm resolution – mainly constructed by zone-doubling techniques – a systematic investigation into the limiting factors has not been reported. We report the structural effects on the focusing and imaging efficiency of 20–30 nm-resolution ZPs, employing a modified beam-propagation method. The zone width and the duty cycle (zone width/ring pitch) were optimized to achieve maximum efficiency, and a comparative analysis of the zone materials was conducted. The optimized zone structures were used in the fabrication of Pt-hydrogen silsesquioxane (HSQ) ZPs. The highest focusing efficiency of the Pt-HSQ-ZP with a resolution of 30 nm was 10% at 7 keV and >5% in the range 6–10 keV, whereas the highest efficiency of the Pt-HSQ-ZP with a resolution of 20 nm was realized at 7 keV with an efficiency of 7.6%. Optical characterization conducted at X-ray beamlines demonstrated significant enhancement of the focusing and imaging efficiency in a broader range of hard X-rays from 5 keV to 10 keV, demonstrating the potential application in hard X-ray focusing and imaging.

SPring-8-II is a major upgrade project of SPring-8 that was inaugurated in October 1997 as a third-generation synchrotron radiation light source. This upgrade project aims to achieve three goals simultaneously: achievement of excellent light source performance, refurbishment of aged systems, and significant reduction in power consumption for the entire facility. A small emittance of 50 pm rad will be achieved by (1) replacing the existing double-bend lattice structure with a five-bend achromat one, (2) lowering the stored beam energy from 8 to 6 GeV, (3) increasing the horizontal damping partition number from 1 to 1.3, and (4) enhancing horizontal radiation damping by installing damping wigglers in long straight sections. The use of short-period in-vacuum undulators allows ultrabrilliant X-rays to be provided while keeping a high-energy spectral range even at the reduced electron-beam energy of 6 GeV. To reduce power consumption, the dedicated, aged injector system has been shut down and the high-performance linear accelerator of SACLA, a compact X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) facility, is used as the injector of the ring in a time-shared manner. This allows the simultaneous operation of XFEL experiments at SACLA and full/top-up injection of the electron beam into the ring. This paper overviews the concept of the SPring-8-II project, the system design of the light source and the details of the accelerator component design.

Good morning. I am Richard Bonnie, chair of the Committee on Developing a Strategy to Reduce and Prevent Underage Drinking.

The Institute of Medicine today presented the 2012 Gustav O. Lienhard Award to Donald M. Berwick, a physician whose work has catalyzed a national movement to improve health care quality and safety.

The Institute of Medicine today presented the Gustav O. Lienhard Award to Linda Aiken, Claire M. Fagin Leadership Professor of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, for her rigorous research demonstrating the importance of nursing care and work environments in achieving safe, effective, patient-centered, and affordable health care.

For his pioneering role in national health policy and health services research, the National Academy of Medicine today announced Stuart Altman is the recipient of the 2018 Gustav O. Lienhard Award for Advancement of Health Care.

For her role in transforming a safety net hospital into a national model for high-quality, cost-efficient health care, the National Academy of Medicine today announced Patricia Gabow is the recipient of the 2019 Gustav O. Lienhard Award for Advancement of Health Care.

For his role as a leader of federal research and policy on infectious diseases and, in particular, for his deft, scientifically grounded leadership in shaping an effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Academy of Medicine today announced Anthony S. Fauci is the recipient of the 2020 Gustav O. Lienhard Award for Advancement of Health Care.

In a meeting with IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, held earlier this week, the companies said the import licensing requirement puts "unnecessary pressure" since there is no ecosystem in place in India at present to manufacture these products such as laptops, tablets and servers, executives present at the meeting told ET.

Industry executives have informed the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) about the extended timelines for acquiring BIS (Bureau of Indian Standards) certification. This is due to the mandatory separate tests for battery packs installed on laptops, after running viability tests for making the products with local contract manufacturers.

The Indian government is considering asking importers of IT hardware to provide an international certification, attesting that their products are from trusted sources. This move is in response to concerns raised by countries such as China, the US, South Korea, and Taiwan about India's restrictions on the import of these products.

Myke and Grey talk about the devices they've chosen to get things done in their lives. From their office set ups, to their everyday carry items, to their entertainment devices, fitness products, and more.

Bright, integrated backlit display enables easy operation for weighing applications.

Carl's Jr. and Hardee's are introducing their brand-new Hand-Breaded Chicken Sandwich platform, reimagining their famous Hand-Breaded Chicken Tenders into new craveable builds available to fans nationwide morning, noon and night.

The California Almond Board recently hosted a virtual orchard tour for media and nutrition professionals, from May 18–19, 2021.

Hardee's is offering the biscuits all day long in packs of one, two, or four.

Hardee's will offer its Made from Scratch Buttermilk Biscuits in the shape of a heart on all breakfast sandwiches Feb. 1–14.

Hardy Process Solutions announced a new version of the HI 6600 Modular Sensor Systems for PROFIBUS-DP control systems.

The global CEO of Edelman talks about PR’s strong performance in Cannes, his agency’s financial year, areas of interest for acquisitions and much more.

My neighbor, Tony, loves his house. We live in a low-crime neighborhood on Long Island but Tony is always on guard against miscreants. He has a Ring camera on every side of his house, mounted high so they’re protected from spray paint. Some of the cameras turn on klieg lights and alarms if I step outside at night to toss the trash in the can. 

My shop teacher was a wiry man who loved hand tools. We spent a week making a buzzer base. He taught us how to saw, sand and varnish. He introduced me to a Brace & Bit hand drill and went on and on about how this was better than an electric drill. “Can you feel the wood? It’s alive!” he said, and I could.

The winner will be selected based on submissions scored on authenticity, originality and desperation for a true vacation away from family drama, the company says.