Baku Olympiad

[amuir]

This starts on September 1st. The Scottish teams were announced back in March but I can't find anywhere who the Scottish captain is. Does anyone know ?

[andyburnett]

This starts on September 1st. The Scottish teams were announced back in March but I can't find anywhere who the Scottish captain is. Does anyone know ?

I will be acting as Head of Delegation and captain for the first 8 rounds, after which John Shaw and Keti Arakhamia-Grant will take on the respective captaincy roles for each team.

[amuir]

This starts on September 1st. The Scottish teams were announced back in March but I can't find anywhere who the Scottish captain is. Does anyone know ?

I will be acting as Head of Delegation and captain for the first 8 rounds, after which John Shaw and Keti Arakhamia-Grant will take on the respective captaincy roles for each team.

Andy, who made these selections ? Were there any other candidates ? Any enquiries from foreign players this time round ?

[andyburnett]

This starts on September 1st. The Scottish teams were announced back in March but I can't find anywhere who the Scottish captain is. Does anyone know ?

I will be acting as Head of Delegation and captain for the first 8 rounds, after which John Shaw and Keti Arakhamia-Grant will take on the respective captaincy roles for each team.

Andy, who made these selections ? Were there any other candidates ? Any enquiries from foreign players this time round ?

As International Director I made these decisions after discussions with our Olympiad squads. Nobody offered or applied for the captains roles and the individuals I contacted as potential captains were unable to go for various reasons.

[amuir]

Andy
You will have some catching to do - John Donaldson has captained the US team 19 times ( I met him in San Francisco once)
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="https://new.uschess.org/news/powerhouse-us-olympiad-teams-set/">https://new.uschess.org/news/powerhouse ... teams-set/</a><!-- m -->
The US team looks good

[amuir]

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="HTTPS://CHESSDAILYNEWS.COM/TOUGH-ANTI-CHEATING-PROCEDURES-AT-BAKU-CHESS-OLYMPIAD/">HTTPS://CHESSDAILYNEWS.COM/TOUGH-ANTI-C ... -OLYMPIAD/</a><!-- m -->

Players and Captains shall come to the Playing Hall at least 30 minutes before the start of the round.

The players of every Match MUST inform their Match Arbiter accordingly, when they leave the playing area in order to go to the toilet, to the bar or to the smoking area. They are not allowed to leave the playing venue, while their game is still in progress.

The players will only use pens provided by the Organizers. The pens will be collected by the Match Arbiter after the end of every game and will be used for the next round

[WBuchanan]

These don’t seem that surprising in the current (admittedly rather reactionary) anti-cheating climate Andy.

But what about these:

“1. BEFORE THE START OF EACH ROUND: the players and the Captains will walk through Xray frames (as in the Airports) at the entrance to the Playing Hall, while security staff will check their bags.”

If they are x-rays then players are being exposed to ionizing radiation, the safe limit of exposure to which is known – zero. Just as the medical profession are advising reducing or avoiding unnecessary scans.

As airport scans are controversial even when used in orfer try to to prevent planes from being blown up, it’s hard to see why they would be justified in a war on chess cheating, especially when there is a raft of other measures

[JMcNicoll]

I would be interested on where this information comes from about the ionising radiation of scanners being dangerous. Cancer Research UK say the dose is so low that there is no appreciable difference made. Indeed opinion seems to be why complain about the scanner when the flight gives exposure of around 100,00 times what a scanner gives. This assumes that the ionising type of scanner would be used and not the radiowave type which is as dangerous as a mobile, apparently. Link to Cancer Research Uk and the relevant page.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-cancer/cancer-controversies/x-rays-body-scans-and-radiation">http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-c ... -radiation</a><!-- m -->

A link to the other information would be appreciated.

[WBuchanan]

Apologies for the length of this post... :|

Most ionizing radiation cancer risk estimates stem from the standard medical cancer BEIR VII lifetime risk model [eg <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17457809">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17457809</a><!-- m -->] which estimates cancer risk from a given level of radiation exposure. This model is assumed to be linear i.e. risks are proportional to dosage so even small doses equate to small risks. The statement by Cancer Research is therefore misleading, as is their “Neither type [of radiation] has been shown to pose a risk to people’s health” which is patently false in the case of ionizing radiation. I don’t recommend them as a source and in any case information of a quantitative nature is needed.
BEIR is the widely used benchmark – under which an exposure of 10 millisivierts equates to a 1 in 1000 lifetime chance of cancer risk (over and above the normal risk of getting cancer, of course).
Estimates of the radiation exposure from flying vary, this one from the industry by no means the highest: “200 hours on a subsonic aircraft would produce an annual dose equivalent to 1 mSv”
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.aviation-health.co.uk/news/browse.php?load=cosmic_radiation.html">http://www.aviation-health.co.uk/news/b ... ation.html</a><!-- m -->:

This would put the exposure at 0.005 mSv [5 microSv] per hour. This is only a two-thousandth of the level that produces a one in 1000 cancer chance.

But at 800 million flights per year [old estimate] at 5 microsivierts per flight equates to 4000 sivierts (fortunately ‘micro’ and million are reciprocals and cancel out). 4000 Sv is 400,000 times the ‘1 in 1000’ chance cancer dose of 10 mSv, so on average this would work out that about 400 cancers (over the flyers’ lifetimes) will be instigated by each year's flights. Or, one cancer from about 2 million flights.

The exposure levels from scanners that use iodizing radiation are lower than that, about 0.1 microSiviert per scan <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.radiologyinfo.org/en/info.cfm?pg=safety-airport-scanners">http://www.radiologyinfo.org/en/info.cf ... t-scanners</a><!-- m -->. But lower by only a factor of about ten, not ten thousand. This equates very roughly with other estimated risks - maybe 1 in ten million chance of cancer from a backscatter scan, according to David Brenner quoted here <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science-july-dec11-backscatter_12-01/">http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science- ... ter_12-01/</a><!-- m -->, or about 100 cancers a year if these were fully deployed in airports].

Or, one in a million if there are used in eleven Olympiad games – they did say x-rays! But OK, I imagine they probably mean milliliter waves, which are non-ionizing eletromagnetic waves.

The Govt. and the security industry will be hoping that because of the short duration and lower power levels used [meaning, lower than what has been shown to be dangerous], the airport scans will not cause a health problem - or at least if they do, it will not be easily traced back to them.

Unfortunately, “hoping” is probably all that they are doing. The safety reassurances seem not to be based on the results of existing science. Millimeter waves were extensively tested by Russian scientists decades ago, and found (like mobile signals) to have widespread biological effects even at extremely low power levels.

A review of this work can be found in the paper: Influence of High-frequency Electromagnetic Radiation at Non-thermal Intensities on the Human Body (A review of work by Russian and Ukrainian researchers)
Kositsky et al. The review paper is here <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.buergerwelle.de/assets/files/influence_of_high_frequency_electromagnetic_radiation_at_non_thermal_intensities.pdf">http://www.buergerwelle.de/assets/files ... sities.pdf</a><!-- m -->

Just as in the case of mobile frequencies, these Russian papers (ignored by western ‘science’) established, decades ago, biological effects from millimetre waves at extremely low power levels. Actually, different effects were noted within very narrow frequency ranges so the underlying science is quite complex, but the reported outcomes are usually written in an understandable way (except when it's to do with genes, I find )

I would add that in the case of mobiles, western research when it arrived found the same picture as the old Soviet research – biological effects from low levels. These include oxidative stress, reduced melatonin levels, DNA damage, weakening of the blood-brain barrier – all already linked to serious diseases. There is little to suppose that changing the frequency will give an improved picture.

Cheers

[WBuchanan]

A lot of numbers and unfamiliar units in that post, sorry....I should add some context.

Perhaps most importantly, it is generally acknowledeged that any radiation risk (flying or scanning, even millileter scanning) will be higher for children, maybe five to ten times higher. Radiation risk is thought to be cumulative so their estimated lifetime risk would, additionally, need be almost doubled compared to a medium-aged adult. Crucially, children can not be considered to have consented to any risk from chess-related scanners. I hope they would be excluded from these scans (if there are any children at the Olympiad) – though I wouldn’t bet on it.

Radiation dose estimation is fiendishly complex and even well-researched estimates are necessarily rough.

I’ve only referred to the standard picture, there is a significant body of thought that claims the standard model significantly underestimates effects at the low end of the exposure scale. If you look up people like Brenner (and especially Chris Busby) you’ll soon find the evidence base for this thinking.

The hand-waving away of questions of radiation exposures is as old as ...questions about radiation exposures themselves. (Likening to something else that may not have been acknowledged either is another).

Also a common technique by those who would like risks to appear smaller is, dilution of the dose by widening the area scrutinized (or something else that may not be relevant). The exposure level cited by the industry for backscatter scanners are based on whole body exposures, and is an average for the whole body. This ignores the fact that the dose is concentrated on the skin (the main feature of backscatters that they do not penetrate beneath the skin much). The dose should probably be re-calculated for the skin, in which case it would be say twenty times higher according to Brenner. Medical scans on the other hand (although the exposures are higher) are at least carefully based on specific calculations based on the effect of the particular radiation type on whatever organs are exposed.

As an analogy, consider a small hot coal – with enough energy to spread a nice warm glow. If you swallowed it or just put it in your mouth, it would do extensive damage to whatever it touched. Distance from the radiation source can be as important as the strength.

Cheers