Don't call it a comeback, it's just a return. I've been gone for a while but looking to get back in the game, and last week's Amazon device event got me to thinking about how this one compares to last year. But, as I said last year, this isn't a blow by blow of every device, feature, and skill that was announced, as you can get that from the great wall-to-wall coverage here on this site. This is just a few thoughts from a CRM-ish perspective after taking some time to mull things around a bit.

While all the excitement was around new devices, features and skills, there were a few numbers sprinkled in that caught my attention. According to Amazon:

Taken together, these stats point to more activities, more devices, more skills, more interactions, more active users and more attention being poured into the Amazon voice ecosystem. And usually, more attention means more money, as that last bullet point attests to. But, as usual, one number I've continually been looking for, to no avail, was any indication of just how much shopping is being done via Alexa. Now according to Adobe, customer journeys are being impacted by voice-first devices, even if the final transaction isn't being carried out through them. But I guess until the numbers are substantial enough to put out there, I'll have to continue waiting. In the meantime, it's apparent that people aren't just buying these devices, they are using them regularly, and for a variety of things.

Of course, when the event is called Amazon Devices Event, devices are going to get most of the hype -- and understandably so. I've already ordered Echo Fire 4K TV stick and Echo Show 8, pre-ordered a set of Echo Buds and signed up for the invite-only Echo Loop ring. And I can see picking up a few of the other numerous things announced, but I am drawing the line at the Echo Frames -- mainly because they don't look good to me at all.

But with that said, and even with my money spent on more than a few things already, last year's event felt more like a device deluge than this year. Maybe because my expectations were raised due to last year's inaugural event where it felt like it'd never stop introducing things. Or maybe because this time around it felt like some of the feedback led to some interesting new experiences and designs aimed at making us feel more comfortable (and secure) using Alexa to do moreeven with our current devices. And to me, that shows just how important it is to Amazon to deepen our dependencies on Alexa and extend our use of the assistant across devices, tasks, and experiences.

And while there were way too many new devices and skills to even try to mention, these new additions seem to be taking us down a path that travels in the same direction we are already headed. It feels like this year's event was innovation from a productivity, efficiency and comfort standpoint. It doesn't feel like a moonshot or 90-degree turn, but necessary infrastructure updates to accelerate adoption and deeper usage. Some of the more interesting examples Amazon highlighted would include privacy/security improvements like:

Alexa is also using AI to learn behaviors and to automate processes based on that learning, including:

Additionally, Alexa has picked up some more human-like capabilities, such as:

Is this AI-generated empathy? Now that could move things into the revolutionary categorybeginning next year. But one new evolutionary thing that could be fun is having Samuel L. Jackson as the first celebrity voice for Alexa. He can tell you jokes, let you know if it's raining, set timers and alarms, play music and more -- all with "a bit" of his own personality. There will be two versions of his voice are available -- explicit and non-explicit. But if I'm going to pay $.99 for a skill to hear Sammy's voice on my Echo, why in the world would I choose non-explicit Sam? If I got this, I'd be wanting to ask Sam to say his Pulp Fiction speech on demand. Now can you imagine what a non-explicit version of that would sound like? But I digress

It seems to me that many of the devices announced at this year's event were newer editions of earlier devices. But some were new for Amazon, and are meant to allow you to take Alexa with you out of the confines of your home. These include:

The Buds, of course, will be competing with Apple Airpods. Frames have less direct competitors and Loop has even less competition if any. And even though Loop and Frames are new and/or in undersaturated categories -- with Buds being in a more competitive category -- will they make up for Amazon missing out on the most important mobile device of all, the smartphone?

eMarketer estimates that roughly 112 million people in the US use a voice assistant at least once monthly, making up roughly 40% of the population. Contrast that with the 81% of Americans who are very active smartphone owners and it shows that Amazon will have to sell a hell of a lot of Loops and Frames to make up for Alexa missing out on automatically being on that platform, like Siri and Google Assistant are. But coming up with new types of devices may be the only way to make up some of that ground, and creating an assortment of less pricey gadgets could lead to some real winners. It's not like it can't happen, considering it has been less than five years since the first Echo hit the market, and look at the impact that has had already. And Amazon has the resources and the determination to experiment with innovative tech that can lead to mini revolutions -- even if the gadget may initially seem quirky. But that's still an uphill battle, to say the least.

I look forward to these device event days because it is fun to see what new stuff is coming down the pike and to begin thinking about what impact it may have. Or at least for the reaction, these announcements generate, as they tend to range from "this is awesome" to "this is nonsense". And possibly the heat generated from last Wednesday's device-fest may have obscured an announcement Amazon released a day before the event announcing the Voice Interoperability Initiative.

According to the announcement, the VII is a consortium of more than 30 companies (including Microsoft and Salesforce) whose goals are based on the following priorities:

The announcement also included a quote from Salesforce co-founder and chairman Marc Benioff:

"We're in the midst of an incredible technological shift, in which voice and AI are completely transforming the customer experience. We look forward to working with Amazon and other industry leaders to make Einstein Voice, the world's leading CRM assistant, accessible on any device."

Leading these kinds of initiatives and partnerships may end up being just as important in helping Amazon play catch up on the mobile platforms Apple and Google (two companies not a part of the VII consortium) have at their disposal.

And with Microsoft and Salesforce on board, Amazon can accelerate inroads into the enterprise software and B2B organizations as more traditional enterprise vendors looking to integrate voice into their offerings. One of those enterprise vendors, Oracle (another company not involved in the consortium) recently announced the availability of its own digital assistant. During its big user conference, OpenWorld, I spoke with the company's VP of AI and Digital Assistant Suhas Uliyar, who offered up a few reasons why the company invested in building a voice layer into its platform in the following clip:

And it's this layer that is allowing Hilton, an early adopter of Oracle's Digital Assistant, to offer its employees a more efficient way to get quick answers to questions and also allow them to create better experiences for customers. In the clip below, Kellie Romack, Hilton's VP of Digital HR and Strategic Planning, shared with me why adding voice interfaces to the company's mobile-first employee base can be so important during our conversation at OpenWorld:

Now Amazon does have Alexa Guest Connect. This is cool for when you are staying at a hotel with an Echo device in the room, and you can say, "Alexa, connect my account" and the feature will authenticate the request and allow you to access your stuff like favorite playlists. But voice-first technology can also be at work assisting the employees working to create better customer experiences behind the scenes. Which is also a great opportunity, and Amazon's leadership in the Voice Interoperability Initiative may allow it to integrate Alexa deeply into mission-critical enterprise apps (like CRM/CX, ERP, HCM, SCM, etc) the way Oracle is building its Digital Assistant into its own suite of cloud offerings. As the Hilton example illustrates, organizations are looking to create better employee experiences just like they are looking to do the same for customer experiences, if given the tools to do so safely and securely.

While last week may feel more evolutionary than revolutionary, that's not a slam in any way. For example, Amazon says in the last year, the wake word engine has gotten 50% more accurate.

And while that's not mind-blowing, it's progress. Evolution is an important part of progress. And it's not even slow progress, as improvements are coming fast and furious, relatively speaking. Every announcement can't be Earth-shattering. Every device can't be game-changing. But consistent, regular, noteworthy progress does set the stage for game-changing episodes to occur in due time.

Read more here:

Amazon device event: Evolutionary, not revolutionary, and there's nothing wrong with that - ZDNet

Scientists from the University of Washington have glimpsed possible reasons for intrinsically disordered domains in heat shock proteins. If confirmed, their observations open up phenomenal possibilities for intelligent design in these and other intrinsically disordered protein domains.

Rather than behaving as a completely 2 intrinsically disordered region, we find it to be quasi-ordered, with six sub-regions that display 3 distinct properties and binding preferences. The results reveal that, contrary to expectation, the high degree of heterogeneity and polydispersity that is a defining feature of HSPB1 (and other human sHSPs) derives not from fuzzy disorder but rather from an array of combinatorial interactions that involve discrete NTR sub-regions and specific surfaces on the structured ACD. We expect other oligomeric sHSPs are similarly defined. [Emphasis added.]

Its just a preprint in bioRxiv, but this paper could represent a giant leap in debunking the old junk-DNA paradigm. Its title, Interplay of disordered and ordered regions of a human small heat shock 1 protein yields an ensemble of quasi-ordered states, introduces quasi-ordered as a term to describe intrinsically disordered proteins, or IDPs. The work presented in this paper should not be discounted for lacking peer review at the time of publication. Six researchers in the University of Washingtons Departments of Biochemistry and Medicinal Chemistry based their models on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging and hydrogen-deuterium exchange mass spectrometry (HDX), so the work is not armchair speculation.

Back in May, Evolution News introduced one example of an IDP with a function, and asked: Will other IDPs be found to quickly change from flopping strands into functional regulators based on environmental changes? Will the DNA sequences that produce IDPs continue to confirm the sequence hypothesis?

This paper is reminiscent of the ENCODE work that found 80 percent transcription in non-coding portions of DNA. The sound of the junk-DNA myth collapsing in 2012 (Science) set evolutionists back on their heels. What will they do if the junk-polypeptide myth falls, too? At this time, the new revelations about IDPs are a mere crack in the door to see a brightly lit room, but it looks like the same kind of epochal moment. The implications are staggering: what was dismissed as disordered could turn out to be ordered and functional at higher levels of complexity than previously imagined. IDPs may turn out to be multi-functional tools or skeleton keys able to switch on an array of processes.

Lets introduce the players in this drama.

Small heat shock proteins (sHSPs) are a class of molecular chaperones that help maintain cellular proteostasis. Like other heat shock proteins, sHSPs are believed to interact with exposed hydrophobic regions of partly unfolded or misfolded proteins to help prevent irreversible aggregation, but unlike other heat shock proteins, they perform their functions independent of ATP. sHSPs are implicated in numerous human diseases on the basis of inherited mutations in the protein sequence or upregulation in certain cancers. Cellular stressors such as oxidation and acidosis can influence their function, and stress-induced phosphorylation of sHSPs typically increases their chaperone activity. Despite their important roles in health and disease, relatively little is known about sHSP structure or structure-function relationships compared to other classes of chaperones.

The authors call HSPs natures first responders to cellular stress. Accordingly, these essential machines need a multitude of skills, just like human first responders need flexibility to handle the variety of accidents that can occur in earthquakes, fires, and floods. Until now, the disordered tails of sHSPs were difficult to interpret. In the following, NTR stands for N-Terminal Domain, the disordered portion of a heat shock protein (HSP). ACD is the ordered alpha-crystallin domain of HSP1 (heat shock protein #1), which is flanked by disordered regions:

Overall, the results from the modeling suggest that any combination of the NTR-ACD 1 interactions defined in our study is theoretically possible. While we only created models containing the maximum NTR-ACD interactions supported by our experimental data, any of the interacting motifs we have modeled could dissociate from the ACD and adopt a more disordered conformation. The results from our NMR and HDX experiments indicate that most of these NTR regions occupy both ACD-bound and ACD-unbound conformations, so it is likely that multiple combinations of NTR/ACD interactions occur in solution. Additionally, the similarity of protected regions in the HDXMS profiles of HSPB1 dimers and oligomers indicate that the interactions depicted in these models also occur within higher-order oligomers. The peptide fragments depicted in our dimeric models could conceivably be connected to other ACD dimers or monomers within an oligomer (Fig. 8D). The array of possible interactions within sHSP oligomers is depicted in Fig. 11 8F. Many regions can form intra-chain, intra-dimer, and inter-dimer interactions. The possibility for multiple combinations of interactions and connectivities contributes to the high degree of plasticity and heterogeneity observed for HSPB1 in NMR and HDX experiments.

The researchers observed disordered (i.e., non-folding) regions of this heat-shock protein combining in a variety of ways with the ordered region. Since half of this small HSP is disordered, they believe they saw only a few of the possible combinations. The more combinations, the more plastic (flexible) the proteins functionality becomes, and the more forms it can take on (heterogeneity). As they indicate, this initial glimpse of quasi-ordered states may be a general trend in IDPs. They only looked at simple combinations in a relatively small, two-part HSP. Since larger, more complex ones exist, the interactions depicted in these models also occur within higher-order oligomers.

The following analogy may be strained, but it might help visualize what is going on. Think of a comic-book superhero who carries a magic chain. Depending on the crisis he faces, he can touch a link on the chain to a part of his body to transform himself into the appropriate defender. If he touches the gold link to his knee, he becomes Spiderman. If he touches the copper link to his elbow, he becomes Aquaman. If he touches the iron link to his forehead, he becomes Batman, and so on.

Something like that goes on with heat shock proteins with their disordered domains. Portions of the disordered half of HSP1 fit into certain grooves on the ordered portion, transforming the protein into the tool needed to respond to the current disaster. Even more amazing, combinations of the links in the disordered region act like codes that switch on different states.

Does the word combinatorial bring to mind concepts shared within the ID community? For example, the histone code is a combinatorial code that considerably extends the information potential of the genetic code (see Histone Code: A Challenge to Evolution, an Inference to Design). In a similar way, the disordered regions of some proteins may bind to ordered parts to extend the functional potential of these molecular machines.

The fact that multiple HSPB1 regions can bind to a given groove or surface sets up a situation in which there are more potential binding elements than there are binding sites. This, in turn, creates a large combinatorial array of possible states within a dimer, and even more states within an oligomer. Each HSPB1 dimer has a single dimer interface groove, but its potential interactions with two NTR regions creates a similarly complicated situation: a given dimer interface groove may be empty, bound by a single boundary region, a single conserved region, two boundary regions, one boundary plus one conserved, or two boundary regions plus a conserved region. Again, in the context of an oligomer, the combinatorial possibilities will be increased if the interactions can occur from neighboring dimer units.

Prior to this work, biochemists tended to downplay the functionality of these states. They called them fuzzy, meaning that they cannot be described by a single conformational state. Others disparaged the bundles of random polypeptides as molten globules without much function at all. That picture is vanishing in the junk-DNA mythology lexicon.

However, given the high degree of orientational specificity of many NTR-ACD interactions, these interactions can be described neither as fuzzy in the canonical sense, nor as molten globule-like.

Notably, ordered interactions occur for several NTR sub-regions with the ACD with varying levels of affinity, and some interactions appear to be interdependent. The high degree of heterogeneity in HSPB1 dimers and oligomers is generated not by multiple random or fuzzy states but rather by the large number of possible combinations of several specific and orientationally-defined states.

In addition, these temporary knob-and-hole states, as they describe them, exist with particular lifetimes that expand the possibilities for their usefulness.

Based on observation of multiple slowly exchanging peaks by NMR for certain residues and bimodal HDXMS at long time points, the lifetimes for these interactions range from a minimum of tens of milliseconds to several minutes. For this reason, we propose the term quasi ordered to describe the NTR of HSPB1, as it makes highly-specific long-lived (on the timescale of seconds) contacts while remaining dynamic and heterogeneous.

Perhaps super-ordered would be a better term. Theres nothing quasi about it! When the specific arrangements of IDPs are messed up with mutations, bad things can happen. Even small changes have profound effects:

Remarkably, single mutations in the NTR have profound, widespread effects on dynamics, highlighting sHSP sensitivity to mutation and modification. We find that mutations at residues only five positions apart in the NTR have distinct, almost opposite effects (G34R and P39L) while two mutations that are 50 residues apart from each other (G34R and G84R) produce highly similar effects. In particular, G34R and G84R variants in the conserved and boundary regions respectively each exhibit a coupled increase in deuterium exchange in both the conserved and boundary regions. Furthermore, the mutant G34R conserved region peptide showed a lower affinity for the dimer interface groove. Altogether the results identify an interplay between two non-local regions of the NTR, in which the location of one region affects the other. Both regions can bind at the dimer interface groove, so another way to view the interdependence is that occupancy at a given interface groove by one sub-region favors occupancy by the other.

Its time to look at IDPs with the eyes of design.

Altogether, our results show that even in a monodisperse form of HSPB1, there is substantial conformational heterogeneity, with multiple, specific contacts between regions of the NTR and the ACD. These contacts are altered in activation-mimicking and disease-associated mutated states, shedding light on the mechanisms by which perturbations such as phosphorylation or mutation can influence sHSP structure and function. The experimental approach presented here can be applied to other structurally heterogeneous systems that have proven difficult to study by traditional means, particularly those containing a mixture of ordered and disordered regions.

As Jonathan Wells suggested here back in 2014, IDPs are worth focusing on. They could be significant players in Biologys Quiet Revolution that, while undermining the old Central Dogma of biochemistry, are revealing new grand vistas of design previously unimagined. Combinatorial codes, like those found in histones, olfactory processing centers, alternative gene splicing, and other places in biology, might now be seen coming to light in intrinsically disordered proteins. Rather than viewing them as fuzzy evolving states or molten globules of little interest, biochemists are beginning to glimpse combinatorial arrangements of specific functions that may turn IDPs into the next superheroes of intelligent design.

Photo: Human first responders, by Frmatt [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Read more from the original source:

Researchers Spot a New Code in Disordered Proteins - Discovery Institute

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Birthdays are occasions to celebrate, and also reflect. As the Peoples Republic of China turns 70, the nations of the world join China in awe-filled recognition of its rapid rise from an agrarian to a cutting-edge culture. Amid the fanfare, the cost of its historic reliance on repression must not be forgotten.

The Asian giant, unmatched in population with more than 1.4 billion souls, erupts in splendor this week, with a military display on the streets of Beijing worthy of its self-proclaimed status as the unequaled colossus of the continent. Tuesdays parade is slated to feature columns of marchers composed of 60,000 Chinese citizens as well as 15,000 members of the nations armed forces.

Security is the watchword, and Beijing residents have been told balloons, kites and especially drones are most unwelcome. Devices like walkie-talkies that use radio waves are banned, and traffic both vehicular and Internet is severely restricted. No sour notes are to escape the orchestrated civic harmony that could hint the Middle Kingdom is faltering along the pathway to perfection. The persistent din from Hong Kongs repression resisters, though, is a reminder that in contrast to utopian ideals, freedom is real.

President Xi Jinping is saddled with the contradictory task of hanging onto special treatment in matters of trade owing to Chinas impoverished past while presiding over a $14 trillion economy that has grown to be the worlds second-largest. President Trump has called the bluff, challenging Beijing to level the trade playing field tilted heavily against the United States. Mr. Xi has never come up against a global competitor of Mr. Trumps caliber, one who values fairness above face.

The man who Mr. Trump calls his friend presides over a massive intelligence-gathering enterprise targeting American secrets. The ongoing thievery, which national security reporter Bill Gertz details in his just-released book Deceiving the Sky, has been particularly successful at penetrating U.S. defense contractors and pilfering plans for the nations most advanced military hardware. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, it is said. Among the missiles and rockets featured on parade day, and the fighters and bombers roaring overhead, are sleek designs bearing striking resemblance to those in the U.S. arsenal.

At 70, China models the modernity of the worlds leading democracies, except for its dearth of democratic institutions. It still is, after all, a socialist state. Like the now-defunct Soviet Union, it underwent a convulsive 20th century revolution based on Marxist-Leninist political philosophy that welcomed human conflict as a necessary condition for social progress. Through the rough-handed ministrations of a dictatorship of the proletariat, it was promised, a new, egalitarian society would emerge from the smoke.

Such is the stuff of fantasy. While dragging a backward society toward the socialist vision via his Great Leap Forward, Chinas founding father Mao Zedong aped an idiom often attributed to Russian revolutionary Josef Stalin: You cant make an omelette without breaking eggs. The ominous metaphor covered a horrific reality: The death toll from Stalins brutal regime reached 20 million, but Mao outdid him with as many as 56 million victims.

Historys largest extermination of human life is now all but forgotten amid the vastness of Chinas gleaming cities. While other communist nations have imploded, China has managed to survive by tweaking its communal principles. The dominant Communist Party Politburo tolerates capitalist practices, resulting in a wealthy elite and prosperous middle class.

Repression is more subtle, except when applied to certain undesirables, like the estimated 1 million Muslim Uighurs of western China held in concentrations camps. For other Chinese, the unblinking eye of authority effectuates proper conduct without the need for old-fashioned show trials and induced famine.

Instead, citizens are monitored online and in the streets. Those who fail to exercise their best behavior are subject to demerits on their social credit scorecard, which can lead to exclusion from choice jobs and from public transportation. ABC News reports a new device soon to join a vast network of cameras in public places: a 500 megapixel cloud super-camera that can pick a face out of a crowd of tens of thousands.

China has managed to outlive its socialist cousin, the USSR, which collapsed just shy of its 70th anniversary in 1991. Longevity is certainly a measure of success, but China has yet to prove that a socialist system which has evolved from killing its citizens to controlling them can outlast the fundamental yearning to live free of relentless repression.

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EDITORIAL: China tests the evolution of repression - Washington Times

POLICE INTERROGATIONS are by their very nature dramatic. The stakes are high. There is an imbalance of power. Those involved are under pressure. Narrative is essential to the proceedings: both the police and the suspect have their own version of events, and seek to convince the other that theirs is correct. Interrogations are also an exercise in characterdetectives might play good cop, bad cop in an attempt to winkle out a confession. Important clues can be found in what a suspect says, and what they omit.

Little surprise, then, that interrogations have long featured in police procedurals and buddy-cop shows. Television dramas often saw interrogations as a set piece from which the police would emerge as brave, smart and victorious. In Prime Suspect (1991), the wily and quick-witted DCI Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren) would come alive in front of the one-way glass; DCI John Luther (Idris Elba, pictured below) knew how to push a perpetrators buttons. The audience was encouraged to trust the judgment of law enforcement.

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But in recent years, as police brutality and misconduct have made headlines, confessionsand the means by which they are elicitedhave been examined more closely on television. Making a Murderer (2015), a true-crime documentary, shows Brendan Dassey, a 16-year-old with learning difficulties, confessing to the murder of Teresa Halbach, a photographer, in 2005. Using footage from the interrogation room, the film-makers argue that the police in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, unconstitutionally coerced him in order to bolster their version of events, which until then had little substantial evidence. The Confession Tapes (2017) likewise takes contentious real-life confessions and inspects them with a rigour that (according to the show) the justice system has failed to.

When They See Us (2019), a four-part series directed by Ava DuVernay, looks at how interrogations, institutional racism and injustice interact. It dramatises the true story of the Central Park Five, a group of minority-ethnic boys wrongly convicted in 1990 of rape and assault. During questioning, the accusedall aged between 14 and 16 at the timewere denied food and drink and access to legal counsel. In the show, they are portrayed as sleep-deprived and desperate, subjected to intense off-the-record questioning in cleaning closets and filing rooms. The police threaten the boys with violence if they do not cooperate; detectives are depicted as more interested in finding someone they can pin the crime on than in nailing the actual perpetrator. In that they were successful: their bullying resulted in taped false confessions, and time in prison for the five boys. (In 2002 a court vacated the convictions.)

In A Confession, a new British drama also based on true events, the failure of Detective Superintendent Steve Fulcher (Martin Freeman) to act above board has severe repercussions for the prosecution of a case. In his eagerness to interrogate a taxi driver suspected of murdering a young woman, he ignores the procedures in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. The man does confess both to the murder in question and to another, but his statement is inadmissible as evidence in court. Here, once again, law enforcement is shown to be prone to making rash, emotional decisions.

Criminal (pictured top), released on Netflix on September 20th, pursues that idea and sets up a fictional game of cat-and-mouse between detectives and suspects. The drama in each of the 12 episodesset in either Britain, France, Germany or Spainis confined to an interrogation room in an anonymous police station. On one side of the mirror, bright lights illuminate police officers, the accused and, sometimes, a lawyer; on the other, a red-lit backroom hosts office politics, a running commentary on the cases progress and a ticking digital clock which informs the officers how long they have left until they have to charge the suspects or release them. Lies are exposed, but often not the ones the detectives had intended to uncover. Investigators are manipulated, led down wrong paths and frustrated in their quest. The suspects guiltor innocenceis not always clear.

Where interrogations once allowed TVs protagonists a chance to outsmart their opponents and heroically solve cases, now they show them to be fallible: think of the interview in Bodyguard in which David Budds reading of the situation is dangerously wrong. These characters bring their own foibles to bear on cases, and are willing to do whatever is necessary, morally permissible or not, to reinforce their version of events. They can make for difficult viewing, but these new shows offer a satisfying combination of suspense, friction and the search for truth.

See the original post:

The evolution of police interrogations on screen - The Economist

On the rooftop of a Manhattan strip club in one of the opening scenes of box office hit Hustlers, Jennifer Lopezs character Ramona says to fellow stripper Destiny, portrayed by Constance Wu, Youre new, youre gorgeous, youre Asian youre a triple threat. Before this scene, we get a glimpse into the life of Asian American protagonist Destiny: She is struggling to take home enough money after exploitative managers and security at the strip club whittle down her wages, and audiences see her at home in Queens trying to provide for her aging grandmother.

Already, within the first few moments of the film, Destiny embodies the most nuanced portrayal of an Asian sex worker in Hollywoods long history of reducing them to age-old stereotypes about Asian women.In the West, representations of Asian women in popular culture are often relegated to the same limiting roles: the ultra-feminine, innocent and sexually submissive lotus blossom, the model minorityand the sexually aggressive, domineering dragon lady, to name a few. One trope used time and time again is the Asiatic prostitute, where Asian women are often depicted in Western narratives as sex workers or sex slaves.

Perhaps one of the most memorable scenes featuring an Asian sex worker in a contemporary Hollywood film is from Stanley Kubricks Full Metal Jacket (1987), in which a Vietnamese prostitute solicits two American GIs by telling them, Me so horny ... me love you long time. The films depictions of the Vietnamese sex workers offer nothing of their personalities, histories or inner lives, only that they are women with degenerate values and bodies to be exploited by the men.

The idea that all Asian women are prostitutes hasnt come solely from stereotypes in Western media; it was also perpetuated by U.S. immigration law. The Page Act of 1875, the first law to restrict immigration into the country, effectively halted the immigration of East Asian women (namely Chinese women) to the U.S., under the assumption that they were all prostitutes and undesirable immigrants.

Such legalized exclusion of Chinese women popularized American representations of them as degrading figures that could potentially debase white manhood and, as such, threaten the health of the United States social body as a modern nation and imperial power, Lily Wong, an associate professor at American University, wrote in Transpacific Attachments, which studies the shifting depiction of Chinese and Chinese American sex workers in transpacific popular media. The legalized policing of Chinese female bodies justified both anti-Chinese yellow peril discourse and U.S. civilizing rescue narratives of imperial expansion into Asia.

It is unsurprising, then, that a lions share of the most popular on-screen and onstage productions starring Asian actresses fed into this exact discourse of the Western white savior going to the East and being seduced by an Asian woman. Both The World of Suzie Wong (1960) and Claude-Michel Schnberg and Alain Boublils hit musical Miss Saigon feature Asian sex workers as female leads, both of whom play the role of a hooker with a heart of gold while simultaneously embodying the lotus blossom stereotype.

The World of Suzie Wong stars Cantonese-European actress Nancy Kwan in the title role. In the film, Suzie Wong, a Hong Kong prostitute, becomes the love interest to American architect Robert Lomax. Film scholar Celine Parreas Shimizu wrote about Suzie in her book The Hypersexuality of Race: Despite incredible hardship as an illiterate prostitute with an illegitimate son, she maintains her goodness, beauty, and innocence.

She embodies immoral practices while projecting an innate innocence, Shimizu wrote, so it is only ever Suzie, the lotus blossom, who was exploited by men. In Hustlers, while Destiny maintains some of her innocence by labeling Ramona as the ringleader, she and the rest of her stripper posse flip the script by exploiting their white male clients (by drugging them and stealing their money). Meanwhile, Suzie is the picture of subservience, promising her dedication to Robert by saying, I will follow you until you say, Suzie, go away, and asking him in another scene, Robert, why you not let me be your permanent girlfriend?

Suzie was forced into the sex trade after being abandoned at 10 years old. Her character is a mirror to Kim, the female lead in Miss Saigon, a 17-year-old Vietnamese bargirl who also exemplifies the prostitute with a heart of gold archetype. Kim falls in love with and marries a U.S. Marine who leaves once the war is over, and she waits for his return for three years with their love child. When they reunite, the man is with his new American wife, whom Kim meets, triggering her to ultimately kill herself. The musical has long been protested by Asian American activists for its racist, sexist and Orientalist depictions, as well as for yellowface controversies.

These more contemporary stories are spawned from earlier texts, which all replicated the same repeated tropes. Miss Saigon is actually based on Giacomo Puccinis 1904 opera Madama Butterfly, which instead followed the doomed romance between an American lieutenant and a Japanese geisha. Before that, Madama Butterfly was inspired by Madame Chrysanthme, an 1887 semi-autobiographical novel about naval officer Pierre Lotis temporary marriage to a Japanese woman named Kiku. These recurrent storylines perpetuate the image of the Asian woman as war brides, geishas and prostitutes, all of whom lack agency and live to serve the white male lead. Meanwhile, Destinys purpose in life seems much more layered: to find a sense of belonging, to take care of her family, to chase thrills, to succeed in life. And we can tell that aspects of her job excite her, exhaust her and bore her at the same time.

However, in Miss Saigon, when the non-lead prostitute characters were allowed to display their inner lives on stage, audiences view them as desperate and suffering.

The production of Miss Saigon may actually represent other particular women in the sex industry beyond those enmeshed within conditions of sexual slavery, Shimizu wrote. While sexual slavery indeed exists for Asian female prostitutes, other situations coexist simultaneously in ways that should not be removed.

However, thanks to persistent stereotypes like those deployed in Suzie and Kims characters, Asian sex workers, especially those who are migrants, are often assumed to be trafficking victims.

The perpetuation of this stereotype has expressed itself in real-life police practices, which play out Western savior narratives. For example, Asian massage parlors were recently targeted in anti-trafficking stings in Florida, though no one has been charged with human trafficking. (These spa raids were made infamous for leading to Patriots owner Robert Krafts arrest.) In New York, similar crackdowns have led to the shuttering of parlors in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens, Manhattan, and Long Island in the past couple years, often leading to arrests. And typically, the people harmed most by these anti-trafficking raids are the women themselves.

Hollywoods insistence on stereotyping Asian women as helpless, innocent lotus blossoms has been met with inevitable consequences, like the fetishization of Asian women, and even some unintended ones, like a hammer-wielding man who killed Chinese men to protect Chinese women from them after watching an unspecified movie.

While Wus character in Hustlers is leaps and bounds better than the characters that came before, presenting a more nuanced and dimensional portrayal of an Asian sex worker on screen, there are still ways in which she fits into the same lineage as Suzie, Kim and Madame Butterfly.

Destiny still maintains a bit of the Asian American ingenue innocence as Ramonas protege, Kate Zen, co-founder of Red Canary Song, an organization that advocates for the rights of migrant sex workers, said in an interview. She ultimately caved in interrogation and sold out the group to the police, in a way that might arguably be retaining the model minority myth.

Sex workers had many other criticisms of the film, from maintaining the whorearchy by portraying the Russian dancers who were willing to give blow jobs as lesser than to ignoring the fact that strippers are often the victims of crimes rather than the perpetrators.

The dimensionality is positive, Zen said, though the focus on drugging and robbing customers also perpetuates stigma against sex workers and is a bit of an aberration from the reality of stripping, where strippers are more likely to get drugged by customers than the other way around.

Brooke, a 20-year-old former stripper from the Chicago area, pointed out that while Hustlers does some work to destigmatize the sex trade, she wishes it wouldve shed more of a light on the abuses and racialized harassment endured by Asian sex workers.

I was told on my first night that being Asian equals money, but they fail to tell you how many times youll hear, Ive never fucked an Oriental girl, Brooke, who requested to not use her last name in regard for her privacy, told HuffPost in an interview. I had many people excited just to see an Asian dancing, thought I was naturally into certain things like being dominated and bossed around, and also treated like a disgrace by Asian men who came into the club.

Still, in Hustlers, audiences are treated to a more well-rounded portrayal of an Asian stripper, whose complex inner life is revealed to us on-screen one that we nearly missed out on, given Dakota Johnson was initially considered for the lead role. (Though perhaps a Southeast Asian actress wouldve been even better casting, considering the real life stripper Destiny was based off of is Rosalyn Keo, who is Cambodian.)

Ultimately, the portrayal of Asian sex workers on screen has come a long way since the me so horny streetwalker, which is especially important given the inextricable ties between the treatment of Asian women in real life and our on-screen depictions.

Its so positive for us to see ourselves portrayed at all, Zen said. What a breath of fresh air!

REAL LIFE. REAL NEWS. REAL VOICES.

Help us tell more of the stories that matter from voices that too often remain unheard.

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'Hustlers' And The Evolution Of Asian Sex Workers On-Screen - HuffPost

SAN FRANCISCO -- The moment was so perfect that it appeared it had to have been planned beforehand.

Bruce Bochy was looking for one last opportunity to get Madison Bumgarner into a Giants game, having decided not to start him Sunday, and when he looked up in the fifth, there was Clayton Kershaw jogging to the mound. Kershaw and Bumgarner will go down as two of the best left-handers of this generation, but their relationship goes beyond that.

The two have become friends, talking before most Giants-Dodgers games over the last decade. They keep in touch off the field and have always cherished the competition they have on it. Their battles are filled with inside pitches, subtle smiles and good-natured taunting as they sit in opposing dugouts.

Their matchup Sunday wasn't planned, both managers said, but it wasn't a total surprise. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts told reporters before the game that he expected to see Bumgarner as a pinch-hitter, not a reliever. Kershaw said he joked about a possible matchup.

Bochy knew what he wanted to do, even if he felt bad about a repercussion. He was apologetic to Brandon Crawford after pulling him from the final game for a pinch-hitter, but Crawford understood.

"I just wanted to do something for Madison," Bochy said. "With all he's done, I just said there can't be a better script right now with Clayton on the mound. They've battled so many times, not just pitching against each other, but how they compete against each other with the bat."

As Crawford headed back to the dugout and Bumgarner walked up the steps to a standing ovation, the shortstop had just one request.

"I told him, 'You better hit a homer,'" Crawford said later.

Bumgarner has taken Kershaw deep twice, and he certainly tried for a third one. He took a huge swing at the first pitch, a fastball up in the zone, but fouled it straight back. The next pitch was up and in and Bumgarner laughed as he looked out at the mound. Bumgarner ended up lining out, but what stood out to the Giants wasn't the result, but how Kershaw handled everything.

He threw seven fastballs, all between 89-91 mph. He wasn't directing meatballs down the heart of the plate, but he certainly gave Bumgarner every opportunity to compete and do something memorable. Kershaw also called rookie catcher Will Smith out before the at-bat to let Bumgarner soak in the cheers.

Bumgarner said after the game that he appreciated how it all went down, and his teammates applauded Kershaw -- who tipped his cap to Bochy after the third out -- as well.

"That's what makes baseball fun, little tidbits like that that you get to see throughout the year," catcher Buster Posey said. "I thought it was really cool how Kershaw pitched him. He went right after him and challenged him. Those two have been going at it for a decade now and there's hopefully more to come, we'll see."

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Bochy shares evolution of his mustache through Topps cards - NBCSports.com

The lighting of the chalice during a Unitarian Universalist church service. Listen to the podcast in the player above or download it below. | Courtesy photo

This is the second in a series of podcasts about faith in eastern Idaho. Over the last six months, weve attended many different church services and spoken with members of different faiths to understand who they are and what they believe. Each episode in the six-part series will focus on a specific denomination and explore the history, culture and beliefs of the religion.

Thirty people gather at a small church on E Street in Idaho Falls. Its 10:30 on a Sunday morning.

A variety of people are in attendance. One young mother is there with her newborn baby, and theres another young couple in the pew several rows ahead. But most of the people are middle-aged.

Its a non-denominational service with progressive beliefs. Some members of the congregation believe in God and some dont. Some are gay and some are straight. But everyone is there for one purpose: to worship through words and music in their own way and on their own terms.

Welcome to Finding Faith, a podcast exploring the history, culture and beliefs of different denominations in eastern Idaho.

RELATED | Finding Faith: The truth about Muslims, what they believe, and how theyre treated by locals

In this episode, well take you inside a Unitarian Universalist church service. Members open up about their beliefs and explain why the faith has broad appeal. They also discuss the evolution of the faith over the years, and how it fosters love and acceptance for those inside and outside the church.

The Unitarian Universalist Church at 555 E Street in Idaho Falls. | Rett Nelson, EastIdahoNews.com

If youd like your church/faith to be highlighted in a future episode, send an email to rett@eastidahonews.com.

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Finding Faith: The evolution of Unitarian Universalism, basic beliefs, and why it's a growing religion - East Idaho News

CultureGaming

Friday, 27th September 2019, 08:17 am

It might have been a while since Pokemon GO received the kind of obsessive attention that it did in the beginning, but Niantic's addictive mobile monster catcher hasn't gone anywhere.

The game's community remains so active that just this August it enjoyed its most profitable month since 2016, bringing in $176 million.

A big factor in the game's impressive stamina has been the steady supply of new content that Niantec has kept up. This month saw a major new addition, with monsters from the series' fifth generation (Pokemon Black and White) appearing for the first time.

Hailing from the Unova region, these critters included the likes of sneaky feline, Purrloin and the snooty-looking lizard, Snivy. With the addition of Unova stones, some of the new 'mon can now be evolved into their more powerful forms.

For anyone who still has ambitions of being the very best, like no-one ever was, here's everything you need to know.

What are Unova stones?

Since the original Gameboy games, stones have featured in the Pokemon universe as been a key way to evolve certain monsters. However, rather than the various elemental rocks found in the original series, Niantec have chosen to streamline things a little by creating new stones that can be applied more widely.

When Pokemon from the Sinnoh region were introduced, the Sinnoh stone was added to handle all of the older critters who had been given new evolutions in Diamond and Pearl Rhyperior, Lickilicki, Ambipom and various others.

The Unova stones are similar except that, rather than evolving old 'mon into their newer forms, the Unova stones will be used to handle some of the evolutions of Pokemon that were first introduced in Black and White, such as Panpour and Lampent.

What Pokemon can I use them on?

As there haven't been that many Unova Pokemon added as of yet, the list of compatible critters is pretty short just now.

The three elemental monkeys Pansage, Panpour and Pansear can all be evolved into their bigger, badder selves Simisage, Simipour and Simisear while spooky lantern Lampent can be upgraded to a Chandelure (it's like "chandelier" but not).

However, it is worth keeping in mind that more Unova Pokemon are probably on the way, some of whom will no doubt also use the stones. Before long, it's very possible that they will be used to turn a Woobat into a Swoobat, a Boldore into a Gigalith, or a Minccino into its far fancier evolution, Cinccino.

How do I get one?

At the moment, there is only one way to get your hands on a Unova stone by completing your seventh day Field Research reward.

The Field Research tasks, added to the game last year, are daily missions which challenge the player to catch, hatch or battle in a specific way. Completing seven tasks across seven days unlocks a Research Breakthrough and lets the player reap a variety of rewards, one of which can now be a shiny new Unova stone.

While this is currently the only way to acquire the new evolutionary item, it seems likely that this will change in the future. Sinnoh stones can be earned through player versus player battles, so its easy to imagine that this will eventually happen with the newer region's stones as well.

Original post:

Pokemon GO Unova stone locations: how to get the evolution items, and full list of Gen 5 Pokemon it works with - iNews

SAN SEBASTIAN Spains The Thinklab, based in Madrid since its founding in 2006, has confirmed toVarietythat it will be packing up its digital paintbrushes and heading north to founder Julio Sotos homeland of Navarre where the company will establish a new studio for the purposes of producing two feature-length CGI animated films, and possibly a third.

Soto credits the territorys generous fiscal incentives and a desire to grow a Spanish animation industry as the impetus for the move.

With one animated feature already under its belt, 2017s Deep, The Thinklab is planning on growing it and Spains impact on the international animation community, open to and actively seeking out international partners on its ambitious upcoming feature projects Evolution and Inspector Sun.

A third title is in early development at the studio, but details wont be announced until more robust financing is secured.

The companys other recent works include Fluffs! a 3D animated TV series produced for the Disney Channel, live-action feature documentary My Beautiful Dacia and Dissection of a Storm, a HollyShorts jury winning short which qualified for the Oscars in 2011.

Set in a 1920s noir world of insects where spiders act as a police force, in Inspector Sun an eight-legged detective boards a seaplane to San Francisco having finally apprehended his longtime adversary. After a passenger is murdered on voyage, however, he is drawn into an unexpected series of events which threaten both the human and bug worlds.

In Evolution, an alien substance blends a young girl named Zoes DNA with that of her pets, creating a team of intelligent animals led by the wild girl.

Intent on growing and improving its product, according to Soto, the two new Thinklab films will be more ambitious in both the quality of their animation, and the breadth of their appeal.

Since we released Deep the market has pushed more towards older audiences, Soto explained. So, with the next two we are going to do in Navarra we want to appeal to an audience age range wider than what we did then.

Production-wise the company plans to re-partner with some of the organizations and people that backed Deep. Although they arent ready to announce any specifics yet, they have secured financing and pre-sales in territories which will help them towards their ambitious goals and assure that both projects will be truly international from the beginning.

Much like the films it makes, the company itself has a socially conscious agenda of its own. And, while Navarres generous fiscal incentives are essential to the companys ability to finance their work, thats far from the only reason to relocate to Navarre.

One of the things that excites Julio is that, In a tiny corner of Spain called Navarra, two big, international productions will be made that will appeal to the international market.

According to Soto, native Spanish animation talent needs opportunities and incentives to stay, or even return to Spain for work.

When you look at Deep, it was partially produced in Belgium, and as many as 40% of the animators there were Spanish, which is quite ironic, he recalled.

Its a bit of a shame because its an indication of something we are doing wrong in Spain. Why are we allowing this talent to go away when we should be building an animation industry here? In a good year in Spain there are one or two big features. Thats not much an industry. Some of Spains most talented people have to go to places like Ireland, France, Canada or Belgium to find consistent work.

As an example, Deep had a production period of two years, employed 250 professionals and trained many of the staff that will return for the companys next two features.

Animation became part of the Navarre Film Institutes strategy in 2015, and in 2018 we started seeing the results of that strategy with companies coming to produce animated movies and series from here, said commission head Javier Lacunza of the agencys push to attract increasingly larger entities to the area.

He added, The Thinklab will consolidate this trend, which wants to focus on going forward. Its more stable in employment, it has longer periods for projects, it requires hiring fully digitally competent employees and therefore provides infrastructure for the employment of young people and skilled artists.

Read more:

Deep Animation Studio The Thinklab to Relocate to Navarre for Future Projects (EXCLUSIVE) - Variety

WASHINGTON, DC Amtrak is taking a page out of Charles Darwin. Instead of saying that they are doing away with the traditional dining car service, Amtrak says that they continue to "evolve the travel experience."

Beginning Oct. 1, diners on several overnight routes will no longer have the option of heading to the dining car, sit down in a boot and order a freshly made meal. No longer will that meal be placed in in front of you on pressed white tablecloths.

Passengers will instead choose from a menu of prepackaged meals.

The change goes into effect on the Cardinal, City of New Orleans, Crescent, and Silver Meteor.

Next year, the Silver Star will be added to the list.

"Traveling on one of our trains has never been just about the destination the journey is part of the adventure," Amtrak President and CEO Richard Anderson said in a release.

"We continue to evolve our onboard accommodations and dining experience to meet the needs of today's customers."

For breakfast diners will now be able to select from items including hard boiled eggs, a breakfast sandwich, yogurtm and a selection of muffins.

The lunch and dinner menu includes red wine braised beef, chicken fettuccini with broccoli, and an Asian noodle bowl. There's also pasta and meatballs for kids.

While Amtrak says that the move is a cost-cutting one, they put a positive spin on it, pointing out that no longer will there be a need for reservations and riders can have the food delivered to their rooms.

The change has already been made on the Capitol Limited and the Lake Shore Limited.

Amtrak says that, for now, the traditional dining car service remains on their seven other overnight routes: Auto Train, California Zephyr, Coast Starlight, Empire Builder, Southwest Chief, Sunset Limited, and Texas Eagle.

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Amtrak Dining Car Service Disappearing, They Call It Evolution - Patch.com

The Free Press is delivered to my door every day and I appreciate its information about our community and our world. However, on Sept. 16 the paper made some claims about how we should understand our world.

I must respond.

First, the claim that evolutionary theory has been strengthened over the decades fails to recognize recent events. In the last few decades there have been numerous scientists who have found that living organisms are too complex to have evolved by random mutations. Considerable controversy has erupted among scientists.

Secondly, the claim that Christianity and evolution are not mutually exclusive is false in my view. Darwinian evolution claims that life emerged on earth by accident and increased in complexity by undirected, random mutations over millions of years. Such a process intentionally leaves no room for a Creator.

Holy Scripture reveals that God created all forms of life in a six-day period. Christianity and evolution are mutually exclusive.

Finally, I agree that students dont get a well-grounded education in biology. However, this is not due to teachers reluctance to speak for evolution. The problem is that the Darwinian theory (including neo-Darwinism) is inadequate.

Over 1,000 scientists from around the world have signed The Scientific Dissent from Darwinism, which states: We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life.

The signers hold doctorates from universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Dartmouth, Rutgers, University of Chicago, Stanford and the University of California-Berkeley. Their fields are biology, chemistry, mathematics, engineering, computer science, and more.

Why isnt the word getting out?

Rev. Randy Pemberton

Mankato

View original post here:

Christianity, evolution are mutually exclusive | Letters To The Editor - Mankato Free Press

Demands and expertise of the security industry are driven by technological advancement on both sides of the attack/defence fence

Increased computer power, artificial intelligence, and tools on the Dark Web are equipping cyber attackers with the resources to launch more sophisticated and destructive attacks. Reactive defenses are no longer enough to stop attackers from infiltrating even the best security architectures. Environmental dynamics are also changing and disrupting resiliency with the rapid adoption of cloud infrastructure and the proliferation of IoT devices. The concept of a perimeter as we have known it is disappearing, and the battle against cybercrime has moved inside the network. With this shift, organisations need to rethink their security strategies as well as the tools they have traditionally come to rely on.

The threat landscape shift over the last 20 years

Attacks are getting both more and less sophisticated. More sophisticated in the targeted phishing email attacks and less in the spray and pray attacks that bombard similar companies with similar forms of attacks. With these, instead of being strategic, they are being opportunistic and preying on the mistakes and simple misconfigurations that lead way to an easy attack. Earlier forms of attacks focused on credit card and PHI theft, these remain active but are also now accompanied by ransomware and crypto-mining attacks (mining and the theft of cryptocurrencies) in an effort for simpler and more instant gratification.

Changes to the threat landscape are changing the strategic considerations of boards and business leaders

With the increased risks of a cyber attack, cybersecurity needs to be on the mind of both boards and business leaders. This is not only to prevent disruption of service and loss of revenue, but also to maintain a competitive advantage. Business must constantly innovate in the services the offer and in how they are delivered. Falling behind will be at the expense of customer loyalty and sales. Plus, with the change in generational interests, not appealing to the millennial need for open and on demand access could also result in company obsolescence.

The role cybersecurity companies have to play in guiding organisations through this ever-changing, always evolving, threatscape

Cybersecurity companies must adapt their approaches to security and solutions to align with the new perimeter-less network. This will drive a shift in thinking and product design to address security in multi-cloud, IoT, and other inter-connected environments. Better solutions will also need to be provided that deliver more accurate detection, remove false positive alert fatigue, and provide adversary intelligence so that an organization can completely eradicate the threat and fortify their defenses. Cybersecurity companies also need to align with newer technology innovators so that systems can automate for information sharing and response action. An example of this would be taking a deception technology detection alert and feeding the adversary intelligence to a SIEM or Threat Orchestration Tool. Achieving a full detection fabric across all attack surfaces with coverage for all attack methods requires multiple technologies. Collaboration amongst the technology vendors plus helping organisations understand how to align their security stack will result in optimal protection and detection results.

Threats will continue to evolve and be challenging to keep in front of. Instead, I would suggest readying for the attacks based on the methods, which tend to be very consistent. By using technologies that provide early and accurate detection of these activities, an organisation can stop an attack early in the attack lifecycle and before they are likely to cause harm. Noting, new technologies, deception is playing a critical role in providing early detection for these attack methods across legacy and emerging attack surfaces.

Excerpt from:

The Evolution Of Cybersecurity - ISBuzz News

Karate Combat Evolution will go down as the biggest night in the career of Edgars Skrivers to date.

Skrivers stepped inside the KC-1 and scored a victory over Luiz Rocha to claim the first-ever title in Karate Combat history.

It started slow, said Bas Rutten. But boy, we finished with some really great fights. Edgars Skrivers? Who are they gonna find to fight him? What a great fighter.

Skrivers scored a TKO to complete the victory. Related: Preview Karate Combat Evolution Event

In the co-main event Joshua Quayhagen topped Dionicio Gustavo, with Abdalla Ibrahim, Sahin Atamov, Igor de Castenada, Omaira Molina, Velmir Jeknik, Fernando Moreno PazAna Luiza Ferreira da Silva and Salem Mohamed all earning victories.

The next event for Karate Combat from the KC-1 is scheduled for November.

Karate Combat Evolution Event Replay

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Karate Combat Evolution Results: Edgars Skrivers Wins Title - The MIX

Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt, is composed of rock and ice. NASAs Dawn spacecraft, which orbited Ceres between 2015 and 2018 gave scientists lots of new insights into its shape and internal structure, surface morphology, and composition. A special collection in Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets focuses on evidence of ice in Ceres subsurface and its dynamical behavior. I asked Hanna Sizemore, guest editor of the special collection, some questions about the mission and what has been discovered.

Ceres was one of two bodies in the asteroid belt visited by NASAs Dawn mission.Why was Ceres a focal point of this exploration mission?

Ceres and Vesta are generally viewed as two extreme cases of the possible evolution of large asteroids. Before the Dawn mission, both objects were thought to have formed in the same neighborhood but at different times. Because Vesta formed early, it accreted Aluminium-26 (26Al), which produced abundant internal heat and rapid loss of water and other volatiles. Ceres formed later, experienced less heating, and was able to retain much more of its water [McCord and Sotin, 2005].

An important goal of the Dawn mission was linking large asteroid interiors to early conditions in the protoplanetary disk, with Ceres representing one extreme scenario. There has been a long debate about how much of Earths water was delivered from the main belt, and whether it came in the form of hydrated minerals or ice. The amount of water in the main belt is only beginning to be inventoried.

Having a spacecraft in orbit around an ice-rich main belt object is extremely valuable.There are big challenges in linking surface composition information derived from telescope data to information about asteroid interiors [Rivkin et al., 2019]. These challenges make having a spacecraft in orbit around an ice-rich main belt object extremely valuable. As both the largest and the most ice-rich object in the main belt, Ceres was a prime target for a mission.

The special collection has a focus on water ice.How has ice been an important factor in shaping the evolution of the surface of Ceres?

Ceres owes its internal structure and its spherical shape to ice.At the most basic level, Ceres owes its internal structure and its spherical shape to ice. It was able to partially differentiate (to form a rocky interior surrounded by an icy outer shell) because ice melts at lower temperatures than rock. It was able to retain enough mass to be spherical because it was cool enough to hang on to most of its H2O and other volatiles, unlike Vesta.

Ice also plays a key role in modern landscape development on Ceres.Of course, ice also plays a key role in modern landscape development on Ceres. There are eight broad classes of surface features that have been specifically linked to subsurface ice and are observed over most of the dwarf planets surface [Sizemore et al., 2019b].

Large domical mountains, such as Ahuna Mons [Reusch et al., 2019], were some of the first to be recognized in the earliest images to be returned by Dawn. Some of these mountains may be cryovolcanoes, or they may be formed by massive ice diapirs [Sori et al., 2018; Sizemore et al., 2019b].

Lobate landslides and ejecta were also recognized as ice-controlled features early in the Dawn mission [Schmidt et al, 2017].

Landslides are nearly everywhere on Ceres, but they are morphologically diverse [Chilton et al., 2019; Duarte et al., 2019].

Some show similarities to rock glaciers on Earth and Mars, some have characteristics in common with landslides on Iapetus.

Ice in Ceres subsurface contributes to the formation of fluidized, lobate, and layered ejecta around craters.

In some cases, Cerean ejecta is similar to layered ejecta formed in icy terrains on Mars and Ganymede [Hughson et al., 2019].

Intermingling of ice-rich ejecta and landslides creates unique Cerean terrains [Duarte et al., 2019]. Some smooth ejecta on Ceres is also pitted, probably due to water vapor and other gasses escaping soon after the impact [Sizemore et al., 2017].

Large-scale fractures in crater interiors have been linked to upwelling of ice and brines in the subsurface [Buczkowski et al., 2019]. Ice also causes craters themselves to relax on Ceres, sometimes leading to fracturing around crater rims that retain distinct topography [Otto et al., 2019] and, more rarely, flattening the topography of large craters [Bland et al., 2018].

Isnt there also evidence that Ceres is active including losing material to space? Why is this happening and why is it important?

There are two main lines of evidence that Ceres outgasses water to space, at least periodically.

The first line of evidence comes from astronomical observations of Ceres from Earth. In the early 1990s, the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) detected OH near Ceres limb [AHearn & Feldman, 1992]. In 2014, immediately prior to Dawns arrival at Ceres, water vapor was detected by the Herschel Space Observatory [Kppers et al., 2014]. Both of these detections spurred speculation about cometary style outgassing and/or possible cryovolcanism on Ceres.

The second line of evidence for episodic outgassing comes from Ceres geomorphology and minerology, as observed by Dawn. In Occator Crater, we see bright carbonate deposits (faculae) that likely formed via extrusion or even fountaining of brines on to the surface in the last several million years [Scully et al., 2019]. Problematically, Dawn did not observe any direct evidence for outgassing during its mission at Ceres or active brine extrusion. Any outgassing from faculae formation would have stopped millions of years ago, so it cannot explain the IUE and Herschel detections.

Explaining the Herschel data in particular has been challenging. Ice in Ceres subsurface is slowly receding to greater depths, which produces a steady background rate of water vapor loss much lower than the Herschel rate [Landis et al., 2017]. Any time ice is exposed on the surface, it will quickly sublimate. So stochastic events, landslides and small impacts that expose ice, can cause short bursts of outgassing. A cluster of these events might have produced the water vapor detected by Herschel [Landis et al., 2018].

Additionally, seasonal changes in shadowing on crater walls may lead to periodic accumulation and sublimation of surface ice [Formisano et al., 2019a; 2019b].

These passive, near-surface processes most likely drove the outgassing events observed in 1992 and 2014, although we cant be certain.

Near-surface processes fall under the umbrella of cometary style outgassing. Understanding these processes is important, because they likely operate on numerous small, volatile rich bodies throughout the solar system, and dominate water vapor production at Ceres today.

Regular outgassing from stochastic, passive processes does not preclude more dramatic outbursts of water from deeper in the interior in the recent geologic past.

There is ongoing work to understand the formation of the bright spots in Occator, and the development of the large cryovolcano Ahuna Mons.

With NASAs Dawn mission having come to an end what are the next steps in the exploration of Ceres now that we know how important water ice has been for the body?

In the near term, there is work to do to understand the Dawn data better.In the near term, there is work to do on Earth to understand the Dawn data better. In particular, laboratory experiments to determine the material properties of the unique mixtures of ice, salts, and clays that occur on Ceres. Knowing more about the properties of these mixtures will allow us to build better models of Ceres structure and evolution [Sizemore et al. 2019a].

Longer term, of course, we hope there will be new spacecraft missions.Longer term, of course, we hope there will be new spacecraft missions. These might include orbiters with instrumentation designed specifically to interrogate the ice and brine content of Ceres interior at depths we couldnt probe effectively with Dawns instrument payload.

For example, an orbiter carrying a sounding radar could help us quantify the ice content of lobate landslides and ejecta, helping us understand stratigraphy at the 100 meter to 1 kilometer scale. An orbital magnetometer could constrain whether or not there is a deep brine layer. And of course, a future lander might be able to directly sample the structure and chemistry of the ice much like the Phoenix lander did on Mars.

Steven A. Hauck, II ([emailprotected]; 0000-0001-8245-146X), Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, Ohio; and Hanna Sizemore ( 0000-0002-6641-2388), Planetary Science Institute, Arizona

See the rest here:

Ceres: Evolution of the Asteroid Belt's Icy Giant - Eos

By Colin Barras

Tony Wu / Nature Picture Library / Science Photo Library

The largest brains ever to have evolved belong to whales. Now we have discovered that the marine mammals gained their big brains size in the same way we did through massive expansion of two particular brain regions, fuelled perhaps through changes in diet.

Amandine Muller at the University of Cambridge and Stephen Montgomery at the University of Bristol, UK, looked at brain size data from 18 species of whale and dolphin, as well as from 124 different land animals including 43 species of primate. With few exceptions, the whales, dolphins and primates all seem to have gained large brains through dramatic growth of the same two brain regions: the cerebellum and neocortex.Both regions are important for cognitive functions such as attention, and for controlling the movement of the body.

It makes sense that the cerebellum and neocortex evolve in unison, says Montgomery, because they are physically connected by many brain pathways. Its possible one can only change so much without being constrained by the performance of its partner, and needing the other structure to catch up, he says.

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But what drove these two brain regions to expand so dramatically in whales and dolphins? Muller and Montgomery first explored whether the trigger was a change in social behaviour. In common with some primates including our species whales and dolphins can form complex social groups. However, the two researchers found no strong correlation between the whale and dolphin species with the most advanced social behaviour and those with a particularly large cerebellum and neocortex.

But they did discover that the whale and dolphin species with a larger cerebellum and neocortex typically enjoy an unusually broad diet, in terms of the variety of foodstuffs they consume. This might suggest that broadening the diet encouraged the evolution of larger brains.

It is unclear why diet and brain size are linked. Montgomery speculates that a broad diet is more likely to provide the energetic resources needed to fuel brain expansion. Alternatively, it might be that marine mammals with a broader diet need to learn and use a wider range of foraging behaviours to exploit different food resources. This could require a larger brain.

Unravelling how and why brain evolution and diet are linked in whales and dolphins could be important because it might help us understand why primates evolved large brains too.

Many researchers argue that primates gained large brains as their social worlds became more complex. But in the last few years, some have given up on this social brain hypothesis because of evidence that primate brain expansion is actually better explained by changes to diet. The data from whales and dolphins provides new evidence to bolster this idea.

Journal reference: Journal of Evolutionary Biology , DOI: 10.1111/jeb.13539

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Whales evolved large brains in the same way that we did - New Scientist News

In her article yesterday for The Atlantic, which I wrote about here, Olga Khazan quotes Penn State political scientist Eric Plutzer on the lamentable stubbornness of many biology teachers in not evangelizing their students in favor of Darwinian evolution in its fullness:

Some educators in this ambivalent 60 percent tend to teach evolution only as it applies to molecular biology, Plutzer said, but not the macroevolution of species. Others distance themselves from the material even as they tell students it will be on a standardized test. Their primary concern is not offending the students or their parents by characterizing the science in a way that seems to be challenging religious faith, Plutzer told me. I think that in some cases, the teachers themselves have doubts. [Emphasis added.]

The teachers themselves have doubts Meaning, doubts about Darwinism. Thats what you think? Well, I know that many do, because they get in touch with us about it, and have been doing so for years. (See the Helpline page on the Free Science website.) The concern about evangelizing teachers so that theyll be better equipped to evangelizestudents has been a priority for some Darwinists, also for years. Political philosopher J. Budziszewski at the University of Texas has a brilliant post about this.

He points out a contradiction between well known sayings of two well known biologists.

Geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky famously wrote, Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.Did you get that?Nothing.

Yet after urging that Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved, molecular biologist and Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick remarked, It might be thought, therefore, that evolutionary arguments would play a large role in guiding biological research, but that is far from the case. It is difficult enough to study what is happening now.

Can both be true? Clearly not. Evolution cant be critical to all biological research, while at the same time not actually play[ing] a large role in it. So what explains the contradiction between Dobzhansky and Crick, who presumably would both know what they were talking about? Budziszewski answers: They were talking to different audiences! Dobzhansky was talking specifically to teachers:

I wonder whether part of the explanation might lie in the fact that Dobzhansky was writing not in a journal for biologists, but in a journal for K through 12 biology instructors,American Biology Teacher.

What difference would that make? Wouldnt the same views and arguments be expressed to teachers as to practitioners? Not if one of the objects of preparing teachers is to propagandize them.

He cites a couple of Darwinist academics who are explicit about the permissibility of using propagandizing deception to get the message across to what they consider to be less intelligent audiences. That would presumably include run-of-the-mill biology teachers, and students too.

In that light, lets turn back to Olga Khazans article. She continues:

Additionally, some teachers expose students to different theories about evolution and encourage them to make up their own minds. But does a 15-year-old student really have enough information to reject thousands of peer reviewed scientific papers? Berkman and Plutzer write in their article.

But that right there, from Plutzer and his colleague Michael Berkman, is itself a piece of misdirection, at best. The purpose of teach the controversy-style pedagogy isnt to encourage students to think they have enough information to reject what most biologists say in thousands of peer reviewed scientific papers they havent read. The goals are to engage and excite students intellectually, introduce them to scientific argumentation, and to acquaint them with the reality, which is that a genuine, interesting, and important scientific controversy is going about neo-Darwinian theory among scientists themselves.

Why should that last fact be hidden from young people? Or from teachers? Budziszewski concludes, ironically, I do think that if everyone laid his best arguments on the table, the results would be different than what most of the smart people expect. But different results are just what the smart people want to avoid, which is why full candor, when speaking to teachers or students, is to be avoided.

Photo: A high school biology classroom, by Dannel Malloy, via Flickr (cropped).

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When Biologists Speak to Biology Teachers - Discovery Institute

SANTA BARBARA It was back in mid-2018 that AMC Networks first said it would allow advertisers to dynamically insert ads to reach specific households.

That was after AMC Networks whose portfolio includes AMC, IFC, SundanceTV, WE tv and BBC America hired Adam Gaynor, the long-time DISH Network executive who oversaw media sales including addressable TV initiatives.

Fast-forward a year, and Gaynor says AMCs addressable TV approach will involve partnership, evolution and complementary context.

At first when we launch addressability, were going to look at what I believe is versioning, Gaynor, now VP of AMCN Agility, tells Beet.TV in this video interview. If an advertiser wants to come in, they can immediately have different messages to different parts of their core audience.

As we each test out the systems, and the platform, and the capability, well then at our own pace, really be able to evolve that to what we call aggregation or multi advertiser addressability, to really think about the best ways to help those advertisers reach the audiences.

AMCN Agility is a data-driven sales team the network created early in 2018.

It includes AMCs Aurora video targeting platform, which can utilize audience segments.

To advance the opportunity, AMC has joined Project OAR, the addressable TV standards consortium that is Open Addressable Ready but is led by TV manufacturer Vizio and includes Disney, NBCU, Turner, CBS, AT&Ts Xandr and others.

There are different pieces that have to bring addressability together, Gaynor says. So you need a decisioning system, you need a watermarking system, you need tags, you need a lot of tech that helps bring that product to life.

Each of us are going down our own path of bringing those things together. Were feeling really good about the partners that weve chosen to sort of stitch things together to bring this capability to life on our national inventory across smart TVs.

With the likes of AMC Networks joining the addressable TV advertising fray, many observers may be tempted to wonder do they networks want to wrestle control of ad sales from under the noses of cable operators?

The answer is no' Gaynor says. I think everybody has talked for so long about needing more inventory and more capabilities. We look at complementing that inventory.

When you think about addressability, it really allows advertisers to find their consumers wherever, whenever. And so context gets removed from that equation. At the network level, we can bring context back into question.

This video is from a series leading up to, and covering, theXandr Relevance Conferencein Santa Barbara. This Beet.TV series is sponsored by Xandr. Pleasevisit this pageto find more videos from the series.

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AMC's Addressable Future: Partnerships & Evolution, Gaynor Says - BeetTV

The movie is set some years in the future, when the mechanics of space travel have greatly improved. Pitt is Major Roy McBride, a US armed forces astronaut whose obsession with space has come at the expense of his personal life. He comes from a proud lineage: his father, Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones), was the most decorated US astronaut of all, a fearless pioneer who went missing on a daring mission to Neptune.

That was years ago, and Clifford is now presumed dead, but after a series of mysterious cosmic shocks cause chaos on Earth, Roy is summoned by his superiors who tell him that his father may still be alive. The shocks are emanating from Neptune, so Roy heads for the blue planet to find out what's really going on.

In Ad Astra, only a flicker of an eye or the odd grimace give any clue of what Ray is thinking, and Brad's always been best when he plays men of few words who hide their emotions. Maybe that's not a coincidence, because Pitt does not seem like the effusive type himself.

He gives few interviews, but recently broke his silence to tell the New York Times what's been happening since his very public split with Angelina Jolie. He told writer Kyle Buchanan how he'd curtailed his "drinking privileges", spent over a year in AA, and found catharsis in group therapy sessions. Living life in the spotlight for almost three decades had clearly taken a heavy toll, and Pitt hinted that he'll be spending less time in front of the cameras from now on. That would be a pity, because as he proves in Ad Astra, when Brad is cast properly, he brings something special to a film.

One thing I've always admired about Brad Pitt is that he's one of those people who arrived in Hollywood owning nothing and knowing no one, and worked his way steadily to the top. He's paid his dues, and never comes across as a man who takes his good fortune for granted.

He was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma, on December 18, 1963, and raised in Springfield, Missouri, which he has called "the heart of the Bible belt". After school, he briefly studied journalism before setting out for Hollywood.

He struggled through the late 1980s, taking acting lessons, queuing for auditions and supplementing his meagre income by moving furniture, driving a limo, even dressing up as a giant fast-food chicken.

His first roles were on television, in shows like Dallas and Another World, but as he approached 30, Pitt was still struggling to make his name. It was Thelma & Louise that changed everything.

Ridley Scott's hit road movie starred Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis as two desperate women fleeing unpleasant lives, and Pitt played a charming conman called JD. He stole every scene he was in, and after Thelma & Louise, better roles started coming his way.

When Robert Redford cast Brad in his elegiac 1992 period drama A River Runs Through It, critics compared his looks and acting style to that of a young Redford. But Pitt himself was more pleased with his work on Kalifornia, in which he played a baby-faced psycho.

In 1994, Pitt established himself as a major star thanks to starring roles in two big-budget movies, Interview with the Vampire and Legends of the Fall. Neither was all that good, but it didn't matter, because Brad had become a sex symbol, and an increasingly bankable actor.

He earned his first Oscar nomination playing a gabbling, shaven-headed psychiatric patient in Terry Gilliam's nightmarish fantasy 12 Monkeys. And in Seven, he began his fruitful ongoing partnership with director David Fincher in some style. A stylish and brutal crime thriller, it starred Pitt and Morgan Freeman as police detectives hunting a serial killer obsessed with the seven deadly sins. It was a huge hit, and suddenly everyone wanted Pitt for everything.

He has since admitted that he did not initially cope with the pressures of stardom especially well. "In the 90s, all that attention really threw me," he told the New York Times in that recent interview. "It was really uncomfortable for me... I really became a bit of a hermit and just bonged myself into oblivion."

Hiding from the spotlight's glare became even harder after he married Friends star Jennifer Aniston. Their relationship, and messy break-up, made headlines across the world, and it was a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire when he met Angelina Jolie. They would bear three children together, and adopt three more, but during the early part of their relationship at least, Brad seemed to recover his professional ambition and focus.

The first sign of this was his remarkably intense performance in Andrew Dominik's superb 2007 anti-western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Pitt played James as an unstable, paranoid man tormented by his violent past.

He was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for his work on Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). But he was much better (and funnier) playing a Jewish-American lieutenant who embarks on a Nazi-killing spree in Tarantino's 2009 hit Inglourious Basterds.

A third Oscar nod came in 2011 for Bennett Miller's Moneyball, in which Pitt played Billy Beane, a laconic baseball manager. And very good in it he was, too, but he was nominated for the wrong film. Because in the same year he'd played an overbearing Southern father in Terrence Malick's superb semi-autobiographical drama The Tree of Life, Pitt's best performance ever in my opinion - until now, perhaps.

Brad Pitt once said he was "too damn affable" to reach the depths that he wanted to in his acting. But he seems to have overcome that obstacle, and his mesmerising performance in Ad Astra might even win him a fourth Oscar nomination - he may not care.

Meanwhile, he's busy with his prolific production company, Plan B, which backed films like Moonlight and Selma. "I have other things I want to do now," Brad said recently, hinting he'll be acting less from now on. That would be a pity, because he really seems to have finally figured it out.

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The quiet evolution of Brad Pitt - will Ad Astra earn him a fourth Oscar nomination? - Independent.ie

A new book traces the evolution of election campaigns in India by focusing on key players, rise and fall of political parties, role of digital and technology platforms, and emergence of fake news impacting poll outcome in the country and across the world.

In The Game of Votes: Visual Media Politics and Elections in the Digital Era, author Farhat Basir Khan argues that traditional ways of poll campaigns are no longer effective or enough to gain the attention of voters.

Political branding, image management, crisis communication, data analytics, microblogging, and most importantly, short crisp videos hold the key for todays elections, he says.

In the early general elections, political parties used newspapers, public meetings and door-to-door canvassing to convey their messages, policies, manifesto and information about the party.

With rapid advancement and industrialisation, the traditional methodologies of electoral campaigning also changed dramatically and gave rise to an even higher proliferation of modern media technologies, he says.

The book traces the changing political and media landscape beginning with the tepid elections of the 1950s to the feverish social media-driven elections of the 21st century, from the heady post-Independence Nehruvian era to the frenzied victory of Narendra Modi in 2019.

Former President Pranab Mukherjee has written the foreword to the book, published by SAGE, terms it as a reflection on the mood swings of the "unpredictable but very intelligent" Indian voter.

The book looks at the role of technology platforms, micro-profiling voters, clash of personalities and the rise of the national champion - all of which have been dealt with in detail," he writes.

The book discusses the art of forging political alliances, the overwhelming influence of social media companies in global politics, the menace of fake news and the worldwide rise of right-wing politics.

The unpredictable rise of brand Modi, his inexplicable persona, style of politics and vote-conversion abilities are contrasted with the losing sheen of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, loss of confidence in the Congress and electoral reverses for the party, it says.

The book also looks back at former US president Barack Obamas and incumbent Donald Trumps elections where social media, particularly Facebook, played a major role in the campaigns.

What the pundits had not reckoned with was the impact the newer kid on the block - WhatsApp will have, considering its mega role in making viral news elements that are volatile, insidious and fake, Khan, a faculty member at AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia, says.

He critically looks at how new media companies and platforms have been used to the hilt by election campaign managers.

The book highlights the fact that social media has not just become a daily battleground for fake news but has spread its tentacles around the core of Indian democracy - its free and fair elections.

According to Khan, social media helps to overcome the barrier of means in communication that in turn enables strengthened relationships between voters or advocates and politicians. And when it comes to election campaigns, social media becomes the digital version of the election rallies held on the ground.

There are, however, repercussions - trolls, shaming, morphing and social bullying are the other side of the story. Yet, it allows the politician to focus on the target voter group more earnestly than on-field where they are an inseparable part of the crowd, he says.

He argues that the BJPs way of using social media is different.

It pushed as much information as possible to saturate and overwhelm the mind of an average Indian with information, not really allowing too much space for further consideration, and driving him to opt for a hurried, if not impetuous, decision on who he chooses to govern the nation for next five years.

In one of the chapters, Khan tries to decipher the visual imagery in the newspapers during the 2014 Indian elections.

The patterns that emerged from the analysis are a clear indication of a robust and well-thought photographic communication strategy in place; it does not seem to be just happenstance or coincidence.

The BJP was the only party with visible and consistent patterns in their use of photographs. They maintained a constant flow of photographic communication in both the newspapers depicting their focus on the use of newspapers for the dissemination of messages, he writes.

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Book traces evolution of campaigning in India elections - Deccan Herald

ERP has come a long way since it was flavour of the decade in the 1990s. Enterprise Resource Planning was the name given to software suites that handled an organisations core activitiesfinance, manufacturing, distribution, etc.

The biggest vendor was German company SAP, still a market leader. But, like most technologies, ERP has evolved. On the cusp of the 2020s the enterprise applications scene looks very different than it did twenty or thirty years ago.

The most important change has been the move to the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. Many organisations resisted moving mission-critical applications to the cloud. But as the technology has improved concerns about security and performance have largely disappeared, and the imperatives for cloud are now hard to argue with.

SAP and Oracle and other ERP vendors have been making the transition from selling on premise packaged software to cloud-based applications sold on a subscription basis, but the inertia of their large installed base has made this a difficult process. They are being challenged by newer vendors who have been cloud-based from the start and who come without this legacy baggage.

Workday is located on the west side of San Francisco Bay, about halfway between San Jose and Oakland. Earlier this year it moved into a futuristic new HQ building (pictured), consolidating employees who were spread across a number of buildings in the area.

Workday is particularlyinteresting because it also demonstrates one of the other major evolutions in enterprise application softwarethe rise of what has come to be called Human Capital Management (HCM). As its name suggests, HCM has to do with an organisations peopleits human capital.

As the economy continues to evolve away from manufacturing and towards service-based industries, an organisations people and the way they are managed are becoming much more important. HCM software integrates the traditional functions of HR and payroll with the finance function, bring new functionality to how people are trained and managed.

Industry analyst with Gartner says there are three major aspects to HCM - workforce acquisition, workforce management and workforce optimisation.

To get a feel for how HCM is challenging the traditional ERP model, iTWire spoke to Workdays VP of Financials Product Management, Rob Zwiebach. He knows the ERP scene well. Before joining Workday last year spent 13 years with Oracle in senior positions in that companys financial software division.

There are many reasons to run these sorts of applications in the cloud, explained Mr Zwiebach. The advantages of the SaaS model are well-known, but there are also sound technical reasons.

Traditional on premise applications are based around relational database technology. Workday uses in-memory processing. That means its faster, but also that is much more flexible. The application structure is defined as metadata, which means applications can be changed on-the-fly without having to restructure the database.

This approach has been successful. Gartner places Workday as a leader in its well-known Magic Quadrant for HCM, alongside archrival Oracle and ahead of SAP and other traditional vendors and niche players. Gartner references Workdays high level of customer satisfaction and application functionality.

Over the past few years Workday has expanded into the traditional financials market, long the exclusive preserve of specialist ERP vendors. Its financials are now mature enough that it has customers who use only that part of its application suite.

Were doing well in financials in the same reason our HCM has been successful, says Mr Zwiebach. The flexibility of our in memory processing means that we can enable our users to be much more agile. Our users tend to be services companies whose biggest expense is their workforce.

The in-memory processing model, which Workday internally calls object graphing. The company has a large team of developers, many of whom are now working on a range of new data analytics capabilities utilising Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies.

In 2018 Workday acquired a company called Adaptive Insights, an HCM planning and analytics company that significantly boost its capabilities in this area. It is also working with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to incorporate that companys increasingly sophisticated AI-based analytics.

Mr Zwiebach was in Australia to visit the companys customers and prospects and visit its small planning and budgeting R&D team in Brisbane. Local users include direct marketing company Salmat, toll road operator Transurban and growing FinTech company Latitude Financial.Deakin University is also a major user, where Workday has been successful againstAustralia's most successful ERP vendor TechnologyOne, which specialises in higher education.

Enterprise applications are the most essential software any organisation runs. Everybody has a general ledger and accounts receivable and payable. And every organisation has human capital. Bringing it all together is what companies like Workday are all about.

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Workday and the evolution of ERP - iTWire