The last crumbs of secular scientific education have been removed, said Feray Aytekin Aydogan, the head of Egitim-Sen, a union of secular-minded teachers. Ms. Aydogan also scoffed at the notion that evolution was too complex for teenagers to understand.

Forget high school, you can comfortably explain it in preschool, she said in a telephone interview. This is one of the basic topics you need to understand living beings, life and nature.

Over the past five years, analysts have noted how Mr. Erdogans government has steadily increased references to Islam in the curriculum and removed some references to the ideas of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkeys founder. It has also increased the number of religious schools, known as imam hatip schools, and spoken of Mr. Erdogans desire to raise a pious generation of young Turks.

Mr. Erdogan has also moved gradually to reduce restrictions on the wearing of Islamic dress. In 2011, he removed a ban on head scarves in universities, and in 2013, scrapped a similar ban in the civil service. This year, he did the same for women in the army, an institution previously regarded as the last bastion of hard-line secularism.

For some, these changes simply constitute a progressive attempt to open up public space and discourse to the pious sections of the population that for decades were marginalized by the countrys secular and military elite.

Its not true that Turkey is becoming less secular, said Ezgi Yagmur Kucuk, 20, a trainee anesthetist who does not wear a veil. Everyone can believe whatever they like.

Others, however, see an attempt not just to promote freedom of religion, but to ensure its primacy. According to Kerem Oktem, the author of Angry Nation, a history of contemporary Turkey, the country is not continuing along a process of secularization its going into a post-secular context.

Still, Turkey is not considered likely to morph into a second Iran. The countrys vexed relationship with secularism also predates Mr. Erdogans tenure.

Technically, mosque and state were never completely separated in Turkey, even during the days of Ataturk. Instead, religion was placed under the control of the state. The process of legitimizing Islamic thought was in part begun during the rule of Kenan Evren, the army general who took power in a coup in 1980 and who viewed Islam as a potential buffer against communism.

To add to the complexity, Mr. Erdogans party the Justice and Development Party, or A.K.P. has a confusing relationship with Islamism, or the belief in a society governed according to Islamic law. It does not call for the application of Shariah law.

Its leaders have historically denied they are Islamists, preferring instead to be known as conservatives. Unlike the political wing of Egypts Muslim Brotherhood, a group to which the A.K.P. has sometimes been compared, several of its female lawmakers are unveiled.

One of Mr. Erdogans best-known supporters, Cem Kucuk, an outspoken commentator, has even called for hard-line Islamists to be expelled from the party.

It uses religion to get votes, said Jenny White, an expert on the changing role of Islam and secularism within Turkey. But they do not have a coherent theological, religious ideology.

The party and Turkish politics in general are best viewed through an authoritarian lens rather than an Islamist one, said Ms. White, the author of Muslim Nationalism and the New Turks, a book about identity in contemporary Turkey.

The A.K.P. is all about staying in power and whatever it has to do to stay in power, it will do, she said.

Any further attempts to Islamize Turkish society is likely to be met with resistance, Mr. Oktem said. Despite Mr. Erdogans increasing authoritarianism, roughly half the country still voted against plans to give him more power in a recent referendum.

Most of these people are those who dont think religion should have such a central place in society, Mr. Oktem said.

He added, Turkey is still not a deeply Islamic society, and much of the public visibility of Islam doesnt necessarily have a very deep basis.

But for Ms. Aydogan, the teachers union leader, the outlook for secularism in the education sector is already bleak.

Removing evolution from the curriculum, Ms. Aydogan said, puts Turkey in the same league as ultraconservative Saudi Arabia, where the concept is briefly mentioned in the curriculum but strongly criticized.

A version of this article appears in print on June 24, 2017, on Page A7 of the New York edition with the headline: Turkey Drops Evolution From Curriculum.

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Turkey Drops Evolution From Curriculum, Angering Secularists - New York Times

Its a new day in Turkey under the rule of their tyrant, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. And in the manner of most famous authoritarians its a necessary step to mold the thinking of young minds. You wouldnt want a bunch of crazy, democratic, westernized ideas running rampant as they had been over the past couple of decades. So now that Erdogan has fired or imprisoned thousands of teachers and professors who have the wrong sort of ideas, those loyal to him are changing up the curriculum a bit. For starters, well have no more of what wacky evolution talk in the classroom. (CNN)

Turkish high school students will no longer be taught the theory of evolution.

The subject has been cut from the curriculum under changes made to eliminate controversial topics, the head of the national board of education, Alpaslan Durmus, announced in a video address.

If our students dont have the background, the scientific knowledge, or information to comprehend the debate around controversial issues, we have left them out, Durmus said.

Another tactic were seeing is a typical maneuver employed by many tyrants. Theres no better way to solidify your support than by giving the people a common enemy to rail against. Traditionally the targets of such attacks tend to be Jews, but the next easiest option is homosexuals, particularly in Muslim nations. CNN further reports that open attacks on gays are on the rise and the police and the government are doing little or nothing about it. They describe one particularly horrible attack on a sex worker named Kemal Ordek and then deal with the growing trend of intolerance.

Although homosexuality has been legal in Turkey since 1923, Turkey has one of the worst records of human rights violations against LGBTI+ people in Europe, according to a 2016 report from the European Region of the International LGBTI Association. A separate 2016 report to the United Nations by Turkish LGBTI+ advocacy groups identified at least 41 hate crimes against lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender people that resulted in death from 2010 to June 2014.

Ordek survived the brutal attack, but many others havent. In 2009, Eda Yildirim, a transgender sex worker was decapitated and burned alive; her breast implants cut out of her before she was murdered. In 2015, another transgender sex worker died after being stabbed 200 times by a client.

One last item of interest is a decidedly darker tone in Erdogans language lately. The international community has taken note of his despotic tendencies and a few nations have actually been pushing back against him or at least criticizing the Turkish government. Erdogan had a response for all of his critics this week, and rather than taking a conciliatory tone, he essentially began threatening everyone with Turkeys military might. (Hurriyet Daily, emphasis added)

We are aware of the games being played in Syria and Iraq and the crisis scenarios that are being tried to be staged in the region. However, we hope that everyone knows this truth; Turkey is too big a bite to be swallowed in these types of games, Erdoan said in his message released to mark Eid al-Adha on June 24.

We are determined to give our answer on the field to those who think that they can make our country surrender to these types of traps. It will be too late for those who set their eyes on our territorial integrity and national unity when they understand their mistakes, he also said.

Erdogan has locked down and consolidated his absolute power at home and shut down the free media. Hes thrown tens of thousands of his critics in prison and used those examples as a way to silence most of the rest. Now, with the internal situation mostly under control, the Tyrant of Turkey is turning his gaze on his neighbors. Hes already claimed the role of intermediary in the current dispute between Qatar and her neighbors. Hes moving military assets around in Qatar as well as Syria like pieces on a chess board. All the signs have been there for us to see ever since the failed coup last summer, so if this situation really goes entirely pear-shaped we wont be able to say that we shouldnt have seen it coming.

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In Turkey, no teaching of evolution, but banning gays is fine - Hot Air

In BriefNew York City is the quintessential example of urban sprawl.In just a few short centuries, the island of Manhattan went fromlush farmland to the towering concrete jungle of today.

While its place on the list is the subject of great debate, there is no doubting that New York City is among the greatest cities in the world. Of course, the city hasnt always been a concrete jungle of skyscrapers, taxi cabs, and pizza rats, but it is still quite difficult to imagine that New York was, once upon a time, fertile farmland.

The Museum of the City of New York has collected a great number of paintings, drawings, lithographs, and photographs documenting the evolution of the city into the rows of monotonous straight streets, and piles of erect buildings that famous landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted predicted.

Even at the time of the American Revolution, the Manhattan landscape was much greener than you will see today, with rolling hills and more trees than buildings or people. Today, the site is a public space called Bennett Park.

The second half of the 19th century saw the beginnings of the demolition of those hills to make way for level roads as they began to sprawl across the island.

Here is the same view looking north up Central Park West at W. 106th street.

Tenement buildings began to be erected to house the citys poor and the many immigrants who began pouring into the United States through Ellis Island.

Thus began the formation of superblocks, which became the template for growth for New York even through today.

Since then, New York has grown exponentially (with an estimated population of 8.5 million and growing), and the urban sprawl that started in Manhattan has long since spread to the outer boroughs. Still, the city is showing no signs of stopping now. As the author O. Henry once said of New York, Itll be a great place if they ever finish it.

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These Incredible Images Reveal the Evolution of NYC - Futurism

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Gopi Chand thrilled with Srikanth's evolution - The Hindu The Hindu India's chief National coach P. Gopi Chand said Srikanth has shown that he had the game to beat anyone on his day. The best part of his win being was his ... and more »

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Gopi Chand thrilled with Srikanth's evolution - The Hindu - The Hindu

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan survived a coup attempt last year and solidified his power in April in a referendum that handed him sweeping powers. Erdogan has been vocal about wanting to raise "a pious generation." President Recep Tayyip Erdogan survived a coup attempt last year and solidified his power in April in a referendum that handed him sweeping powers. Erdogan has been vocal about wanting to raise "a pious generation." Related Content

ISTANBUL, Turkey (CNN) - Turkish high school students will no longer be taught the theory of evolution.

The subject has been cut from the curriculum under changes made to eliminate "controversial" topics, the head of the national board of education, Alpaslan Durmus, announced in a video address.

"If our students don't have the background, the scientific knowledge, or information to comprehend the debate around controversial issues, we have left them out," Durmus said.

The new curriculum will go into effect for the 2017-2018 school year.

It was crafted to emphasize national values and highlight contributions made by Turkish and Muslim scholars, Durmus said.

History classes will look beyond "Eurocentrism" and music classes will focus on "all colors of Turkish music," he said.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan survived a coup attempt last year and solidified his power in April in a referendum that handed him sweeping powers.

Critics view the changes in the education system as another step in the ruling Justice and Development Party's ambitions to make Turkey more conservative. Erdogan has been vocal about wanting to raise "a pious generation."

The argument that evolution is too difficult for ninth-graders to comprehend is not a reasonable explanation for removing the unit from high schools, according to Ebru Yigit, a board member of the secular education union Egitim-Sen.

"The curriculum change in its entirety is taking the education system away from scientific reasoning and changing it into a dogmatic religious system," Yigit said in a phone interview with CNN. "The elimination of the evolution unit from classes is the most concrete example of this."

Darwin's theory of evolution has been at the center of the Turkish culture wars over the last decade.

The government-run Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey, or TUBITAK, enflamed the debate in 2009 after recalling a magazine issue featuring a spread on evolution proponent Charles Darwin.

The controversy is based in a conservative and hard-line approach to the scientific theory that equates evolution with atheism, according to Mustafa Akyol a fellow at the Freedom Project at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

But the theory in its most basic form doesn't have to pose a problem for Muslims, he said.

"There are various progressive theologians in Turkey who argue that evolution is the way God created life via natural means," Akyol said.

The decision to eliminate evolution from the curriculum "implies that more conservative, parochial and anti-intellectual Islamic views are more ascendant," he said.

Eliminating evolution from high schools takes information away from students and reveals a worrying trend of getting rid of anything that challenges tradition, he said.

"They could have been still conservative, but also wise," Akyol said. "The students could have been informed, rather than uninformed."

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Turkey to stop teaching evolution in high school - My Champlain Valley FOX44 & ABC22

Ghost isnt exactly a saint. Still, many probably didnt expect his past to catch up to him via his ex-girlfriend and federal prosector, Angela, for a crime he didnt commit.

At the end of the pilot episode, we promised that someday he would get arrested and she would do it. So its more of why did we do it now? Its really about me as a writer wanting to write myself into a corner to see if I could write my way out. I really try to plot in a fearless fashion. I try not to care about not knowing the answer before I get there, I just jump in first and see what happens.

Were you able to get out of the corner?

We got way better stuff by doing it this way, because we forced ourselves to look at the characters more closely. We forced the characters to look at the characters more closely. Self-discovery is a universal quest, so immediately the characters are more relatable.

Youve said that Ghosts character is based on your father and Curtis Jackson (a.k.a. 50 Cent), one of the shows executive producers. As his character has evolved over the series, who is Ghost based on now?

I steal some pieces of Omari. Ghosts commitment to his family is very much Omari. I think all the characters are me to some extent.

How so, as it relates to Ghost?

This is going to sound a little strange, but I think theres a large part of being a working mom that I put into Ghost, which is that youre never in the right place at the right time. We show Ghost in a lot of situations where he really shouldve been elsewhere. When Im at work, I want to be with my daughter and when Im with my daughter, I probably should be working and it just is what it is.

As the show and characters have evolved, how are you approaching your role as a showrunner?

My approach to plotting, storytelling and writing hasnt changed. I definitely have the writer of the episode on set, but I probably should delegate more.

I dont hire anyone for my assistant job or any low-level writer job in the writers office who isnt an aspiring writer. A lot of people will say that they want to be my assistant, because they want to be an actor on the show and Im not interested in that. I definitely want to hire people who want to know how to make TV, you know what I mean? Im in a unique position to be able to teach you how to do that.

I try to spend as much time in Los Angeles as I can throughout the year and less time in New York on the set, just because my daughter is getting older.

What are some references youve used to frame the storytelling on the show and move the characters and narratives forward?

A lot of Shakespeare. Ive used Richard III because hes ruthless in getting what he wants and then ghosts of the people he killed start haunting him. I think thats very much Ghost.

You recently signed a multiyear deal with Starz and Lionsgate (which bought the network last year). What kind of projects are you looking to produce?

Im hoping to develop more television shows with people of color and women in front of and behind the camera. I want to tell some more personal stories. I want to tell more stories about lying, dual lives, self-deception those are my favorites.

When youre not working on Power, what are you watching?

Ru Pauls Drag Race, Im a long-term fan. Master of Nones season was amazing. I love Archer, thats one of the best-written shows out there.

A version of this article appears in print on June 24, 2017, on Page C4 of the New York edition with the headline: Shes Keeping a Promise on Power.

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Courtney Kemp of 'Power' on Shakespeare and Ghost's Evolution - New York Times

By Will Higginbotham

Posted June 25, 2017 05:27:41

In the Zenadth Kes, also known as the Torres Strait Islands, the art of ceremonial mask-making has been around for centuries.

Made from materials such as woods, shells and feathers, the masks play an important role in uniting the diverse groups of the Torres Strait together.

"Through these masks we know our stories, our ancient ways of life, our families, clans and tribes," Cygnet Repu, from the Torres Strait Regional Authority, says.

"In them we see our ancestors, our heroes, our totems and the connection back to the land and sea country."

Evolution: Torres Strait Masks is a new exhibit at the National Museum of Australia that celebrates the historic and spiritual significance of the ceremonial mask.

Ceremonial mask making is a common practice in the Pacific, especially in neighbouring Papua New Guinea.

The cultural linkage is not surprising at their closest point, Papua New Guinea and the Torres Strait are only four kilometres apart.

"When you study the face carvings [on the masks] you see and notice similarities [between PNG and Torres Strait masks], in the deepness of the grooves and the way the eyes are drawn and carved," Mr Repu says.

"But both of us use the same material, the same style and really, for the same purposes."

The new exhibit focuses on Torres Strait mask making by showcasing twelve contemporary masks created by artists at the Gab Titui Cultural Centre on Waiben island [Thursday Island].

The contemporary masks are displayed next to ancient examples of the practice.

Lead curator, Letha Assan, says the exhibit shows how Torres Strait culture and artistic practice has evolved over time.

"It takes you on a journey from time immemorial when masks were used in ceremonial rituals involving art, theatre and dance by our ancestors," Ms Assan said.

"And we show how these historic artefacts have inspired new works that are constantly developing and changing."

Ms Assan told the ABC that the exhibit highlights the resilience of Torres Strait culture after European colonisation.

"We wanted to show that our cultural practices are still very much alive, even though a lot of our masks were taken away post-colonialism," she said.

"[And] we wanted to show the journey of them coming around, and that our artists continue to make these masks and that they continue to be used."

Director of the National Museum, Matthew Trinca says the exhibit is timely and that it speaks to a broader Australian story.

"The story of Australia's first peoples is a deep important part of our collective cultural experience," Mr Trinca said.

"It is important to honour that, especially at this time in what is an anniversary year for all Australians."

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the 1967 referendum and the 25th anniversary of the Mabo land rights decision.

Evolution will be at the National Museum Canberra until July 23 before embarking on a national tour.

Topics: indigenous-culture, arts-and-entertainment, torres-strait-islands, australia, pacific

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Evolution: Torres Strait exhibit on national tour to celebrate history of ceremonial mask-masking - ABC Online

Even after a tip of the cap to Rovio for making the original Angry Birds gameplay as durable and long-lived as it has been, its understandable that the company would want the franchise to spread its wings in order to keep going and no, thats probably not the only bad avian pun in this review. Angry Birds Evolution definitely succeeds in pushing the brand forward, but with mixed results as it combines gameplay you didnt know you wanted with a story you probably dont.

The set-up for Angry Birds Evolution is about as classic as it gets, assuming that word applies for a franchise that is less than 10 years old. Pigs are threatening eggs, so the grown-up birds need to do something about it and fight back. Theres a lot more to the narrative behind your adventure as well, with the gist of the plot being that you need to convince a legendary team of bird heroes to come back into the fold and help you defeat the Pigs leader, whos obviously been watching some iconic movies as motivation.

But the details of the story dont grab you as much as the sense that for the most part, these arent any Angry Birds youve encountered before in other games, animation or even the movie. They look like the characters from the film, but the game designers worked overtime to come up with a whole bunch of new birds when the familiar ones probably would have sufficed. On top of that, theyre more scary than cute, despite being beautifully rendered and animated.

If you can accept a whole new flock into your life, you might be impressed with the way Rovio created a turn-based RPG and still managed to preserve the one thing that screams Angry Birds to anyone. That is, when your characters attack, you pull them back, find the right angle to let them go and watch as they bounce off enemies, blow stuff up and generally wreak havoc until they come to a rest. Power-ups and special attacks add to the strategy as you pick your targets and try to eliminate them before they have a chance to do harm to your squad. Its somewhat reminiscent of Angry Birds Action in terms of the perspective from behind your birds, but otherwise its all its own thing.

Theres also a PvP mode where these same mechanics are combined with the simple goal of shoving as many birds onto your opponents side of the playing field for as long as possible. Its nice that the game doesnt ask you to learn a whole new way of doing things for multiplayer, and the matches usually tend to be fast and frantic.

In-between battles, there are plenty of very standard mobile game things to do to create a more powerful team of birds. Lower rarity birds can be used to power up the ones you plan on using regularly, and several different currencies give you a chance to hatch new characters in the time-tested gacha style. The different colors of birds all have different types of special attacks and can form sets that unlock extra abilities, so theres definitely a hunt and collect element to the whole thing. Extra birds can also be sent on resource-gathering missions if you so desire. Clans provide a social hook, as they often do.

One aspect of Angry Birds Evolution you might not expect is that its not geared toward kids, or at least theres a conscious effort to make this one more adult. One of the old heroes youre trying to recruit is named Major Pecker, which gives you an idea of the type of humor involved. Thats not to say the game is objectionable as a lot of whats going on will fly right over the head of younger players, and it does make one wonder exactly who the intended audience is supposed to be.

Then again, maybe O.G. Angry Birds players are mostly grown up now, or at least on their way. Evolution was probably inevitable, and it plants the Birds flag in a genre that works well on mobile in a unique manner, but it also jettisons a lot of what many would probably expect, right down to the birds themselves. If you simply adore turn-based RPGs or are down to glide with this IP all the way until the end, you need to try it, but otherwise, it feels like more of a curiosity than an essential.

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Angry Birds Evolution Review: A Fun But Strange Flock - Gamezebo

Classical music may be the art of the sublime, liquid architecture and all the rest, but it has nonetheless always been a long-suffering kingdom of kvetching. Born to serve the church, Western music became in the Middle Ages an ideal medium of sacrilege, and the art form has continued over the centuries to bite the hands that have fed it, be they the aristocracy, ruling powers, philanthropists or the public. However high-minded, the history of classical music is riddled with worry and an obsessive desire for reinvention.

Music Academy of the West the summer training program for young musicians on an elegant campus nestled among Montecito mansions and overlooking a scenic stretch of shoreline held a two-day conference this week called Classical Evolution/Revolution. Eighteen movers and shakers, young and seasoned, working in Los Angeles, the Bay Area, New York and London, took part in six panels surveying the state of the field.

The curriculum for such symposiums is expected to ask all the pressing questions. What horrors will disruptive digital unleash next? How can we develop new audiences without teaching music in schools? Can classical music, that sliver of a sliver of the modern zeitgeist, possibly matter? Where, everyone in the business desperately wants to know, will the next dollar come from?

If anyone should be anxious, its Graham Parker. Last July he was appointed president of the U.S. division of Universal Music Classics, which includes such fabled classical record labels as Deutsche Grammophon and Decca. The classical market has long been expected to die on the vine. Classical buyers still want CDs but cant readily find them. To top the charts, a new classical release once needed to sell tens of thousands. Now a few hundred units makes for a coveted bestseller.

But that doesnt mean the classical music baby need be thrown out with the the CD bathwater. A cheerfully upbeat Parker ended the conference raising eyebrows with the claim that in any given month an extraordinary 30% of the U.S. population listens to classical music on some device. That translates to 100 million people in our country alone! Another happy number he threw out is that more than 40 million Americans sing in a chorus (an estimate that includes church choirs).

Of course, how you best reach these millions is another matter. There are also millions more who dont know what they are missing. Classical music might just supply the spiritual nourishment they seek.

Technology is ever the elephant in the room. The history of sharks out to cheat musicians is long and dishonorable. Today its Silicon Valleys ability to redirect profits from the creators and producers to the likes of Apple, Amazon and Spotify. Equally troubling is the power of technology in the form of virtual reality, holograms and things we may not yet know about, to suck the life out of live music making.

Again, such dire predictions are nothing new in classical music. And yet so much classical has been around for so long that it would be hard to get rid of it all. Live performance has lasted, furthermore, because, as Los Angeles Opera head Christopher Koelsch said Tuesday, The human creature craves the communal.

For his part, Sam Bodkin asked what the world needs and rapidly answered his own question: It needs more substance, beauty and intimacy, and classical music checks all those boxes.

So Bodkin founded Groupmuse, which uses social media to build audiences for intimate concerts in homes, breaking down the barrier between listener and performer. People are looking to go places they cant find in contemporary commercial society, he said. Beethoven in your living room or grungy basement as far as Bodkin is concerned, any place can provide a newbies aha moment.

What is maybe new to our time is the necessity for everyone the creators, the practitioners, the producers and the audience to become determinedly flexible. The ways to make and consume classical music keep expanding. The technological wonders of the modern world take, but they also give. It is not just good but essential to be adaptable and open. And wary.

The idea of putting faith in the artists was another central point. Luke Ritchie and Toby Coffey, who respectively head digital innovation and development departments for the Philharmonia Orchestra and the neighboring National Theatre at the Southbank Centre in London, are working at the cutting edge of virtual reality and did a fairly convincing job of making that seem a less scary reality. Both demonstrated concern with enhancing content and disdain for digital trickery.

Ritchie has the advantage of the orchestras tech-savvy principal conductor and artistic advisor Esa-Pekka Salonen. He takes viewers hooked up to those clumsy VR masks on an illuminating tour of the orchestra that you really could never get any other way. The National Theatre is more radical, with its immersive storytelling. An audience member can wear VR goggles that create a 360-degree spatial environment that feels completely interior and dreamlike, and at the same time interact with live actors, resulting in intense situations, where the theatrical confusion between reality and dream state weaken emotional defenses. The implication for opera is terrifying and thrilling.

However encouraging the fact that artists may have a chance to help mold VR technology, which is still in its infancy, that is a future as yet out of reach. And it is coming up against what is a much bigger trend of reviving, as Bodkin is doing, the physical connection between performer and audience.

The value of discovery in an audience is diminishing, lamented Kristy Edmunds, executive and artistic director of the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA. But her solution is simply listen to and support the artist. She said that her guiding principle is something that the French director Ariane Mnouchkine once told her: For somebody in the audience, this will be their first experience with theater, and for somebody it will be their last.

One of the great contributions of Mnouchkines avant-garde company, Le Thtre du Soleil, has been the understanding of the importance of space as the place. She took over former munitions factory in eastern Paris where she could create a uniquely communal environment for a revelatory new ritualistic theater. Yuval Sharon, founder of the Los Angeles opera company the Industry, described how masterminding operas in Union Station or in limousines driving through downtown L.A. offered a unique engagement between city and artists, allowing audiences to find all kinds of unexpected resonances.

Though Sharon may be a paradigm shifter, he distinguished his approach as a director from that of a disruptor. The dictates of the work is everything, he said, and, no, Wagner should not be done in Union Station, although his next project will be the creation of a play-opera hybrid of Brechts Galileo, with music by Andy Akiho, to be staged in September around a bonfire on the beach in San Pedro.

How to improve the world without making matters worse? Would a holograph of Yuja Wang playing at Walt Disney Concert Hall broadcast to audiences in Kansas yes that was suggested provide people access to something they would not otherwise have, or would it make classical music creepy?

Few students turned up for the conference. They were busy with lessons and practicing. Their duty is to become artists we can trust. Our duty is to create a world in which they can be trusted. That is not out of the question.

The news from picture-perfect Montecito is that however great the challenges may be for classical music, the possibilities are greater. And there are a lot of people who care.

mark.swed@latimes.com

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While a lot of people may only think of theheavy-hitter franchises likeToy Story,Finding Nemo,andMonsters Inc., Pixar has been steadily producing CGI animations forover30 years. And between each feature-length film comes a bevy of animated shorts that, when viewed one after the other, really show the progress theyve made in just over three decades.

This recent super cut by YouTubes Burger Fiction placed everything Pixar has done in chronological order and, as youd expect, its absolutely gorgeous. In just under 15 minutes, the super cut gives us a look at what the animation studio has been able to accomplish over the years. Theres a lot to love inthe familiar faces you see and its impossible not to notice how things have improved for character design over the yearsbut make note of the environments to really see the real magic that Pixar creates.

Pixar continually pushes the needle forward of what can be done with CGIin every film and short they create but will likely always limit their characters to more cartoon-ish designs. This is actually a good thing since it leaves more room for expression, otherwise impossible movements, and (thank goodness) avoiding the uncanny valley. And as characters remain lovable cartoons, the worlds become so much more realistic. Compare the lighting effects and environments inLuxo Jr.orToy Story to the hyper-realistic vistas they created for their Pipershort or evenjust for the the end credits of The Good Dinosaurto see how far theyve come.

Theres a lot to love about Pixar characters and story but one of the most beautiful things about their films are the worlds they create.

Whats your favorite Pixar movie or shorts? Lets discuss in the comments below!

Featured Image: Disney/Pixar

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The Beauty of Pixar's Evolution is in the Environments They Create - Nerdist

The last shore-dwelling ancestor of modern whales was Sinonyx, top left, a hyena-like animal. Over 60 million years, several transitional forms evolved: from top to bottom, Indohyus, Ambulocetus, Rodhocetus, Basilosaurus, Dorudon, and finally, the modern humpback whale.

The theory of evolution by natural selection, first formulated in Darwin's book "On the Origin of Species" in 1859, is the process by which organisms change over time as a result of changes in heritable physical or behavioral traits. Changes that allow an organism to better adapt to its environment will help it survive and have more offspring.

Evolution by natural selection is one of the best substantiated theories in the history of science, supported by evidence from a wide variety of scientific disciplines, including paleontology, geology, genetics and developmental biology.

The theory has two main points, said Brian Richmond, curator of human origins at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. "All life on Earth is connected and related to each other," and this diversity of life is a product of "modifications of populations by natural selection, where some traits were favored in and environment over others," he said.

More simply put, the theory can be described as "descent with modification," said Briana Pobiner, an anthropologist and educator at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., who specializes in the study of human origins.

The theory is sometimes described as "survival of the fittest," but that can be misleading, Pobiner said. Here, "fitness" refers not to an organism's strength or athletic ability, but rather the ability to survive and reproduce.

In the first edition of "The Origin of Species" in 1859, Charles Darwin speculated about how natural selection could cause a land mammal to turn into a whale. As a hypothetical example, Darwin used North American black bears, which were known to catch insects by swimming in the water with their mouths open:

"I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale," he speculated.

The idea didn't go over very well with the public. Darwin was so embarrassed by the ridicule he received that the swimming-bear passage was removed from later editions of the book.

Scientists now know that Darwin had the right idea but the wrong animal: Instead of looking at bears, he should have instead been looking at cows and hippopotamuses.

The story of the origin of whales is one of evolution's most fascinating tales and one of the best examples scientists have of natural selection.

To understand the origin of whales, it's necessary to have a basic understanding of how natural selection works. Natural selection can change a species in small ways, causing a population to change color or size over the course of several generations. This is called "microevolution."

But natural selection is also capable of much more. Given enough time and enough accumulated changes, natural selection can create entirely new species, known as "macroevolution." It can turn dinosaurs into birds, amphibious mammals into whales and the ancestors of apes into humans.

Take the example of whales using evolution as their guide and knowing how natural selection works, biologists knew that the transition of early whales from land to water occurred in a series of predictable steps. The evolution of the blowhole, for example, might have happened in the following way:

Random genetic changes resulted in at least one whale having its nostrils placed farther back on its head. Those animals with this adaptation would have been better suited to a marine lifestyle, since they would not have had to completely surface to breathe. Such animals would have been more successful and had more offspring. In later generations, more genetic changes occurred, moving the nose farther back on the head.

Other body parts of early whales also changed. Front legs became flippers. Back legs disappeared. Their bodies became more streamlined and they developed tail flukes to better propel themselves through water.

Darwin also described a form of natural selection that depends on an organism's success at attracting a mate, a process known as sexual selection. The colorful plumage of peacocks and the antlers of male deer are both examples of traits that evolved under this type of selection.

But Darwin wasn't the first or only scientist to develop a theory of evolution. The French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck came up with the idea that an organism could pass on traits to its offspring, though he was wrong about some of the details. And around the same time as Darwin, British biologist Alfred Russel Wallace independently came up with the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Darwin didn't know anything about genetics, Pobiner said. "He observed the pattern of evolution, but he didnt really know about the mechanism." That came later, with the discovery of how genes encode different biological or behavioral traits, and how genes are passed down from parents to offspring. The incorporation of genetics and Darwin's theory is known as "modern evolutionary synthesis."

The physical and behavioral changes that make natural selection possible happen at the level of DNA and genes. Such changes are called mutations. "Mutations are basically the raw material on which evolution acts," Pobiner said.

Mutations can be caused by random errors in DNA replication or repair, or by chemical or radiation damage. Most times, mutations are either harmful or neutral, but in rare instances, a mutation might prove beneficial to the organism. If so, it will become more prevalent in the next generation and spread throughout the population.

In this way, natural selection guides the evolutionary process, preserving and adding up the beneficial mutations and rejecting the bad ones. "Mutations are random, but selection for them is not random," Pobiner said.

But natural selection isn't the only mechanism by which organisms evolve, she said. For example, genes can be transferred from one population to another when organisms migrate or immigrate, a process known as gene flow. And the frequency of certain genes can also change at random, which is called genetic drift.

Even though scientists could predict what early whales should look like, they lacked the fossil evidence to back up their claim. Creationists took this absence as proof that evolution didn't occur. They mocked the idea that there could have ever been such a thing as a walking whale. But since the early 1990s, that's exactly what scientists have been finding.

The critical piece of evidence came in 1994, when paleontologists found the fossilized remains ofAmbulocetus natans, an animal whose name literally means "swimming-walking whale." Its forelimbs had fingers and small hooves but its hind feet were enormous given its size. It was clearly adapted for swimming, but it was also capable of moving clumsily on land, much like a seal.

When it swam, the ancient creature moved like an otter, pushing back with its hind feet and undulating its spine and tail.

Modern whales propel themselves through the water with powerful beats of their horizontal tail flukes, but Ambulocetus still had a whip-like tail and had to use its legs to provide most of the propulsive force needed to move through water.

In recent years, more and more of these transitional species, or "missing links," have been discovered, lending further support to Darwin's theory, Richmond said.

Despite the wealth of evidence from the fossil record, genetics and other fields of science, some people still question its validity. Some politicians and religious leaders denounce the theory, invoking a higher being as a designer to explain the complex world of living things, especially humans.

School boards debate whether the theory of evolution should be taught alongside other ideas, such as intelligent design or creationism.

Mainstream scientists see no controversy. "A lot of people have deep religious beliefs and also accept evolution," Pobiner said, adding, "there can be real reconciliation."

Evolution is well supported by many examples of changes in various species leading to the diversity of life seen today. "If someone could really demonstrate a better explanation than evolution and natural selection, [that person] would be the new Darwin," Richmond said.

Additional reporting by Staff Writer Tanya Lewis, Follow Tanya on Twitter. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+.

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Darwin's Theory of Evolution: Definition & Evidence

A scene from Food Evolution.

Black Valley Films

Several years ago, a county government in Hawaii debated a measure to ban genetically modified crops on the island. The hearings highlighted the divergent views of pro-GMO scientists and anti-biotech activists, many who assert, without credible evidence, that GMOs are linked to numerous diseases.

Those deliberations, contentious as they were, eventually became the focus of a long narrative feature by Pulitzer Prizewinning New York Times journalist Amy Harmon, titled A Lonely Quest for Facts on Genetically Modified Crops. The piece revealed the fraught and bewildering discourse around GMOs and why, even if you took the time to painstakingly verify all the claims and counter-claims (as one lonely councilman did), most people arent interested in listening or changing their minds based on the evidence. Its too much of a slog, and it goes against the very human tendency to accept only information that confirms pre-existing beliefs or mindsets. The majority of councilmembers voted for the GMO ban, an outcome, that as Harmons article shows, was likely preordainedand also nonsensical when considering the evidence.

For those seeking clarity on GMOs, the push to get people to accept the facts is just as lonely now as it was in 2014: The Hawaii case also serves as the dramatic centerpiece of an ambitious new documentary called Food Evolution, opening in select movie theaters this week. Food Evolution travels to major battlegrounds to better understand the GMO conflict, from Hawaii and New York to California and Africa. It is abundantly clear that the film, like any good documentary, is argument-driven, attempting to prove that GMOs, far from how theyve been painted, are in fact safe.

Unfortunately, theres no good reason to think this effort will be any more successful at correcting the popular misperceptions and stereotypes around GMOs than Harmons thoughtful piece (or several others since, including, for example, one in this very magazine). The film, like any good documentary, wants to be the arbiter of a debate over evidence. In reality, it ought to have admitted that what it is facing is an ideologically charged debate that, like climate change, is increasingly immune to facts.

Food Evolution leans heavily on science and scientific authority to make its argument. Exhibit A: Neil DeGrasse Tyson is the films narrator. To dispel unfounded but persistent health fears of GMOs, Tyson points to the nearly 2,000 experiments and foremost scientific institutions that have affirmed the safety of genetically engineered foods. Will this change anyones mind?

As we say in Brooklyn, fughetaboutit. Im skeptical that the film will have any impact on GMO-averse people because I know GMO-averse people. I belong to this tribe. My GMO-averse friends and fellow brownstone liberals havent given a lot of thought to the science that suggests GMOs are safe. Theyre not going to wade through dense National Academy of Sciences reports that provide nuanced discussions on the pros and cons of genetically modified crops. For them, the GMO debate is not about science; it is about emotions. They very much care about the food they feed their families. And they take their cues from the experts they trust on such matters, experts they judge to share their values. And in this tribe, GMOs are not associated with sustainability and healthy foods.

Im skeptical that the film will have any impact on GMO-averse people because I know GMO-averse people.

Maybe this explains why, despite embracing GMO foods myself, I also belong to my local organic co-op, something one friend gleefully reminded me of the last time I brought up misguided GMO fears at a dinner party. Yes, theres a large GMO-free sign hanging on the main wall in the co-op, but I like the vibe and ethic of the place. And yeah, I know the lucrative organic food industry is a racket unto itself and that organic benefits are grossly overstated, but I still identify with the people who shop at the co-op. And that matters more to me.

When the topic of GMOs comes up at dinner parties, I am the skunk who will gently remind everyone of everything Tyson says about GMO safety in Food Evolution. I have a litany of facts and studies that I cite. After listening politely and patting me on the head like a child out of his depth, they always checkmate me with, What about Monsanto?

Its hard to overstate the significance of that albatross on the GMO debate. Monsanto is perhaps best known for producing pesticides and herbicides like DDT in the 1940s and Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. In the 1980s, Monsanto was at the forefront of the nascent agricultural biotechnology revolution, but when it pioneered the first generation of genetically engineered seeds, it conveniently made them able to withstand an herbicide it created. Activists suspicious of the new technology had a field day branding GMOs as the work of mad scientists with a history of poisoning us. Its easy for activists to portray the company as the evil face of industrial agriculture.

Of course, the reality is that it is possible for Monsanto to be terrible and for GMOs to still be safe. But when Ive tried unpacking the companys real problems (calling out its monopolistic, heavy-handed business practices and tone-deaf responses to critics), that only makes people more suspicious. Its become hard for scientists and journalists alike to debunk GMO myths and misinformation without being accused of shilling for Monsanto or Big Ag. Even Harmon, a highly regarded science journalist, cant escape this charge: After one of her (ultimately prize-winning) pieces chronicling a non-industry application of crop biotechnology was published, Michael Pollan tweeted that it contained too many industry talking points. (The science journalism community leapt to Harmons defense and repudiated Pollan.) And after Harmons Hawaii piece was published, an anti-GMO group on its Facebook page photo-shopped her in a leopard-skin bathing suit, holding hands with the Monsanto CEO on a Hawaiian beach.

Given this poisonous milieu, Im not surprised that Food Evolution has already been characterized by activists as a textbook case of corporate propaganda. Several influential GMO critics who appear in the film, including Pollan and New York University professor Marion Nestle, are also crying foul. Its fair to say that the film has an agenda. It does. (Though, to its credit, Food Evolution devotes ample time to the socio-political concerns of GMO opponents.) But to baselessly insinuate that Monsanto has somehow financially underwritten it, as Nestle does in a blog post on her website, is a pretty good indicator of Food Evolutions herculean challenge: to overcome immense distrust of a science dominated and shaped by industry.

There is one scene that left me hopeful that it is possible for a meeting of the minds on this topic. It comes when Alison Van Eenennaam, a professor of animal genomics and biotechnology at the University of CaliforniaDavis, stops to talk with anti-GMO protesters. She engages in a civil, good faith conversation with them. One protester says to her: Dont you think putting all these chemicals in our food and in our animals is dangerous?

After some polite back and forth, Van Eenennaam says, What frustrates me is that I think this [GMO] technology has potential and yet it gets mixed up with a lot of other concerns, like multinational control. The protester seems truly engaged in their dialogue. Maybe its not an and/or [issue], she says.

Van Eenennaam reaches out to shake the womans hand. I agree, she says, smiling. Can we agree on that?

They do. It would be great if more conversations like this resulted from Food Evolution. But the film is an attempt to inject science into a debate that is shaped by values. That tactic, one that I have employed plenty of times in my own life with minimal results, seems destined to fail. Instead, perhaps we should all take a page from Van Eenennaam and try to be more willing to listen to how peoples values inform their opinions and find common ground from there.

More:

Food Evolution Is Scientifically Accurate. Too Bad It Won't Convince Anyone. - Slate Magazine

June 23, 2017 by David L. Chandler Researchers have discovered that Prochlorococcus varieties can each produce more than two dozen different peptides (molecules that are similar to proteins, but smaller). Credit: Christine Daniloff/MIT

It's one of the tiniest organisms on Earth, but also one of the most abundant. And now, the microscopic marine bacteria called Prochlorococcus can add one more superlative to its list of attributes: It evolves new kinds of metabolites called lanthipeptides, more abundantly and rapidly than any other known organism.

While most bacteria contain genes to pump out one or two versions of this peptide, Prochlorococcus varieties can each produce more than two dozen different peptides (molecules that are similar to proteins, but smaller). And though all of Earth's Prochlorococcus varieties belong to just a single species, some of their localized varieties in different regions of the world's oceans each produce a unique collection of thousands of these peptides, unlike those generated by terrestrial bacteria.

The startling findings, published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, were discovered by former MIT graduate student Andres Cubillos-Ruiz, Institute Professor Sallie "Penny" Chisholm, University of Illinois chemistry professor Wilfred van der Donk, and two others.

"This is incredibly significant work," says Eric Schmidt, professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Utah, who was not involved in the research. "The authors show how nature has evolved methods to create chemical diversity. What really sets it apart is that it examines how this evolution takes place in nature, instead of in the lab. They examine a huge habitat, the open ocean. This is amazing," he says.

"No one had seen the true extent of the diversity in these molecules" until this new study, Cubillos-Ruiz says. The first hints of this unexpected diversity surfaced in 2010, when Bo Li and Daniel Sher, members of van der Donk's and Chisholm's labs respectively, found that one variety of Prochlorococcus could produce as many as 29 different lanthipeptides. But the big surprise came when Cubillos-Ruiz looked at other populations and found that the same organisms, in a different location, produced similarly great numbers of the peptides, "and all of them were completely different," he says.

After considerable study examining the genomes of many Prochlorococcus cultures and pieces of DNA from the wild, the researchers determined that the way the extraordinary numbers of lanthipeptides evolve is, in itself, something that hasn't been observed before. While most evolution takes place through tiny incremental changes, while preserving the vast majority of the genetic structure, the genes that enable Prochlorococcus to produce these lanthipeptides do just the opposite. They somehow undergo dramatic, wholesale changes all at once, resulting in the production of thousands of new varieties of these metabolites.

Cubillos-Ruiz, who is now a postdoc at MIT's Institute For Medical Engineering and Science, says the way these genes were changing "wasn't following classic phylogenetic rules," which dictate that changes should happen slowly and incrementally to avoid disruptive changes that impair function. But the story is a bit more complicated than that: The specific genes that encode for these lanthipeptides are composed of two parts, joined end to end. One part is actually very well-preserved across the lineages and different populations of the species. It's the other end that goes through these major shakeups in structure. "The second half is amazingly variable," he says. "The two halves of the gene have taken completely different evolutionary pathways, which is uncommon."

The actual functions of most of these thousands of peptides, which are known as prochlorosins, remain unknown, as they are very difficult to study under laboratory conditions. Similar compounds produced by terrestrial bacteria can serve as chemical signaling devices between the organisms, while others are known to have antimicrobial functions, and many others serve purposes that have yet to be determined. Because of the known antimicrobial functions, though, the team thinks it will be useful to screen these compounds to see if they might be candidates for new antibiotics or other useful biologic products.

This evolutionary mechanism in Prochlorococcus represents "an intriguing mode of evolution for this kind of specialized metabolite," Cubillos-Ruiz says. While evolution usually favors preservation of most of the genetic structure from the ancestor to the descendants, "in this organism, selection seems to favor cells that are able to produce many and very different lanthipeptides. So this built-in collective diversity appears to be part of its function, but we don't yet know its purpose. We can speculate, but given their variability it's hard to demonstrate." Maybe it has to do with providing protection against attack by viruses, he says, or maybe it involves communicating with other bacteria.

"Prochlorococcus is trying to tell us something, but we don't yet know what that is," says Chisholm, who has joint appointments in MIT's departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Biology. "What [Cubillos-Ruiz] uncovered through this molecule is an evolutionary mechanism for diversity." And that diversity clearly must have very important survival value, she says: "It's such a small organism, with such a small genome, devoting so much of its genetic potential toward producing these molecules must mean they are playing an important role. The big question is: What is that role?"

In fact, this kind of process may not be uniqueit may be just that Prochlorococcus, an organism that Chisholm and her colleagues initially discovered in 1986 and have been studying ever since, has provided the wealth of data needed for such an analysis. "This might be happening in other kinds of bacteria," Cubillos-Ruiz says, "so maybe if people start looking into other environments for that kind of diversity," it may turn out not to be unique. "There are some hints it happens in other [biological] systems too," he says.

Christopher Walsh, emeritus professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Harvard University, who was not involved in this work, says "The dramatic diversity of prochlorosins assembled by a single enzyme raises surprising questions about how evolution of thousands of cyclic peptide structures can be accomplished by alterations that favor large changes rather than incremental ones."

According to Schmidt, "There are many possible practical applications. The first is fairly clear: By using this natural variation, the same process can be used to design and build chemicals that might be drugs or other materials. More fundamentally, by understanding the natural process of generating chemical diversity, this will help to create methods to synthesize desired applications in cells."

Explore further: Ubiquitous marine organism co-evolved with other microbes, promoting more complex ecosystems

More information: Evolutionary radiation of lanthipeptides in marine cyanobacteria, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (2017). http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1700990114

This story is republished courtesy of MIT News (web.mit.edu/newsoffice/), a popular site that covers news about MIT research, innovation and teaching.

William Blake may have seen a world in a grain of sand, but for scientists at MIT the smallest of all photosynthetic bacteria holds clues to the evolution of entire ecosystems, and perhaps even the whole biosphere.

The smallest, most abundant marine microbe, Prochlorococcus, is a photosynthetic bacteria species essential to the marine ecosystem. An estimated billion billion billion of the single-cell creatures live in the oceans, forming ...

Marine cyanobacteriatiny ocean plants that produce oxygen and make organic carbon using sunlight and CO2are primary engines of Earth's biogeochemical and nutrient cycles. They nourish other organisms through the provision ...

Sea experiments show there's a constant shuffling of genetic endowments among tiny plankton, say Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers.

In a proof-of-concept experiment, a 4-billion-year-old protein engineered into modern E. coli protected the bacteria from being hijacked by a bacteria-infecting virus. It was as if the E. coli had suddenly gone analogue, ...

Researchers from David Karl's laboratory at the University of Hawai'i at Mnoa (UHM) and from Professor Jens Nielsen's laboratory at Chalmers University of Technology in Gteborg, Sweden, developed a computer model which ...

Toxins produced by three different species of fungus growing indoors on wallpaper may become aerosolized, and easily inhaled. The findings, which likely have implications for "sick building syndrome," were published in Applied ...

Marine seismic surveys used in petroleum exploration could cause a two to three-fold increase in mortality of adult and larval zooplankton, new research published in leading science journal Nature Ecology and Evolution has ...

Dramatic differences in chimp societies, discovered by researchers at the University of St Andrews, reveal variations in social status and sharing food, as seen in human cultures.

Sometimes, when a science experiment doesn't work out, unexpected opportunities open up.

A host of proteins and other molecules sit on the strands of our DNA, controlling which genes are read out and used by cells and which remain silent. This aggregation of genetic material and controlling molecules, called ...

Plants adopt different strategies to survive the changing temperatures of their natural environments. This is most evident in temperate regions where forest trees shed their leaves to conserve energy during the cold season. ...

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In marine bacteria, evolution of new specialized molecules follows a previously unknown path - Phys.Org

The scientific method is under siege, and not just from naysayers who dismiss climate change or fear vaccines. G.M.O.s genetically modified organisms and the crops they enable have become another field of battle.

Directed by Scott Hamilton Kennedy, Food Evolution hopes to demystify G.M.O.s and points to successes like Hawaiian papayas and Ugandan bananas, which were saved from devastating viruses. And while it gives opponents their say, the film rebuts their arguments, including reports that suggest G.M.O.s lead to a rise in farmers suicide rates and an increase in pesticide use. (The response to the first: correlation is not causation; to the second, yes, but those pesticides are far less toxic.)

A preview of the film.

The film also speaks with food journalists (including Michael Pollan, a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine) as well as farmers who have benefited from the technology. And if trust is an issue, Neil deGrasse Tyson, perhaps the most credible public scientist on the planet, is its narrator.

The documentary acknowledges the gorilla in the garden: Monsanto, a leading exponent of modification, is one of the most-hated companies in the world. There are many reasons Monsanto raises hackles, Dr. Tyson acknowledges, but to be concerned about the safety of their G.M.O.s is to be misinformed.

The food industry recruits scientists to speak on its behalf, but in press notes and email correspondence, the films producers say no funding came from any Big Ag company or lobbying group. Food Evolution was commissioned by the nonprofit Institute of Food Technologists, and the filmmakers retained creative control.

With a soft tone, respectful to opponents but insistent on the data, Food Evolution posits an inconvenient truth for organic boosters to swallow: In a world desperate for safe, sustainable food, G.M.O.s may well be a force for good.

Director Scott Hamilton Kennedy

Stars Raoul Adamchak, Charles Benbrook, Tamar Haspel, Mark Lynas, Emma Naluyima

Running Time 1h 32m

Genre Documentary

Food Evolution Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes.

A version of this review appears in print on June 23, 2017, on Page C7 of the New York edition with the headline: G.M.O.s May Not Be an Enemy.

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Review: In 'Food Evolution,' Scientists Strike Back - New York Times

From the Agenda Long Beach trade show floor.

Courtesy Photo

As Aaron Levant and team put the finishing touches on their ambitious effort to turn the trade show model on its head, the Agenda Show founder cant help but note hes come full circle.

The Agenda trade show for the action sports and streetwear industries will see its first consumer-facing component, Agenda Festival, next month. It's been a long time in the making, but the it hardly strays from the roots Levant laid when he began putting together parties serving up music, food, beer and some limited edition shirts in Los Angeles. It wasnt until 2003 that Levant, in a story well-known within the trade, launched the Agenda trade show in the back of a Long Beach Thai food restaurant. Ten years later, he struck a deal with Reed Exhibitions bringing Agenda into the event organizers fold.

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Agenda's Aaron Levant on the Evolution of the Trade Show - WWD

The National Space and Aeronautics Administration has done some amazing things for the United States over the years: the initial short flights into space, then the longer orbiting missions, the moon visits, the space station and even unmanned trips to every sidewalk in the solar system.

But now it has some new goals: Find aliens.

And prove evolution.

And while the agency is at it, its staff members should identify the origins of life.

Thats according to the new and very religious marching orders the agency was given just weeks ago.

The Atlantic explained just what developed.

The truth about evolution is all found in the WND Superstore, in Evolution: The Grand Experiment, Volume 1, Icons of Evolution, The Lie: Evolution Intelligent Design vs. Evolution, Incredible Creatures that defy Evolution II and more.

On March 21 of this year, both parties in Congress and the Trump administration made a change to a federal document that amounted to only a few words, but which may well change the course of human history.

Every few years, Congress and the administration pass a NASA Authorization Act, which gives the U.S. Space Agency its marching orders for the next few years. Amongst the many pages of the 2017 NASA Authorization Act (S. 422) the agencys mission encompasses expected items such as continuation of the space station, building of big rockets, indemnification of launch and reentry service providers for third party claim and so on.

But in this years bill, Congress added a momentous phrase to the agencys mission: the search for lifes origins, evolution, distribution, and future in the universe. Its a short phrase, but a visionary one, setting the stage for a far-reaching effort, that could have as profound an impact on the 21st century as the Apollo program had on the 20th.

At the NASA Watch bog, Keith Cowing noted the law itself states, The administrator shall enter into an arrangement with the National Academies to develop a science strategy for astrobiology that would outline key scientific questions, identify the most promising research in the field, and indicate the extent to which the mission priorities in existing decadal surveys address the search for lifes origin, evolution, distribution, and future in the universe.

Atlantic speculated on the meaning of the change, noting it will include a new emphasis on the question of whether there are other life forms in the universe.

In the last decade we have made enormous advances in the field of exoplanet studies. Telescopes on the ground have become sensitive enough to discern the faintest stellar wobbles, as orbiting planets tug gently against the gravitational bonds. With the National Science Foundations Atacama Large Millimeter Array, and the Hubble Space Telescope, we have peered into interstellar clouds where new planets are forming and have detected the presence of all the elements necessary for life.

It noted that just last February, a nearby star system was confirmed to have seven planets orbiting, three of which lie with the stars Goldilocks zone, making them potentially habitable.

There have been multiple reports of planets that possibly could sustain life. Whats thought to be needed for life water and energy sources have been located even on Saturns moon, Enceladus.

And just last June, the New York Times said, Yes, there have been aliens.

Even so, the mystery still remains about life on earth, and the report places its faith in the still-unexplained idea that somehow, somewhere, sometime, something turned from inanimate matter into living tissue.

On its own.

Every worm on a deep sea vent, or cactus eking out an existence in the high Andres, every human who hunted on the plains or stood on the moon owes their existence to a single chance meeting of two cells that learned to get along, it continued.

There is a possibility, and even a statistical probability, that life exists on some planet other than earth, reports say.

But at Inverse, bloggers charged Congress sneakily told NASA to, well, find aliens.

And the move is being viewed by those in the faith community as the federal governments endorsement of an effort to prove the biblical creation narrative false.

The work already had begun.

The Atlantic reported: NASA has been putting in place all the necessary building blocks to make the Search for Life possible. NASAs James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), due to launch in late 2018, will begin following up on recently discovered exoplanets, searching for the fingerprints of life, gases that scientists believe can only exist in the presence of living organisms. And NASA and private industry have embarked on ambitious new rockets capable of carrying probes and landers to Europa [one of Jupiters moons which is encrusted in ice], and launching future telescopes capable of finding and characterizing continents and oceans on Earth-like planets. Soon, they will be able to send (human) geologists and biologists to Mars.

At least the marching orders are a change from what ex-President Barack Obama wanted from NASA.

He wanted the agency to be a Muslim feel-good outreach.

According to the Telegraph, Charles Bolden, a retired United States Marines Corps major-general and former astronaut, said in an interview with al-Jazeera that NASA was not only a space exploration agency but also an Earth improvement agency.'

Bolden said: When I became the NASA administrator, he [Obama] charged me with three things. One, he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.

The truth about evolution is all found in the WND Superstore, in Evolution: The Grand Experiment, Volume 1, Icons of Evolution, The Lie: Evolution Intelligent Design vs. Evolution, Incredible Creatures that defy Evolution II and more.

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NASA's new assignments: Find aliens, prove evolution - WND.com

The mystery of why birds eggs come in so many shapes has long been up in the air. Now new research suggests adaptations for flight may have helped shape the orbs.

Stronger fliers tend to lay more elongated eggs, researchers report in the June 23 Science. The finding comes from the first large analysis of the way egg shape varies across bird species, from the almost perfectly spherical egg of the brown hawk owl to the raindrop-shaped egg of the least sandpiper.

Eggs fulfill such a specific role in birds the egg is designed to protect and nourish the chick. Why theres such diversity in form when there's such a set function was a question that we found intriguing, says study coauthor Mary Caswell Stoddard, an evolutionary biologist at Princeton University.

Previous studies have suggested many possible advantages for different shapes. Perhaps cone-shaped eggs are less likely to roll out of the nest of cliff-dwelling birds; spherical eggs might be more resilient to damage in the nest. But no one had tested such hypotheses across a wide spectrum of birds.

Stoddard and her team analyzed almost 50,000 eggs from 1,400 species, representing about 14 percent of known bird species. The researchers boiled each egg down to its two-dimensional silhouette and then used an algorithm to describe each egg using two variables: how elliptical versus spherical the egg is and how asymmetrical it is whether its pointier on one end than the other.

Next, the researchers looked at the way these two traits vary across the bird family tree. One pattern jumped out: Species that are stronger fliers, as measured by wing shape, tend to lay more elliptical or asymmetrical eggs, says study coauthor L. Mahadevan, a mathematician and biologist at Harvard University.

Story continues after graphic

By examining the eggs of 1,400 species (each species average egg is represented on this scatterplot by an pale orange dot), researchers found that the shape of bird eggs is determined by two variables: ellipticity and asymmetry. Dark orange dots mark species highlighted as examples.

Mahadevan cautions that the data show only an association, but the researchers propose one possible explanation for the link between flying and egg shape. Adapting to flight streamlined bird bodies, perhaps also narrowing the reproductive tract. That narrowing would have limited the width of an egg that a female could lay. But since eggs provide nutrition for the chick growing inside, shrinking eggs too much would deprive the developing bird. Elongated eggs might have been a compromise between keeping egg volume up without increasing girth, Stoddard suggests. Asymmetry can increase egg volume in a similar way.

Testing a causal connection between flight ability and egg shape is tough because of course we cant replay the whole tape of life again, says Claire Spottiswoode, a zoologist at the University of Cambridge who wrote a commentary accompanying the study. Still, Spottiswoode says the evidence is compelling: Its a very plausible argument.

Santiago Claramunt, associate curator of ornithology at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, isnt convinced that flight adaptations played a driving role in the evolution of egg shape. Streamlining in birds is determined more by plumage than the shape of the body high performing fliers can have rounded, bulky bodies he says, which wouldnt give elongated eggs the same advantage over other egg shapes. He cites frigate birds and swifts as examples, both of which make long-distance flights but have fairly broad bodies. There's certainly more going on there.

Indeed, some orders of birds showed a much stronger link between flying and egg shape than others did. And while other factors like where birds lay their eggs and how many they lay at once werent significantly related to egg shape across birds as a whole, they could be important within certain branches of the bird family tree.

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Flight demands may have steered the evolution of bird egg shape - Science News Magazine

June 22, 2017 by Aaron Dubrow A Burmese python superimposed on an analysis of gene expression that uncovers how the species changes in its organs upon feeding. Credit: Todd Castoe

Evolution takes eons, but it leaves marks on the genomes of organisms that can be detected with DNA sequencing and analysis.

As methods for studying and comparing genetic data improve, scientists are beginning to decode these marks to reconstruct the evolutionary history of species, as well as how variants of genes give rise to unique traits.

A research team at the University of Texas at Arlington led by assistant professor of biology Todd Castoe has been exploring the genomes of snakes and lizards to answer critical questions about these creatures' evolutionary history. For instance, how did they develop venom? How do they regenerate their organs? And how do evolutionarily-derived variations in genes lead to variations in how organisms look and function?

"Some of the most basic questions drive our research. Yet trying to understand the genetic explanations of such questions is surprisingly difficult considering most vertebrate genomes, including our own, are made up of literally billions of DNA bases that can determine how an organism looks and functions," says Castoe. "Understanding these links between differences in DNA and differences in form and function is central to understanding biology and disease, and investigating these critical links requires massive computing power."

To uncover new insights that link variation in DNA with variation in vertebrate form and function, Castoe's group uses supercomputing and data analysis resources at the Texas Advanced Computing Center or TACC, one of the world's leading centers for computational discovery.

Recently, they used TACC's supercomputers to understand the mechanisms by which Burmese pythons regenerate their organsincluding their heart, liver, kidney, and small intestinesafter feeding.

Burmese pythons (as well as other snakes) massively downregulate their metabolic and physiological functions during extended periods of fasting. During this time their organs atrophy, saving energy. However, upon feeding, the size and function of these organs, along with their ability to generate energy, dramatically increase to accommodate digestion.

Within 48 hours of feeding, Burmese pythons can undergo up to a 44-fold increase in metabolic rate and the mass of their major organs can increase by 40 to 100 percent.

Writing in BMC Genomics in May 2017, the researchers described their efforts to compare gene expression in pythons that were fasting, one day post-feeding and four days post-feeding. They sequenced pythons in these three states and identified 1,700 genes that were significantly different pre- and post-feeding. They then performed statistical analyses to identify the key drivers of organ regeneration across different types of tissues.

What they found was that a few sets of genes were influencing the wholesale change of pythons' internal organ structure. Key proteins, produced and regulated by these important genes, activated a cascade of diverse, tissue-specific signals that led to regenerative organ growth.

Intriguingly, even mammalian cells have been shown to respond to serum produced by post-feeding pythons, suggesting that the signaling function is conserved across species and could one day be used to improve human health.

"We're interested in understanding the molecular basis of this phenomenon to see what genes are regulated related to the feeding response," says Daren Card, a doctoral student in Castoe's lab and one of the authors of the study. "Our hope is that we can leverage our understanding of how snakes accomplish organ regeneration to one day help treat human diseases."

Making Evolutionary Sense of Secondary Contact

Castoe and his team used a similar genomic approach to understand gene flow in two closely related species of western rattlesnakes with an intertwined genetic history.

The two species live on opposite sides of the Continental Divide in Mexico and the U.S. They were separated for thousands of years and evolved in response to different climates and habitat. However, over time their geographic ranges came back together to the point that the rattlesnakes began to crossbreed, leading to hybrids, some of which live in a region between the two distinct climates.

The work was motivated by a desire to understand what forces generate and maintain distinct species, and how shifts in the ranges of species (for example, due to global change) may impact species and speciation.

The researchers compared thousands of genes in the rattlesnakes' nuclear DNA to study genomic differentiation between the two lineages. Their comparisons revealed a relationship between genetic traits that are most important in evolution during isolation and those that are most important during secondary contact, with greater-than-expected overlap between genes in these two scenarios.

However, they also found regions of the rattlesnake genome that are important in only one of these two scenarios. For example, genes functioning in venom composition and in reproductive differencesdistinct traits that are important for adaptation to the local habitatlikely diverged under selection when these species were isolated. They also found other sets of genes that were not originally important for diversification of form and function, that later became important in reducing the viability of hybrids. Overall, their results provide a genome-scale perspective on how speciation might work that can be tested and refined in studies of other species.

The team published their results in the April 2017 issue of Ecology and Evolution.

The Role of Supercomputing in Genomics Research

The studies performed by members of the Castoe lab rely on advanced computing for several aspects of the research. First, they use advanced computing to create genome assembliesputting millions of small chunks of DNA in the correct order.

"Vertebrate genomes are typically on the larger side, so it takes a lot of computational power to assemble them," says Card. "We use TACC a lot for that."

Next, the researchers use advanced computing to compare the results among many different samples, from multiple lineages, to identify subtle differences and patterns that would not be distinguishable otherwise.

Castoe's lab has their own in-house computers, but they fall short of what is needed to perform all of the studies the group is interested in working on.

"In terms of genome assemblies and the very intensive analyses we do, accessing larger resources from TACC is advantageous," Card says. "Certain things benefit substantially from the general output from TACC machines, but they also allow us to run 500 jobs at the same time, which speeds up the research process considerably."

A third computer-driven approach lets the team simulate the process of genetic evolution over millions of generations using synthetic biological data to deduce the rules of evolution, and to identify genes that may be important for adaptation.

For one such project, the team developed a new software tool called GppFst that allows researchers to differentiate genetic drift - a neutral process whereby genes and gene sequences naturally change due to random mating within a population - from genetic variations that are indicative of evolutionary changes caused by natural selection.

The tool uses simulations to statistically determine which changes are meaningful and can help biologists better understand the processes that underlie genetic variation. They described the tool in the May 2017 issue of Bioinformatics.

Lab members are able to access TACC resources through a unique initiative, called the University of Texas Research Cyberinfrastructure, which gives researchers from the state's 14 public universities and health centers access to TACC's systems and staff expertise.

"It's been integral to our research," said Richard Adams, another doctoral student in Castoe's group and the developer of GppFst. "We simulate large numbers of different evolutionary scenarios. For each, we want to have hundreds of replicates, which are required to fully vet our conclusions. There's no way to do that on our in-house systems. It would take 10 to 15 years to finish what we would need to do with our own machinesfrankly, it would be impossible without the use of TACC systems."

Though the roots of evolutionary biology can be found in field work and close observation, today, the field is deeply tied to computing, since the scale of genetic materialtiny but voluminouscannot be viewed with the naked eye or put in order by an individual.

"The massive scale of genomes, together with rapid advances in gathering genome sequence information, has shifted the paradigm for many aspects of life science research," says Castoe.

"The bottleneck for discovery is no longer the generation of data, but instead is the analysis of such massive datasets. Data that takes less than a few weeks to generate can easily take years to analyze, and flexible shared supercomputing resources like TACC have become more critical than ever for advancing discovery in our field, and broadly for the life sciences."

Explore further: Team proposes new model for snake venom evolution

More information: Audra L. Andrew et al, Growth and stress response mechanisms underlying post-feeding regenerative organ growth in the Burmese python, BMC Genomics (2017). DOI: 10.1186/s12864-017-3743-1

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Researchers use supercomputers to study snake evolution, unique traits - Phys.Org

National Center for Science Education (blog)

(Star)bursts of Genetics and Evolution! National Center for Science Education (blog) Since our last kit activity was about climate change, it was time we sent our leaders an activity about evolution. To do this, I teamed up with my longtime friends and Iowa City Science Booster Club interns Laura Bankers and Joseph Jalinsky, who helped ...

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(Star)bursts of Genetics and Evolution! - National Center for Science Education (blog)

OnePlus unveiled its new flagship smartphone yesterday, and there were few surprises, given the myriad leaks leading up to the launch.

We knew the OnePlus 5 would sport a dual-lens camera, and we were fairly certainit would ship with a Snapdragon 835 processor and offer up to 8GB of RAM. What wasnt quite so clear, however, was the pricing.

After an hour-long event yesterday, OnePlus finally confirmed the one metric that perhaps matters most to people.The OnePlus 5 will retail for $479 in the U.S., said OnePlus cofounder Carl Pei.

However, that statement didnt tell the full story, given that there are two versions of the OnePlus 5 it would be more accurate to say that the OnePlus 5 retail price begins at $479. After a little bit of digging through the various press paraphernalia VentureBeat was issued, we discovered that the 128GB incarnation will cost around $539.

To be clear, the OnePlus still represents a good value, given the specs it delivers, but what is even clearer is that it is edging steadily away from the Wow, thats ridiculously cheap end of the pricing spectrum.

Above: OnePlus 5

It may help to look back at the pricing evolution of the various OnePlus flagship devices and compare them to other flagships at the time. OnePlus is often spoken of in the same breath as Samsungs Galaxy handsets and Apples iPhone, so for the sake of simplicity, well use those two brands to see how OnePlus prices have evolved since its first device went to market in 2014.

A quick note: While some may argue that OnePlus devices havent always been true high-end phones compared to the likes of Samsungs Galaxy and the iPhone OnePlus has always positioned its phones as flagship killers. Plus, it is fair to say that they are broadly comparable to and have often been better in many respects than other premium smartphones. Weve tried to compare specific versions of devices as like-for-like as possible, in terms of display size and storage capacity, two key factors when buying a device. But that wasnt always 100% possible due to the specs offered by the companies in question.

We also havent factored in differences in features that may make one device more appealing than the other for example, Samsung Galaxy devices have expandable storage, while Apple and OnePlus dont offer this feature.

This is purely an exercise designed to highlight OnePluss pricing evolution.

The OnePlus One was announced in April 2014 and priced at $299 (16GB) and $349 (32GB). This was two months after the unveiling of the Samsung Galaxy S5, which went to market in the U.S. for an off-contract price thatstarted around $600 for the 16GB version.

September 2014 saw the launch of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, the latter sporting a similar-sized screen to the OnePlus Ones (around 5.5). It cost $749 (16GB) off-contract.

Using the 16GB version of the three companies respective flagships, we can see that OnePlus One weighed in at roughly 50 percent the price of the Samsung Galaxy and 40 percent that of the iPhone.

In July 2015, the OnePlus 2 went to market at$329 (16GB) and $389 (64GB). This came four months after the announcement of Samsung Galaxy S6, which shipped with 32GB and 64GB versions the latter went to market in the U.S. for an off-contract price starting at $700, while the funkier Galaxy S6 Edge cost around $100 more. Later that year, Samsung shipped a bigger-screened Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge+, which sported a screen a little larger than the OnePlus 2, for around $860.

In September 2015, Apple launched the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. The latter, which again sported a screen roughly comparable to that of the OnePlus 2, went to market in the U.S. for $849 (64GB).

Looking at the 64GB version of the devices, the OnePlus 2 crept up to around 55 percent of the price of Samsungs main flagship (though down to 45 percent compared to the S6 Edge+), and 45 percent of Apples.

The OnePlus 3 went to market in June 2016, priced at $399 (64GB). But the company wasnt happy with that and rushed out theOnePlus 3T five months later in November, for $439 (64GB) and $479 (128GB).

Earlier, in February, the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge were announced, the latter sporting the same sized screen as the One Plus 3 / 3T. The U.S. market was only privvy to a 32GB version of the Galaxy S7 Edge, which started at around $720 off-contract.

In September, as usual, Apple launched the latest version of its flagship. The iPhone 7 Plus came in three variants $769 (32GB), $869 (128GB), and a whopping 256GB version that cost close to a grand.

Its difficult to make completely like-for-like comparisons here, given that Samsung only brought a 32GB Galaxy device to market in the U.S., but using the lowest level OnePlus (64GB) as a guide, we can see that the OnePlus 3 remained at around 55 percent of the price of the Galaxy before rising to 61 percent when the OnePlus 3T went to market.

Comparing the respective 128GB versions of the OnePlus 3T and the iPhone 7 Plus showed that OnePlus was now at around 55 percent of the iPhones price.

Fast forward to 2017, and Apple has yet to release its newest flagship, something that will likely happen in September. But we can at least get a glimpse of how OnePluss U.S. pricing compares to the Samsung Galaxy S8.

Launched yesterday, the OnePlus 5 costs$479 (64GB) and $539 (128GB). This followed the Samsung Galaxy S8 (64GB), which was unveiled a few months ago and which originally cost around $720 off-contract, though Best Buy and Samsung arenow selling it directly for $625 only a fraction more than the price of the 16GB Samsung Galaxy S5 back in 2014.

Using the original off-contract pricing through carriers, we can see that OnePlus has jumped up in price to 66 percent of Samsungs Galaxy flagship at launch, and almost 77 percent when we use todays unlocked Samsung Galaxy S8 price.

There is little question that OnePlus still offers great value devices they are high-end in nearly every way, irrespective of spurious benchmarking.

But while OnePlus could once boast about a sub-$300 smartphone, today its base-level device is a smidgen under $500. Compared to two big-name competitors, its price point has shifted from around 40-50 percent cheaper to only around 20 percent less pricey than the big guns.

This isnt a criticism. As noted, OnePlus does offer great hardware and it is still markedly cheaper than other flagships on the market. But it is no longer the young upstart seeking to blast the competition out the water with ludicrously low prices and high-end specs. It has had to up its game on many fronts, including providing decent customer support, which it has been increasingly investing in. But all that comes at a price, and that price, it seems, translates to more expensive smartphones.

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OnePlus price evolution has made its smartphones less competitive - VentureBeat