Athletics South Africa has come a long way since the 2008 Beijing Olympics when the country only came back with one medal. Fast-forward to 2017 and the country has transformed itself into one of the finest sporting nations on the continent.

Athletics in the country is alive and that's a fact. With Wayde Van Niekerk and Caster Semenya both grabbing gold at the IAAF championship, ASA has reached a phase where continental domination is on the horizon.

ASA has changed its fortunes with the help of golden stars Semenya, Van Niekerk and swimmer Chad Le Clos. Our athletes have won not only medals but the world's attention.

HuffPost SA takes a look at the nearly decade-long journey of ASA and how the sport has evolved into a potential continental and global powerhouse.

2008 Beijing Olympics Following the success of the 2004 Athens Olympics in Greece, the 2008 Beijing Olympics in China was seen as the dawn of a new era in South African Olympics. Instead, it was the South Africa's worst showing in terms of results and medals. ASA only came back with a dismal solitary medal, courtesy of Khotso Mokoena who claimed silver in long jump.

The disappointing showing at such a prestigious global event was perhaps a blessing in disguise for ASA, as it signaled a turning point and the evolution of ASA.

2011: ASA greed and corruption An unpleasant period reigned between 2010 and 2011 when the organisation's president admitted to corruption and not handling Semenya's gender saga. According to the M&G, Leonard Chuene was found guilty of an unauthorised salary increase of R19,067 to R35,000 a month.

Bare in mind ASA was going through dire financial issues. Chuene was fired, and the corruption and greed were a catalyst for the rebirth of a new look ASA.

2012 London Olympics The 2012 London Olympics will be remembered as the year Le Clos beat great Olympian Michael Phelps. It was the breakthrough year for the 20-year-old at the time as he claimed an unprecedented gold in 200m butterfly, the race everyone presumed Phelps would win. This was a major victory for ASA, as swimming solidified itself as ASA's saving grace in the midst of all of its woes.

2012 Olympics saw South Africa win three gold medals with Le Clos, Cameron Van Der Burgh and the rowing team taking first place. It was also the year Semenya made headlines when she won silver but was overclouded by gender discrimination.

Team SA went home with six medals and Le Clos was the national hero after beating Phelps. It was a beautiful period for ASA, but the best was still to come.

2016 Rio Olympics The year Wayde van Niekerk introduced himself to the world was when he won gold in the 400m at the Rio Olympics. It was also ASA's best Olympics based on results as Team SA came home with 10 medals (two gold, six silver and two bronze). It was also the year Semenya was crowned the world champion of the 800m. This is when the momentum began. ASA was at an all-time high as the country's star athletes defeated renowned champions and were on the verge of world domination.

Van Der Burgh, Luvo Manyonga and the Springbok Sevens side were also among the medalists.

2017 IAAF Youth Championship 2017 was the year all South Africans started to realise that our athletics were alive and running. South Africa's athletics team produced one of its finest ever performances at the World IAAF Championship. Team SA topped the medals chart in the 2017 IAAF U/18 age group. The games were hosted in Nairobi, Kenya.

Team SA stood on a pedestal as it clinched 11 medals and jumped ahead of China. The stellar performance from our track and field athletes caught the eye of the world, more especially gold winner Breyton Poole.

Poole stole the show with his sheer size and determination. The 1.7m tall athlete jumped over 2.24m to claim gold in the high jump. Team SA topped the charts with five Golds, three Silver and three Bronze.

2017 IAAF London Championships

Van Niekerk was at it again. After storming to gold in the 400 metre at the IAAF, he also secured silver in the 200m. He gave an emotional interview on Thursday after winning and broke down in tears, saying he "deserved" what he achieved following criticism by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The BBC has been quite hard on South African athletes and downplayed Van Niekerk's achievements.

Continue reading here:

Timeline: The Evolution Of Athletics In South Africa Over The Past 10 Years - Huffington Post South Africa (blog)

While much of the Game of Thrones cast has morphed from the innocence of the first season to the militarized cynicism of its seventh, none have undergone as striking a transformation as Isaac Hempstead Wrights Bran Stark. The precocious little spider monkey whose climbing excursions effectively caused the War of the Five Kings has become a stoic, omniscient weirdo after his travels beyond the Wall. Everyone else is enjoying the brief and bittersweet pleasures of reunion; Bran is trying to continue being a human being rather than Westeros first computer filing system. That has meant changes for both Wright and his now one of the most fascinating on the series as we reach the beginning of the end. At a joint AT&T and HBOevent, Paste sat down with Wright to talk Game of Thrones, memes, and what he can see of his future.

Paste: I heard that you were a bit of a meme aficionado. Have you been browsing Twitter after each episode?

Isaac Hempstead Wright: Ive seen a lot of memes. Amongst the abuse I got after episode three [The Queens Justice]so much hate after that. Oh Bran, I hate Bran now. Hes changed so much. Guys, chill the fuck out. Its alright.

Paste: Do you contribute to the discussion secretly?

Wright: I dont, Im purely an observer. But all I do with my girlfriend is send memes to each other. She got so excited when she found one of me. Isaac, youre in a meme! Yeah, Im in a meme. [Bran] has become very meme-able. Ive seen some great ones, like one where Meera goes, My brother died for you, Hodor died for you, and Bran says, New phone who dis?

Paste: Has this character change affected you professionally? A big acting step up?

Wright: It was really interesting to do, because in many ways, for me at least, Bran has been playing either a child or a teenager. Obviously with some unique and weird bits, but as Ive grown up, its basically just been me in a different time period. Theres things you can bring into it, with this and other parts, but now theres nothing you can possiblyIm not arrogant enough to think I know everything. We had a couple meetings with the producers David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, and we modeled it on Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen. We called it Dr. Branhattan. This idea of existing at all these different times and tuning into all these moments.

Paste: I know youve also learned from Max von Sydows performance as the previous three-eyed raven. How are you doing it differently?

Wright: I didnt want it to be just like Max von Sydow because that three-eyed raven had been sitting in that tree for a thousand years. Bran hasnt. Hes not that old. Hes just been given all this craziness now. Theres no point in trying to pretend that hes immediately become wise. Hes obviously become wise, but he hasnt had time to sit there and go through all the history. The way it works, this whole vision thing, isnt that he knows everything immediately. He has access to everything. So where that raven has sat there for a million years and has everything at his fingertips, Bran doesnt yet. So we didnt want him to be this, Oh, I know everything and Im all stoic sort of guy. Hes still a kid, just with a unique power.

Paste: He and Samwell Tarly (John Bradley-West) are really the only ones dealing with the world by sitting and learning quietly.

Wright: Yeah, its really nice. Its nice being one of the representatives of the intellectuals of Westeros. People using knowledge as power.

Paste: In the past youve said that you plan on pursuing a PhD in the futureis that still important to you?

Wright: Somebody put this PhD thing on WikipediaIm not doing a PhD. I am going to university for joint honours in music and maths. Music theory mainly. I just did my Grade 8 Music Theory this year.

Paste: Have you gotten to do your composition theory stuff yet?

Wright: Yeah, Ive been composingIm friends with Ramin Djawadi, our composer, and Ive been with them on some of the tours theyve done of all the music. Whenever were at an event, we just sit in a corner and talk music.

Paste: Did you and Kristian Nairn [who played Hodor in the series] bond over music?

Wright: Weve always been music pals. I managed for the first time its taken me agesto go see him DJ. Awesome. Im not really into house music, but it was really good.

Paste: Electronic music can get pretty close to classical though.

Wright: Oh, definitely! Steve Reich! I mean, Aphex Twin, even.

Paste: Going on to university, what lessons do you think youll take from your experience on Game of Thrones?

Wright: I think one of the most important things, with Bran anyways, is learning from massive mistakes. Bran basically killed everyone he held dear. But he didnt sit there and wallow and go, Oh, Im useless and cry in despair. He also didnt just brush it off. He took from it that he needed to be wiser and accepted that this was destiny. Theres no point getting upset. Which is a bit of a grandiose way of putting learn from your mistakes.

Jacob Oller is a writer and film critic whose writing has appeared in The Guardian, Playboy, Roger Ebert, Film School Rejects, Chicagoist, Vague Visages, and other publications. He lives in Chicago, plays Dungeons and Dragons, and struggles not to kill his two cats daily. You can follow him on Twitter here: @jacoboller.

See the article here:

Game of Thrones' Isaac Hempstead Wright on Bran's Evolution, House Music and Becoming a Meme - Paste Magazine

After racking up accumulated losses of Rs 50,000 crore, debt of Rs 55,000 crore, a failed Rs 30,000 crore bailout in 2012 and an aborted disinvestment attempt in 2001, the NDA government bit the bullet: last month, the Cabinet gave its nod to sell its stake in the beleaguered Air India. It isnt the only state-owned behemoth in which the government reckons it doesnt need to be wasting its time.

Half of Indias 235 Central public sector enterprises (CPSEs) are under scrutiny for a possible disinvestment. The governments think tank NITI Aayog has recommended a strategic sale in over 40 public sector undertakings (PSUs) and outright closure of 26 sick PSUs.

This time, it may not be all talk and little action. Various governments have toyed with disinvestment since 1991, but with limited success. The biggest sell-off surge happened under the NDA government of 1999-2004, when PSUs like Maruti, VSNL, IPCL and IBP were privatised. It is hard to argue against the economic rationale for privatisation.

While CPSEs contribute over 20% to Indias GDP and employ over 10 lakh people, many have turned into bloated, inefficient behemoths and a drain on the national exchequer. One-third of the CPSEs today are making losses. Even a maharatna like BHEL has slipped. Between 2011-12 and 2015-16, a recent CAG report points out, its turnover declined from Rs 49,510 crore to Rs 26,587 crore and profits slipped from Rs 7,400 crore to losses of Rs 913 crore. Between 2007 and 2016, sick CPSEs reportedly logged losses of Rs 19.68 lakh crore. Small wonder, then, that NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant suggested that the government should hand over schools, colleges and prisons to the private sector as the government has no business to be in business.

The reality, globally, is a bit more nuanced. PSUs arent exactly out of fashion and have often been used to stoke nationalistic fervour. The French government has threatened to nationalise the shipyard in Saint-Nazaire instead of selling it to Fincantieri of Italy. Italians are nervous about French colonisation as many cross-border deals (like the 50 billion Essilor-Luxottica merger) have resulted in French firms having the upper hand.

Global Lessons In India, PSUs were created post Independence to build a self-reliant, state-led economy. Through the 1970s, amid a nationalisation drive, PSUs dominated the economic landscape before a bankrupt government was forced to rethink its strategy post liberalisation.

India echoed what was happening globally. Professors Aldo Musacchio and Sergio G Lazzarini talk about evolution of state capitalism in their book Reinventing State Capitalism (2014). Globally, too, state capitalism peaked around the 1970s. As a result, output of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to GDP reached 10% in mixed economies and 16% in developing economies.

Then reality dawned. The oil shock of the 1970s and the liquidity crunch of the 1980s meant SOEs globally ran average losses equivalent of 2% of GDP, according to the World Bank. In developing countries, they stood at 4% of GDP. Between 1980 and the turn of the century, the focus shifted to a wave of PSU reforms that included minority stake sales, listings and overhauls of PSU management.

The year 2008 was an inflection point when state-led bailouts of distressed companies PSUs or even private became the norm. The US government bailed out private firms like GM and AIG. By some calculations, firms under government control today account for a fifth of the worlds total stock market capitalisation.

While state capitalism has been in vogue, governments have been trying to make it efficient. The book refers to two examples. In 2007, Brazilian private firm JBS acquired US-based Swift & Co for $1.4 billion to become the world's largest beef processing company. Then it acquired Pilgrim's Pride for $2.8 billion. JBS, identified as a national champion, was funded by Brazilian National Development Bank (BNDES), which became the largest minority shareholder in JBS. SOEs in China are coming from the other end. In 2010, Agriculture Bank of China's mega IPO raised $22 billion.

The two examples reflect the new forms of state capitalism taking root. Both are distinct from the traditional (often inefficient) PSU model where government owns and manages the SOE like an extension of public bureaucracy.

PSUs have often helped government deal better with economic cycles. "In China when the economy is in danger of recession, SOEs can quickly deploy government resources and play a counter cyclical role. India is different in that governments, especially Central governments, are relatively much weaker," says Xi Li, professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

After its independence in 1965, Singapore government owned a lot of companies like SingTel and Singapore Airlines. In 1974, it set up Temasek Holdings, a sovereign wealth fund, to hold and manage its assets on a commercial basis and push the nation's growth agenda. Temasek today owns and manages a portfolio of over S$250 billion.

Japan and Korea took a different approach. Chaebols in Korea and Keiretsu in Japan have played a key role in the economic growth of the two countries. And governments in both the countries have nurtured them. This also led to crony capitalism which they are now trying to tackle. For example, Chaebol reforms was a key issue in the 2017 election in Korea. "To avoid the trap of import substitution and make local firms globally competitive, governments gave these companies export targets. When achieved, they were given special credit and land," says Ajay Chhibber, visiting distinguished professor, NIPFP, a research institution.

India's Path NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant recently told ET Magazine that "the government should spend money on improving social indicators like health, education, nutrition". Beyond disinvestment and sell-off, some shifts are already visible. PSUs like BHEL are morphing to be relevant. Besides renewable energy, it now wants to make components for metro rail and defence. "To facilitate public spending, new PSUs are sprouting in areas like inland waterways, metro rail and renewable energy," says Vinayak Chatterjee, chairman, Feedback Infra. The government has set up the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation to build highways. New mechanisms are being explored to help PSUs operate efficiently. For example, National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) will help fund projects where the government's stake will be capped at 49%.

Former bureaucrat Pradeep Baijal says PSUs are a necessity in areas where government has a natural monopoly; like railways, metro rail, utilities or sensitive areas like satellite or nuclear power. In a rapidly evolving world, there should be a model of constant review of the PSU portfolio - what to retain and what to divest," adds Amit Sinha, partner, Bain & Company.

Gaurav Taneja, partner, EY, says PSUs are necessary in areas where private sector is not keen to invest, like public health in rural areas. "In fact, government should convert many of these operations into public sector outfits and set up a strategic framework to evaluate their performance," he says. Consider the case of not-so-profitable Jan Dhan scheme where public sector banks were asked to roll it out without adequate compensation and yet are expected to compete with the private sector.

"The difficulty with PSU emanates from a misplaced sense of their reason for existence," says Utkarsh Palnitkar, partner, KPMG in India. "Distortions come into play when a PSU is expected to perform on similar lines as private sector units yet is deprived of management autonomy," he adds. Experts recommend that disinvestment proceeds must be parked in a separate fund to be used in infrastructure investment. "We should not be selling the family silver to pay the grocery bills (which is the case now)," says Chhibber.

Ranen Banerjee, partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers India, says: "Private and public sector need not be completely divorced. While PSUs can build and own the infrastructure, private sector could do operations and maintenance efficiently." An example: railway tracks could be state-owned, and trains with the private sector. Any takers?

See the rest here:

How some of India's PSUs are set for a logical evolution through disinvestment - Economic Times

In movie trailer voiceover voice:

In a world where the third time seldom is the charm, when source material often devolves into convoluted chaos, when the expansion of combinatorial storylines undermine the value of the product, a madman has defied the odds. But not just any madman, a Fantasy Madman.

In the fight to engineer a world-beating system to fantasy football draft strategy, the Madman has ignored complacency while avoiding the pitfalls of overcomplication. He has identified the confusing complexity of his past evaluations and has taken action. The days of sliding scales are over. The era of required cross-referencing player ratings is a thing of the past. This is a new world of player rankings.

This is the DVQ 3.0.

Sometimes, simpler is better.

Weve seen it before: a disappointing third installment of a beloved franchise. The Dark Knight trilogys weakest entry was the third. Spider-man 3 was a disaster, as well as the third X-Men or Matrix movies the list of part-three disappointments is long. Heck, a third presidential term isnt even allowed.

But the Madman, he perseveres. Past incarnations of the draft value equation (DVQ) have been functional but admittedly overly complex. With this, the third edition, we make it easier. This third entry is more Lord of the Rings: Return of the King than Godfather Part 3. It is the pinnacle of the DVQ thus far.

In the past, the DVQ addressed draft value with a sliding scale. Each player was evaluated based on projected results compared with their average draft position. It worked; were proud. But it wasnt as helpful as we wanted. The ratings varied based on where in the draft you were targeting a player, and it admittedly required cross-referencing to understand player-to-player comparisons.

But that was like going to a restaurant that only serves dishes a la carte. Even if the food is great, Give me a No. 8 is easier and quicker than surfing through an entire menu for individual items.

This season, the new DVQ 3.0 lets you simply order a full meal. It gauges each players value independently then assigns a draft position rating. The number reflected in each player rating is the spot in the draft at which the Madman projects the best value. Note: There is a parabolic curve near the top, where there is greater separation in individual projections, thus a greater separation between DVQ ratings.

So when you see 16.9 beside Jimmy Catchgood, that is the spot in the draft at which the Madman believes that players projected-point total agrees with the value of that draft pick. By shifting our evaluation to this paradigm, it accomplishes multiple tasks with one rating.

It shows where you should target a player. It will include clusters of players with similar ratings, which reveal the mash-up of similar values. It also will unveil tier cliffs, where there is a substantial divide in player ratings. And it does all of this with one number. One number that conveys actionable information. One number that simultaneously separates and groups players of varying or similar values. One number to rule them all.

So now that you know this, how do you employ the DVQ 3.0 in your personal draft strategy? First, no plan is foolproof. If there is a player you adamantly want on your roster, and you dont think they will be there when you pick again, take them when you can.

Use the DVQ as a guide. For example: You want Wilhelm Runningwell on your roster, and he has a DVQ of 29.3. Youre picking with the 22nd pick, and you dont think Wilhelm will last that long, then take him. But, say, you really want that player, and his average draft position (ADP) is drastically higher than the DVQ rating, then perhaps you should re-evaluate that choice.

For example: Christian McCaffrey has an ADP of 31.7 in a 12-team PPR (points per reception) redraft league, but a DVQ of 89.9. Chances are, if you really want McCaffrey, you will have to pick him well ahead of where the DVQ recommends. The Madman says wait. The Madman says that player is being overvalued. The Madman says there are more reliable options at the point in the draft when McCaffreys ADP indicates he will go. The Madman says, you must be mad!

The short story is: Play the odds. And the DVQ 3.0 is a method to convey those odds. Weve made it more simple to follow. Weve made it more universally informative. Weve made it easier.

This is the Bourne Ultimatum of third installments. This is a Christmas Vacation of fantasy advice. This is the DVQ 3.0.

Sometimes, simpler is better.

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DVQ 3.0: The latest evolution in fantasy football draft strategy - New York Post

WooliebuGGer recently released Constant Evolution Parts 1 & 2, from his forthcoming EP or album, slated to drop later this year. Hailing from Aurora, Illinois, WooliebuGGer began creating music at the age of 14, stating, I am inspired everyday by the idea of what can be accomplished.

Stylistically, WooliebuGGers sound encompasses electronic, experimental, ambient, minimal and glitch elements. And his musical influences include Brian Eno, Kraftwerk, Future Sound Of London, Stereolab, Pink Floyd, The Doors and The Beatles.

Constant Evolution is a single, lengthy song composed of two distinct segments: part 1 consists of a radiant dance beat, while part 2 dampens the rhythm and takes on a flowing, almost psychedelic flavor rife with extended, syncopated notes.

The bipartite song begins with a percolating synth rhythm, followed by a mesmerizing, futuristic melody that exudes electronic dance elements riding on leitmotifs projected by the synths. The leitmotif gives the impression of gazing into a sonic mirror that reflects the melody in ever devolving fractal patterns. The groove is provided by handclaps that ebb and flow, depending on the intensity of the synth matrix. Part 1 concludes with a protracted synth note that vibrates horizontally as part 2 enters riding a clicking, popping groove, with white noise sound effects and an escalating shrill tone that abruptly halts. The tune segues into percussive effects backed by, and riding on, a rapidly stuttering synth, which eventually fades, leaving only the percussive effects, which assume a light industrial feel that elongates and increases in tension, like something out of 2001: A Space Odyssey. As the tune culminates, two part harmonies percussion and synth slowly fade, increase and end on a vibrating tone.

The overall sound of parts 1 and 2, together, is electronic ambient music that is kept fresh by the replicating leitmotifs serving as an elastic melody, a melody that ultimately devolves into an austere, minimalist series of detached sonic expression in Part 2. Even though part 2 depicts an almost mechanical detachment, it remains intense with suppressed energy.

Constant Evolution Parts 1 & 2 evokes turbulent, stylish sonority, along with tensile flamboyance under precise control. The latter component, the tensile flamboyance, provides the tune with an edgy tightness that imbues the music with pressure and strain that borders on apprehension. To that end, although its eccentric and quasi-experimental, it is good. That being said, if youre searching for relaxing ambient music, this is not it. On the other hand, if youre searching for ambient music that is pregnant with mysterious sonic symbolism stridently asserting its vitality, this is just the ticket.

Find out more about WooliebuGGer here.

Listen to more WooliebuGGer here.

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Music Review: Constant Evolution Parts 1 & 2 WooliebuGGer - HuffPost

August 11, 2017 A new paper from Duke molecular genetics and microbiology shows how pathogenic Cryptococcus fungi evolved from having many sexes to just two through 50 million years of gene swapping. Credit: Kara Manke

Biologically speaking, nearly every species on Earth has two opposite sexes, male and female. But with some fungi and other microbes, sex can be a lot more complicated. Some members of Cryptococcus, a family of fungus linked to human disease, can have tens of thousands of different mating types.

In a study appearing early online Aug. 11 in PLOS Biology, Duke researchers have mapped the evolutionary turning point that transformed the pathogenic form of Cryptococcus from an organism of many sexes to one with only two. They found that during evolution, a reshuffling of DNA known as translocation brought together separate chunks of sex-determining genes onto a single chromosome, essentially mimicking the human X or Y chromosome.

Surprisingly, they've shown that these crucial translocations occurred at the centromeres, the twisty ties that hold together chromosomes at the center of an x-shaped pair. These regions of the chromosome are so dense that they were once thought to be removed from recombination.

"Recombination at the centromere doesn't have to happen frequently, it just has to happen often enough that it punctuates the evolution of the organism," said Joseph Heitman, MD, PhD, senior study author and professor and chair of molecular genetics and microbiology at Duke University School of Medicine. "With each translocation, the genome is altered again and again, until you have evolved an entirely new species."

Scientists have been studying the evolution of sex chromosomes for more than a century. In the 1960's, Japanese-American geneticist and evolutionary biologist Susumu Ohno proposed a theory in which the genes determining sex first arose at various spots scattered across the entire genome, but over time were "captured" on the sex chromosomes. In humans, those chromosomes go by the familiar X and Y; in birds, they are known as Z and W; in moss, they are called U and V.

Regardless of the name or species, Heitman contends that some universal principles could govern the evolution of all sex chromosomes. He and an international team of researchers focused on the last common ancestor of the human pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans and its nearest sibling species, a non-pathogen called Cryptococcus amylolentus.

In C. amylolentus, dozens of genes at two different locations on the chromosomes control what's called a tetrapolar, or four-part, mating system. At one location or locus known as P/R, genes encode pheromones and pheromone receptors that help the fungus recognize compatible mating types. At the other locus, called HD, genes govern the development of sexual structures and reproductive spores.

The researchers sequenced the entire genome of C. amylolentus, mapping the location of all the genes as well as the centromeres on each of the organism's 14 chromosomes.

They found that the genomes had undergone quite a bit of rearrangement since the two species shared a common ancestor, at least 50 million years ago. For example, chromosome 1 of C. neoformans contained pieces of four different chromosomes from C. amylolentus, providing evidence of multiple translocations, some within the centromere.

"That was very surprising. The dogma has been that recombination is repressed in centromeric regions," said Sheng Sun, PhD, lead study author and assistant research professor at Duke University School of Medicine.

In the 1980's, a seminal paper by Duke colleague Tom Petes demonstrated recombination could occur across the centromeres in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, but some attributed the finding to a quirk of the favored model organism with its tiny point centromeres. But since then, other studies have emerged suggesting that the phenomenon was wider spread.

In this study, the researchers showed that in Cryptococcus amylolentus, the ancestral state, the P/R locus resided on chromosome 10 and the HD locus on chromosome 11. But in Cryptococcus neoformans, the evolved state, those loci ended up in one place. According to their model, multiple translocations deposited the two sex determinants on the same chromosome, with a centromere in between. Subsequent rearrangements put P/R and HD next to each other. The result was an organism with a bipolar mating system, much like the male and female sexes that embody most species.

"In any kind of model like this, you are thinking about what could have been the organization in the last common ancestor, which is now extinct so you can't know definitively," said Heitman. "But in each of these lineages, there are multiple evolutionary events that have occurred, and you can use genomics to turn back the hands of time and deduce the trajectory."

Heitman says their study suggests that other researchers should actively look for translocations, both in the expected locations as well as within centromeres. These chromosomal rearrangements are a common cause of birth defects and cancer in humans.

He and his colleagues are currently investigating whether similar translocations occur in the evolution of sex chromosomes in other fungal families, such as Ustilago and Malassezia.

Explore further: Evolution of the Sexes: What a Fungus Can Tell Us

More information: "Fungal genome and mating system transitions facilitated by chromosomal translocations involving intercentromeric recombination," Sheng Sun, Vikas Yadav, R. Blake Billmyre, Christina A. Cuomo, Minou Nowrousian, Liuyang Wang, Jean-Luc Souciet, Teun Boekhout, Betina Porcel, Patrick Wincker, Joshua A. Granek, Kaustuv Sanyal and Joseph Heitman. PLOS Biology, Early online Aug. 11, 2017. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.2002527

Journal reference: PLoS Biology

Provided by: Duke University

Fungi don't exactly come in boy and girl varieties, but they do have sex differences. In fact, a new finding from Duke University Medical Center shows that some of the earliest evolved forms of fungus contain clues to how ...

For more than a decade, a rare but potentially deadly fungus called Cryptococcus deuterogatti has taken up residence in the Pacific Northwest and Vancouver Island. Unlike its cousin Cryptococcus neoformans, which mostly infects ...

In butterflies, sex is determined by chromosome differences between males and females. But unlike in humans with the familiar X and Y, in butterflies, it is the females that determine the sex of offspring.

As cells divide, some of their DNA is rearranged, spurring the emergence of new traits that can dictate whether a species survives or flounders. But some stretches of DNA appear to be so crucial to the basic functioning of ...

Researchers from Trinity College Dublin have uncovered the evolutionary mechanisms that have caused increases or decreases in the numbers of chromosomes in a group of yeast species during the last 100-150 million years. The ...

(Phys.org) -- Fruit flies are commonly used in genetics research because their lifespan is short, they are easy to breed in the laboratory, and mutants are widely available. There are about 1,500 known species. Now a new ...

Biologically speaking, nearly every species on Earth has two opposite sexes, male and female. But with some fungi and other microbes, sex can be a lot more complicated. Some members of Cryptococcus, a family of fungus linked ...

(Phys.org)A team of researchers with the University of Pennsylvania has uncovered the means by which squid eyes are able to adjust to underwater light distortion. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group ...

Scientists at the Universities of Oslo and Liverpool have uncovered the secret behind a goldfish's remarkable ability to produce alcohol as a way of surviving harsh winters beneath frozen lakes.

The gene-editing technology called CRISPR has revolutionized the way that the function of genes is studied. So far, CRISPR has been widely used to precisely modify single-celled organisms and, more importantly, specific types ...

While hundreds of circular RNAs (circRNAs) are abundant in mammalian brains, one big question has remained unanswered: What are they actually good for? In the current issue of Science, Nikolaus Rajewsky and his team at the ...

In the cells of palm trees, humans, and some single-celled microorganisms, DNA gets bent the same way. Now, by studying the 3-D structure of proteins bound to DNA in microbes called Archaea, University of Colorado Boulder ...

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Scientists map sex chromosome evolution in pathogenic fungi - Phys.Org

The Rock is many things to many people: movie star, pro wrestling legend, television star, real big huge guy, cool dad, marketable celebrity, highest-paid dude on the planet, and fella who feels he needs to go to space to use Siri. Oh, and maybe hes going to be the President of the United States soon. I mean, the guy can punch an earthquake in the face or whatever, so hes as good a choice as any.

Last week, the man that some people know as Dwayne Johnson revealed on Instagram that he was evolving his iconic Brahma bull tattoo, which looked pretty cool in 1999, but is maybe slightly behind the times now. (Especially compared to his other, amazing quarter-sleeve of work on his left arm.) Some fans noticed the work already peeking up from his shoulder in older Instagram posts, suggesting that despite the video announcing he was getting work done, the process had already begun. Pretty sneaky, Rock.

Indeed, the big ol tattoo (which ended up being a complete cover-up, despite world famous tattoo artist Nikko Hurtados site claiming he doesnt do cover-ups, but you always just do what the Rock tells you to do) took several sessions, and we can finally see the finished product. It is pretty incredible, and probably not at all what most people were expecting.

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The Rock Unveiled The Evolution Of His Brahma Bull Tattoo, And It's Mind-Blowing - UPROXX

RENO, Nev. (News 4 & Fox 11)

Drift Evolution is one of the newest events at Reno's annual Hot August Nights, but it's quickly becoming one of the most popular.

Custom vehicles take turns drifting around a track at the Reno Livestock Events Center.

The event started in 2016, but this year, organizers said they sold out of participation passes about a month and a half before Hot August Nights started. They said they had to turn some drivers away because they didn't have enough space.

The cars featured at Drift Evolution are much different than the typical classic vehicles most people picture when they think of Hot August Nights. Many of them were built in the '90's and have been customized specifically for drifting.

Tickets to get into the Livestock Events Center are $10. Pit passes are an additional $10-- those allow access to talk to the drivers, see the drift cars up close, and take a lap as a passenger on the track.

Drift Evolution is happening through Saturday, August 12 from 9:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. CLICK HERE to learn more.

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Drift Evolution puts modern spin on Hot August Nights - KRNV My News 4

August 11, 2017

How do initially benign forms of cancer evolve to become aggressive? In a quest to answer this long-standing question, an EU project has studied the growth and clonal evolution of chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL)a blood and bone marrow cancer that mostly starts asymptomatic but can become very aggressive over time.

Cancer evolution is a complex process. Whilst we know that tumour growth is enabled by a continuous process of clonal expansion, genetic diversification and clonal selection, there are still many open questions related to this process. Answering them could be the key to preventing tumour progression and relapses.

According to Dr Michaela Gruber, whose research was funded under the CLL_INCLONEL (Identification and functional dissection of key genetic events in early chronic lymphocytic leukaemia) project, CLL is a valuable model for studying this process due to its high prevalence, initially slow progression and easy access to samples.

Dr Gruber studied the clonal dynamics of a cohort of 21 CLL patients, who were recurrently sampled from diagnosis until the time of first treatment. Her objectives were to identify events leading to disease progression using next-generation sequencing of patient samples. She also developed in vitro models to assess the functional impact of these genetic events on B cell biology, studied their impact on CLL and gathered valuable information on the effects of drugs on potential CLL sub-populations.

Dr Gruber agreed to discuss the project's outcomes and how they could one day lead to individualised diagnostic and therapeutic management of CLL.

What kind of knowledge did you aim to gather from this project?

The key aim of this project was to gain a better understanding of the early dynamics of growth and clonal evolution, as cancer progresses from diagnosis to the need for treatment. CLL is a highly informative model system for studying such natural cancer growth patterns: It typically has a relatively indolent beginning, with potentially long timeframes (in the order of years) before treatment becomes necessary.

Why is it so important to better understand clonal evolution? How can it help prevent tumour progression and relapse?

Insights from recent cancer sequencing studies indicate that the occurrence and expansion of cancer-driving mutations follows a specific sequence. Certain mutations generally appear to occur early in the disease and could be cancer-initiating. Other mutations tend to occur late and appear to have variable impact on tumour expansion. Moreover, different cancer sub-types show different patterns of mutations.

Together, these findings indicate that it could be possible to anticipate the specific evolutionary potential (i.e. plasticity) of a patient's cancer, which actually fuels progression, treatment resistance and relapse. Based on such understanding, therapeutic strategies could be shaped directly against this plasticity of cancer. This would be a major milestone towards overcoming current obstacles to cancer cure.

What would you say were the most important findings from the project?

Our data show that key mutations driving the progression of CLL are established very early in the course of the disease, years before symptoms warrant treatment initiation. For the first time, we were also able to quantify the impact of individual sub-clonal driver mutations on in vivo tumour expansion.

Another important discovery is that of clearly distinguishable growth patterns among patients, both globally as well as on a sub-clonal level. Finally, our data indicate that different patients have different potentials for clonal evolution and growth, and that these patterns remain throughout the entire course of the disease up to the event of relapse.

Can you tell us more about the genome editing technologies you employed?

Suitable experimental models are much needed in order to test the functional impact of observations made in CLL sequencing studies. Thus, we employed novel genome editing strategies, initially using TALENs and then switching to the recently emerged and more easily programmable CRISPR/Cas9 technology. Thanks to the latter, we established an array of isogenic B cell lines, which are used to test the molecular impact of mutations on cellular biology andmost importanttreatment response.

What are your plans now that the project is completed?

We have initiated several follow-up projects in Vienna, which aim to integrate an understanding of epigenetic modifications and tumour microenvironments, as well as their role and dynamics in CLL evolution.

What do you hope will be the impact of the project on future diagnostics and treatments?

Our hope is to establish cancer evolution as a predictable process. With sufficient understanding of the forces that drive evolution and selective advantages of sub-clonal mutations, we hope to develop prognostic schemes that anticipate individuals' evolutionary trajectories.

Treatments based on these schemes would directly aim to target the cancer plasticity that underlies progression, treatment resistance or relapse. CLL provides us with a unique opportunity to better understand cancer evolution. The conceptual insights about cancer that can thus be gained from CLL would have a high potential for being translated across other haematologic and solid malignancies.

Explore further: Follicular lymphoma: A tale of two cancers

More information: Project page: cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/186119

Follicular lymphoma (FL), the second most common form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, is a largely incurable disease of B cells, yet in many cases, because of its indolent nature, survival can extend to well beyond 10 years following ...

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CLL evolution under the microscope - Medical Xpress

Professor of Biological Science David Houle

Small, seemingly insignificant mutations in fruit flies may actually hold clues as to how a species will evolve tens of millions of years in the future.

Thats the focus of a new study by a Florida State University researcher who raised 200 generations of fruit flies to examine how they changed both in the short and long term. What he found was quite surprising.

Small mutations in the wing of fruit flies the drosophilids predict up to 40 million years of evolution for this common household pest. The research was published today in the journal Nature.

The main point is mutation thats happening now affects long-term evolution, said Professor of Biological Science David Houle. How this happens is not clear. Some scientists believe that the supply of mutation is what guides evolution. Others have suggested that the same processes that shape long-term evolution also shape mutation.

Houle set out to investigate if there were parts of the fruit fly that couldnt mutate or evolve and how quickly other parts did so.

We wanted to see how the effects that mutation produces are related to evolution, Houle said. We were surprised that there was a very tight relationship.

Fruit flies are considered an ideal species for scientists to investigate unsolved problems in evolution and genetics because it is easy to breed more than 20 generations each year. Their wings are also easy to measure, so scientists can easily identify even small changes.

Its a convenient system to investigate complex parts of an organism, Houle said. Ive always been interested in evolutionary process, whats going on and whats limiting it. Its the nuts and bolts.

By examining fossil evidence and conducting DNA sequencing, Houle and his colleagues knew that fruit flies had been around for roughly 40 million years. They also suspected that the pattern of mutation could have remained constant over that time period.

It is often true that some things evolve very slowly, and its reasonable to conclude that mutational patterns may be one of those things, he said. The important thing is that the pattern of past evolution did not necessarily have to be similar to mutation. We were surprised at how similar they are.

To measure the rate of mutation and evolution, Houle and co-author Kim van der Linde of the Tallahassee-based Animal Genetics Inc. gathered almost 120 different species of flies by collecting them from nature or obtaining them from other scientists. Van der Linde studied how these flies were related to each other.

Houle then raised 200 generations of fruit flies it takes four years to breed that many generations and then individually raised some of the flies to see what, if any, changes occurred in the wings of the flies. In total, the researchers measured more than 50,000 fly wings in the course of this study and found changes in the overall shape of the wing, such as the ratio of width to length and vein locations.

Some types of changes evolved at a higher rate than others, such as the ratio of wing width and length. These evolutionary changes were also the most common mutational changes.

Through these observations and sophisticated statistical modeling, Houle and his team were able to determine that the small mutational changes occurred in the same pattern as evolution throughout the entire group of fly species.

The findings are likely applicable to how other plants and animal species evolved, Houle said. But they also are predictive of the next 40 million years of evolution as well, he added.

What we are doing is more accurately known as a retrodiction using something from the present to predict past events, Houle said. Of course, we can now make a prediction that Drosophila will evolve in this pattern in the future, as well.

This work was funded by the National Science Foundation.

Other authors on the paper are Thomas Hansen of the University of Oslo, Norway, and Geir Bolstad of the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research. Hansen is a former member of the FSU faculty, and Bolstad was a postdoctoral researcher at Florida State in 2013.

Read more here:

Fruit fly mutation foretells 40 million years of evolution - Florida State News

Before I go any further, let me say - and I'm sure other articles may have started at the beginning like this - that the financial press can now place a moratorium on all articles concerning the theory that Disney (NYSE:DIS) is going to buy Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX).

Okay, that's out of the way. Now, on to quarter three.

According to Seeking Alpha, Disney's management came in ahead of expectations by three pennies with adjusted earnings of $1.58 per share. Sales, however, of $14.24 billion, which were flat year-over-year, missed by $180 million. EPS was down 2%; it should be noted. Overall, not a great start.

Free cash flow for Q3 was better by 33%, however, at $3.3 billion, according to the release. For the nine-month frame, the growth in that metric was only 3%, and it should be noted that nine-month operational cash flow was actually down 9%.

Disney is known for its cash-generation abilities and its great dividend potential over time, so the cash-flow picture, aside from the quarterly free cash, was perhaps only okay this time around. But that can happen in any given three-month period. More disappointing were the segment operating income results for the media networks and studio divisions - down 22% and 17%, respectively. They were also down over the last nine months as well - 11% and 8% on the same respective basis. Plus, consumer products/interactive media was down 11% in profit generation on the nine-month. Guess that's understandable given the studio decline, but still, merchandising is an area that I like to see growing a little more strongly, even in non-holiday quarters (it also shows that Disney probably has more work to do on its interactive segment, which has been a problem spot in recent years).

If you're a Disney stock fan, this wasn't your quarter. I am, and it wasn't. The shift in cable-bundling/over-the-top subscription services is forcing weakness on the company's big asset, ESPN, and it is now that the story gets very interesting. It goes from one focused on stats to one focused on streaming.

For Disney to get into the streaming business, it needed to reinforce its position in the BAMTech asset we've heard so much about in past quarters. The company has done that: for a little under $1.6 billion, CEO Bob Iger acquired another 42% of the business. Given the 33% already owned, the company is now up to 75% ownership. Disney can now call the shots and create its own ESPN product it can distribute on its own, Netflix-style.

The company doesn't intend on stopping there, though. It also wants to create a new streaming asset that will cater to families.

Obviously, this is an important time in Disney's corporate history for a true evolution is going on. It was expected, but it is also necessary. Disney is a great content supplier, but as many have now pointed out, Disney needs to learn the ropes of creating, from scratch and via acquisition (i.e., BAMTech), a branded platform. This brings up a whole portfolio of questions/risks. Indeed, as I was reading through articles (and comments to articles), I came away with the feeling that this directional change could be riskier than it seems upon first study; again, though, it is necessary.

Here are some examples from my own perspective that I think shareholders need to consider. I believe Disney is still a long-term buy, but I also believe that the story has changed in certain respects.

Let me start with debt levels, cash flow and dividend growth. Right now, Disney has $18.8 billion of debt borrowings. I have a feeling that Disney is going to have to increase its debt level significantly over time as it builds out its streaming services. Is that bad? According to this article, it isn't. The debt the company has now isn't straining it. From the quarterly report, it can be seen that at the beginning of July 2016, the net interest expense was $70 million. At the beginning of July 2017, that statistic increased to $117 million.

Obviously, the net interest expense widened, but it is still inconsequential in the overall picture. Nevertheless, it's cleaner in my mind if Disney tries to keep debt levels down over time. I don't think that can happen now, and I think the company will become more conservative in its dividend increase evaluations. That doesn't mean the stock is a sell; it just means that, given Disney's priority on growth over income in the past, and given that producing content for new streaming services most likely will require big investments/acquisitions, it is worth placing such theory into the mix. There have been many articles over the years about Disney's dividend; there should be a few more analyzing that aspect of the investment idea with this change in strategy, especially with any attempts at quantification of risk of recession and the resultant impact. I know pointing out debt levels in the case of a company like Disney will be criticized, but it is something I think about. Going back to that linked SA article, I do agree with what it intimates: to management, there might not be any preconceived inconvenience to adding $10 billion, say, to the borrowings. Myself, I'm not so sure.

Has Disney found a new CEO yet? We don't know the answer to that; maybe the board already knows and has yet to announce the knowledge. But imagine you are the new CEO-to-be walking into this: a major realignment of the company's long-term goals, engineered by the company's very popular previous boss...what are you thinking at this point? Also, it would be odd if Disney doesn't have someone in mind yet (or at least a very, very short list of not more than two candidates). If the company did not have someone in mind yet, then the person who eventually is identified is going to need a lot of catching-up in the inner workings of this new model, if not in reality (I sometimes think Disney is taking too much time in finding its new CEO) than certainly from the perspective of management (and that is the only reality that matters). Is the board going to be confident in handing over the keys to the kingdom to a new CEO? Is it going to ask Iger to reconsider his retirement?

Just saying that Disney is going to create new streaming services leaves out a lot of details. ESPN is the more obvious of the two - I don't use the product and I'm not a sports expert, but I think it's safe to say that ESPN is ESPN: pay for expensive sports rights, charge a premium to view the events. But Disney's fictional-content service (services, eventually?) is more ambiguous.

From the earnings-call transcript, here is Iger's response to a question on that subject:

"Well, what we're saying specifically is that the Disney-branded app will have the Disney and Pixar films. The disposition of the Marvel and Lucas or Star Wars films, we have not determined yet. We've had a discussion internally about how best to bring them to the consumer."

See, this is odd to me. When I first heard about the plan to create a subscription product, I figure everything from Disney would be in it. Pixar, Star Wars, Pirates, all of it. If I interpret the above correctly, then it would seem that Disney wants to create unique services, perhaps believing that several lower-priced tiers will add up to more than one omnibus streaming entity. The company could be correct on that, but how would it execute in terms of consumer response in a Netflix-branded world? One would assume that to compete with Goliath, you would have to bring everyone you have to the battle. Disney clearly wants to experiment first, solidify later. I can understand that strategy, but I wonder if maybe there was a better way of doing it.

Going back to ESPN, it also occurred to me that this mutation in strategy might make it easier to someday sell/spin-off that business. Yes, Iger is committed, but what about a new CEO? ESPN is basically a big-spending bet on non-fiction; the rest of the company comprises storytelling assets - mythology and merchandising. If Disney wanted to, it could swap its bet on sports for a bet on original-content production in the tradition of Netflix (i.e., spend until it hurts...and then spend some more, if the data allows). ESPN is a great singular investment; Disney proper is a portfolio of business models that interact with each other more closely. A sale of ESPN could bring in a lot of cash that could immediately be put to work creating different franchise episodic IP for Disney's service. While buying BAMTech might seem like a way to keep ESPN in the fold, I wonder if it is the first step in a future sale (which would be some time down the road, if at all).

While I just said that Disney's non-omnibus strategy surprised me, I will concede that investment in original content probably would necessitate some separation from the family-oriented branding model. A separate channel devoted to more adult-targeted stories, or the ability to block that out from younger children, would be logical. The goal on the part of Disney is to siphon off subscribers from Netflix in addition to overlapping; to do that, the company might want, as an example, to invest in low-budget horror movies/episodic. Or to strike its own Adam-Sandler-like deal with a comedian whose box-office prospects necessitated a switch in thinking on the part of agents/managers. Disney can do this...but will it want to? Will such thinking be proprietary to the next CEO?

Iger mentioned in the conference call that premium video-on-demand is not in the mix. When asked about that possibility, he said:

"We're not planning to put our movie, to use this service to encroach on a theatrical window, if that's what you're asking."

Bad move; don't exclude that possibility, Bob. If Disney, every once in a while, took one of its big properties and programmed it on the service a few weeks after release in theaters, then the service becomes unique and more valuable; it would strike a blow against Netflix. Furthermore, producing movies specifically for that purpose would work as well. Imagine if a lower-budgeted Marvel picture were made so that it would do whatever it could at theaters, then was ported over on an accelerated schedule to streaming - it would probably market itself and get the attention of potential subscribers. Even a big Star Wars film could lend itself to this method.

I do like the idea of allowing subscribers the ability to buy content from Disney as well with this new BAMTech-led initiative. From the call, Iger mentioned:

"We do hope to use this service to give people the ability to buy, to download-to-own or download-to-rent Disney movies in the window prior to pay, which used to be called the home video window. There is no reason why we shouldn't be doing that. But the priority here is this is a direct-to-consumer product, a subscription product."

This announcement from Disney's management will be analyzed in the coming weeks. I want to know how Disney's Hulu investment will fare post the development. How ABC will approach its own corporate mandate - will all outside producers of content have to sign over some streaming rights? - vis a vis its new corporate sister. It's possible competitive content creators will look at ABC differently.

My decision regarding the stock is that it is not a sell. There's just too much possibility here on the positive side of things to go bearish. Remember that Disney contains a significant quantity of brand equity; that isn't going away. It also has its parks division, and the cross-promotional opportunities there are numerous. I could imagine a kiosk signing park patrons up for the service near one of the rides; maybe when you book your Disney vacation, you can also book a couple of years on the ESPN over-the-top. The Disney Store could get in on the act. In addition, maybe Disney will sign people for limited-streaming services that are only for a short period of time, almost like an extended rental/pay-per-view - maybe you'll have access to all Star Wars content for six months and be done with it.

As Iger said in the conference call, there are all kinds of scenarios and optionalities to evaluate. For this reason, even with the new risks attached, I believe Disney is still a buy; just don't look at it as necessarily an income play until we see how the future dividend announcements shape up.

Disclosure: I am/we are long DIS, NFLX.

I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

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Disney's Q3: An Earnings Beat, A Strategic Evolution - Seeking Alpha

Ants detect pheromones though porous hairs on their antennae. The researchers generated mutants lacking this ability.

Ants run a tight ship. They organize themselves into groups with very specific tasks: foraging for food, defending against predators, building tunnels, etc. An enormous amount of coordination and communication is required to accomplish this.

To explore the evolutionary roots of the remarkable system, researchers at The Rockefeller University have created the first genetically altered ants, modifying a gene essential for sensing the pheromones that ants use to communicate. The result, severe deficiencies in the ants social behaviors and their ability to survive within a colony, both sheds light on a key facet of social evolution and demonstrates the feasibility and utility of genome editing in ants.

It was well known that ant language is produced through pheromones, but now we understand a lot more about how pheromones are perceived, says Daniel Kronauer, head of the Laboratory of Social Evolution and Behavior. The way ants interact is fundamentally different from how solitary organisms interact, and with these findings we know a bit more about the genetic evolution that enabled ants to create structured societies.

Social beginnings

The most important class of pheromones in ant communication are hydrocarbons, which can communicate species, colony, and caste identity as well as reproductive status. These pheromone signals are detected by porous sensory hairs on the ants antennae that contain what are called odorant receptorsproteins that recognize specific chemicals and pass the signal up to the brain.

Work in the Kronauer lab, led by graduate student Sean McKenzie and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has shown that a group of odorant receptor genes, known as 9-exon-alpha ORs, are responsible for sensing hydrocarbons in the clonal raider ant species Ooceraea biroi.

McKenzie and his colleagues also examined the genomes of related insects to determine where 9-exon ORs emerged in the evolution of this species, and found that there was an enormous duplication in this gene in a relatively short evolutionary timescale: While the ancestors of bees and ants only had one to three copies of this gene, clonal raider ants have about 180 copies. The massive expansion of 9-exon ORs happened concurrently with the evolution of complex social behavior, suggesting that the duplication of odorant receptor genes was vital to the development of ant communication.

Communication interrupted

To further dissect the role of odorant receptors in ant communication and social behavior, the Kronauer lab disrupted a gene called orco, required for the function of all odorant receptors. Introducing the mutationusing a genetic manipulation technique known as CRISPRwas easy. The challenge was keeping the mutant ants alive.

We had to convince the colonies to accept the mutants. If the conditions werent right, the worker ants would stop caring for larvae and destroy them, says graduate fellow Waring Trible, who led this portion of the study, published separately in Cell. Once the ants successfully made it to the adult phase, we noticed a shift in their behavior almost immediately.

Researchers tracked color-coded ants, using an algorithm to analyze following behavior.

Ants typically travel single-file, sensing the route by detecting pheromones left by the ants in front. Using an automated system that tracks color-coded ants and an algorithm that analyzes movement, the researchers observed that, among other behavioral abnormalities, the mutant ants couldnt fall in line. The finding suggests that the missing odorant receptors are crucial for pheromone detection, and therefore social organization.

The lack of odorant receptors also changed the shape of the ants brains. This was a surprise, says Trible, because brain anatomy is not affected in orco mutants in other insects, like the fruit fly. Our findings suggest that ants are fundamentally differentthey need functional odorant receptors for the brain to develop correctly. This points to how crucial sensing odors is to ants, an ability that may be less important in other insects.

Now that the lab is able to generate mutant ants, Kronauer has a bucket list of genes to explore, including those related to the division of labor between groups. Weve successfully taken a gene out, and next wed like to put a gene in. We have a whole new world to explore, says Kronauer.

Continue reading here:

First mutant ants shed light on evolution of social behavior - The Rockefeller University Newswire

Investors in Dalian Wanda Group Co.'s companies haven't had much good news of late.

Billionaire owner Wang Jianlin's global buying spree is on Beijing's radar and aslowing Chinese box office is taking a toll on his cinema operations. No wonder Wang is taking a leaf out of Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing'splaybookand focusingon cash generation first and foremost.

Hong Kong-listed Wanda Hotel Development Co. said in a statement late Wednesday that it had agreed to sell controlling stakes in property projects from Australia to Chicago to affiliateDalian Wanda Commercial Properties Co., leaving it to concentrate on the management of theme parks and hotels.Last month, most of those domestic theme park and hotel assets were soldto property developers Sunac China Holdings Ltd. andGuangzhou R&F Properties Co. in a$9.4 billion transaction. Shares in Wanda Hotel jumped as much as 41 percent Thursday, before closing up 19.8 percent.

Room Upgrade

Shares in Wanda Hotel Development have almost doubled this year

Source: Bloomberg

Shareholders are right to cheer. This restructuring will turn Wanda Hotel from a company bleeding cash into a cash cow.Sunac is nowobligedto pay Wanda Hotel about 650 million yuan ($98 million) every year for the next two decades in management fees. To put this amount in perspective, last year, Wanda Hotel generated just HK$385 million ($49 million) in operating cash flow. In addition, getting the hotel projects off its hands means Wanda Hotel no longer needs to incur any heavy capital expenditure.

House of Horrors

Wanda Hotel's finances have been pinched by expensive project developments

Source: Bloomberg

Wang's hope is that Wanda Hotel will now command a higher valuation.International hotel operators trade at an average 26.3 times forward earnings. With Wanda Hotel going asset light, shouldn't it join the ranks ofMarriott International Inc. and Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc., too?

Wanda Hotel shares, YTD

+98.6%

Having a listed company with a higher valuation can only serve Wang well, because he needs the money. Banks are scrutinizing his funding, and there's little sign that Dalian Wanda Commercial Properties will get approval to list in China anytime soon. In last year's take-private agreement, Wang promisedthat if he couldn't re-list the unit by August 2018, he would pay investors up to 12 percent annual interest.

Don't expect this latest deal to close quickly, however. A transaction of this size will probably be counted as a reverse takeover, which in Hong Kong means having to meet rules associated with a new listing.

Investors may be experiencing some temporary euphoria, but the hurdles Wang faces aren't over yet.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the authors of this story: Nisha Gopalan in Hong Kong at ngopalan3@bloomberg.net Shuli Ren in Hong Kong at sren38@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Katrina Nicholas at knicholas2@bloomberg.net

Read more from the original source:

Wanda's Cash Cow Evolution - Bloomberg

Based on current evidence, Darwins ideas still seem capable of explaining much, if not all, of what we see in nature. Photograph: Philipp Kammerer/Alamy

I can save you the effort of reading AN Wilsons expos on Darwin, which did the rounds over the weekend, characterising the famous scientist as a fraud, a thief, a liar, a racist and a rouser of nazism. Instead, head over to Netflix and watch the creationist made-for-TV movie A Matter of Faith, which covers many of the same arguments and also includes a final scene in which a fictional evolutionary biologist, standing alone in his study, holds a rubber chicken in his hands and finds himself deliberating over the question of which came first, the chicken or the egg. At least that was an original take on these tiresome accusations.

And so, here we are again, quietly drawing breath and smiling politely while the same familiar discoveries about Darwin arise once more. Was the blood spilled by the Nazis on Darwins hands? Did he steal his big idea from others? Is evolution by natural selection a great hoax? Are the Darwinians covering something up? Wilson appears to have hit upon a rich seam of cliches in his five years of research for his book, Charles Darwin: Victorian Mythmaker.

In particular, its nice to see fossils come in for a kicking again. Palaeontology has come up with almost no missing links of the kind Darwinians believe in, pants Wilson. If you too are panting at this notion, I implore you to visit a museum. Visit as many as you can. Better still, collect and study your own fossils they are quite common. In the worlds museums and store-rooms, there are hundreds of millions of them and they all fit into broadly recognisable patterns of geological age and within the framework of what you or I would call evolution. Oh, you meant transitional fossils of whales specifically? Yep, its here. Oh, you meant birds? Here. Oh, you meant primates? Yep. Oh, you meant land fish? Here you go. Oh, you meant early human-like ancestors? Theres a link to more than a million scientific articles about the subject here.

But where are the transitional fossils? comes the familiar cry again. Knowing what I have learned about the intricacy and rarity of fossilisation, if anything would make me genuinely consider the presence of an all-seeing God it would be the discovery of an unbroken chain of 60,000 fossil skeletons, following the strata upwards, going smoothly from species A to species B. But thats not the point, I guess, and Wilson should know it.

Scientists tend to fit into two camps on the issue of how to deal with this familiar kind of Darwin-baiting. In the modern age some, such as the American science communicator Bill Nye, choose to debate the anti-Darwinians on live TV. Others, such as Richard Dawkins, prefer to starve them of the oxygen they require by politely ignoring them a kind of personal exercise in the non-validation of non-scientific ideas. So what is the approach we should take, as everyday lovers of science? I would suggest, and this may sound bold, we simply carry on regardless. Mostly.

Based on current evidence, Darwins ideas still seem capable of explaining much, if not all, of what we see in nature

The truth is that and this is worth saying a million times over most scientists probably dont think about Darwin very much in their day-to-day studies and would consider themselves as much Darwinist as they would round-Earthers or wifi-users. This is, after all, the best working theory we have to understand the nature that we see around us. Also, I think we are all OK with entertaining the idea that, if a more scientifically accurate way of explaining the diversity of life on Earth comes along, Darwin would be ousted. Its just that, based on current evidence, Darwins ideas still seem capable of explaining much, if not all, of what we see in nature. Hence, our kids learn about him in schools and popular science books that refute his influence are treated with understandable confusion, concern or disdain.

Sadly, many people will not find their way to this end-point, so suspicious are they of science, evolution and scientific ideas. For me, one of the most pressing problems in science is how we engage this lost audience, because theyre missing out on a wonderful experience that of chasing real truths about some of the most beautiful and complex repeating patterns in nature, an apparent universal law that many people can and do balance regularly alongside their religious beliefs. For starters, their scepticism could come in quite handy.

So how can we connect with people who shout so loudly about this, sciences greatest apparent conspiracy? How do we draw them in and get them to re-engage with science? Id love to know your thoughts about this. Contrary to the popular belief about those involved in science, I think were open to ideas. So let us know. Youll find us ignorant about a great number of things. Just, unlike some, never wilfully.

Jules Howard is a zoologist and the author of Sex on Earth and Death on Earth

Original post:

Some still attack Darwin and evolution. How can science fight back ... - The Guardian

Catherine Dong Contributor

Catherine Dong is a summer associate at Bloomberg Beta and will be working at Facebook as a machine learning engineer.

Major tech companies have actively reoriented themselves around AI and machine learning: Google is now AI-first, Uber has ML running through its veins and internal AI research labs keep popping up.

Theyre pouring resources and attention into convincing the world that the machine intelligence revolution is arriving now. They tout deep learning, in particular, as the breakthrough driving this transformation and powering new self-driving cars, virtual assistants and more.

Despite this hype around the state of the art, the state of the practice is less futuristic.

Software engineers and data scientists working with machine learning still use many of the same algorithms and engineering tools they did years ago.

That is, traditional machine learning models not deep neural networks are powering most AI applications. Engineers still use traditional software engineering tools for machine learning engineering, and they dont work: The pipelines that take data to model to result end up built out of scattered, incompatible pieces. There is change coming, as big tech companies smooth out this process by building new machine learning-specific platforms with end-to-end functionality.

Large tech companies have recently started to use their own centralized platforms for machine learning engineering, which more cleanly tie together the previously scattered workflows of data scientists and engineers.

Machine learning engineering happens in three stages data processing, model building and deployment and monitoring. In the middle we have the meat of the pipeline, the model, which is the machine learning algorithm that learns to predict given input data.

That model is where deep learning would live. Deep learning is a subcategory of machine learning algorithms that use multi-layered neural networks to learn complex relationships between inputs and outputs. The more layers in the neural network, the more complexity it can capture.

Traditional statistical machine learning algorithms (i.e. ones that do not use deep neural nets) have a more limited capacity to capture information about training data. But these more basic machine learning algorithms work well enough for many applications, making the additional complexity of deep learning models often superfluous. So we still see software engineers using these traditional models extensively in machine learning engineering even in the midst of this deep learning craze.

But the bread of the sandwich process that holds everything together is what happens before and after training the machine learning model.

The first stage involves cleaning and formatting vast amounts of data to be fed into the model. The last stage involves careful deployment and monitoring of the model. We found that most of the engineering time in AI is not actually spent on building machine learning models its spent preparing and monitoring those models.

Despite the focus on deep learning at the big tech company AI research labs, most applications of machine learning at these same companies do not rely on neural networks and instead use traditional machine learning models. The most common models include linear/logistic regression, random forests and boosted decision trees. These are the models behind, among other services tech companies use, friend suggestions, ad targeting, user interest prediction, supply/demand simulation and search result ranking.

And some of the tools engineers use to train these models are similarly well-worn. One of the most commonly used machine learning libraries is scikit-learn, which was released a decade ago (although Googles TensorFlow is on the rise).

There are good reasons to use simpler models over deep learning. Deep neural networks are hard to train. They require more time and computational power (they usually require different hardware, specifically GPUs). Getting deep learning to work is hard it still requires extensive manual fiddling, involving a combination of intuition and trial and error.

With traditional machine learning models, the time engineers spend on model training and tuning is relatively short usually just a few hours. Ultimately, if the accuracy improvements that deep learning can achieve are modest, the need for scalability and development speed outweighs their value.

So when it comes to training a machine learning model, traditional methods work well. But the same does not apply to the infrastructure that holds together the machine learning pipeline. Using the same old software engineering tools for machine learning engineering creates greater potential for errors.

The first stage in the machine learning pipeline data collection and processing illustrates this. While big companies certainly have big data, data scientists or engineers must clean the data to make it useful verify and consolidate duplicates from different sources, normalize metrics, design and prove features.

At most companies, engineers do this using a combination SQL or Hive queries and Python scripts to aggregate and format up to several million data points from one or more data sources. This often takes several days of frustrating manual labor. Some of this is likely repetitive work, because the process at many companies is decentralized data scientists or engineers often manipulate data with local scripts or Jupyter Notebooks.

Furthermore, the large scale of big tech companies compounds errors, making careful deployment and monitoring of models in production imperative. As one engineer described it, At large companies, machine learning is 80 percent infrastructure.

However, traditional unit tests the backbone of traditional software testing dont really work with machine learning models, because the correct output of machine learning models isnt known beforehand. After all, the purpose of machine learning is for the model to learn to make predictions from data without the need for an engineer to specifically code any rules. So instead of unit tests, engineers take a less structured approach: They manually monitor dashboards and program alerts for new models.

And shifts in real-world data may make trained models less accurate, so engineers re-train production models on fresh data on a daily to monthly basis, depending on the application. But a lack of machine learning-specific support in the existing engineering infrastructure can create a disconnect between models in development and models in production normal code is updated much less frequently.

Many engineers still rely on rudimentary methods of deploying models to production, like saving a serialized version of the trained model or model weights to a file. Engineers sometimes need to rebuild model prototypes and parts of the data pipeline in a different language or framework, so they work on production infrastructure. Any incompatibility from any stage of the machine learning development process from data processing to training to deployment to production infrastructure can introduce error.

To address these issues, a few big companies, with the resources to build custom tooling, have invested time and engineering effort into creating their own machine learning-specific tools. Their goal is to have a seamless, end-to-end machine learning platform that is fully compatible with the companys engineering infrastructure.

Facebooks FBLearner Flow and Ubers Michelangelo are internal machine learning platforms that do just that. They allow engineers to construct training and validation data sets with an intuitive user interface, decreasing time spent on this stage from days to hours. Then, engineers can train models with (more or less) the click of a button. Finally, they can monitor and directly update production models with ease.

Services like Azure Machine Learning and Amazon Machine Learning are publicly available alternatives that provide similar end-to-end platform functionality but only integrate with other Amazon or Microsoft services for the data storage and deployment components of the pipeline.

Despite all the emphasis big tech companies have placed on enhancing their products with machine learning, at most companies there are still major challenges and inefficiencies in the process. They still use traditional machine learning models instead of more-advanced deep learning, and still depend on a traditional infrastructure of tools poorly suited to machine learning.

Fortunately, with the current focus on AI at these companies, they are investing in specialized tools to make machine learning work better. With these internal tools, or potentially with third-party machine learning platforms that are able to integrate tightly into their existing infrastructures, organizations can realize the potential of AI.

A special thank you to Irving Hsu, David Eng, Gideon Mann and the Bloomberg Beta team for their insights.

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The evolution of machine learning - TechCrunch

The data storage landscape is continually changing and in the background, there are a few shifts driving that evolution.

One of those is culture, Shaun Bierweiler, vice president of public sector for Hortonworks, says in an interview with FedScoop Radio. We like to say that every agency is a data agency, and that stems from the evolution and the significance that data has taken in the lives and in the missions of our customers.

With traditional data warehouses in the past, Bierweiler explains, data was used in a very transactional way. But now its at the center of every decision, he says.

To start with, the structure of big data has evolved. Previously, you knew what was going in and what was coming out. Today, now you have data from an infinite number of sources. You have images, you have videos, you have data encrypted within those items, Bierweiler says in the interview. The data itself has become very much more complex in terms of structure.

The volume is, perhaps, the biggest change.

Agencies are drowning in data because theres so much of it, he says. You have to be able to store it, you have to be able to process it. You have to be able to extrapolate the value from that data. And so thats become much more complicated and complex.

Finally, to top that all off, expectations for the use of that data has changed drastically, Bierweiler explains.

Not only do you have more data that has more information that varies much more greatly, but now users expect to do more with it. And they not only expect to do valuable things with their data, but they expect to extrapolate information and sharing data from other users data. What used to be very traditionally stove-piped and siloed now is a mesh of data thats expected to be shared.

With such an array of data types, sizes and uses, Bierweiler advocates for enterprise open source platforms to address users many needs.

If you look at a traditional proprietary technology, the lifecycle for them tends to be much longer, and the development cycle even longer, Bierweiler says. When you get a new release of a proprietary solution, its often with very old or antiquated solutions and its solving the problems that existed when the technologys development model started.

Youre also locked-in to the vendors roadmap, he says.

An enterprise open source platform like Hortonworks harnesses the development model of community people that arent paid by Hortonworks. What you get then is a very open solution that not only solves what people are trying to address today, but problems they foresee for tomorrow, Bierweiler tells FedScoop Radio. And because there arent barriers or proprietary interfaces, it lends itself to a true best-of-breed solution.

Consider everything as possible, he recommends to agencies and offices considering open source. Its often difficult to make that cultural shift from something that youve always done and you convince yourself that thats the only way. Technology has come a very long way and there are creative ways to do things better, cheaper, faster, smarter. So oftentimes, the biggest challenge we have is not a technical hurdle its a cultural shift.

See more about how Hortonworks open source solutionscan help you manage your data.

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The rapid evolution of big data storage - FedScoop

Englands one-day captain, Eoin Morgan, at the Chance to Shine Street National Finals Day in Wolverhampton. Photograph: Courtesy of Chance to Shine

Eoin Morgan has given a few masterclasses this summer. There was his century against South Africa at Headingley, his 87 against Australia at Edgbaston and his 75 against Bangladesh at The Oval. Then there was the hour he spent at Aldersley leisure centre in Wolverhampton. You may have missed that one. It was during the finals of Chance to Shines street cricket competition, when the kids were taking a break from whacking tape balls around the indoor gym. One asked Morgan which was his favourite shot, another, a young Pakistan fan, what it felt like to be cleaned up by Hasan Ali and a third wanted to know how much Morgan enjoyed playing for his favourite team. Which wasnt England, or Middlesex, but the Kings XI Punjab. It was another little reminder of the ways in which the game is changing.

Chance to Shine cooked up street cricket to give city kids an easy way to get into the game. Its a six-a-side thrash, played with a tape ball and a plastic bat. Morgan gets it. I grew up on a council estate, he says. So I can relate to not having facilities. All he had was a barrel of kit his father kept by the front door. He learned to play on a concrete strip by the side of his house in Rush in North County Dublin. He used to make his own tape balls. But normally Id be bowling against my elder brothers and theyd just whack it out of the garden. Then wed have to get another ball with no tape on it.

Only, Morgan used to dream of playing Test cricket. Most of these kids are hooked on T20. Morgan wanted to be Brian Lara or Graham Thorpe because when he was young England always seemed to be playing West Indies. Which is mad because Thorpes our batting coach now. Not long ago, Thorpe was giving him a few pointers on his pull shot. I was playing it with one leg off the ground, which takes all the power out of your shot. He said that to me and I was like: Hold on, Im sure I had a picture of you on my bedroom wall playing a pull with one leg off the ground and a floppy hat on.

When Morgan was 13, he and his dad met the Ireland coach Adrian Birrell. He had ideas about Ireland moving forward and my dad turned to him and said: Well, he wants to play Test cricket. Adrian turned to him and said: Well, hes 13 years old, how do you know you know you want to play Test cricket? But I just did. I always thought my future was here. Odd how life works out. Morgan came to England because he wanted to play Tests but hes ended up specialising in limited-overs cricket. And now Ireland have Test status. But hes adamant he will never go back.

Morgan is 30, a year older than Dawid Malan, but hes reconciled himself to the idea that he wont play another Test. I came to terms with that when I took the captaincy, he says. Because in order to prove myself to play Test cricket I would need to play more county cricket, which would have meant giving up my one-day position. And Im not willing to do that at the moment. I think what we have with the one-day side is quite special, hopefully were putting a side in the position to compete in 2019. So Im very happy with the path my career has taken.

At the same time, he tells the kids that the three team-mates he admires most are Joe Root, Ben Stokes and Moeen Ali because they play all three formats. I suppose ideally Id like to play all forms but there are not many people that do that any more. Theres a bigger division now than there ever has been between Tests and white-ball cricket, he says. Its becoming a real challenge that. With T20, theres such a shift, to go straight from Tests to T20 is such a jump. So what does Morgan, a pioneer of modern cricket, make of the shibboleth that Test cricket is the pinnacle of the game?

The city T20 competition is going to have a huge impact on our game

Its hard for me to say, he admits. Ive changed my view in the last year or so. Before, we said Test cricket is the best form of the game. But everybody is gearing towards Twenty20 cricket. Morgan has been around. He knows better than most what some of the players in the IPL and the Big Bash think about Test cricket. How do you get people to engage with, say, Test matches between South Africa and the West Indies or Pakistan v New Zealand? How do you make those series relevant? I dont have the answer. I just know that something needs to be done. There has to be a shift or the divide will become bigger and one form will take over. And I dont see Tests taking over.

Morgan is surprised that the swing towards T20 has not started already in England. He says the players he is with at Middlesex have not made the switch yet. But were at a county which does prioritise red-ball cricket. And our young guys coming through, Stevie Eskinazi, Nick Gubbins, George Scott, their priority is still to play Test cricket. Which is interesting because I thought the shift would have been made by now. But Morgan has no doubt it is coming. The impact of T20 cricket, its influence around the world, thats already happened. Were a way behind it in England. But when it comes it shouldnt come as a shock.

Morgan thinks it will show in the next generation. Say youve got the next Ben Stokes at Middlesex. Hes coming through right now and he makes his debut in two years time. The question for him is: yes he wants to play Test cricket but there are only 11 players in the team and Ben Stokes is still around, and then this young kid gets offered a lot of money, life-changing money, to go and do something else. Thats serious pressure. Its not an easy decision. And the answer depends on what background he comes from and where his principles lie.

A lot of young players around the world are in that position already. Thats where the future problem lies. Its already happening in the West Indies and in other countries that dont prioritise Test cricket.

England still draw crowds for Test matches but that will not make them immune. We will get guys who come along and say they only want to play T20 cricket. We will lose international players because they feel they have a limited amount of time and they want to make the most of their careers or because their priorities lie elsewhere because its not about playing for England, its about making money. Thats already happening around the rest of the world. The England and Wales Cricket Board has three years before it launches its new city-based competition T20 and Morgan says it will need to spend a lot of that time preparing for the impact it will have on Test cricket.

The key question, he says, is how you grab the people who are being engaged by T20 and introduce them to Test cricket, filtering them through at a lower level. Which brings us back to Chance to Shines street cricket. Sunil Narine comes from tape ball. Thats where he learned all his tricks and now his fingers are so strong from squeezing the tennis ball to get spin on it, Morgan says. In the next five years you will see a Sunil Narine playing for England or a guy with a Lasith Malinga action because they played tape ball cricket. Thats the beauty of it. Its instant, its fast, theres no barriers, everyone can play it.

Morgan adds: The city T20 competition is going to have a huge impact on our game. That should allow us to prepare for whats going to happen with the players, to recognise that, yes, the formats are going to get further and further apart. So we should build them both hand in hand, alongside each other, to protect Test cricket. I think thats very important because if we dont do something about it in England, who is?

NatWest has partnered with Chance to Shine as part of its #NoBoundaries campaign, championing diversity and inclusion in cricket

This is an extract taken from The Spin, the Guardians weekly cricket email. To subscribe, just visit this page and follow the instructions.

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Eoin Morgan: T20 evolution must work in tandem with protection of Test cricket - The Guardian

Cypress Semiconductor Chief Executive Hassane El-Khourys first year on the job has been eventful, to say the least.

El-Khoury, who has been with Cypress since 2007, took over as CEO on August 11, 2016. But, he wasnt just taking over a job from anyone else. At that time, El-Khoury succeededchip-industry legend T.J. Rodgers, who stepped down in April of last year and who had been Cypress only CEO since he founded the company in 1982.

Last October, El-Khoury oversaw Cypress cutting of 500 jobs, or about 8 percent of its workforce.

Cypress shareholders elected two of Rodgers nominees to the companys board, and in early July, Bingham stepped down from Cypress board.

In the meantime, El-Khoury has led a transformation of Cypress called Cypress 3.0, in which the company isfocusing on high-growth areas such as its automotive business and consumer products. And with that, El-Khoury wants Cypress to be known as a company that takes on, and solves, its customers problems.

To me, its an evolution, El-Khoury said, because we had bits and pieces, but it wasnt a coherent story.

El-Khoury spoke about Cypress recently at the companys San Jose headquarters. His comments have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Youve said Cypress is a new company. Why did you feel the need to make itnew?

A: At Cypress 3.0, we are looking at how you take all these capabilities and create solutions that really target a customers needs. We needed to be a different company because the world also changed around us. Automotive growth requires a different skill set, a different DNA, for example. If you have that focus, you can get more of a benefit from your investment. Weve done that in automotive, and were number one in automotive memory, touch screens. Thats a very credible strategy weve focused on.

Q: Automotive seems to be a thing that everybody is into today.

A: Before the merger (with Spansion), beginning in 2015, automotive was about 15 percent on a$750 million annual revenue run rate. Today, its 30 to 32 percent on a $2 billion run rate. Theres a lot of hype in automotive, so when I talk about it, I have the numbers and the success that the team put behind us to say, Yeah, were an automotive supplier. When I say, This is what were doing in auto, were doing it. Theres no feeling around in the dark to see what hits. We know exactly what to do.

Q: How open is the automotive industry to what Cypress is offering?

A: Their guys come through and audit our processes and say, Now you are worthy to be our supplier. Thats a lot of work and money on their side. When we acquired Broadcom (Cypress bought Broadcoms wireless internet of things business for $550 million in April 2016), that became an asset. And we got the calls from the automotive guys. They wanted to talk to us about how they could design our new products into their platforms. If you provide quality, they feel like they have no reason not to use Cypress (technology), nor to maximize it. We can bundle and optimize what they need.

Q: Automotive is obviously a big deal, but what about the consumer market?

A: Our strategy is broad, by definition. So, these are new markets coming in, and we have to be able to capitalize on them. And our strategy is to dominate the capability there. IoT (internet of things) is a capability. A connected car doesnt move the car from the automotive bucket, it puts it in the IoT bucket. The IoT capability in the consumer market is what were going after. Once you have the main event, then everything else you get, you can dominate.

Q: When you came in as CEO, were you feeling like Cypress had been missing out on things, or there were areas you could have had?

A: Not really. My role before I became CEO was running the connectivity division. Within that, is where automotive was. With the IoT business, we were not missing out. But, with focus, we thought about how we could do more and capitalize on the opportunities we had. Yes. And that was the reason we did the restructuring in September. Its not that we were blind to it; we saw that we could do more and do it better.

Q: Whats the reaction been like in the company?

A: From where I sit, its been very positive. Employees have no problem sending me an email telling me, This sucked. Which they did when I first deployed the new brand. We had problems in the banner. And we learn in business school not to use problems in a brand. I got a lot of feedback asking if we could change that. I said, No. Everybody comes here to solve problems. Customers call us when they have a problem. This is what we do. We went with it. And after we deployed it, and they saw it in a context, they said, Slam dunk! This is what we are about. The atmosphere of collaboration is alive, and that makes it refreshing for me.

Age:37. Occupation:CEO and President, Cypress Semiconductor. Education:Bachelors of science degree in electrical engineering (BSEE) from Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Mich., and a masters degree in engineering management from Oakland University in Rochester Hills, Mich. Family:One daughter. City of residence:Pleasanton.

1. His hometown is Beirut, Lebanon.

2. Before joining Cypress, he worked for Continental Automotive Systems, a supplier of electronics and other systems for major automakers.

3. He considers his father as his early inspiration for his interest in electronics.

4. As a boy, he once took apart a remote-controlled car he got for Christmas and turned it into a flashlight.

5. He sees his professional mission as working on projectsthat really matter and shapethe way people connect with each other and the world around them.

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Hassane El-Khoury's active evolution of Cypress - The Mercury News

As far as Gene Munster is concerned, Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) has no problem with appeal.

It isnt about demand, the managing partner of Loup Ventures told Benzinga Wednesday. They have plenty of demand. Theyve been underselling this vehicle, and as you know, they have about 500,000 pre-orders for it.

No, Teslas problem isnt demand. Its production. Its a relatively low economy of scale that Munster considers currently prohibitive to the companys success.

Tesla reports much lower yields than those of traditional automakers like General Motors Company (NYSE: GM) and Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F). In the last quarter, the company produced 30 Model 3s, and in the upcoming quarter, it plans to produce about 1,500. Ambitious CEO Elon Musk aims for 10,000 a week in 2018.

Tesla isnt there yet, but Munster sees potential in its processes.

If you want to just be blown away, look at how the manufacturing of a Model 3 is versus how even some of the automated manufacturing from some of the Big 3 is, he said. The level of efficiency and robotics used in building a Model 3 really changes the equation around the pace that they can manufacture.

But even with its futuristic mechanisms, its largest plant can only produce a million vehicles a year at full capacity compared to BMWs 2.5 million niche cars produced last year. Munster said Tesla needs to invest in a bigger plant to match pace with competitors.

Whether it takes the steps to scale is the critical question around the Tesla story, Munster said. But he has hope. I think that theyre going to get there.

If not, the firm risks vindicating skeptics concerned with high consumer costs.

The expense of a Model 3 is a potential deterrence for buyers.

With a $35,000 base price and an anticipated final cost closer to $50,000 after all features are added, the product is about 40 percent more than the average $32,000 Toyota Motor Corp (ADR) (NYSE: TM) Camry, according to Munsters calculations.

But over time, that price gap diminishes.

If you look at total cost of ownership, which factors in lower insurance, the energy-saving cost with fuel, and the maintenance theres almost no maintenance on these cars, then that cost of ownership gap shrinks to about 14 percent, Munster said. I think that cost gap isnt as big as youd think when you think about total cost of ownership over a five-year period.

Musk has given a two-year timeline before hes ready to flip the switch on autonomy for existing Tesla models, but Munster extended the goal to 2020.

In fact, he said it will be another eight years before Teslas self-driving cars become mainstream, largely due to fear-driven legislative roadblocks.

I think its going to take a few years after [technology updates] to start to advance and get the legislation to loosen up to allow these, he said. I think this is probably 2025 before this is mainstream and you see a self-driving car and dont think twice about it.

Related Links:

Gene Munster: Traditional Car Manufacturers Face 'Innovator's Dilemma'

Tesla And The Auto Markets New Big Three

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The Path Toward Autonomy: Munster On Tesla's Critical Evolution - Benzinga

Some fascinating four-state history,came out of the shadows in Franklin, Kansas. It's all part of the Miners Hall Museum'spresentation,"The Evolution of Emergency Services".

Lomshek: "With the mines it was mostly young people and with that you get a little more criminal activity than with older people." That's Jerry Lomshek, he's a part of the Miners Hall Museum. He says the criminal aspect is the darker part of the coal mining history. Take this statistic for instance... Lomshek: "It's always been, verbal history anyway, that there's been 52 unsolved murders in the history of Chicopee." Lomshek is a local historian for the town of Chicopee, and has done some checking... Lomshek: "Although I've researched a number of those, Idon't know that there's exactly 52, but i can tell you there was many unsolved murders there, and that's in addition to the solved murders." The Chicopee murders are just a part of that. Lomshek: "There was some really violent crimes that occurred here in those past days, some of it may have been vendettas between different groups here." Those different 'groups' he's referring too, are the vast number of immigrants that came to America and to the four-states in search of a better life, a richer life. And even though they may have fought among themselves... Lomshek: "There was not animosity between the different ethnic groups, it was usually within the ethnic group, not between ethnic groups, which is kinda unusual, you wouldn't expect that." But, there were dangers beyond the criminal activity. Lomshek: "Along with that, the fire safety is a little more intimately connected with coal mining because of the dangers in the mines, there was explosions and fires and those kinds of things." Those dangers resulted in the development of mine safety laws, as well as a unique need in the area. Lomshek: "There was rescue, mine rescue squads that were developed to help in the mines in case of a disaster and that type of thing." One last thing Lomshek says was a big operation in southeast Kansas...bootlegging... Lomshek: "There was always liquor here in southeast Kansas, and it was kinda ignored that that was going on, and fostered almost, and that went through the whole history of prohibition in this area and our bootleg whiskey became well known in other places because of that."

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The Evolution of Safety Services in SEK - KOAM-TV