X-Men: Evolution is my favorite adaptation of the X-Men franchise. It just edges out the 90s X-Men animated series because it was able to get better as it went on, without a final season of poor animation and drastic voice acting changes. X-Men: Evolution was able to perfectly blend the teen drama of the characters going through high school with clever uses of their mutant abilities.

I wish so much that the show had gotten that fifth season to do the Dark Phoenix Saga, because it set that up masterfully. However, there were some weird episodes. and one of the weirdest was Walk on the Wild Side from season two.

Walk on the Wild Side, written by Cydne Clark and Steve Granat, starts off with Jean Grey trying to teach Amara (Magma) how to use her powers in dangerous situations. Then, Scott ends up swooping in during training to save them, and Jean has to tell him off. This is the setup to Jean, Amara, Tabatha (Boom Boom), Rogue, and Kitty (Shadowcat) all having a massive girl power moment later on and forming a vigilante girl gang called the Bayville Sirens. (Its always sirens, isnt it?) Eventually, they stop doing it, just because vigilantes are bad, whichconsidering they are already vigilantes anywayis weird.

I remember watching this episode as it aired, and as a child, it was one of my favoritesthe women of the X-Men teaming up together to wear leather outfits and be vigilantes at night, walking dramatically down the hallway like TheCraft, and lets not forget that weird music video interlude. However, I recently rewatched it on Disney+ with a slight cringe, because while the episode has great intentions, it reads as Straw Feminism 101/Girl Power Feminism.

The first issue is the premise. If you look at the episode description on IMDB, it says: The female X-Men are fed up with playing second fiddle, and form a vigilante crime-fighting group called the Bayville Sirensexcept the female X-Men in this show did not play second fiddle to the guys. In fact, this is one of the series that I felt really understood their powers.

Jean is shown to have a lot of leadership qualities, and there are several episodes that highlight how powerful she is, an episode where Rogue gets completely overwhelmed by all the powers she has absorbed over time, and Kitty gets plenty of character growth. Storm, Mystique, Scarlet Witch, and minor X-Men like Boom Boom and Magma also get interesting story arcs over time and standalone episodes. X-Men: Evolution did justice to the women of this franchise.

Plus, Walk on the Wild Side has the messy overall message of showing how, even though they combined some of the most powerful women in the X-Men world, they still need men around to keep them from going too far. Scott gets to play the role of woke bae, keeping a careful eye on the ladies to keep them from accidentally allowing someone to get blown up.

Jean says, at the end, I guess we took the whole girl power thing a little too far, when all they did was stop petty crime and stop a crime boss.

It is the very 2000s girl power feminism: all style, but no real substance or message. Its disappointing because I do remember thinking it was cool as a kid, and it definitely helped make me gay, but its just filler, and you know what? I can live with that. Plus, for all the issues with it, Im glad it does show they dont need the help of their male counterparts in the end, and they end on their own terms with Professor X telling them to not be Charlies Angels.

All that needed to be changed was allowing them to be a female crime-fighting group without having the whole We dont need a big strong man to save us statement at the beginning. It would have been the same episode, but it would have held up much better. But thats just my thoughts.

I still stand by this music video sequence that makes no sense, though. It slaps.

Whats your favorite X-Men animated series: Evolution, the 90s series, or Wolverine & the X-Men?

(image: Warner Bros. Television)

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Girl Power X-Men: Evolution Episode Walk on the Wild Side Has Not Aged Well - The Mary Sue

When it comes to broadcast and Pay TV operations, video compression is essential in delivering content to audiences. However, as the demand for high-resolution video increases, the need to advance video compression techniques is becoming unavoidable. Its clear that innovation is the key to evolving compression methods and meeting demand but to truly understand and influence the future of codecs, its vital to look at their origins and the existing requirements for video compression within the broadcast industry.

Existing codecs

There are currently two mainstream codecs, MPEG-2, the historic codec used for SD and initially the first digital deployment, and H.264, otherwise known as Advanced Video Coding (AVC) which was established for the transition to HD. These standards-based codecs have proved to be the two most successful so far and were both primarily formulated for the broadcast market. ITU standards like AVC were designed with TV in mind and have subsequently been extended to over-the-top (OTT). Therefore, neither lend themselves to use for streaming, instead, they could be the answer for converged services.

With the popularity of streaming overtaking traditional broadcast, the need for new video compression technology has become apparent, which has led to the emergence of new codecs. However, while broadcasters are bound to look to the future, its vital they dont forget about the widespread HD audience. As such, existing codecs shouldnt receive less attention, as theyre still essential to the delivery of this content. Rather, learnings must be taken from these developments to improve older existing codecs to ensure broadcasters are able to meet the needs of most audiences who are still watching standard HD television.

Next generation codecs

High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) was originally seen as the ITU successor of AVC, however, its pace has been slowing down owing to limited 4K penetration and royalty issues. Compared to AVC, HEVC delivers high-quality 4K video that is at least 50% smaller than before. A different option has emerged in the form of AV1, which is a royalty-free OTT-centric alternative to HEVC, supported by giant tech groups including FAANG through the Alliance for Open Media. AV1 has been designed primarily with OTT, and therefore progressive scan, in mind. Consequently, it is the optimised choice for this type of service.

Whether a broadcaster or Pay TV operator uses AV1 or HEVC is very dependent on their needs and existing infrastructure as there are similarities between the two. Currently, AV1 is seen as the codec of choice for streaming media distribution and is supported by the likes of Amazon, Google and Netflix.

Shaking up the market

As the broadcast industry develops new standards to handle new resolutions and more sophisticated content types, codecs are set to change even further to support the rise of OTT consumption and the resulting advancements in technology. One of the codecs currently in development is Versatile Video Coding (VVC) which the JVET expects to be finalised this year. VVC capabilities are expected to support immersive content, resolutions from 4K to 16K and 360 degree videos. Meanwhile, Essential Video Coding (EVC) has been fast-tracked by MPEG to provide a licensing-friendly standardised video coding solution to address business needs, such as video streaming.

Beyond the usual commitment of reducing the bitrate by 30-50% compared to previous standards (in this case HEVC), its too early to ascertain the exact benefits and advantages VVC and EVC could offer. Regardless, these new codecs are likely to shake up the market in 2020 and beyond, and bring with them a degree of complexity, particularly as each of them are due to be set in stone over the course of the next year. As a result, it may take until next year or even 2022 before its possible to determine whether they will find their market.

The next decade and beyond

Over the next decade, its likely H.264, HEVC and AV1 will be among the most popular codecs in use. Given each codec has different properties and that every broadcaster or Pay TV operator has different infrastructure and legacy systems, its unlikely there will be a clear winner in the codec domain. Instead, there will be several dominant players per niche. Due to the infancy of the standard, its core technology DNA and its supporters, AV1 will perhaps cement its position as the codec of choice for streaming media distribution.

Improving the landscape of codecs both old and new hinges on the learnings and technological innovations taken from ongoing advancement works. So, whether viewers are watching video content in 8K or HD, every audience will benefit from continual enhancements; future-proofing the viewing experience and ensuring that no consumer group gets left behind.

More:

The evolution of video codecs - Videonet

Personal interaction and client entertainment are traditions within any industry, and thats always been especially true of TV advertising. But,given the industrys massive, tectonic changes of recent years, is there still room for the process of large, extravagantly staged annual gatherings?

The coronavirus scourge already has disrupted the annual spring-season process of transacting major television advertising deals. All networks and other participants of course have canceled their in-person upfront presentations to advertisers, many programmers opting for virtual upfronts.

Combine the virus with the acceleration of cord-cutting, and the TV ad industry has some strong headwinds, to put it mildly. By contrast, the fast-growing digital ecosystem is already transacted on a real-time audience and impression basis. The coronavirus, in a perverse way, may hasten a re-thinking of the upfronts, at least as currently configured.

Could this crisis trigger a broader, lasting, even profound, change in the way TV advertising is transacted? Could it be the catalyst to accelerate the value of TV, by enabling the process of transacting TV advertising to catch up with the growth of digital advertising? Could this actually help offset any TV advertising losses in the short term?

In other words, some might see the upfronts, like the three-martini lunch, as an antiquated relic long since bypassed by the reality of lightning-speed digital transactions based at least as much on data as content and relationships.

Not to worry. Relationships and personal interaction will always matter in the TV advertising business. But in this data-driven world, clients will need their agency and media partners to be ready with metrics that support the relationship.

Ultimately, marketers will not care where their agency and media-buying partners find audiences for them, so long as it is on any piece of glass andto the extent possible as budgets permitin an impactful, TV brand-friendly environment.

Possibly the advanced TV consortium OpenAP offers an example of a roadmap. Partners including ViacomCBS, NBC Universal, Fox and Univision are collaborating on an audience-based buying platform enabling advertisers to leverage first-party data or defined audience segments to buy quickly across the companies properties and platformslinear TV, connected TV (CTV), set-top box, mobile or desktop.

There have been other efforts. Canoe (video-on-demand ad platform), Project OAR (addressable-ad platform), Simulmedia (TV ad management platform) and the cloud-based product QTTTM (bridging digital programmatic platforms with linear TV ad inventory in real time). None of these require the traditional TV upfronts.

Whether we like it or not, the process of selling video advertising has to evolveand we, as sellers, will be forced to innovate in order to participate inor be left behind bythat evolution.

The coronavirus is indeed frightening, and we all should take this time to care for our loved ones. And, as with so many medical crises throughout our history, we will get through the coronavirus chapter stronger, wiser, readier and healthier.We will survive coronavirus.The upfronts, and certain other aspects of legacy-thinking within the TV-advertising ecosystem, may not. And that may actually be ...healthy.

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Opinion: How will the pandemic accelerate the evolution of the TV ad market? - AdAge.com

With the exchange traded fund industry continuing to grow and expand, money managers see strategies focused on environmental, social, and governance as part of the next evolution in the innovative ETF space.

We see ESG becoming a bigger and bigger part of investors concerns and something theyre going to be looking at very closely, Daniel Noonan, Executive Vice President, Head of ETF Sales, U.S. Global Wealth Management, PIMCO, said at the Inside ETFs conference.

For example, PIMCO recently came out with the PIMCO Enhanced Short Maturity Active ESG ETF (NYSEArca: EMNT), which aims to offer higher income than traditional cash investments, with a modest increase in risk and focuses on issuers with high quality environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices.

EMNT is based on the success of PIMCOs Enhanced Short Maturity Active Exchange-Traded Fund (MINT) and invests in high-quality money market instruments and short-term fixed income securities. The fund blends PIMCOs active fixed income management with its disciplined ESG investment framework. The framework favors issuers identified by PIMCO as best-in-class, with robust environmentally conscious practices, strong corporate governance, and industry-leading social policies.

Additionally, PIMCO rolled out the PIMCO RAFI ESG U.S. ETF (RAFE), which is benchmarked to the Research Affiliates RAFI ESG US Index and seeks to outperform market capitalization-weighted indices while investing in ESG-conscious companies.

The fund utilizes Research Affiliates time-tested Fundamental Index approach which weights stocks by economic size, rather than by market capitalization, and is built on the principles of contrarian investing and disciplined rebalancing, offering the potential for improved returns. This is paired with Research Affiliates unique approach to ESG, investing in ESG-conscious companies as well as incorporating two additional metrics linked to improved return potential financial discipline and diversity.

For more ETF-related commentary from Tom Lydon and other industry experts, visit ourvideo category

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ESG ETFs Could Be the Next Big Evolution in Investment Strategies - ETF Trends

It looks like a Pokmon skull, but this thing is real.

Some humble frogs may have more hiding beneath their moist, slick skin than may appear -- namely, horns, spikes and fangs that make up their surprisingly unconventional skulls.

In a truly metal development, 3D scans have revealed that although most frogs subscribe to the smooth skull shape you'd likely expect, others have evolved extreme, unusual skulls with crests and armorlike fortifications.

The study that references the scans, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forms part of the National Science Foundation-fundedoVertproject, which seeks to digitize and catalog vertebrate anatomical data.

"Superficially, frogs may look similar, but when you look at their skulls, you see drastic differences," Daniel Paluh, lead author and doctoral student at the University of Florida, said in a statement.

"Some of the weirdest skulls are found in frogs that eat birds and mammals, use their heads as a shield, or in a few rare cases, are venomous. Their skulls show how strange and diverse frogs can be," Paluh said.

The team analyzed skull shapes from 158 species (across all living frog families), revealing that extra layers of bone were present in all the unusually shaped skulls, in the form of ridges, grooves and layers -- a process called "hyperossification," or excessive bone formation.

Though habitat can be isolated as one of the key reasons some frogs will develop this trait and others won't, additional reasons are still a matter of speculation.

Limnonectes dabanus showing off its extra large head.

Jodi Rowley, a biologist with theAustralian Museum Research Institutewho specializes in amphibians, suggests it could very well be due to factors like fighting, mating and defending territory.

"There's so much we don't know about evolution and adaptation in frogs, but it's likely that these crazy skulls evolved in different ways for different species," Rowley said. "Some features may have also evolved due to other pressures -- perhaps 'fangs' [were] for eating, but became useful and exaggerated for other purposes (i.e. fighting)."

The result is an array of horned, crested and fanged frogs that, skeletally, are a far cry from the smooth-skulled green frogs we've come to see in popular culture.

"Some of the adaptations are remarkable," said Rowley. "From the 'fangs' that Southeast Asian Fanged Frogs (Limnonectes sp.) fight each other with, which are actually bone projections, to the elaborate spikes on the skulls of Casque-headed Tree Frogs (Corythomantis greeningi), that actually deliver venom."

"We've got so much to learn about frogs that most of this is speculation -- exciting speculation though! Every bit of research that is published that sheds light on frogs and their evolution or adaptation helps us better understand and hopefully conserve these unique and often threatened animals."

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Frogs have evolved extreme skulls with hidden fangs and horns - CNET

Sometimes you know a player has made a mini-leap, even if the numbers dont fully show it. Jordan Henderson has made a fairly comfortable leap this season, from a solid, works-hard-for-the-team-and-zooms-all-over-the-pitch shuffler into Liverpools metronome. He has become a legitimate offensive fulcrum for one of the most explosive attacking teams in Premier League history. Two years ago, that was unthinkable.

Henderson is now considered the frontrunner for PFA Player of the Year award -- if one is ever awarded. We cant distill Liverpools greatness into one player, the theory goes. That would be a disservice to Sadio Man or Mo Salah or Virgil van Dijk or Trent Alexander-Arnold or Alisson. We cant give it to Jurgen Klopp. Hes, you know, not a player. So, well give it to Liverpools on-pitch figurehead, their captain.

Henderson symbolizes all the feel-good that goes with Klopps team: the relentlessness, the passion. In a team filled with great stories, Hendersons redemption arc might be the best of all. But also does a disservice to Hendersons game.

So much of the Henderson conversation focuses on the intangibles: the leadership, the hustle, the desire. What that obfuscates is his brilliance on the ball: his technical ability; his understanding of when to modulate tempos; his knowledge of how to manipulate a defence; his defensive positioning, which has risen to a whole new level in the past 24-months.

Where Henderson has shown his most growth, however, is as a passer. Hes become almost an oxymoronic player: By shuffling backward, into Liverpools single-pivot role, hes become a more attacking player. When he plays higher up the pitch as a number eight, he becomes a little more defensive, focusing more on leading Liverpools press than splitting the defensive block.

Henderson was thrust into the pivot role when Fabinho went down with an injury. In that time, he ranked third in passing success rate, behind only Ilkay Ilkay Gndogan and Rodri among players with at least 540 minutes in that timeframe.

Henderson was thrust into the pivot role when Fabinho went down with an injury. In that time, he ranked third in passing success rate in the Premier League, behind only Ilkay Ilkay Gndogan and Rodri among players with at least 500 minutes.

And these werent just keep-the-game-ticking pashes sloshing from sideline-to-sideline. Hendersons forward passes attempted and completed have ballooned this season, as have his long passes. Even more encouraging: his shots on target assisted are up from 0.27 last to season to 0.46 this season; his through passes completed per 90 are up from 0.42 in 2018/19 to 1.14 in 2019/20.

Those arent minor bumps. Theyre massive leaps. Henderson has grown from a good passer into a world-class one: incisive and metronomic in equal measure.

The numbers are good, the process behind them even more encouraging. Henderson has always fallen victim to a common misnomer that he does little more than shuffle the ball sideways. At times, thats been more accurate than the Henderson defenders would like to admit. But it was also a product of his role in the Klopp set-up. Pushed back to a deep-lying creator role, Henderson has thrived -- showing off his complete passing arsenal.

His personal favourite: dropping into a deep pocket in front of a defensive shell and driving the ball in-behind to a wide-forward charging in on the angle.

Henderson sets up in his normal role: pulling back from the centre-circle to a spot in the inside channel, typically to the right. The back two splitting a little wider, the fullbacks moving up to Hendersons level, the two numbers eight splitting into the half-spaces further up the pitch.

This subtle manipulation has a couple of benefits. It frees Henderson to scan the field with plenty of room ahead of, and it forces the opposing midfield line to make a decision: to press Henderson high up the pitch or to sag-off. If the team runs a staggered, multi-layered press, Henderson is able to pull the second-line out of position.

The knock-on effect: it frees up either Liverpool fullbacks to push much higher up the field, with Henderson able to cover the space in-behind.

Again, by moving back, Henderson becomes a better player going forward. He isnt a prototypical, driving playmaker, someone capable of beating a man on the move then slipping a ball past the outside shoulder of a defender at full-flight. Instead, he likes to take his time: to survey the landscape and pick the best option.

Press up, and Henderson is happy to revert to type, pushing the ball back to either centre-back or flipping it out to the wing. Sit back, and Henderson will go to work creating out of the pocket:

Above, Henderson backed out of his original spot and moved into his preferred pocket. Bournemouth let him go, favouring a solid midfielder-four with a pair of forwards ready counter if the play broke down.

Henderson took full advantage. Given room to sit and inspect, he uncorked a line-drive directly into the path of an onrushing Salah. One-nil:

Not bad for a sideways passing rhythm clogger. If anything, that reputation has worked in Hendersons favour. Opposing teams have underestimated his range, have been so fearful of leaving space in-behind for Salah and Mane, that theyd been happy to sit-off as Henderson pings balls all over the park.

Reaching where-is-he-at-all-times status is rarefied air, reserved for only the most feared of conductors: Andrea Pirlo, Sergio Busquets, Marco Verratti. Henderson hasnt played at that level consistently, but his output during his time as the teams single pivot was more than enough to earn him a day pass in the club's swanky lounge.

His trusty running mate: Trent Alexander-Arnold. The pair have struck up a nice wink-wink chemistry. As mentioned, when Henderson sets up in his right-hand side pocket, TAA is able to push farther forward. But the fun-and-games begin when Henderson switches things up and drifts off into the left-side pocket.

Things take a similar look: Andy Robertson presses on, the number eights move a little wider, the centre-backs split. The difference this time is how far Alexander-Arnold advances on the right-side of the pitch.

In that spot, Alexander-Arnold essentially works as an auxiliary winger, pulling onto the opposing left-back and driving on-the-angle:

The above shot vs. Norwich is the best example. Henderson sunk off, Alexander-Arnold bombed forward.

Look at where he put the ball! That wasnt a sand-wedge. He drove that thing on a rope, allowing Alexander-Arnold to run onto the ball at pace and charge into the box, rather than waiting on a floater to arrive somewhere near the touchline.

Some of Hendersons plays are subtly gorgeous. At first, they look like non-events -- excellent passes from a Premier League calibre player. Its only with a second and third viewing that you appreciate the beauty. Few players show a better understanding of the geometry of the pitch.

Thats Henderson doing what he does best: apparating into all the right places at all the right times. With a cluster of white shirts cutting off passing lanes, he shows for the ball, darting out of the middle of the field cluster to offer Joe Gomez an outlet. But Henderson is smart. He doesnt linger too close to the Flamengo forward applying the press. Hes careful to keep his distance. Eyes forward. A flick of the head. Move. A flick of the head. Move. Eyes forward.

He gave Gomez the nod. Knock the ball ahead of me and let me go to work. Gomez obliged.

Now hit freeze. Notice anything:

While Henderson is on the half-turn, everyone else is facing back towards their own goal. It would have been easy for Henderson to take an extra touch or two. To settle on playing it sideways. To keep it safe.

Instead, he ripped a first-time channel ball (an old Antonio Conte favourite!) towards a steaming Mo Salah. A flash of the head, a touch to steady, then thump.

And look at the ball:

Holy moly. That is spicy. That is downright mean.

During his Liverpool career, Henderson has been happy to play the role of a chameleon. Its why coaches and teammates have admired him so much. Ask him to function as ago-go, effort-based winger and hell do a job. Need him to play role as box-to-box and he'll the spot gladly. But it's as a deep playmaker that he's played his best football for the club. Indeed, when Fabinho returned and Henderson was pushed back into his role as number eight, Liverpool's build-up play became stodgy.

During his spell as a key creator, Henderson showed a nascent ability for unlocking defences with quick-fire, long-range passes. That, mostly, vanished when he was inched higher up the field.

The narrative (its ok to shudder at that word) of Henderson winning the Player of the Year award feels fitting. We like to award people who went above and beyond. Who proved us wrong. Is Henderson Liverpools best player? No. Is he their most important? No. But hes closer to being a top-five player than he is a bottom-five one.

Hendersons story is brilliant. But that shouldnt mask the real, actual improvements he has made as a player. This isn't reverse engineering. Hes worthy of the POTY discussions, just not for a bunch of the reasons that are so often cited. Hes worthy because he applied himself, adapted his game, and improved; hes earned it.

That has been the story of Hendersons career: some parts of his game rise, others fall. Now, theyre all rising together. What a joy to watch in real-time.

Original post:

Liverpool's metronome: the evolution of Jordan Henderson - Liverpool.com

Global organisations continue to get to grips with the global coronavirus pandemic, as MGM Resorts International pledges further relief nationwide with a number of the firms properties making donations to benefit local communities.

Through an array of initiatives designed to support those impacted economically by COVID-19, donations includes a $1m crisis and disaster relief pledge into an employee emergency grant fund as well as the equivalent of 400,000 meals across the United States.

As we confront extraordinary events and an unprecedented global pandemic crisis, we know that this is an extremely challenging and uncertain time for many of our employees, their families, friends and neighbours and we are committed to help those in need, said Bill Hornbuckle, acting CEO and president of MGM Resorts International.

We have done a number of things to help our colleagues, including significantly expanding eligibility coverage for the MGM Employee Emergency Grant Fund. MGM Resorts International is donating $1m towards disaster relief to offer additional support to employees impacted by the crisis and who may be experiencing hardships.

Weve also stepped up our commitment to communities around the country. Over the past week, MGM has donated the equivalent of 400,000 meals through local food banks to alleviate food insecurity in the United States.

Online gaming organisation 888 Holdings anticipates a potential impact on group EBITDA in the current financial year of up to high single digit millions of dollars, should global sporting cancellations continue for a significant period of time.

However, the firm asserts confidence that an evidenced increase of customer activity in the its casino and poker products could, in part, compensate for the sports betting disruption.

Entering 2020 with strong momentum, 888s performance in the current financial year has seen continued progress across the casino and sport verticals as each recorded average daily revenue 24 per cent ahead of the prior year

Issuing an update for the period ahead, and the spread of COVID-19, 888 explained: The board recognises that, with people spending more time at home and with potentially increased stress from economic uncertainty, 888s vigilance on safe gambling and preventing gambling-related harm is even more important than ever.

The group continues to offer its customers support and is proactively communicating with its customers to make them aware of safe gambling tools to limit and control their play. In addition, 888 continues to leverage its unique observer software to scan player data and identify potential areas of concern in order to prevent gambling harm.

As a purely online operator with diversified brands across product verticals and geographies, a strong balance sheet with $99.5m of cash and cash equivalents at the 2019-year end, and a proven track record of delivering operational efficiencies, the board is confident in 888s ability to manage these challenges.

Underpinned by the strength of 888s technology, its growing customer base and the Groups talented and committed teams, the board continues to see a number of significant growth opportunities for the group which it is confident of progressing during 2020 and beyond.

Just days after Evolution Gaming acknowledged a potential impact on its live studio operations, the company has been instructed by Georgian authorities to temporarily close the floor operations at its Tbilisi site.

Commenting that the studio adhered to current guidelines regarding social distancing and the extensive number of infection prevention measures in place, the company said that its in close contact with local authorities in order to verify the taken measures and to be able to reopen the studio. The situation is developing, and Evolution will adapt continuously.

As previously announced, Evolution operates studios in eight locations, and the company has routines for redundancy and continuity in the respect of studio operations.

In direct response to the criticism of a few unethical affiliates exploiting the current coronavirus crisis by supervisory authorities, Gaming Innovation Group is offering free searches to operators that are concerned that their brand might be promoted inappropriately.

We dont believe anyone should be profiteering off this crisis, which is having a huge effect on so many within our industry and through many others, James King, director of sales of GiG.

Therefore we at GiG are running checks against COVID-19/ Coronavirus (and other associated keywords) for operators for free. Our technology can scan and analyse thousands of web pages within a short space of time and therefore is well placed to support our industries fight against those profiteering off the back of this crisis.

In the US Gaming and Leisure Properties is currently monitoring ongoing events to better understand the timeline and geographic footprint of interruptions to the operations of properties, after state and regulatory authorities began mandating the closure of gaming facilities.

With gross gaming revenue exceeding expectations during the first two months of the year, the company is withdrawing previously communicated guidance issued last month in light on the coronavirus pandemic.

Peter Carlino, chairman and CEO of GLPI, commented, Our management team has a long track record of managing through challenging market conditions, as do the management teams at our portfolio of 42 gaming and related facilities where we own the underlying real estate. In addition, our assets remain a strong and integral component of state budgets across the country given their relevance and significance to tax revenue generation.

As the properties in our portfolio begin to open and start the process of returning to normalised operations, our geographically diversified portfolio stands to play an important role in the recovery process, providing a significant source of employment and an equally significant source of state tax revenue generation.

To conclude, Churchill Downs Incorporated has announced the temporary suspension of live racing at Miami Valley Raceway at Miami Valley Gaming in Lebanon, Ohio and Fair Grounds Race Course in New Orleans, Louisiana in cooperation with state and local authorities as a precautionary measure to COVID-19.

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MGM Resorts, Evolution Gaming and 888 Holdings: COVID-19 updates - Casino Beats

The reimagined DigiDestined.Image: Toei

Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna, the latest film in Toeis Digimon franchise, is set to bring the story of the eight children who saved both the real and Digital Worlds by partnering up with living, digital creatures to an end. But it isnt the end. Much in the same way that Digimon cant truly die, the DigiDestined are coming back in a fascinating way.

While the original Digimon Adventures premise revolved around a number of aspects about our realitylike the widespread use of the internetthe ways that we interact with technology has changed considerably since the series first premiered in 1999. Unlike Last Evolution Kizuna, which is set in 2010 (in keeping with the passage of time established in the original series), Toeis new reboot Digimon Adventure:reimagines Tai and the other DigiDestined as young children living in modern-day Japan. (Note that the colon hanging out at the end of Digimon Adventure: is a purposeful choice to differentiate the reboot from the original.)

The basic premise of the story appears to be largely unchanged as a disturbance in the Digital World begins to affect electronics in the real world and DigiDestined meet their partner Digimon for the first time. Whats different, though, is that all the kids seem to have cell phones, their Digivices are all somewhat physically different, and the Digital World itself appears to be a more abstract, conceptual place.

As the kids embark on their adventure and learn that its up to them to battle whatever creatures are causing the Digital Worlds problems, back in the real world the prevailing idea is that the digital problems are part of a larger string of cyberterrorism attacks. Its in ways like that which Digimon Adventure: is keeping in the series tradition of tackling real-world issues while also being fantastical, and at the same time, its introducing new elements into its story that reflect our present-day reality.

A big part of what made the original Digimon series so satisfying to watch over the years has been its willingness to let its characters continue to age and evolve in ways that many cartoons like Pokmon tend not to. Emotional depth was one of Digimons strong suits from the very beginning, and so it stands to reason that Digimon Adventure: will keep in that tradition, but now the franchise can do that in a world that feels as if it exists much closer to our own.

The original Digimon Adventure was very much a product of the way global telecommunications functioned throughout the end of the 20th century, but in 2020, the basic principles of how people access information on the web is just drastically different. Things like chat rooms, message boards, and the very concept of hyperlinking have all become subsumed by social media platforms and applications. Digimon originally worked with the idea of the internet being a massive, shared space that one could explore the way one might a continent. But today, the web is increasingly composed of walled-off gardens that we create portals into through our phones to scroll through TikTok, or through our consoles to go hang out with friends in Animal Crossing.

Whats going to be interesting to see is how Digimon Adventure: ends up capitalizing on what the shape of the modern-day internet is like as the kids venture deeper into the Digital World. In a time where were all extremely online as a way of life, what does it mean to physically travel across the digital networks that keep the world operating? The DigiDestined might be the first people to discover the Digital Worlds existence, but in 2020 theyre probably not the only hyper-connected children with the potential to become the unlikely saviors of two worlds.

In nearly every Digimon series, when a digital monsters life comes to an end (usually as the result of sustaining too much damage in battle), the creation disintegrates into glowing bits of dust that scatter to the wind, making it seem as if theyre lost. In reality, though, their data actually ends up being pulled to the Primary Village, a place where the Digimon is reincarnated (or recompiled, depending on how you think of it) as a fresh Digiegg full of new life and possibility. In a way, Digimon Adventure: is the Digiegg meant to be born in Last Evolution Kizunas wake. Theyre interconnected stories that represent two distinct phases of life for the same franchise and how its time for Digimon to evolve into something new and more advanced.

While Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizunas premiere here in the U.S. has currently been postponed, Digimon Adventure: is set to hit Fuji TV on April 5.

For more, make sure youre following us on our Instagram @io9dotcom.

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Digimon Adventure's Hard Reset Is Key to the Franchise's Evolution - Gizmodo

On a new episode of ID the Future, Robert J. Marks interviews chemist Charles Thaxton about a seminal 1984 book he co-authored, The Mystery of Lifes Origin, foundational to the intelligent design movement, and a later project, Of Pandas and People. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

The main body of Mystery was generally praised, Thaxton explains. It was the epilogue that proved controversial. (Look for except at Evolution News tomorrow.) There the three authors reviewed five proposed explanations for lifes origins and suggested that the best explanation was that the first life originated through an act of creative intelligence. The Mystery of Lifes Origin has now beenre-released in an updated and greatly expanded version, with new contributions by Stephen Meyer, James Tour, and others.

Photo: Stephen Meyer discuss the work and impact of Charles Thaxton at the 2020 Dallas Conference on Science & Faith, by Chris Morgan.

Go here to read the rest:

Charles Thaxton on a Controversial Epilogue - Discovery Institute

Integration of recent acquisitions helps deliver robust industry solution sets.

The company brings expertise and IoT integration services to solution provider and enterprise customers serving the following industries: healthcare, life sciences, asset management, fleet management, and manufacturing/industrial IoT.

KORE is leveraging the power of its recent acquisitions to showcase its end-to-end solution capabilities in key verticals. The December acquisition of Integron, for example, allows KORE to bring the industrys most powerful healthcare IoT solution set to market. Additionally, its acquisition of ASPIDER-NGI, a leading provider of advanced connectivity, core network and embedded SIM (eSIM/eUICC) solutions allows KORE to offer a single global SKU to simplify the deployment of IoT devices across vertical markets worldwide, with particular relevance to large scale international and industrial deployments.

We are entirely cognizant of the role of our solution provider customers. Their knowledge of the industry use case is critical to credibly providing the end solution to their customers, said KORE President & CEO, Romil Bahl.

However, neither our solution provider customers nor our enterprise customers should be trying to do everything themselves. As IoT use cases mature and accelerate, time-to-market will be increasingly important to how well our customers can compete. We at KORE help tremendously with IoT adoption, scaling, and speed-to-benefits. Today we are saying, more confidently than ever before, that KORE is the quintessential integrator for our customers IoT needs.

KOREs focus will be to support all of the behind-the-scenes details that go into making an IoT solution a success so that its customers, both solution providers, and enterprises, can focus extensively on the experience of their end-user customers, and maximize the value of the data relative to their respective verticals.

Specifically, KORE is launching the following industry solution areas:

Bahl continued:

Our strategic acquisitions continue to bear fruit, and as a result, KORE is now uniquely positioned to deliver secure solutions that enable these industry use cases and markets. This level of focus, however, is only possible with the strength of KOREs underlying technology and the KORE One platform which help our customers simplify complexity, accelerate deployments and maximize ROI.

See the rest here:

KORE Announces Next Stage in Evolution of its Vertical Market IoT Strategy - IoT Business News

Yu-Gi-Oh! Legacy of the Duelist: Link Evolution is finally available on the four major platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, and Xbox One. With the wider release, Nintendo Switch players got an update to get them all the great new content available to the other platforms which includes over 900 new cards, the whole VRAINS storyline (complete with new characters), and the highly anticipated switch to Master Rule 5.

I will say that my favorite part of the updated content has been the switch to Master Rule 5 which hits the physical game on April 1. It really helps so many of the Story Decks from the earlier seasons to really shine. So many of those decks were built upon being able to have multiple Synchro Monsters or Fusion Monsters, etc out on the field at once, but Master Rule 4 really got in the way and made some duels nigh impossible. With Master Rule 5, you can get those monsters out more easily and really get the full effects of these classic decks.

Having the additional VRAINS content is a very welcome update as well, especially for people like me who are trying to return to the game or for new players. Having only three duels available in the story to learn how Link Monsters work just felt very incomplete. Now, we have the whole storyline to play through with more ways to practice before going online.

All-in-all I love this update and cant think of anything bad to say about it. I hope that Konami continues to update the game and that they do so more regularly. This would help keep the game current as new cards are released every few months in the real world. Itd be nice to see a similar approach taken to the virtual world. I do also hope that they are working to implement crossplay soon as I would love to have the opportunity to play with more of my friends.

What do you think of the new update and what system are you playing Link Evolution on?

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The Update for LINK EVOLUTION is Absolutely Incredible and Makes a Great Game Greater - GeekTyrant

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During Monday's coronavirus briefing at the state Capitol, Gov. Andy Beshear said doctors and nurses treating patients amid the PPE shortage are heroes, and they are showing "once-in-a-generation courage." March 23, 2020(Photo: Matt Stone/Courier Journal)

Gov. Andy Beshear's first months in office weren't supposed to be like this.

He was supposed to spend more time advocating in Frankfort for his campaignpriorities investing more in public education and trying to persuade Kentucky's Republican-run legislature to generate money for the state bylegalizing casino gambling.

But whentheglobal COVID-19 pandemic breached Kentucky's borders,Beshear's focus had to shift to protecting the publicfrom a deadly, fast-spreading virus.

He has taken aggressive steps to limit the spread of the virus, issuing orders thatprompted thousands ofKentuckians to lose their jobs.

Shortlyafter taking officein December, Beshear said he was"committed to building a commonwealth that is focused on the common good" and pledged to "work to address the anxieties that people worry about at the end of the day. ..."

[This story is being provided for free to our readers during the coronavirus outbreak. Consider supporting local journalism by subscribing to The Courier Journal atcourier-journal.com/subscribe.]

No one could have envisioned how quickly that commitment would be put to the test.

"I want to start the way we always start, and that's reaffirming that we will get through this, and we will get through it together," Gov. Andy Beshear said Sunday as he began another of his daily, widely viewed press conferences about the coronavirus situation. "It's not easy and it's not going to be easy, and it's probably going to get tougher before it gets easier, but we are resilient people, and we can and we will do this together."

Live updates: Get the latest information on COVID-19 in Kentucky

Coronavirus map: How many coronavirus cases are in Kentucky? Where are they?

Beshear showed acalm, even-keeled demeanor during last year's elections, making the case to voters that he was a more polite and better choice for governor than Matt Bevin, thebombastic, confrontational conservative who then led the state's executive branch.

Nowadays, Beshear continues with hisdisciplined,soft-spoken message, even as he makes hard-linechoices.

Kentuckians see what he's doing, and many of them are praising him for it.

The internet is full of good-natured memesriffing onhis efforts to not only reassure people, but alsoadmonishthose who aren't taking the coronavirus seriously enough.

He's being compared to MisterRogers, and some people are even joking about how they've developed a crush on him because of how he's handling this crisis. Othersare such big Beshear fans,they'rebuying socks dotted with images of his smiling face.

Related: Meet Virginia, the silent partner in Kentuckys modern-day fireside chats with Gov. Beshear

The decisions Beshear has been making haven't been universally supported, though. He has repeatedly referencedreports he's received of people and businesseswho are ignoring his orders.

The comments on his Facebook page include a ton of pro-Beshear posts, but there's also some criticism about how his decisions can hurtKentuckians economically.

"So lets crash our state economy. That makes sense," one person wrote.

Another commented: "Some of us will be homeless soon, glad the weather outside is nice."

Other posts aren't critical but do voice concerns about how people will be affected.

"We need to know whats going to happen to the people who are losing their jobs and still have to pay rent," one person said in a recent comment.

4 cents in the bank: Louisville restaurant workers are reeling fromclosures

In his daily press conferences, which are broadcast online and on TV, Besheardescribes the latest data on the coronavirus cases that have been confirmed across the state and announces his latest recommendations and orders.

He takes questions from reporters, as well as ones people submit online. And he often talks directly to the viewers, including kidswatching with their parents.

He offers tips on how to manage the anxiety he knows people are feeling and tells them he's feeling it, too.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear looks back at a video screen during a children's press conference about the coronavirus. The video showed a mother and daughter talking about the effect the pandemic has had on kids. March 17, 2020.(Photo: Matt Stone/Courier Journal)

He's been doing these press conferences for a fewweeks now. He wore a suit jacket and tie at first, but lately he's worn a simple button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

And more and more folks are tuning in.One of his most recent appearances racked up 290,000 views on Facebook alone.

"Hes an extremely calming presence," said Dawn Howard of Louisville, who listens tohis press conferences most days.

Howard, a self-employed certified public accountant, is far from Beshear's biggest fan.

She said she didn't vote for him in last year's Democratic primary (although she did support him when he faced off against Bevinin November).

"I found him to be kind of wooden and not super-engaging," she said of Beshear. "But Ive been really impressed with his warmth and his obvious empathy and his willingness to make tough calls and be strong on this stuff."

She thinks Beshear is striking a balance inmaking sure Kentuckians take the pandemic seriously without talking about it in a way that terrifies them.

"Hes like a cult of personality right now, which is very funny," she said. "But Ithink peopleare just really responding to that. Theyre responding to the comfort and the steadiness, and they have a lot of affection for it becausewere all really scared."

Howard finds the memes about Beshear kind of ridiculous, and she's sure he does, too. "But I think it's important to keep things light whenever we can," she noted.

"I actually feel really proud to be from Kentucky right now," she said. "... We have somebody leading Kentuckythat is setting a standard that other people are taking notice of and admiring."

Read this: Other states make competing offers forBeshear, but he's ours

The praise for Beshear isn't just coming from liberal circles.

State Rep. Jason Nemes, a Louisville Republican, said he trusts Beshear, even though they fundamentally disagree on a lot of things.

"Peopleare tried by the moment, by circumstances," Nemes said. "Gov. Beshear is being tried by some very difficult circumstances, and I think hes rising to the occasion. It doesnt surprise me.

"When you have character, when you have heart, you can stand up when the going gets tough, and that's what the governors doing right now. Hes meeting the occasion."

Nemes said Beshear is to be commended for surrounding himself with experts and following their evidence-based suggestions, in addition to communicating openly with the broader public about what his administration is doing.

That doesn't mean the governor's decisions haven't been controversial.

Nemes has heard from a lot of his constituents, many of whom are afraid of the coronavirus and support Beshear's efforts to contain it and many of whom are upset Beshear has gone further than some othergovernors in his response to the pandemic, issuing orders that have restricted business and endangered their livelihoods.

"Theres true fear on both sides, and theres a lot of people on both sides," Nemes said.

He understands the concerns of people who worry Beshear may be going overboard.

"If I had worked my entire life, and I've got a little something because Ive created a business, and now Im losing it all, you want to know: 'Are these steps legit?'" Nemes said. "But at the same time, this is the unknown. We dont know what is to come, and weve seen from some other places like Italy that our health care system can be overrun very quickly. And were trying to stop that."

Here's what Nemes is trying to tell the concerned constituents he's hearing from: "'Listen ... Itrust our governor, and Itrust the people around him.'

"I know Andy Beshear the man more than I know Andy Beshear the governor. Andy Beshearis a good man," Nemes told The Courier Journal."And Andy Beshearthe man is trying to do right by the people that he is the governor of."

Beshear, 42, has been an elected official for less than five years, and he's been governor for less than four months.

But hehas deep roots in the commonwealth and in its politics. Born and raised in the Bluegrass State, he is the son of Steve Beshear, a former governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general of Kentucky.

The elder Beshear was hit with a national crisis, too,when the U.S. economy took a nosedive soon after he became governorin 2007, forcing massive state budget cuts.

Andy Beshear followed in his father's footsteps in 2015, when he was elected attorney general. Then, in November 2019, he won the gubernatorial election in an increasingly red state by a thin margin and was sworn into office the following month four years, almost to the day, since his fatherleft the Governor's Mansion in December 2015.

During his term as attorney general, Beshear generally came off as mild-manneredand often took a measured approach when making public appearances and statements.

However, that doesn't mean Beshearavoided conflict.

During hisstint as attorney general, he regularly butted heads with Bevin.

Beshear challenged some of Bevin's governing decisions in court, with mixed results. And when Bevin and GOP lawmakers clashed with public school teachers over pensions and other issues, Beshear aligned himself with educators and sued to block acontroversial pension reform law many of them opposed.(He won that case.)

Teachers were credited with returning the favorby helping him beat Bevin last year.

With this pandemic, Howard the Louisville CPA said she has been pleasantly surprised by Beshear's willingness to make tough, sometimes unpopular calls.

Looking back, though, she indicated that it's clear he has a track record of being willing to fight for things he thinks are necessary.

"We knew that he was strong because he did a great job of standing up against Bevin on things that he thought were important as attorney general," she said."I knew that he had a backbone."

Beshear entered the governor's office withbig goals.

The lone Kentucky Democrat with actual power in Frankfort, he planned to advocate hard for legalizingcasinos to bring in more tax revenue an admittedly hard sell, but something he felt could helpthe state's severely struggling public pension system.

And he wanted to work on getting the statetopour more money into public education, including enough supportto give teachers a $2,000 raise and fully fund their pensions.

Then came the pandemic.

He orderedbars, restaurants,gyms, hair and nail salons, "nonessential" retail stores and other businesses to indefinitely close their doors to in-person customers.

Hetold senior and childcare centers to close temporarily, asked medical professionals to stop doing elective procedures and recommended the state's public school districts stay closed until at least April 20.

"You know, Ihave put my dreams as governor on hold. And in fact, I've had to make decisions that listen Iknow they've impacted you watching a lot more than they have impacted me," he told the people tuned in to one of his press conferences last week.

"I'm a governor that ran to create opportunity, both for everyone and their small business, and a governor that wanted to make sure that we had more educational opportunities for our kids. And what have I had to do?" Beshear asked.

"I have had to close more businesses out there than maybe any governor has ever had to, and I've had to ask our superintendents which all agreed to call off school," he said."Why? Because it's what we have to do to beat the coronavirus."

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom, president and CEO of Greater Louisville Inc., said her organization is appreciative of Beshear, even though he has issued orders that have hurtbusinesses and their employees.

"The drastic measures that are being put into place are meant to mitigate the impact of COVID-19s spread, and we think thats very important," she said. "The more we enact short-term pain, the more longer-term gain we will see."

GLI, which is the Louisville region's chamber of commerce, is trying to help employers and out-of-work individuals through a job-matching program it's running with KentuckianaWorks, according to Davasher-Wisdom.

"I think everyone is very much in shock right now, but Ihave not really heard many businesses that are expressing anger about the orders...," she said.

Davasher-Wisdom said she feels the Beshear administration is taking thebusiness community's concerns into account. But there are still a lot of unknowns out there.

"Peopleare most in need of certainty, and unfortunately, thats just the one thing that we cant obtain right now," she said.

Listening to the experts

Doctors and nurses are on the front lines of this pandemic.

When asked to assess Beshear's strategy, representatives from the Kentucky Nurses Association and the Kentucky Medical Association pointed to the same thing: He's involving health care experts in his decision-making and paying attention to them.

"What that means is that the people who are at the table have knowledge to help him to make good decisions," said Delanor Manson, a nurse who is also CEO of theKentucky Nurses Association, which is a voice for Kentucky's 90,000 nurses statewide. "Nobody works in a vacuum in a situation like this."

Manson saidshe supports the hard-line calls Beshear has made to limit people's exposure to the virus and said he isn't pulling those choices out of thin air, but instead is listening to experienced medical professionals.

"Thats called leadership," she said of Beshear's approach to the pandemic. "And that has nothing to do with being mild-mannered or aggressive or assertive. It has to do withwhat needs to be done to protect and save Kentuckians."

Opinion: Feeling anxious about the coronavirus? Here's how you can cope

Beshear's decisions haven't only affected people who work inplaces like restaurants, bars, stores and day cares. He also toldhospitals and health care professionals to stop performing elective procedures, but left room for doctors' discretionon individual cases.

Dr. Brent Wright, president of the Kentucky Medical Association, saidthat guidance acknowledges the importance of letting health care professionals use their own judgment on whether a procedure is necessary.

Wright also notedthe governor is working closely withDr. StevenStack, the commissioner of the Kentucky Department forPublic Health, and said Stack has stressed the importance of physicians' leadership and innovation during this crisis.

"Wehave felt very respected by this administration through this process and through this response to COVID19," Wright said of the physicians the KMA represents.

"Were looking at this as ... reason and caution over revenue and convenience," he said. "We dont have a chance given the nature of this virus the aggressiveness of its spread and its ability to affect vulnerable populations, as well as all ages to choose a response thats not geared toward maximizing human life."

Wright said he met briefly with the governor recently in Frankfort. They were headed to a press conference at the Capitol when they passed by the rotunda, where another event would soon be held.

And I think what impressed me was the governor looked to his left, in the rotunda, and made the comment that he thought the chairs were too close together that we needed to space the chairs out more to protect people," Wright said.

Reach reporter Morgan Watkins: 502-582-4502; mwatkins@courierjournal.com; Twitter:@morganwatkins26. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today:courier-journal.com/morganw.

Read or Share this story: https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/2020/03/25/kentucky-gov-andy-beshear-takes-rapid-evolution-fight-pandemic/2901910001/

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Gov. Beshear has been in office for 3 months. Handling a pandemic wasn't on the calendar - Courier Journal

The coronavirus pandemics global spread has caused concern regarding the development of the situation.

The most up-to-date online platform for the monitoring, analysis and mapping of the geographical distribution and evolution of the virus has been created by the GeoCHOROS research team of the National Geographic and Space Research Laboratory of the National Technical University of Athens.

Unlike other platforms, it is the only one that gives a true picture of the size and magnitude of the problem, in each country and worldwide, and makes it easier for the visitor to make comparisons, even estimates of evolution, the research team said.

What makes the platform particularly unique is the way in which it allows users to see the data in a visual form.In addition to the number of cases, deaths, and recoveries, the rate of disease progression for different time periods can be visualised; overall, on the last day, the last week, or the last two weeks, the incidence and death rates can be calculated on population or relative to the population density of each country.

Professor George Fotios, professor of Geography and Regional Planning at the School of Rural and Surveying Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens told the Athens Macedonian News Agency that the platform was created so that people could see a break-up of cases in terms of population while also viewing the development of coronavirus in terms of specific groups.

READ MORE:Australian states closing their borders in response to coronavirus epidemic

The reason we developed this platform is because this is a phenomenon that people evaluate based on three to four key facts how many cases there are, how many deaths and how many have recovered. But these numbers need to be weighted according to the country they refer to, Professor Fotios said.

It allows you to compare how this pandemic evolves by country. That is, one can see what the number and spread of the disease is in each country, he said, adding that it is a tool both for the ordinary citizen and people who want to deepen their knowledge of the issue.

READ MORE:Flexible visa terms on the way during coronavirus crisis

The creation of the platform, according to the research team, makes use of state-of-the-art technologies and has focused on user-friendliness, which provides maps, graphs, and tables that answer questions.

Visit the platform at http://geochoros.survey.ntua.gr/coronavirus/?fbclid=IwAR3bWOdskdtMh2znadEJPg-rTqWHNnkbhRzvoi_GCk24jzVToz6t7yOI4Bs

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University of Athens coronavirus platform shows the geographical distribution and evolution - Neos Kosmos

No, not those fish fingers. Defrosting and a microwave werent required here.

Humans may not be directly related to fish (except maybe Abe Sapien or that creature from The Shape of Water), but the fossil of an extinct fish known as Elpisostege watsoni was a breakthrough for a research team from Flinders University in Australia and Universite de Quebec a Rimouski in Canada. This literal fish out of water had fingers, as in actual finger bones, in its pectoral fins. Its 380-million-year-old skeleton revealed how vertebrate fingers evolved from fins and how prehistoric fish morphed into tetrapods.

The find reveals extraordinary new information about the evolution of the vertebrate hand,"said John Long, Strategic Professor in Paleontology at Flingers University, who recently published a study in Nature. This is the first time that we have unequivocally discovered fingers locked in a fin with fin-rays in any known fish. The articulating digits in the fin are like the finger bones found in the hands of most animals."

Elpisostegalians were amphibious predators that merged features of fish and tetrapods. They were the closest known evolutionary ancestors of tetrapods, but are thought to have appeared more fishlike (closer to how you would probably imagine a fish-crocodile hybrid) since they still had the scales and gills. Their large skulls with eyes on top were parts of their morphology closer to tetrapods, and unlike fish, they had insignificant dorsal and anal fins or none at all, relying instead on their pectoral fins to carry them around in shallow water or all the way to shore. Finger-like bones made it easier for them to spread their weight through those fins.

No other fossils have revealed the complete anatomy of an elpisostegalians extraordinary pectoral fins until now. Out of four elpistostegalian species, E. watsoni is the only one whose body shape and proportions can now be fully fleshed out.

Tetrapods are thought to have emerged in the form of elpisostegalians during the Devonian period. Earlier fossilized impressions of bones that suggested the beginnings of a transformation do exist, but these not-quite-fish, or tetrapodomorphs, which probably walked something like this, marked the dawn of the transformation into tetrapods. What may have deceptively appeared to be a fin could have been mistaken for one, since it still shows fin rays characteristic of fish. These fins were actually hiding skeletal digits that Long and his team determined to be the closest skeletal structure to tetrapod hands ever found.

"This finding pushes back the origin of digits in vertebrates to the fish level, and tells us that the patterning for the vertebrate hand was first developed deep in evolution, just before fishes left the water," Long said.

So where did fish end and tetrapods begin? The Devonian phenomenon of fish fingers was undoubtedly one of the most significant events in vertebrate evolution. Later incarnations of tetrapodomorphs would eventually ditch the gills for lungs and further adapt to terrestrial life by developing stronger muscular structures in fins that were turning into legs. Dorsal and anal fins that are necessary for stability and swimming in water also disappeared. Functions of major organs began to change, and sensory abilities to detect movement of predators and prey in water gradually faded, though E. watsoni was probably not in much danger of being eaten since it had fangs for days.

Elpistostege further blurs the line between fish and tetrapods in showing a greater number of tetrapod novelties than are present in any other fish, Watson and his team concluded in the study.

Just hope that monster sharks wont start taking sunset walks on the beach anytime soon.

(via Flinders University/Nature)

See the article here:

Creepy extinct fish with fingers unearths the bizarre truth of how hands evolved - SYFY WIRE

Senseonics Holdings, Inc. (SENS) is priced at $0.81 after the most recent trading session. At the very opening of the session, the stock price was $0.6 and reached a high price of $0.92, prior to closing the session it reached the value of $0.56. The stock touched a low price of $0.58.

Senseonics Holdings, Inc. had a pretty Dodgy run when it comes to the market performance. The 1-year high price for the companys stock is recorded $2.66 on 03/26/19, with the lowest value was $0.52 for the same time period, recorded on 03/24/20.

Price records that include history of low and high prices in the period of 52 weeks can tell a lot about the stocks existing status and the future performance. Presently, Senseonics Holdings, Inc. shares are logging -69.73% during the 52-week period from high price, and 54.11% higher than the lowest price point for the same timeframe. The stocks price range for the 52-week period managed to maintain the performance between $0.52 and $2.66.

The companys shares, operating in the sector of healthcare managed to top a trading volume set approximately around 2.67 million for the day, which was evidently higher, when compared to the average daily volumes of the shares.

When it comes to the year-to-date metrics, the Senseonics Holdings, Inc. (SENS) recorded performance in the market was -38.86%, having the revenues showcasing -40.41% on a quarterly basis in comparison with the same period year before. At the time of this writing, the total market value of the company is set at 110.60M, as it employees total of 191 workers.

According to the data provided on Barchart.com, the moving average of the company in the 100-day period was set at 1.0157, with a change in the price was noted -0.3100. In a similar fashion, Senseonics Holdings, Inc. posted a movement of -27.93% for the period of last 100 days, recording 2,041,382 in trading volumes.

Raw Stochastic average of Senseonics Holdings, Inc. in the period of last 50 days is set at 22.07%. The result represents downgrade in oppose to Raw Stochastic average for the period of the last 20 days, recording 23.57%. In the last 20 days, the companys Stochastic %K was 9.71% and its Stochastic %D was recorded 6.12%.

If we look into the earlier routines of Senseonics Holdings, Inc., multiple moving trends are noted. Year-to-date Price performance of the companys stock appears to be encouraging, given the fact the metric is recording -38.86%. Additionally, trading for the stock in the period of the last six months notably deteriorated by -47.66%, alongside a downfall of -78.54% for the period of the last 12 months. The shares increased approximately by 24.14% in the 7-day charts and went up by -27.15% in the period of the last 30 days. Common stock shares were lifted by -40.41% during last recorded quarter.

Read more:

Senseonics Holdings, Inc. (SENS) is primed for evolution with the beta value of 0.85 - The InvestChronicle

e.l.f. Beauty, Inc. (ELF) is priced at $9.38 after the most recent trading session. At the very opening of the session, the stock price was $9.56 and reached a high price of $10.15, prior to closing the session it reached the value of $9.26. The stock touched a low price of $9.19.

e.l.f. Beauty, Inc. had a pretty Dodgy run when it comes to the market performance. The 1-year high price for the companys stock is recorded $20.00 on 02/14/20, with the lowest value was $7.58 for the same time period, recorded on 03/19/20.

Price records that include history of low and high prices in the period of 52 weeks can tell a lot about the stocks existing status and the future performance. Presently, e.l.f. Beauty, Inc. shares are logging -53.10% during the 52-week period from high price, and 23.75% higher than the lowest price point for the same timeframe. The stocks price range for the 52-week period managed to maintain the performance between $7.58 and $20.00.

The companys shares, operating in the sector of consumer goods managed to top a trading volume set approximately around 1.07 million for the day, which was evidently lower, when compared to the average daily volumes of the shares.

When it comes to the year-to-date metrics, the e.l.f. Beauty, Inc. (ELF) recorded performance in the market was -41.85%, having the revenues showcasing -40.52% on a quarterly basis in comparison with the same period year before. At the time of this writing, the total market value of the company is set at 444.61M, as it employees total of 277 workers.

During the last month, 6 analysts gave the e.l.f. Beauty, Inc. a BUY rating, 0 of the polled analysts branded the stock as an OVERWEIGHT, 5 analysts were recommending to HOLD this stock, 0 of them gave the stock UNDERWEIGHT rating, and 0 of the polled analysts provided SELL rating.

According to the data provided on Barchart.com, the moving average of the company in the 100-day period was set at 15.79, with a change in the price was noted -8.39. In a similar fashion, e.l.f. Beauty, Inc. posted a movement of -47.21% for the period of last 100 days, recording 875,342 in trading volumes.

Total Debt to Equity Ratio (D/E) can also provide valuable insight into the companys financial health and market status. The debt to equity ratio can be calculated by dividing the present total liabilities of a company by shareholders equity. Debt to Equity thus makes a valuable metrics that describes the debt, company is using in order to support assets, correlating with the value of shareholders equity. The total Debt to Equity ratio for ELF is recording 0.58 at the time of this writing. In addition, long term Debt to Equity ratio is set at 0.53.

Raw Stochastic average of e.l.f. Beauty, Inc. in the period of last 50 days is set at 14.49%. The result represents downgrade in oppose to Raw Stochastic average for the period of the last 20 days, recording 17.34%. In the last 20 days, the companys Stochastic %K was 14.37% and its Stochastic %D was recorded 10.96%.

Bearing in mind the latest performance of e.l.f. Beauty, Inc., several moving trends are noted. Year-to-date Price performance of the companys stock appears to be encouraging, given the fact the metric is recording -41.85%. Additionally, trading for the stock in the period of the last six months notably deteriorated by -49.02%, alongside a downfall of -7.50% for the period of the last 12 months. The shares increased approximately by 3.44% in the 7-day charts and went up by 10.35% in the period of the last 30 days. Common stock shares were lifted by -40.52% during last recorded quarter.

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e.l.f. Beauty, Inc. (ELF) is primed for evolution with the beta value of 2.12 - The InvestChronicle

In a press conference yesterday about the coronavirus, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo used notably religious language. He observed (at 33 minutes) that healthcare workers are doing Gods work of caring for people. Was he mistaken in saying so? You might well think so from watching the Cosmos series on Fox and the National Geographic channels.

Episodes 5 and 6 of this newseason of the program, with Neil deGrasse Tyson, aired on Monday. See here for commentary from Evolution News on episode 6. Going a little out of order, here are my thoughts on episode 5, entitled The Cosmic Connectome. This episode gives the impression that ancient medicine, with few exceptions such as the Greek physician Hippocrates and his followers, consisted merely of ritualistic appeasement of the gods. Reliable medicine triumphed only as science conquered religion. Wrong impression! Lets get this right.

In their introduction to the history of medicine, Essential Readings in Medicine and Religion (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), Gary Ferngren and Ekaterina Lomperis write: Healing in the ancient world took a variety of forms, some secular and some religious or magical. Here is their summary of the causal repertoire of ancient medicine (both before and after Hippocrates) in Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek, Roman, and early Christian texts:

Disease was generally attributed to four kinds of causation. In the first, it was said to be caused by gods or divinities and was often considered to be retributive, that is, inflicted in response to an act that had aroused the displeasure of a god or divine force. In the second type, disease was attributed to demons (minor deities or malevolent spirits).In the third, it was said to be caused by the magic of magicians or sorcerers. Finally, disease was seen to be the result of natural causes that could be observed, for example, in wounds and broken bones. While in some societies one or another model of disease causation was dominant, in most ancient cultures all four were seen as potential causes, and a proper diagnosis was necessary to determine which type was the cause and what kind of treatment would be effective in each instance.

Religion and science-based medicine have continued to interact in modern times, up through the current COVID-19 pandemic. Like Governor Cuomo, many people today still see religion and medicine as operating in harmony. They practice social distancing (echoing Old Testament leprosy protocol), accept medical ventilator assistance (if available), and pray. See neurosurgeon Michael Egnors comments, Why Prayer Is Wise During a Pandemic, at Mind Matters.

Prior to the public hospitals created by ancient Christians, very few ancient people had access to physicians. Early Christians proclaimed and practiced the harmony of faith (prayer, not pagan magic) and medical technology. Much of the subsequent humanitarian expansion of medicine, especially for the poor, was inspired and funded by Christianity. Many hospital names still reflect this religious heritage.

Although few medical practices prior to about two hundred years ago significantly resulted in healing, this was not due to religious hindrances to medical progress. Rather, biomedical science, needed to dramatically improve medical practice, took a long time for humanity to discover. This largely occurred in the modern Western world. The Judeo-Christian tradition proved to be a supportive context for such discoveries. See my video that deals with this subject, Three Big Ways Christianity Supported the Rise of Modern Science.

So Cosmos host Neil Tyson is wrong to say that the hallmark of modern science and enlightened medicine is the belief that nothing happens without a natural cause. That is a narrow philosophical belief that is out of touch with the cultural roots of modern science. Discovery of the cause-and-effect structure of the natural world has been best fostered in cultures committed to a belief in a supernatural creator who made a world with discoverable natural laws and discernible natural histories.

Despite Tysons many misguided criticisms of theistic religion, his own materialistic faith is granted a privileged, but undeserved, authority in Cosmos 3.0. Much of the rest of episode 5 is devoted to celebrating the emergence of consciousness from material processes, even though there is no good explanation for how this could have happened by a series of unguided physical events. Echoing Carl Sagan, Tyson defines the universe as everything that ever was, is, or will be. This is a statement of faith. Science, in principle, could not derive such a conclusion.

Finally, Tyson conveys religious awe when he concludes the episode with the hopeful anticipation that, after sharing our digitized brain contents with alien superintelligence, humanity will experience the ultimate realization of emergence, a cosmos interconnected by thoughts and dreams. Salvation by technology! This is an oblique expression of the extraterrestrial enlightenment myth that I debunk in my book Unbelievable. See also, Unbelievable: The Myth of Alien Enlightenment. Be on the lookout for more of this muddled naturalistic Nirvana in the remaining episodes of Cosmos.

Editors note: Find further reviews and commentary on the third season of Cosmos, Possible Worlds, here:

Image credit: Galen and Hippocrates, two ancient physicians, depicted in a fresco from Anagni Cathedral in Italy, by Nina Aldin Thune via Wikimedia Commons.

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Medicine, Religion, and Cosmos Was Andrew Cuomo Wrong to Invoke God? - Discovery Institute

The evolution of cataclysmic binary systems is cyclical in nature throughout their life they constantly change from the state of the binary system to the state of a nova, a new star and a dwarf nova. Then the cycle repeats, scientists from the American Museum of Natural History found out, whose work was published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Cataclysmic binary systems consist of a star like the Sun, a red dwarf, and a dead white dwarf, which gradually sucks energy and matter from its companion.

In the process of theft, the white dwarf forms a critical mass of hydrogen, which at a certain moment explodes like a super-powerful hydrogen bomb. These explosions highlight the system and temporarily make the white dwarf a million times brighter than the Sun.

In a new study, astronomers compiled a mathematical model that allowed us to track the phases that catastrophic binary systems undergo during evolution. The simulation was supposed to show what stages the red dwarf goes through under the influence of his companion.

Scientists have discovered that cataclysmic binaries do not just alternate through each of four states nova, nova-like, dwarf nova and a separate binary system throughout their lives. Just formed binary files during the first several million years of life alternate only the state of the new and new. Then, over the next 10% of lives, the number of phases increases to three nova, nova-like and dwarf nova. During the remaining almost 90% of life, they continuously cycle through all four states.

Statistically, this means that the systems that we observe are newborn systems. And this is less than about 5% of the total number of binary systems. The vast majority are at the following developmental stages, less noticeable for telescopes therefore, science ignores them.

Michael Shara, lead author of the study

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The evolution of cataclysmic binary systems is cyclical - FREE NEWS

Editors note: As an alternative to what you are getting pretty much everywhere else in the media at the moment, Evolution News is proud to offer inspiration, pointing to purpose and meaning in life. The profoundest mystery and thus the deepest inspiration is life itself. Discovery Institute Press has just published a greatly expanded edition of the 1984 classic of intelligent design science literature, The Mystery of Lifes Origin. Below is an excerpt from the original introduction by Charles Thaxton, Walter Bradley, and Roger Olsen.

Two monumental scientific reports appeared in 1953, both of which have subsequently received wide acceptance in the scientific community. One was the proposal by James Watson and Francis Crick of their double helical model for deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA. According to their now-famous model, hereditary information is transmitted from one generation to the next by means of a simple code resident in the specific sequence of certain constituents of the DNA molecule. It had previously been held that the spectacular diversity of life was due in part to some corresponding diversity of nuclear material. The breakthrough by Crick and Watson was their discovery of the specific key to lifes diversity. It was the extraordinarily complex yet orderly architecture of the DNA molecule. They had discovered that there is in fact a code inscribed in this coil of life, bringing a major advance in our understanding of lifes remarkable structure.

Almost as if synchronized for the sake of irony, the other report in 1953, by Stanley Miller, offered experimental support for what has become an increasingly apparent contradiction. Miller offered his work in support of the neo-Darwinian theory of prebiotic evolution. This notion suggested that the fantastic complexity in the molecular organization of living cells might somehow have resulted from nothing more than simple chemicals interacting at random in a primordial ocean.

In 1953, few if any were troubled by the tension between the new insights of Crick and Watson on the one hand and Millers results on the other. Crick and Watson were concerned with lifes structure and Miller was concerned with lifes origin. Most observers had an unshakable confidence that these two investigative approaches would eventually converge. After all, young Millers announcement of experimental success was just what was anticipated according to the general theory of evolution. Regardless of whether the particular theory of evolution is Darwinian, neo-Darwinian, or something else, an evolutionary preamble to the biological phase of evolution is clearly required. Chemical evolution, then, is the pre-biological phase of evolution in which the very earliest living things came into being. This monumental dawning of life occurred through the variation of natural forces acting on matter over long time spans, perhaps up to a thousand million years, or maybe longer.

In the decades since Millers and Crick and Watsons reports, however, there have been indications that all is not well in the halls of biology. We have gained a far deeper appreciation of the extremely complex macromolecules such as proteins and nucleic acids. The enlarged understanding of these complexities has precipitated new suggestions that the DNA mechanism may be more complex and the molecular organization more intricate and information-filled than was previously thought.

The impressive complexities of proteins, nucleic acids, and other biological molecules are presently developed in nature only in living things. Unless it is assumed such complexity has always been present in an infinitely old universe, there must have been a time in the past when life appeared de novo out of lifeless, inert matter. How can the mere interaction of simple chemicals in the primordial ocean have produced life as it is presently understood? That is the question. The signs do not bode well for the standard answers given, and some investigators are suggesting that our two approaches will not converge.

Read the rest in The Mystery of Lifes Origin: The Continuing Controversy, from Discovery Institute Press.

Photo: (l. to r.) Roger Olsen, Charles Thaxton, and Walter Bradley signing books at the 2020 Dallas Conference on Science & Faith, by Chris Morgan.

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Crisis in the Chemistry of Origins - Discovery Institute

At the end of the latest market close, Hasbro, Inc. (HAS) was valued at $51.87. In that particular session, Stock kicked-off at the price of $55 while reaching the peak value of $63.2 and lowest value recorded on the day was $54.88. The stock current value is $63.11.

Hasbro, Inc. had a pretty Dodgy run when it comes to the market performance. The 1-year high price for the companys stock is recorded $126.87 on 07/30/19, with the lowest value was $41.33 for the same time period, recorded on 03/18/20.

Price records that include history of low and high prices in the period of 52 weeks can tell a lot about the stocks existing status and the future performance. Presently, Hasbro, Inc. shares are logging -50.26% during the 52-week period from high price, and 52.70% higher than the lowest price point for the same timeframe. The stocks price range for the 52-week period managed to maintain the performance between $41.33 and $126.87.

The companys shares, operating in the sector of consumer goods managed to top a trading volume set approximately around 3.27 million for the day, which was evidently higher, when compared to the average daily volumes of the shares.

When it comes to the year-to-date metrics, the Hasbro, Inc. (HAS) recorded performance in the market was -40.24%, having the revenues showcasing -39.08% on a quarterly basis in comparison with the same period year before. At the time of this writing, the total market value of the company is set at 8.55B, as it employees total of 5600 workers.

During the last month, 10 analysts gave the Hasbro, Inc. a BUY rating, 1 of the polled analysts branded the stock as an OVERWEIGHT, 6 analysts were recommending to HOLD this stock, 0 of them gave the stock UNDERWEIGHT rating, and 0 of the polled analysts provided SELL rating.

According to the data provided on Barchart.com, the moving average of the company in the 100-day period was set at 93.06, with a change in the price was noted -35.53. In a similar fashion, Hasbro, Inc. posted a movement of -36.02% for the period of last 100 days, recording 1,562,545 in trading volumes.

Total Debt to Equity Ratio (D/E) can also provide valuable insight into the companys financial health and market status. The debt to equity ratio can be calculated by dividing the present total liabilities of a company by shareholders equity. Debt to Equity thus makes a valuable metrics that describes the debt, company is using in order to support assets, correlating with the value of shareholders equity. The total Debt to Equity ratio for HAS is recording 1.35 at the time of this writing. In addition, long term Debt to Equity ratio is set at 1.35.

Raw Stochastic average of Hasbro, Inc. in the period of last 50 days is set at 31.95%. The result represents downgrade in oppose to Raw Stochastic average for the period of the last 20 days, recording 50.00%. In the last 20 days, the companys Stochastic %K was 27.62% and its Stochastic %D was recorded 17.38%.

Now, considering the stocks previous presentation, multiple moving trends are noted. Year-to-date Price performance of the companys stock appears to be encouraging, given the fact the metric is recording -40.24%. Additionally, trading for the stock in the period of the last six months notably deteriorated by -46.55%, alongside a downfall of -24.83% for the period of the last 12 months. The shares increased approximately by 3.81% in the 7-day charts and went up by 34.99% in the period of the last 30 days. Common stock shares were lifted by -39.08% during last recorded quarter.

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Hasbro, Inc. (HAS) is primed for evolution with the beta value of 1.49 - The InvestChronicle