Latest news with #Scotty
Sky News AU
17 hours ago
- Business
- Sky News AU
'Ridiculous': The Block host Scott Cam lashes out at Adrian 'Lambo Guy' Portelli in extraordinary spray after show's controversial billionaire hung up his bidding paddle
Scotty Cam has declared that he will not miss Adrian Portelli at The Block auctions, as his absence will only allow more families to purchase houses. Portelli, also known as "Lambo Guy" for the luxury vehicle he's known to drive to the show's auctions, announced he would retire from bidding after the 2024 season finale, in which the billionaire businessman, 35, purchased the lot for a massive $15.3 million. The owner of luxury giveaway company LMCT+ had dropped a total of $31.68 million on The Block houses since his first appearance on the hit renovation series in 2022, where he posed as a 'phoney' buyer to up bids. He earned a reputation as a predictable figure at the season finales thereafter, thanks to his polished appearance, designer accessories, and habit of arriving in a yellow Lamborghini to snap up the homes. The host of The Block on Monday said he "won't be nervous at all" at the next auction later this year after Portelli dominated the previous two. 'You know, we might not get ridiculous prices, but we're going to give mums and dads the opportunity to buy one of these houses," Scotty told 'And we're going to get families the opportunity to buy one. Or holiday houses for people. It's going to open it right up. We want these homes to go to families. "They eventually do when Portelli buys them, but this way we cut out the middleman. Let's just get them to the families.' Portelli is hoping to offload all five Phillip Island properties he purchased in 2024 to a single buyer after his December lottery for the resort failed. The winner of his giveaway, 34-year-old Holly from Ballarat, opted instead to take an $8 million cash prize, leaving the homes with Portelli. About six months later, in June, the business announced the sale of the mega Block complex via an Instagram callout. 'For Sale. EOI. The Phillip Island Block Resort. Selling complex complete. Everything included. Will not sell houses separately,' he wrote. With Portelli having hung up his bidding paddle, Scotty said he and co-host Shelly Craft hope the 2025 Blockheads can all get over reserve. He said the auction day is always a "very trying time for Shelley and I, adding, "It's the only day we get nervous" for the contestants, whom the hosts want to win and not be set up to fail after all their hard work. As for Craft, she isn't entirely convinced Portelli's Block run is over and wouldn't be surprised if he showed up at the next auction unexpectedly. Although she confirmed Nine hasn't heard from the TV star ahead of The Block's 2025 premiere next Sunday at 7:30 on Nine, she said "who knows" if he will eventually stun everyone with a shock appearance. Blockhead Em, one half of the married couple Emma and Ben, meanwhile, told she is 'a little worried' about Portelli's absence. However, she said she is confident the pair have "created a beautiful house" that one buyer will be "very interested" in. The fresh round of Blockheads will this year build homes from scratch, rather than renovating them, in the Victorian town of Daylesford. As well as building from the ground up, the Blockheads will no longer be allowed to work on their properties overnight, Domain reported. Portelli was embroiled in a scandal earlier this year, when former Today Show sports presenter Alex Cullen made national news after accepting $50,000 from a billionaire to refer to him on air as "McLaren Man". The moment triggered a media firestorm and led to Cullen stepping down from his role at Nine, followed shortly by his departure from the network.
Daily Maverick
7 days ago
- Science
- Daily Maverick
Breakthrough SA research promises quantum leap into our global future
This will be an entirely novel way of managing quantum information and will have revolutionary implications – we will be able to quickly solve very hard problems in fields such as chemistry, pharmacology, logistics, finance and many more. 'Beam me up, Scotty!' A brave new South African-led study aims to solve exactly the quantum physics challenge that the fictional starship Enterprise's transporter system is designed to overcome. Unfortunately, we're not looking to dematerialise people and put them together again somewhere else, which certainly would be very exciting. What we envisage, however, is far more fundamental: we're going to show people the future – and unlock South Africa's development potential. To make the nascent field of harnessing quantum entanglement viable, we – myself, a vibrant, young team of South African researchers and select international partners, including leading scientists from China's Huzhou University, France's Sorbonne University and Australia's Monash University – aim to practically demonstrate an entirely novel way for managing quantum information. This will have revolutionary implications: with quantum computing, which will be exponentially more powerful than current technology, we will be able to quickly solve very hard problems in fields such as chemistry, pharmacology, logistics, finance and many more. We will also be able to truly harness artificial intelligence – without the unsustainably huge energy price (environmentally speaking) that we currently pay for it. In quantum communications, it will enable long-distance links, essential for a global quantum network that is fundamentally secure. Our quantum physics research, which stands to offer manifest benefits for humanity, is generously funded to the tune of R2.5-million by the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust through its annual Harry Oppenheimer Fellowship Award, for which I am the 2024 co-recipient. SA a potential global leader I envisage South Africa, which has no Silicon Valley of its own, becoming a leader in quantum software – much like apps on cellphones, but harnessing quantum technology. I see us creating a quantum-literate workforce that will realise our country's immense human potential and create human and economic opportunities that we cannot yet imagine. Allow me to explain. The big picture to consider is quantum as a new paradigm for future technologies. In the past decade or two, humanity has begun to harness the spooky property of quantum theory that had hitherto remained elusive: entanglement – a form of connecting particles no matter how far apart they are, enabling faster computing, more secure communications and measuring with higher precision. This is an extremely valuable resource, and I (and others around the world) believe that this promises an entirely new economy for our planet, one based on quantum technologies. South Africa has a national quantum strategy – into which significant resources are being poured – to not only move us into the quantum economy we believe is coming, but also position our country as a major global player. It's a very exciting time to be involved in this field; indeed, 2025 is Unesco's International Year of Quantum Science and Technology to celebrate the progress made so far, but also to highlight how quantum can be used to address grand societal challenges. Entanglement At the heart of this promise is an aspect of quantum called entanglement that physicist Albert Einstein himself deplored; in fact, he called it 'spooky'. Entanglement is the unusual, but proven idea that two particles can be connected and if you do something to one of them, this will be replicated in the other, regardless of the distance between them (in theory, they can be infinitely far apart). Entanglement holds enormous potential for the nascent field of quantum computing. Unlike in classical computing in which particles have only the binary, one-bit value of 1 or 0, in quantum computing, entanglement will allow particles to be 1 and 0 at the same time. This means that you can do multiple things with one bit (in quantum computing, called a qubit). Imagine going through a maze using classical computing: every time you arrive at a junction, you have to turn left or right, 1 or 0, and then choose again at the next junction and so on. With quantum computing, you can turn left and right, 1 and 0, and map out the maze's pathways many times faster. Entanglement is also fantastic for communications. Modern cryptography works on the principle of mathematical complexity – that a code is sufficiently complex that it cannot quickly be cracked – but it doesn't guarantee security. The Enigma machine of World War 2 proved that if your adversary has a machine you're unaware of, they can break your code. Quantum computers will be able to decipher mathematical codes with ease. However, entanglement offers an exciting solution, too: if I send you a particle and retain its entangled partner particle, and I change something about my particle, it will similarly change your particle. But if someone tries to intercept that message, according to the laws of physics, it will be destroyed; this will enable all communications to be fundamentally secure. Decay But, of course, all of this is easier said than done. This is because entanglement is very fragile and it begins to decay because of 'noise' – essentially, various kinds of disturbance – for example, temperature or atmospheric disturbances. To date, our efforts have been expended on trying to preserve entanglement from decay, and we have had very limited success in this regard. Think about Scotty in Star Trek, trying desperately to lock on to Captain Kirk and beam him safely back to the Enterprise; sometimes his transporter's capabilities have been tested by energy fluctuations, gravitational anomalies and other kinds of external forces. But this is where the Star Trek analogy ends. We need an alternative strategy, one that abandons the notion of preserving entanglement and asks: can we exchange information even though the link is decaying? Let's rather think of entanglement like a cellphone battery. Even though the battery is losing charge, the phone's apps will continue to work fully while there is power; the apps' functionality won't deteriorate along with the loss of charge. We have an idea on how to make this metaphor a reality: quantum topology. Essentially, topology allows us to ignore how something looks and instead focus on a feature of that 'something' that does not change. A famous example of topology is that of a coffee mug and a doughnut, which both feature one hole. Physically, they are very different, but topologically, they are the same. With the traditional alphabet (albeit including numbers), I would send you a 1 for the mug or a 0 for the doughnut, and you would receive the communication accordingly. Topologically, however, it doesn't matter how noisy the channel is, and if what I sent you has been deformed in any way, you would just count the number of holes in the information you receive: 0 for no holes, 1 for one hole, 2 for two holes, and so on. This represents a topological alphabet formed out of the topology of things rather than how they look. It has two fantastic features: it is an infinitely large alphabet, not just 0 and 1, and most importantly, it is intrinsically invariant to noise: it doesn't care how much the communication is distorted. In the quantum world, this would mean that the communication would be preserved, even though the entanglement is weakening. In our seminal academic paper in 2024, we showed that entanglement is inherently topological. What my team and I must now do is create a topological toolkit, with tools showing that topology can be used to communicate, regardless of entanglement decaying. What Einstein really disliked about entanglement is that, without measurement, objects are not real. The Harry Oppenheimer Fellowship Award will allow us to dispel his doubt and unlock myriad possibilities that will largely only be revealed as we go. Spooky, indeed. DM Professor Andrew Forbes is a Distinguished Professor in the Structured Light Laboratory at the University of the Witwatersrand's School of Physics, and a co-recipient of the 2024 Harry Oppenheimer Fellowship Award, presented on 15 July 2025. Established in 1958 by Harry Oppenheimer as an endowment trust to honour the memory of his father, Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust (OMT) has recently undergone a strategic shift to better serve the sectors it supports, namely education, social justice and arts and culture.
Newsweek
11-07-2025
- General
- Newsweek
He Was Out of Time at the Shelter—Then a Family Showed Up
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. For Scotty, a young puppy facing a grim fate, time was running out. He was on the euthanasia list at a kill shelter in southern Illinois due to overcrowding until the Iroquois County Animal Rescue (ICARe) stepped in at the eleventh hour. Volunteers there pulled him and his sister from the brink and set them on a path to a forever home. In a Facebook post, ICARe recounted the success story. Margaret Fox, 51, president of ICARe, told Newsweek about the sense of responsibility she felt in rescuing the pup, named Scotty, from his near-fate. Stock image: A boy hugs a black-and-white dog outside. Stock image: A boy hugs a black-and-white dog outside. romrodinka/Getty Images "Scotty was adopted today!" ICARe wrote in a Facebook post. "He was on the euthanasia list at a kill shelter, so we grabbed him up at the last minute and it didn't take long for him to find a wonderful family!" Fox recounted the urgent situation that led to Scotty's rescue. "On June 18, I received an urgent email from … the transport coordinator for all of the Animal Control facilities in southern Illinois," she said. The email stated that Scotty, his sister Tabby and two other littermates "had a date scheduled for euthanasia—and they most definitely would be killed for space if a rescue did not commit to pull them that day." Despite her own shelter being full, Fox's immediate response was unequivocal. "I immediately agreed to take all four puppies, even though our shelter was full at the time," Fox said. "I could not let these babies be killed and felt an immediate sense of responsibility for their lives." Fortunately, another shelter also committed to saving some of the litter. So, the litter was split between the two rescues—and ICARe got Scotty and his sister, Tabby—who has now been renamed as Mocha. The puppies' journey to a new life began with the dedication of volunteers. "The pups went directly from transport to one of our amazing volunteer foster families," Fox said. "They have fostered countless dogs and puppies for us and were gracious enough to take these pups into their home at the last minute." Once settled with their foster family, the crucial next steps for their health and well-being commenced. A vet exam was scheduled, along with spaying and neutering, vaccinations and deworming. Remarkably, just two days after the comprehensive veterinary care, Scotty found his forever home. "Just two days later, Scotty was adopted by a PetSmart employee," Fox said, "and we were informed that the [foster family's] adult daughter Delaney was interested in adopting his sister." The news brought immense relief to the rescue team. "We were overjoyed at this news and that both pups were able to be in their forever home so soon after rescue," Fox said. Scotty and his siblings' ordeal began tragically. Their original intake paperwork said that the puppies were taken into care in May after being dumped outside the ICARe building. "How extremely sad it is to think of these babies being discarded like trash," Fox said. This heartwarming story underscores the critical role of animal rescues and foster families in saving vulnerable lives. For animals facing euthanasia due to overcrowding, a last-minute rescue is their only hope—and Fox said she was proud to play a part. "I am very thankful to be able to have played a small part in their rescue journey to a happily ever after," she added.
Irish Independent
09-07-2025
- Science
- Irish Independent
Rare T-rex blood vessels found in fossil show how dinosaurs healed injuries
Blood vessel structures found preserved in a T-rex fossil are helping scientists understand how dinosaurs healed from injuries. A study published recently in the journal Scientific Reports analyses structures found inside a rib bone from Scotty, the world's largest known Tyrannosaurus rex unearthed in Saskatchewan, Canada, in the 1990s.
CBC
08-07-2025
- Science
- CBC
Sask. researchers discover how T. Rex might have healed from injuries
Researchers from the University of Regina have been studying a fracture in a rib fossil from the province's famous Scotty the Tyrannosaurus rex to explore how dinosaurs healed after an injury.
