A turning point in human evolution has been identified through reanalysis of a single stone tool found in Tabun Cave in northern Israel, from about 350,000 years ago. It had been used not to bash animals or butcher their carcasses but to abrade soft material, possibly animal hides, much earlier in human evolution than had been thought, say Ron Shimelmitz, Iris Groman-Yaroslavski, Mina Weinstein-Evron and Danny Rosenberg from the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa.

Grinding and abrading (scraping) had only been thought to have developed much later, Shimelmitz explains to Haaretz. The entire engagement in this technology is much later, around 200,000 years ago, he says.

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Yes, based on one tool, this discovery, reported in the Journal of Human Evolution, changes our thinking about part of our deep technological evolution.

Abrading stones abound in Africa and Europe starting about 200,000 years ago, from which point there was more frequent evidence of that technology, explains Shimelmitz, an expert in the evolution of technology. But it is also true that given that assumption, archaeologists hadnt necessarily been looking for such artifacts at earlier sites for one thing, theyre very hard to identify. You need to look for them, he adds.

You can fairly easily identify a knapped stone, especially the likes of arrowheads or spear points and especially when theyre made of flint a stone widely preferred because its so hard. They look quite unnatural. It is, conversely, not trivial to identify an abrading or grinding stone, which looks like a stone.

However, the authors point out that this particular piece of dolomite stood out among the tens of thousands of knapped stone tools found in Tabun Cave, located on the Mount Carmel range south of Haifa, from various periods of occupation. And they concluded that it wasnt just any chalky rock, but a tool, through microscopic use-wear analysis, including examination of the patterns on the cobbles surface, which were compared with known naturally weathered surfaces.

The importance of this technology [abradement] hadnt been on the table regarding the ancient world, Shimelmitz says. And why was the invention of abrading a crucial turning point? Because thats the way of humankind, he explains. To shape materials and our environment, to improve our adaptation to situations. The tools are external to our bodies and enable us to do things we couldnt do without them. Abradement is another significant technology within our possibility to adapt the environment. It appeared relatively late in human evolution; we thought very late; and now we show that its roots are deeper. We need to open our eyes wider.

Asked why, actually, abrading was so significant to our evolution, he brings the example of hides. You cant just skin an animal and comfortably wear its pelt. It is better to scrape off the fat and muscle remains, and soften the hide by abrading a precursor to proper tanning than to strut around garbed in decaying aurochs.

Does this mean the abrasion-stone of Tabun indicates there was a Middle Stone Age fashion? Not necessarily. The use-wear experiments conducted on the ground-breaking stone indicate that it was used on soft material (as opposed to bone, for instance), but not which soft material. It could have been hides used for clothing, or might not have been.

Great leaps forward

Usage of stone tools goes back at least 3.3 million years, well before modern humans were even a gleam in the eye of evolution. The first tools were large, crude hammers. Over the ages, as hominins gained sophistication, tool manufacture and use became more finely developed.

But throughout the period loosely known as the Early Stone Age, usage was confined to vertical motions: striking, battering and pounding, and then using knapped stones as knives as the researchers put it, applying a thin or narrow working edge of the stone tool.

In any case abradement, now known to have begun at least 350,000 years ago, is a precursor to a game-changer in human behavior and evolution: grinding grain.

Grinding grain comes much later, nearer the modern time and not the prehistoric time, Shimelmitz qualifies. Thats the end of the process. But this was a significant addition to the human tool chest. We note that mortars used possibly to grind grain have been found in Neolithic sites in Israel, from over 10,000 years ago.

The discovery of abrading in the Middle Pleistocene, which requires applying a wide working surface of the tool by means of sequential horizontal motions to modify or reduce the target surfaces of a materia,l rather than banging or stabbing at it, fits in with the bigger figure of huge strides among early hominin abilities to harness technology to shape their environment, the team explains.

Asked to elaborate, Shimelmitz points to two key behaviors that developed during that span one being a leap forward in the use of fire.

It remains an open question when fire was tamed in the sense that archaic humans could help themselves to a burning bush in order to roast their dinner and when our ancestors achieved control of fire, meaning they could ignite it at will. At sites dating to the Middle Pleistocene there is a giant step up in the discovery of purposely burned stuff, he say. One of those sites, by the way, is Tabun itself.

Another marked change in behavior is that during the Middle Pleistocene, hominins seem to have developed the concept of base camps, meaning a place they were leaving and coming back to every day (where they could curl up by their fire). Base camp and fire became a way of life during the Middle Stone Age, Shimelmitz says.

Asked if the upswing in intensity of occupation doesnt mean home, Shimelmitz agrees that one could see it that way. And this intensification also speaks to socialization and group structure. There is a reason early humans would return to their base camp every day. This was a period of intense change in the behavior of humankind, he sums up.

Israel has apparently been on the migration route for the human species for almost two million years. While solid evidence of hominin migration that far back is sparse, it has been demonstrated that the environmental conditions in the key region of the Negev desert were hospitable at the time, and hominin remains going back hundreds of thousands of years, as well as modern human remains, abound in this area. It begs qualifying that the study by Shimelmitz and his colleagues reevaluated previous discoveries at Tabun Cave, which had been used by hominins for hundreds of thousands of years, as of the early Stone Age. The cave was first explored by the famed British archaeologist Dorothy Garrod in the 1930s.

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At the end of the day, this is less a story about one rock found around 150,000 years earlier than had been expected, and more a story about what the artifact represents how deep abrading behavior, a totally different form of tool use, goes back in time.

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A 350,000-year-old turning point in human evolution found in Israel - Haaretz.com

The question facing Johnson, chair and associate professor of Environmental Studies, was simple: Why is the Gorge so deep? What makes it so different than other rivers in the area?

While he stared at the maps, Olivia Stanley, an environmental studies major and 2020 graduate, came to him with findings from a research project. Her work transformed how Johnson saw his research.

I had spent the better part of my last two years at Davidson researching the Gorge, Stanley said. In the summer of 2019, with a grant from the Davidson Research Initiative, I walked miles and miles of riverside trails, taking field notes and turning them into a digital mapping of the Linville River and Gorge.

That map showed that the Linville River starts much farther up in the Blue Ridge than other streams around it, Johnson said. It looked just like stream profiles in Virginia that we had looked at in class the day before.

That paper focused on stream capturethe geological phenomenon when water from one stream is diverted into another, steeper stream. The similarity between the captured streams in Virginia and the Linville River seemed to indicate that stream capture might help to explain the unique nature of Linville Gorge.

At its most simple, it is really a question of which way a river flows, Johnson said. Rivers on top of the Blue Ridge Escarpmentthe steep section of terrain that leads into the mountainstend to be slow, meandering rivers that eventually drain toward the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile, streams on the face of the Blue Ridge Escarpment are much steeper and drain toward the Atlantic. This creates a situation where the steeper streams that drain east can steal flow from the lazier streams on top.

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Research Reveals Origins of River, Evolution of Ancient Landscape - Davidson News

MIDDLETOWN A new Images of America book about the history of Wesleyan University and the street it dominates was a meticulously researched labor of love for its coauthors, they said.

Middletown municipal historian Deborah Shapiro and Portland architect Alain Munkittrick, a 1973 graduate of Wesleyan, teamed up on Middletowns High Street & Wesleyan University, a 12-month-long intensive project published in this year.

Shapiro, retired 10-year executive director of the Middlesex County Historical Society, has contributed to several other Images of America books, including Legendary Locals of Middletown, co-authored by Robert and Kathleen Hubbard.

Munkittrick wrote his senior thesis on the Samuel Russell House, which can be found at the corner of Washington and High streets. He was the only student named to the Wesleyan Landmarks Advisory Board, set up to help the college learn how to care for and restore its historic properties, he said. That piqued his interest even further.

It took close to a year to research, gather photos, and edit the 127-page volume, chock full of details discovered through land records, area libraries, and online and other sources. For me, that was the most enjoyable aspect, to learn even more about High Street, Munkittrick said.

The architects biggest asset was in describing the buildings, Shapiro said. My strength was bringing my lawyerly skills in the title searching, and going back and putting the pieces together.

That was necessary because the properties there now used to be much larger parcels situated in a rural, agriculture area, she said.

When you get into the early 1800s, late 1700s, it gets a little dicey, because the descriptions are this is the Pearce place by the oak tree, which, of course, the oak tree met its demise many years ago, Shapiro said.

Materials at Wesleyans Special Collections & Archives, the Middletown Room at the Russell Library, and the historical societys own extensive collection were among items used for research.

Over the course of five chapters, consisting of dozens upon dozens of historical photographs, the authors tell the story of the once highly regarded road, home to Wesleyan Row, the group of brownstone buildings at the center of the block. Its scope covers the area from Washington Street south to Warwick Street.

The writers were constrained by the Images of America parameters, which allowed for no more than 70 words per caption, Shapiro said. We encountered a lot of stories that didnt make it into the book. We chose the [photos] that were the most compelling, and would tell the most complete story, because we were starting with the settlement of the street in the late 1600s, early 1700s, when photography hadnt been invented yet.

Most illustrations from that era are paintings.

High Street is perched high on a hill, hence its name, and once afforded people a sense of prestige and sweeping view of the Connecticut River, now mostly obstructed by buildings, trees and other obstacles.

Many stories couldnt fully fit into the book, the authors said. For instance, the Rev. Enoch Huntington, minister of First Church, which used to occupy High Street, headed the parish during the Revolutionary War, Shapiro said. His brother Samuel signed the Declaration of Independence from Connecticut. He was the first president of the Continental Congress, Munkittrick said.

Samuel Huntingtons daughter Mary married Matthew Talcott Russell, cousin of Samuel Russell. Their son, William Huntington Russell, became a distinguished general, Shapiro said. He and Alphonso Taft, father of President William Howard Taft, founded the Skull and Bones Society at Yale University in New Haven.

A generation later, president Taft and William Huntington Russells son courted another woman named Mary. Taft lost out, Shapiro said. Mary was the great-grandmother of Jill Hunting, a writer from California, who discovered she was a descendant of Enoch Huntingon.

Hunting later visited Middletown, and she and Shapiro spent an afternoon talking about her ancestors. One day, Shapiro was watching the Ken Burns series on the Vietnam War, and saw Huntings name run quickly through the credits.

Shapiro wondered what her contribution was to the movie. Huntings brother, Pete Hunting, a 1963 graduate of Wesleyan, had become a civilian aid worker in Vietnam. It turned out he was the first American non-military member killed in the Vietnam War, Shapiro said.

Shapiro spent a great deal of time in the town clerks office, deep in the basements vault so much so that workers joked they should name the room after her. There, records turned up family names, which the two used to search newspapers online, Munkittrick said. That added a lot of flavor to the story and rounded out the picture of who these people were, what their occupations were, how they may have been related to other families on the street, he said.

That process was a lot of fun, said Munkittrick, who found a photo of Mr. and Mrs. Charles and Amelia H. Vinal (whom the state technical school is named for) among the cemetery records compiled on the Find a Grave site. Since every illustration can only be used with permission, he discovered the owner just so happens to live down the road from him.

This person could be anywhere in the world, and it turns out, shes a descendant of the Vinals and she lives in East Hampton, said Munkittrick, who spent an afternoon talking to her about the family history.

Munkittrick calls High Street a museum of American architectural building styles, ranging from the early 18th century through to modern day. Among them Greek Revival, Italianate, stick style, Second Empire, Gothic Revival and Eclecticism. All those styles you can find a great example of on High Street, he said.

The 127-page book, printed by Arcadia Publishing, is available at area bookstores, including Wesleyan R.J. Julia Bookstore, at 413 Main St.; the historical society, 151 Main St., by calling 860-346-0746; Arcadia Publishing, Amazon.com, as well as other online retailers. All proceeds go to the historical society.

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New book explores Wesleyan and evolution of High Street in Middletown - Middletown Press

We examine the origins of the Kepler 36 planetary system, which features two very different planets: Kepler 36b, (|$rm rho = 7.46$| |$rm g$| |$rm cm^{-3}$|) and Kepler 36c (|$rm rho = 0.89$| |$rm g$| |$rm cm^{-3}$|). The planets lie extremely close to one another, separated by just 0.01AU, and they orbit just a tenth of an AU from the host star. In our origin scenario, Kepler 36b starts with far less mass than Kepler 36c, a gaseous giant planet that forms outside the ice line and quickly migrates inward, capturing its neighbour into its 2:1 mean-motion resonance while continuing to move inward through a swarm of planetesimals and protoplanets. Subsequent collisions with these smaller bodies knock Kepler 36b out of resonance and raise its mass and density (via self-compression). We find that our scenario can yield planets whose period ratio matches that of Kepler 36b and c, although these successes are rare, occurring in just 1.2 per cent of cases. However, since systems like Kepler 36 are themselves rare, this is not necessarily a drawback.

This content is only available as a PDF.

2020 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Exploring the Origin and Evolution of the Kepler 36 System - Oxford Academic

2020 has been quite the year! The pandemic changed a lot about the world including the ways in which paleoanthropologists, archaeologists, and other fieldwork-based researchers operate. This year, we want to highlight the different lines of evidence that are used in human origins research so weve organized our nine highlighted discoveries into four broader lines of evidence categories. Since many scientific articles are years in the making, a lot of exciting discoveries were still revealed in 2020!

1. Fossil footprints tell us where and how modern humans traveled the globe

While we may not be able to move around much this year, three studies on fossil human footprints published in 2020 revealed a lot more about where ancient humans traveled and how they moved together in groups. Unlike body fossils, footprints (and other trace fossils) offer us a snapshot of an exact moment in time, or at least a very short time interval. In December, the longest trackway of fossil human footprints was announced by Matthew R. Bennett and colleagues. This ~11,500-13,000 year old, 1.3 km/0.8 mile long trackway, roughly the length of 14 football fields, was made by a woman (or juvenile male) holding a 2-3 year old toddler while on their journey through a rough and dangerous landscape. How do we know? Every so often the adult footprints pause and are joined by a childs footprints. The footprints go in a straight and definite line, and pretty fast, indicating a deliberate end target; they then return in the opposite direction, this time without the child.

But did Pleistocene humans always travel solo? Heck no! Another 2020 announcement, this one in May from Chatham Universitys Kevin Hatala and colleagues (including Briana Pobiner!), analyzed the largest fossil footprint assemblage in Africa. Between 6,000 19,000 years ago, a group of modern humans walked through a mudflow in the shadow of the Oldoinyo Lengai volcano in Tanzania. The 408 footprints left behind by 17 individuals help us understand not only the heights and weights of the footprint-makers, but using statistical analysis based on a large data set of modern human feet, the team determined that the walking group probably consisted of 14 female and 2 male individuals. Comparing this to ethnographic data from modern forager groups such as the Hadza in Tanzania, they concluded that the footprints were probably made by adult females with occasional visits or accompaniment by a few adult males during a food gathering session. Finally, footprints can simply reveal that humans were someplace we didnt know they were at that time, like with these ~120,000 year old human and animal footprints found on an ancient lake surface in a current Saudi Arabian desert by Michael Petraglia from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and colleagues. Before this discovery, the earliest evidence of humans moving into the heart of Arabia dated back to ~85,000 years ago.

2. Fossil primates also undertook major journeys

While discoveries directly related to humans evolutionary journey are important, understanding how now-extinct primates survived, thrived, and traveled across the globe is just as exciting! In October , a team led by Nina Jablonski and Xueping Ji from Penn State University and Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology respectively, found three new ~6.4 million year old Mesopithecus pentelicus fossils in Yunan Province, China. These late Miocene fossils indicate that this ecologically versatile and adaptable ancient monkey lived in Asia at the same time as apes and the likely descendants of this species (modern colobines of Asia) have continued this trend by inhabiting some of the most highly seasonal and extreme habitats occupied by nonhuman primates.

Speaking of extreme did you know that researchers think monkeys rafted all the way across the Atlantic? In April, Erik Seiffert from University of Southern California and colleagues announced a new tiny soup-can-sized fossil monkey species Ucayalipithecus perditabased on four fossil monkey teeth that they found deep in the Peruvian Amazon. This newly discovered species belongs to an extinct family of African primates known as parapithecids, which are now the third lineage of mammals that made the >900 mile transatlantic journey to get from Africa to South America, most likely on floating rafts of vegetation that broke off from coastlines during a storm. Sounds improbable, but monkeys can survive without access to fresh water if they get enough food like fruit that could have been on a tree on the vegetation raft. Finally, in September, a team led by Hunter Colleges Christopher C. Gilbert announced another new fossil primate: this time a ~13 million year old ape, Kapi ramnagarensis, from a fossil molar found at Ramnagar in northern India. This new species pushes the fossil record of gibbons back by about five million years, and provides significant information about when the ancestors of todays gibbons migrated to Asia from Africa which was around the same time ancient great apes were undertaking the same migration.

3. New fossils hominins from Drimolen, South Africa

No list of important finds in human evolution would be complete without fossil evidence of hominins themselves, and this year the site of Drimolen in South Africa was the big winner. First, in April, a team led by Andy I. R. Herries from La Trobe University announced new fossils of both Paranthropus robustus (DNH 152) and Homo erectus (DNH 134) dating to between ~2.04 and 1.95 million years ago, making these the oldest fossils of both of these hominin species. These finds demonstrate the contemporaneity of these two species at this site with Australopithecus africanus and DNH 134 pushes back the origin of Homo erectus by about 150,000 200,000 years. And aspiring paleoanthropologists, check this out: Jesse Martin and Angeline Leece, who were both students attending a field school at Drimolen when DNH 143 was found in 2015, got to clean and reconstruct the skull. They had to hold the specimen, which consisted of more than 150 pieces of a ~3 year old child, together without coughing, sneezing, or even talking, and controlling their breathing for up to 40 minutes at a time!

Drimolen seems to be the gift that keeps on giving (us fossils): in 2018, the team found two more Paranthropus fossils, including the ~2 million year old DNH 155 adult male cranium (also found by a field school student, Samantha Good). The analysis of this specimen led by Jesse M. Martin from La Trobe University was published this year in November, and especially comparisons to other adult male Paranthropus robustus fossils from Drimolen and elsewhere in South Africa, suggests that differences previously ascribed to sexual dimorphism (differences between males and females) are actually examples of microevolution related to ecological change within this early hominin species.

4. Denisovan DNA found in cave sediments and modern humans

Back to our theme of migration (can you tell we miss being able to, you know, go places?!?) One of this years big announcements, in October, was the first definitive evidence of Denisovans outside of Denisova Cave in Siberia from ~2800 km/~1,740 miles away in Tibet! A team led by Dongju Zhang from Lanzhou University wanted to test the hypothesis that a ~160,000 year old partial jawbone found by a Buddhist monk in Baishiya Karst Cave might be the remains of a Denisovan. First, in 2019, they used a new method based on protein variations to identify the jaw as Denisovan; but the novel method and unknown exact location of where the jaw was found in the cave led to continued skepticism. Determined to find more evidence, Zhang and her team returned to the cave. They agreed to excavate only in winter and at night, in sub-zero temperatures, to avoid disturbing worshippers and were rewarded by Denisovan mitochondrial DNA from the cave sediments, dated to between 100,000 60,000 years ago, and possibly as recently as 45,000 years ago. The research team also found charcoal from fires Denisovans built in the cave, as well as stone tools and fossil animal bones.

Also in October, a team led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropologys Svante Pbo and Diyendo Massilani analyzed a ~34,000 year old modern human womans skullcap found by miners in 2006 the only Pleistocene fossil currently known from Mongolia as well as a ~40,000 year old modern human male skull from Tianyuan Cave in China. They found that both fossils contain DNA from both Neanderthals and Denisovans. What does this evidence mean for interactions and migrations among Eurasian Pleistocene populations? Well, it was complicated. Because the Denisovan DNA sequences in these fossils around not found in present-day Oceanians (Australian Aboriginals and New Guineans), but they are found in present-day East Asians, modern humans must have met and exchanged genes with two different populations of Denisovans one in Southeast Asia, and one in mainland Asia. This suggests that Denisovans once inhabited a pretty large area of Asia. Looks like its time to find more Denisovan fossils (fingers crossed)!

In the meantime, museums are continuing to work on digitization programs so that scientists can study and have access to collections regardless of pandemics or long distances: the National Museums of Kenya and our own Smithsonian institution have already been working to make 3D reconstructions of their fossils available to researchers from around the world. If youve also been missing visiting museums, like us, the Smithsonian has created a way to view fossils from the safety of your own home! While we wait for more Denisovan fossils to be discovered, you can use this VR technology to see through a Neanderthals eyes and get up close and personal with some mammoths!

Featured image by Karen Carr/National Park Service.

Edited by Jason Organ, PhD, Indiana University School of Medicine.

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Top 9 Discoveries in Human Evolution, 2020 Edition - PLoS Blogs

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Semiconductors are one of the modern worlds essential industries, making possible so much of what we rely on or take for granted: internet access, high-speed computers with high-speed memory, even the thermostats that control our air conditioning there isnt much, tech-wise, that doesnt use semiconductor chips.With the end of 2020 in sight, its time for the annual ritual of evaluating the equities for the New Year. Wells Fargo analyst Aaron Rakers has cast his eye on the chip industry, tagging several companies as likely gainers next year.The analyst sees several factors combining to boost demand for chips in 2021, including cloud demand, new gaming consoles, and a market resolution to the future of the PC segment. Overall, however, Rakers expects that memory chips and 5G enabled chips will emerge as the drivers of the industry next year. The analyst expects that semiconductor companies, as a group, will see between 10% and 12% growth over the next 12 months.Thats an industry-wide average, however. According to Raker, some chip companies will show significantly higher growth, on the order of 30% to 40% in year ahead. We can look at those companies, along with the latest TipRanks data, to find out what makes these particular chip makers so compelling.Micron Technology (MU)Among the leading chip makers, Micron has staked out a position in the memory segment. The company has seen its market cap expand to $78 billion this year, as shares have appreciated 32% year-to-date. The surge comes on a product line heaving on computer data storage, DRAM, and flash storage.Look back at 2020, Micron has seen revenues increase each quarter, from $4.8 billion in Q1 to $5.4 billion in Q2 to $6.1 billion in Q3. Earnings came in at 87 cents per share, up from 71 cents in Q2 and 36 cents in Q1.The calendar third quarter was Microns 4QFY20, and the full fiscal year showed a decline due attributed to the COVID pandemic. Revenue came in at $21.44 billion, down 8.4% year-over-year, and operating cash flow fell to $8.31 billion from $13.19 billion in FY19. During this past quarter, Microns 1QFY21, the company announced the release of the worlds first 176-layer 3D NAND chip. The new chip promises higher density and faster performance in flash memory, and the architecture is described as a radical breakthrough. The layer count is 40% higher than competing chips.Looking ahead, Micron has updated its F1Q21 guidance, predicting total revenue of $5.7 billion to $5.75 billion. This is a 10% increase from the previous guidance.Wells Fargo's Aaron Rakers calls Micron his top semiconductor idea for 2021. He points out a deepening positive view on the memory, and in particular the DRAM industry. DRAM accounts for approximately two-thirds of Microns revenue and over 80% of the companys bottom-line profits. In addition, Rakers notes Microns technology execution 1Znm DRAM leadership; recently outlined 1nm ramp into 2021, as well as Microns move to 176-Layer 2nd -gen Replacement Gate 3D NAND to drive improved cost curve. We would also highlight Microns execution on graphics memory (e.g., GDDR6X), Multi-Chip Packages (MCPs), and High-Bandwidth Memory (e.g., HBME2) as positives.In line with these comments, Rakers rates Micron shares a Buy, along with a $100 price target. This figure suggests room for 41% growth in 2021. (To watch Rakers track record, click here)Micron has 24 recent reviews on record, breaking down to 19 Buys, 4 Holds, and 1 Sell, and giving the stock a Strong Buy from the analyst consensus. Shares are priced at $70.96, and recent appreciation has pushed them almost to the $74.30 average price target. But as Rakers outlook suggests, there may be more than just 4.5% upside available here. (See MU stock analysis on TipRanks)Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)With $6.5 billion in total sales last year, and a market cap of $110.7 billion, AMD is a giant company but it doesnt even crack the top five of the worlds largest chip makers. Still, AMD has a solid position in the industry, and its x86 processors provide stiff competition for market-leading Intel (INTC). AMD shares have shown solid growth this year, and are up 101% as 2020 comes to a close.The share growth rides on the back of steady revenue gains since the corona crisis peaked in Q1. AMDs Q3 top line came in at $2.8 billion, up 55% from the $1.8 billion recorded in the year-ago quarter and beating the forecast by 10%. Earnings, at 37 cents per share, were up 220% year-over-year. The company credited the growth to solid results in the PC, gaming, and data center product lines, and boasted that it was the fourth consecutive quarter with >25% yoy revenue growth.AMD announced last month a new product for the scientific research market, the Instinct MI100 accelerator. The new chip is billed as the worlds fasted HPC GPU, and the first such x86 server to exceed 10 teraflops performance.Covering AMD for Wells Fargo, Rakers wrote: We remain positive on AMDs competitive positioning for continued sustained gradual share gains in PCs We also believe AMDs deepening data center GPU strategy with new Instinct MI100 GPUs and the release of RoCM 4.0 software platform could become increasingly visible as we move through 2021. AMDs roadmap execution would remain an important focus 7nm+ Ryzen 4000-series, new RDNA Radeon Instinct data center GPUs (MI100 / MI120), and the 3 rd -gen 7nm+ EPYC Milan CPUsRakers stance supports his Buy rating, and his $120 price target implies a 30% one-year upside to the stock.The Moderate Buy analyst consensus view on AMD reflects some residual Wall Street caution. The stocks 20 recent reviews include 13 Buys, 6 Holds, and 1 Sell. AMD shares are selling for $91.64, and like Micron, their recent appreciation has closed the gap with the $94.71 average price target. (See AMD stock analysis on TipRanks)Western Digital Corporation (WDC)Closing out the Wells Fargo picks on this list is Western Digital, a designer and manufacturer of memory systems. The companys products include hard disk drives, solid state drives, data center platforms, embedded flash drives, and portable storage including memory cards and USB thumb drives. WDC has had a tough year in 2020, with shares down 19% year-to-date. Still, the stock has seen gains in November and December, on the heels of what was seen as a strong fiscal 1Q21 report.That earnings report showed $3.9 billion in revenue, which was down 3% year-over-year, but the EPS net loss, at 19 cents, was a tremendous yoy improvement from the 93-cent net loss in the year-ago quarter. The earnings improvement, which beat the forecast by 20%, was key for investors, and the stock is up 30% since the quarterly report. The company also generated a solid cash flow in the quarter, with cash from operations growing 111% sequentially.Wells Fargos Rakers acknowledges WDCs difficulties in 2020, but even so, he believes that this is a stock which is worth the risk.Western Digital has been our toughest constructive call of 2020 and while we believe calling a bottom in NAND Flash (mid/2H2021?) remains difficult and WDs execution in enterprise SSDs will remain choppy, our SOTP analysis leaves us to continue to believe that shares present a compelling risk / reward. We continue to believe that Western Digital can drive to a ~$7/sh.+ mid-cycle EPS story; however, we continue to think a key driver of this fundamental upside will not only be a recovery in the NAND Flash business, coupled with WDs ability to see improved execution in enterprise SSDs, but also a continued view that WDs HDD gross margin can return to a sustainable 30%+ level, Rakers opined.To this end, Rakers rates WDC a Buy along with a $65 price target. Should the target be met, investors could pocket gains of 29% over the next months Where does the rest of the Street side on this computer-storage maker? It appears mostly bullish, as TipRanks analytics demonstrate WDC as a Buy. Out of 11 analysts tracked in the last 3 months, 7 are bullish, while 4 remain sidelined. With a return potential of 9%, the stocks consensus target price stands at $54.44. (See WDC stock analysis on TipRanks)To find good ideas for tech stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks Best Stocks to Buy, a newly launched tool that unites all of TipRanks equity insights.Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the featured analysts. The content is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment.

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Geopolitical Instability such as Chinese Naval Expansionism Driving Evolution across the Global Naval Command and Control Market - Yahoo Finance

When a persons feeling ill and warm, we tend to check their temperature to see if theyre experiencing any fever, allowing you to determine if they should be brought to the hospital immediately. Fortunately, there are a ton of ways on how you can take someones temperature. It can be done through the mouth, ears, forehead, underarm, or rectal.

Along with this, the device that you use to take the temperature has made an evolution that allows you to accurately take ones temperature. One of the most advanced devices in taking someones temperature would be a temperature screening kiosk thats designed for business use. Not only that theyre able to capture ones temperature, but theyre also able to capture the persons photo for database management.

Heres how taking temperatures progressed:

Mercury Thermometer

The mercury thermometer is the oldest medical instrument thats used to detect ones thermometer. Theyre made out of glass and have liquid mercury inside of it that rises up or down, depending on the temperature of the metal end. Along with the glass, it also includes a scale to further help you identify the temperature of a person.

When using this type of thermometer, its best that you gently shake it to reduce the mercury level, capturing better results after it lowers in height. You can use this orally, rectally, and placing it in between your underarms. You just have to wait until the liquid mercury stops moving to make sure that it has made its final count.

Take note that you need to be extra careful when handling mercury thermometer as theyre prone to breakage. Liquid mercury can be toxic and extremely dangerous.

Digital Thermometer

A digital thermometer is a plastic device that uses a sensor instead of a liquid, providing maximum safety in case of breakage.

The digital thermometer is a relatively new invention that makes it easy to keep track of ones temperature. A digital thermometer has no moving parts so it can be kept anywhere. Instead, a digital thermometer contains a microprocessor chip and a small resistor. When a temperature change occurs, the microprocessor senses a slight change in the resistance. The chip then converts the slight change in resistance into an electrical signal and transmits it to the microprocessor's internal memory. The microprocessor interprets the voltage change and provides an electronic readout on the thermometer's display in degrees (Fahrenheit or Celsius).

You must learn to disinfect your thermometer after each use, most especially when you use this at a hospital.

Basal Thermometer

Much like a standard digital thermometer, a basal thermometer simply measures your bodys temperature. The main difference is that it only measures very little incrementsa fraction of a degree or a tenth of a degree.

There are plenty of advantages when using basal thermometers over regular digital thermometers. For one, theyre a lot more accurate than other thermometers. This is because they require less information, giving you accurate readings. Most of them give readings that are within an inch or two of each other.

Temporal Artery Thermometer (TAT)

The TAT is another portable and lightweight handheld device that allows you to capture the temperature of one person without inserting the device into their mouth. All you need to do is to point the sensor on their forehead, press the button, and you should see the results in seconds.

The TAT captures the heat thats naturally released by the skin through the temporal artery. Take note that the arteries receive blood directly from the heart, making it a great and convenient way to check the hearts temperature.

Tympanic Thermometer

A tympanic thermometer refers to a simple apparatus thats commonly used to determine the bodys temperature. This is a handheld, wand-like device that captures a persons temperature from their ear.

It works by using infrared light that helps detect thermal radiation that's emitted from the tympanic membrane. With this, it calculates the emission gathered and converts it into a numerical temperature that allows you to determine the persons temperature. A Tympanic Thermometer should be used by a healthcare professional so can provide accurate results.

Conclusion

With the modern world today, we now have thermometers that allow us to capture a persons temperature without direct contact. This is helpful most especially when youre using this in hospitals since direct contact might result in unintentionally spreading a disease.

Not only has the thermometer evolved, but medical technology has evolved as well, enabling healthcare professionals to help more people as much as they possibly can.

If your fever is above 38C for more than 2 days, you should consult with your doctor immediately. If you reached 40C, immediately contact your doctor and dont wait for other symptoms to show up. Its always important that you look out for your temperature especially when youre sick.

Lori Graham

Lori Graham is full-time blogger who writes articles about the developments in the healthcare industry. Lori aims to help her readers improve the quality of their lives by educating and encouraging the make the most out of the newest trends from the healthcare industry.

During her leisure, Lori loves to read books at home.

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The Evolution Of Taking Someone's Temperature - HealthTechZone

CHICAGO So much has changed in one year. And its still changing. As the world evolves, the food supply chain is looking to the COVID-19 retail landscape to prepare for the future.

The pace and breadth of change has been stunning and is really putting a premium on your ability as a retailer to be agile and to adopt and be willing to make changes on the fly, said Walter Robb, former longtime co-chief executive officer of Whole Foods Market, Austin, Texas, and current executive-in-residence at S2G Ventures, Chicago, during a Dec. 1 webinar hosted by Spark Change and presented by Naturally Chicago and New Hope Network. Why does retail matter? Because retail mirrors, reects and captures the rhythms of our lives. Everything that happens at retail touches everything across the entire food supply chain.

A recent report from S2G Ventures, The Future of Food: Through the Lens of Retail, was the catalyst for the webinar. Mr. Robb and co-author S2G vice president Audre Kapacinskas wrote, The pandemic has shined the brightest of lights on our food system, and retailers sit squarely in the middle. Each new day brings new innovation and evolution in customer choice and system changes.

S2G Ventures mission is to back the best entrepreneurs that are improving the overall health and sustainability of the food system. COVID-19 helped them identify opportunities for more improvements. Mr. Robb explained that the changes the natural products industry has seen this year were not revolutionary but rather accelerations of evolutionary trends already in progress.

Retailing of the future is going to be dimensional, he said. Its not just about the products and values. Its also the community in which it is situated and also the way in which commerce is done.

According to the report, in this next evolution of food, much of what was once aspirational will be considered table stakes.

Theres much more context going on, Mr. Robb said. Delivery and curbside pickup are absolute table stakes going forward. It is going to be essential to provide those services to customers if you want to play in this new world order.

Every retailer will need to experiment with new formats, everything from design to location to size. Retailers need to prepare for the return of restaurants. To stay competitive, retail foodservice needs to change.

The perimeter of the store is such an important area in every way, including profitability, said Brandon Barnholt, CEO of KeHE Distributors, Naperville, Ill. The perimeter is changing in front of our eyes.

Bulk foods scooping stuff into bags shut down immediately (at the onset of the pandemic). Retailers responded with contactless bulk.

Fresh Thyme, Downers Grove, Ill., for example, built a business around bulk ingredients and snack foods, as well as grab-and-go bakery items, antipasto buffet and soup/salad bar. The store even had a grind-your-own oats machine; pour-your-own honey, vinegar and olive oil; and cream-your-own nut butter. Now Fresh Thyme offers shoppers contactless bulk for dry items, as well as pre-packaged bulk in many varied sizes. Fluid bulk is pre-portioned in containers on an as-needed basis. Stores recently opened the self-serve soup bar, with an enhanced plastic shield and instructions to use a napkin when touching the ladle. Hand sanitizing stations are adjacent.

Its all about quick pivots, Mr. Barnholt said. Doing everything they can do to serve customers.

Mr. Robb predicted that future growth in food retail will be driven by an interaction between community/customer engagement (digital engagement, frictionless instore experience and transparency); commerce/sales channel (omnichannel capabilities, smart fulfillment and resilient fresh food); and content/products sold (product curation, farmacy focus, values-first marketing and sustainability as brand affinity).

Theres a need for innovation to address these opportunities within commerce, community and content in order to drive future growth for food retailers, Mr. Robb said.

Anu Goel, president of client growth solutions, SPINS, Chicago, said, Weve advanced four to five years technologically. Theres a broadening of who is shopping online and what is being shopped. Everybody is doing it now, and across all categories.

Whereas the online shopper before the pandemic skewed younger, today four different generations are actively engaging. Eating at home is one COVID-19 impact that is likely to have staying power with the rise of grocery pickup and delivery, as well as the growth in ghost kitchens and food delivery options. Retailers need to pivot to stay relevant.

See the article here:

The next evolution of food retail: Pivot, or you're out - Food Business News

Evolution is often an unpredictable cocktail of happy accidents, environmental anomalies, and that just-right blend of genetic material assembling in fortuitous order.So it's nosurprise thatpaleontologists are somewhatbaffled by a new species of creaturethey've officially namedAdalatherium hui,which, as translated fromMalagasy and Greek,means "crazy beast."

But more than just a weird 66-million-year-old mammal that lived during the Age of the Dinosaur when the mighty T-rex reigned supreme, Adalatherium is a vital componentofthe complicatedmystery ofearly mammalian evolution in the Southern Hemisphere.

As detailed in a new studypublished last weekin theJournal of Vertebrate Paleontology, a14-member team of international researchers headed upby Dr. David Krauseof the Denver Museum of Nature & Scienceand Dr. Simone Hoffmann of the New York Institute of Technologydescribed their intensive analysis of the odd, opossum-sized animal that existed nearthe end of the Cretaceous periodon the island of Madagascar.

These new revelations delvedeep into the evolutionary history of mammals from the prehistoric supercontinent of Gondwana known currentlyas Africa, South America, Australia, Antarctica, the Indian subcontinent, and the Arabian Peninsula.

Adalatherium is part of an extinct collectionof early mammals catalogued asgondwanatherians, which were initially unearthedbackin the 1980s, butthen known onlyby a scattering ofteeth and jaw fragments.

For this latest study, research on this unusualanimal was carried out over a 20-year stretch using its perfectly preserved fossilzed remainsthat representthe most complete skeleton for any mammal discovered so far in the Southern Hemisphere before the dinosaurs became extinct.Adalatherium appears to be a jumbo-sizedrelative to the shrew-like, or mouse-ishmammals that thrived in that primeval environment.

In addition to the fact that Adalatherium was born withmore trunk vertebrae than most other mammals, its thickhind limbs were arrangedin asprawling position like today's crocodiles or lizards.These powerful back legs were paired withbulky,sprinting front legs tucked beneaththe torso, identical to most mammals seen in modern times.

It also sported rabbit-like front teeth coupled with a set of back teeth never observed in any other known mammal,living or extinct, as well asa sizableholein the bones at the crownof itssnout.

"Knowing what we know about the skeletal anatomy of all living and extinct mammals, it is difficult to imagine that a mammal likeAdalatheriumcould have evolved; it bends and even breaks a lot of rules," Krause explains. "Islands are the stuff of weirdness,and there was therefore ample time forAdalatheriumto develop its many extraordinarily peculiar features in isolation."

Sure, when seen in these detailed, life-like reconstructionsby renowned paleoartist Andrey Atuchin, it seems like a typical badger, but under its familiar-looking skin is an evolutionary puzzlement forthe ages.

"Adalatheriumis simply odd," notes Hoffman."Trying to figure out how it moved, for instance, was challenging because its front end is telling us a completely different story than its back end. Adalatheriumis an important piece in a very large puzzle on early mammalian evolution in the Southern Hemisphere, one in which most of the other pieces are still missing."

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Paleontologists puzzled by this primeval 'crazy beast' that bends all the evolutionary rules - SYFY WIRE

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Semiconductors are one of the modern worlds essential industries, making possible so much of what we rely on or take for granted: internet access, high-speed computers with high-speed memory, even the thermostats that control our air conditioning there isnt much, tech-wise, that doesnt use semiconductor chips.With the end of 2020 in sight, its time for the annual ritual of evaluating the equities for the New Year. Wells Fargo analyst Aaron Rakers has cast his eye on the chip industry, tagging several companies as likely gainers next year.The analyst sees several factors combining to boost demand for chips in 2021, including cloud demand, new gaming consoles, and a market resolution to the future of the PC segment. Overall, however, Rakers expects that memory chips and 5G enabled chips will emerge as the drivers of the industry next year. The analyst expects that semiconductor companies, as a group, will see between 10% and 12% growth over the next 12 months.Thats an industry-wide average, however. According to Raker, some chip companies will show significantly higher growth, on the order of 30% to 40% in year ahead. We can look at those companies, along with the latest TipRanks data, to find out what makes these particular chip makers so compelling.Micron Technology (MU)Among the leading chip makers, Micron has staked out a position in the memory segment. The company has seen its market cap expand to $78 billion this year, as shares have appreciated 32% year-to-date. The surge comes on a product line heaving on computer data storage, DRAM, and flash storage.Look back at 2020, Micron has seen revenues increase each quarter, from $4.8 billion in Q1 to $5.4 billion in Q2 to $6.1 billion in Q3. Earnings came in at 87 cents per share, up from 71 cents in Q2 and 36 cents in Q1.The calendar third quarter was Microns 4QFY20, and the full fiscal year showed a decline due attributed to the COVID pandemic. Revenue came in at $21.44 billion, down 8.4% year-over-year, and operating cash flow fell to $8.31 billion from $13.19 billion in FY19. During this past quarter, Microns 1QFY21, the company announced the release of the worlds first 176-layer 3D NAND chip. The new chip promises higher density and faster performance in flash memory, and the architecture is described as a radical breakthrough. The layer count is 40% higher than competing chips.Looking ahead, Micron has updated its F1Q21 guidance, predicting total revenue of $5.7 billion to $5.75 billion. This is a 10% increase from the previous guidance.Wells Fargo's Aaron Rakers calls Micron his top semiconductor idea for 2021. He points out a deepening positive view on the memory, and in particular the DRAM industry. DRAM accounts for approximately two-thirds of Microns revenue and over 80% of the companys bottom-line profits. In addition, Rakers notes Microns technology execution 1Znm DRAM leadership; recently outlined 1nm ramp into 2021, as well as Microns move to 176-Layer 2nd -gen Replacement Gate 3D NAND to drive improved cost curve. We would also highlight Microns execution on graphics memory (e.g., GDDR6X), Multi-Chip Packages (MCPs), and High-Bandwidth Memory (e.g., HBME2) as positives.In line with these comments, Rakers rates Micron shares a Buy, along with a $100 price target. This figure suggests room for 41% growth in 2021. (To watch Rakers track record, click here)Micron has 24 recent reviews on record, breaking down to 19 Buys, 4 Holds, and 1 Sell, and giving the stock a Strong Buy from the analyst consensus. Shares are priced at $70.96, and recent appreciation has pushed them almost to the $74.30 average price target. But as Rakers outlook suggests, there may be more than just 4.5% upside available here. (See MU stock analysis on TipRanks)Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)With $6.5 billion in total sales last year, and a market cap of $110.7 billion, AMD is a giant company but it doesnt even crack the top five of the worlds largest chip makers. Still, AMD has a solid position in the industry, and its x86 processors provide stiff competition for market-leading Intel (INTC). AMD shares have shown solid growth this year, and are up 101% as 2020 comes to a close.The share growth rides on the back of steady revenue gains since the corona crisis peaked in Q1. AMDs Q3 top line came in at $2.8 billion, up 55% from the $1.8 billion recorded in the year-ago quarter and beating the forecast by 10%. Earnings, at 37 cents per share, were up 220% year-over-year. The company credited the growth to solid results in the PC, gaming, and data center product lines, and boasted that it was the fourth consecutive quarter with >25% yoy revenue growth.AMD announced last month a new product for the scientific research market, the Instinct MI100 accelerator. The new chip is billed as the worlds fasted HPC GPU, and the first such x86 server to exceed 10 teraflops performance.Covering AMD for Wells Fargo, Rakers wrote: We remain positive on AMDs competitive positioning for continued sustained gradual share gains in PCs We also believe AMDs deepening data center GPU strategy with new Instinct MI100 GPUs and the release of RoCM 4.0 software platform could become increasingly visible as we move through 2021. AMDs roadmap execution would remain an important focus 7nm+ Ryzen 4000-series, new RDNA Radeon Instinct data center GPUs (MI100 / MI120), and the 3 rd -gen 7nm+ EPYC Milan CPUsRakers stance supports his Buy rating, and his $120 price target implies a 30% one-year upside to the stock.The Moderate Buy analyst consensus view on AMD reflects some residual Wall Street caution. The stocks 20 recent reviews include 13 Buys, 6 Holds, and 1 Sell. AMD shares are selling for $91.64, and like Micron, their recent appreciation has closed the gap with the $94.71 average price target. (See AMD stock analysis on TipRanks)Western Digital Corporation (WDC)Closing out the Wells Fargo picks on this list is Western Digital, a designer and manufacturer of memory systems. The companys products include hard disk drives, solid state drives, data center platforms, embedded flash drives, and portable storage including memory cards and USB thumb drives. WDC has had a tough year in 2020, with shares down 19% year-to-date. Still, the stock has seen gains in November and December, on the heels of what was seen as a strong fiscal 1Q21 report.That earnings report showed $3.9 billion in revenue, which was down 3% year-over-year, but the EPS net loss, at 19 cents, was a tremendous yoy improvement from the 93-cent net loss in the year-ago quarter. The earnings improvement, which beat the forecast by 20%, was key for investors, and the stock is up 30% since the quarterly report. The company also generated a solid cash flow in the quarter, with cash from operations growing 111% sequentially.Wells Fargos Rakers acknowledges WDCs difficulties in 2020, but even so, he believes that this is a stock which is worth the risk.Western Digital has been our toughest constructive call of 2020 and while we believe calling a bottom in NAND Flash (mid/2H2021?) remains difficult and WDs execution in enterprise SSDs will remain choppy, our SOTP analysis leaves us to continue to believe that shares present a compelling risk / reward. We continue to believe that Western Digital can drive to a ~$7/sh.+ mid-cycle EPS story; however, we continue to think a key driver of this fundamental upside will not only be a recovery in the NAND Flash business, coupled with WDs ability to see improved execution in enterprise SSDs, but also a continued view that WDs HDD gross margin can return to a sustainable 30%+ level, Rakers opined.To this end, Rakers rates WDC a Buy along with a $65 price target. Should the target be met, investors could pocket gains of 29% over the next months Where does the rest of the Street side on this computer-storage maker? It appears mostly bullish, as TipRanks analytics demonstrate WDC as a Buy. Out of 11 analysts tracked in the last 3 months, 7 are bullish, while 4 remain sidelined. With a return potential of 9%, the stocks consensus target price stands at $54.44. (See WDC stock analysis on TipRanks)To find good ideas for tech stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks Best Stocks to Buy, a newly launched tool that unites all of TipRanks equity insights.Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the featured analysts. The content is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment.

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Evolution of Electric Vehicle Battery Reuse and Recycling, Global Market, Forecast to 2025 - Yahoo Finance

Adam HartBloomsbury Sigma2020 | 352pp | 16.99ISBN9781472970992

Buy this book on Amazon.co.uk

Many a time, while trapped in another dreary meeting that really should have been an email, I have found myself wondering: Is this really what we were designed to do? Did our evolutionary forefathers really drag themselves upright and cross continents by foot just so I can scald my internal organs on coffee and pretend to understand what an algorithm is?

Personal existential malaise aside, it is a question often pondered by both scientists and by the media, who tell us repeatedly that our modern lifestyles are terrible for our bodies. Headlines inform us that sitting down for 14 hours a day with only the occasional vertical interlude to forage high fat, high sugar snacks will send us to an early grave. The constant consumption of fake news, real violence and the unsolicited opinion of strangers means we are mentally stimulated to the point of pathology.

It is exactly this physiological and psychological mismatch that Unfit for Purpose grapples with. Author Adam Hart explains to us that we really arent built for this after all. The great gulf between what we are as people [] and what we were as animals is the central theme of this book, he writes.

Hart explains this all using simple but not simplistic prose. He begins with a digestible and engaging overview of the fundamentals of evolution before using that as a framework over which to drape specific examples of humans as both modern world-builders and walking, talking apes. Gently and genially, he describes how the agricultural age, modern microstressors and our innate desire for connection have led to a society ravaged by obesity, addiction and fake news. Technical terms are often explained through metaphor, while intricate scientific concepts are purposefully introduced in the same language as sensationalist tabloid headlines. This makes the subsequent takedown and explanation both easy to follow and exceptionally satisfying.

Harts wry humour and knowledge are clear throughout, as is his warmth this does not read as a preaching scientist telling the layperson how to live their life. Instead, it feels like a friendly sort of commiseration, where both author and reader acknowledge that these bodies we occupy dont really mesh too well with the world weve created.

A word of caution. To those itching to shrug off the confines of the modern world and return to a more primitive form of living, Unfit for Purpose could become a manifesto, filled with justification for fleeing naked back into the wilderness. To the rest, it is an enjoyable, accessible and highly entertaining insight into exactly why so many of us seem to be lactose intolerant and addicted to Instagram, perfect to unwind with after a long day of staring at spreadsheets.

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Unfit for Purpose: When Human Evolution Collides with the Modern World - Chemistry World

Flying has changed a great deal over the past 100 years and with it the passenger cabin experiences and available options. First class has evolved along with this, from the standard, or only, way to fly to the top end choice we see today. This article takes a look at this changing role of first class over the years, and what its been like to fly at the front over time.

Passenger aviation in the US came about alongside lucrative mail and freight services. Of course, in the early days, there were no separate cabins, rather just one basic class. As passenger transport became more popular, seating heading in the luxury direction, essentially creating a first class service, even if it was not named as such.

As aviation grew in popularity, and larger aircraft entered service, this one high cabin standard remained. Most aircraft introduced during the 1930s offered one type of seating, always large and comfortable, and often with fixed tables, and other facilities such as bars or sleeping areas.

The DC3 entered service in 1935 and is often hailed as a major aviation milestone and the first aircraft that really made passenger aviation a profitable undertaking. This was introduced by many airlines (over 16,000 were produced) and typically offered a single cabin, with either spacious seating or beds for passengers.

Longer, intercontinental services at this time were also luxurious offerings, for passengers who could afford them. Qantas Empire Airways, for example, offering Flying Boat services (using the Short Empire flying boat) from Sydney to Singapore and eventually on to London. Anyone undertaking these long flights would do so in first class style beds, lounges, a smoking room and a promenade deck with viewing areas were all included.

From the 1940s, many airlines started to offer lower coach fares. These were usually for different aircraft, or services with more stops, rather than a different class of service.

One of the restrictions at this time was that airfares were highly regulated and airlines were very limited in what they could charge for tickets. Changes to IATA rules in 1952 allowed for two-class fare structures the first to be introduced was on the transatlantic New York to London route.

It was not until 1955 however that a real two-class service began. TWA was the first airline to offer this, installing first and economy seats on its Super Constellation aircraft.

With the introduction of new jet aircraft, such as the Boeing 707 and the DC8, in the late 1950s, the separate economy and first cabins became standard. Many of the luxurious facilities seen in earlier times, such as flatbeds and lounges, became less common. Airlines instead focussed on offering and selling a more comfortable cabin along with enhanced service.

The introduction of the Boeing 747 in 1969 gave airlines a chance to change things again. Flying by this time was much more popular and widespread. Airfares were also deregulated in the US, giving airlines much more ability to set different fares and offer different types of tickets. The extra space on the 747 allowed many improvements in first class.

First class in these days was not just about more comfortable seats and better service. Onboard lounges for were common, and typically large and more luxurious than the few we have seen appear again in recent years (on the A380).

It was not long before growth led to the introduction of a third class, todays business class. During the 1970s, many airlines carved out premium parts of their economy cabins (but left their first class cabins alone), and by the early 1980s major airlines such as Pan Am, TWA, British Airways and Qantas were offering three cabins.

Seating and first class offerings gradually improved during the 1980s and 1990s, but it was not until the mid-1990s that flatbeds appeared in first class cabins. British Airways were among the first airlines to install these, to improve their offering over business class (less than 10 years later they would be the first airline to introduce the flatbed in business class too).

In some ways its surprising it took so long to happen, given that back in the 1930s this was common!

The first cabin has seen many more advances since then. Similar to when the Boeing 747 started service, the introduction of the Airbus A380 has provided airlines with new opportunities to enhance their product. Seating and space offered have improved significantly. Some airlines now offer larger, enclosed suites. Emirates and Etihad have both added showers for first class. And the first class lounge (much loved on the 747 earlier) has returned with a number of airlines.

With continued improvements to business class, there are fewer and fewer differences with first class these days. Several airlines, including Asiana, have removed first class altogether. Others have chosen not to install on some new aircraft (such as Cathay Pacific with the A350). Certainly, the overall number of first class seats on offer has declined over the past 10 years (with only Emirates increasing their supply).

Many airlines though continue to operate first class. Its role might have changed from the way most used to fly in the early days, but it still offers airlines a luxury or VIP travel option or a way to attract and reward frequent flyers.

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The Evolution Of Long Haul First Class - Simple Flying

This year, Cyclingnews celebrates its 25th anniversary, and to mark such an important milestone, the editorial team will be publishing 25 pieces of work that look back at the sport over the last quarter of a century.

The evolution of Cyclingnews closely mirrors that of the internet as a whole. How the site posted and reported on the news - from a single post per day of news mixed with results, cobbled together through various sources via email, to the stream of news, results and features you see today evolved rapidly along with the exponential growth and speed of the internet.

As the site expanded so too did the urgency of the content. When the Festina scandal erupted at the 1998 Tour de France, Cyclingnews was in its infancy. At the same time, cycling fans were flocking to the internet, reading the news and discussing events on Usenet groups and forums and, later, on social media, pro cyclists began to find their doping misdeeds were suddenly very much public. By the time the next major doping thread blew up with Operacin Puerto eight years later, the sport's seedy underbelly was well and truly and embarrassingly exposed.

When Cyclingnews began in 1995, there were only about 23,500 websites in existence and 40 million users accessing information through Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer or AOL. Most users were in the United States and looking at mostly text-based sites on dial-up connections at unthinkably slow speeds of 56kbps or less, which is why Cyclingnews' early posts consisted mostly of single posts - with results, news and interviews intermingled - it gave users something worth the wait for the page to load.

As time went on, races were given their own pages, but with the huge volume of results being posted, news continued as multi-story editions until the site redesign in 2009.

The change from the more laid-back pace of a newspaper-like publishing schedule came in tandem with the more widespread access to broadband speeds and far more users: by 2006 there were around 700 million users, and today roughly 60 per cent of humans on the planet are on the web.

Alongside the bigger, faster internet came the rocket-fuelled EPO era of cycling: if Lance Armstrong fired up the engines, no other storyline exploded quite like Operacin Puerto, and it was heralded in a flurry of posts entitled "News Flash".

The Festina scandal - aptly entitled 'The drugs scandal update' - was one of the first news extras, but it wasn't until the site's major redesign in 2002 that the first official 'News Flash' was posted: the five wildcards for that year's Tour de France.

However, before long, the News Flash became synonymous with doping.

During the 2002 Giro d'Italia, two riders were nailed for NESP (novel erythropoiesis-stimulating protein, a modified version of EPO), Stefano Garzelli was popped for a banned diuretic, and Gilberto Simoni came up positive for cocaine - which led his Saeco team to lose its wildcard spot for the Tour de France. All of these breaking stories were News Flash-worthy.

Other News Flash subjects included Jan Ullrich's Team Coast, its collapse and recreation as Bianchi in 2003, the death of Andrei Kivilev, and the UCI Track World Championships being moved from China because of the SARS-1 epidemic, and the death of Marco Pantani, but doping cases proved to be the most frequent breaking news.

There was the NAS raid on the Giro d'Italia, doping shenanigans from Raimondas Rumsas, the police raid on Cofidis headquarters in 2004 and the revelations of Kelme's Jesus Manzano that led to that team's exclusion from the Tour de France.

Then came EPO positives: Dave Bruylandts, Filip Meirhaeghe, the admission by David Millar. Then the blood doping cases of Tyler Hamilton and Santiago Perez.

At the time, Cyclingnews' homepage was largely dedicated to race results, recalls long-time editor Jeff Jones (1999-2006). Each race had multiple links underneath for each stage, making for an incredibly busy homepage. To run individual news, he says, would have been logistically difficult.

"There was too much per day to fit on the homepage," Jones says. "It was already horribly busy and we tried to squeeze as much as possible into a small area."

Deviating from the normal one or two editions of news today only happened when the news had a bit of urgency or was of high interest to readers, and, until 2004, only came a dozen or so times per year. But when a doping case came out, it resulted in an inevitable avalanche of news.

Take September 22, 2004, when Tyler Hamilton emerged as the first-ever athlete to test positive for a homologous blood transfusion - it came out as three extra news editions in two days and numerous other news flashes throughout his appeal process. But there was nothing like 2006.

On May 23, 2006, a hint of something huge brewing in Spain began with a story: "Liberty Seguros director Manolo Saiz arrested on doping charges". It would prove to be the longest thread in Cyclingnews history.

After months of phone taps and surveillance, watching athletes come and go, investigators from the Unidad Centro Operativo (UCO) and the Spanish civil guard staged a raid on an apartment belonging to ex-Kelme team doctor and 'gynaecologist' Eufemiano Fuentes, where they found a huge store of anabolic steroids and hormones, some 200 blood bags and enough freezers and gear to dope up dozens if not hundreds of athletes.

Liberty Seguros manager Manolo Saiz - literally caught holding the bag (60,000 in cash) - and four others were taken into custody including Fuentes, Jos Luis Merino Batres, who ran the lab in Madrid; Alberto Leon, a professional mountain bike racer suspected of acting as a courier; and Jose Ignacio Labarta, the assistant sports director of Comunidad Valenciana.

Fuentes was accused helping riders with "the illegal practice of auto-transfusing blood to riders during stage races, which is one of the most difficult doping practices to detect, as it uses the rider's own blood", as Cyclingnews reported.

Jos Merino just happened to be the same Merino mentioned in the explosive testimony of Jesus Manzano, who tried to expose these doping practices two years earlier, but who was derided and even threatened by his peers.

It was only May and the Giro d'Italia just finishing up, with leader Ivan Basso forced to issue denials as Spanish media named him as being on Fuentes' list of names coded, it would later emerge, by using the names of riders' pets.

Soon, Saiz' team was fighting for its survival as Liberty Seguros pulled its support from the team. Then it was Phonak who, in the previous years, had those doping incidents with Hamilton and Perez, who were under scrutiny as well as T-Mobile after Oscar Sevilla admitted to visiting the clinic 'for training plans'.

By June, Phonak sidelined Santiago Botero and Jose Enrique Gutierrez (Giro d'Italia runner-up) after their implication in the scandal and Comunidad Valenciana DS Jose Ignacio Labarta resigned despite protesting his innocence in the affair. Phonak said its future depended on the Tour de France and Floyd Landis.

With the Tour de France only weeks away, Saiz's team was rescued thanks to Alexandre Vinokourov, who brought on Astana as title sponsor thanks to strong support from his home country Kazakhstan. The team debuted as Wrth in the Criterium du Dauphine as the team's licence remained in dispute and Saiz left the team.

In mid-June, the ASO withdrew the wildcard invitation to the Tour de France for Comunidad Valenciana but under the UCI's nascent ProTour rules, once Astana-Wrth's licence case was decided on June 22 the team was protected from exclusion.

It's easy to forget that all of this was taking place amid the Armstrong vs L'Equipe case: remember that time when French researchers went back to the 1999 Tour de France and tested the samples for EPO? And that Vrijman report the UCI commissioned that supposedly cleared Armstrong? It's all so ludicrous in retrospect because it was all there - the constant thrum of doping news, Manzano's revelations, Armstrong with Michele Ferrari, Armstrong threatening Greg LeMond, Armstrong calling for Dick Pound's exit from WADA, WADA 'slamming' the UCI over the Vrijman report... and then Operacin Puerto.

If the French had hopes that after Armstrong retired they could finally count on an open and clean Tour de France, the week before the Tour proved they were up against more than just one Texan. El Pais published more details from the case, writing there were 58 cyclists and 15 from the now-former Liberty Seguros team involved.

News Flash June 29, 2006: More names released

"The list, which comes from the Spanish Civil Guard's official report on the doping probe, contains several big names, and there is a strong possibility that the Tour de France could be raced with a very different list of favourites."

Astana-Wrth OK to race: The ASO, its hand forced, appealed to the CAS to keep Astana-Wrth at home but the team defiantly headed to Strasbourg for the Grand Depart. The CAS said the team should be allowed race.

News edition: Ullrich, Sevilla and Pevenage suspended

"At 9:34 am on Friday morning, T-Mobile announced that it has suspended Jan Ullrich, Oscar Sevilla and Rudy Pevenage in the wake of the Operacin Puerto affair. The three were implicated in the doping scandal as being clients of Dr Eufemiano Fuentes. None of them will take part in the Tour de France.

"As the announcement was made, the three sat in the team bus on their way to what was supposed to be a "meet-and-greet" press conference. They were informed on the way."

Meanwhile, Johan Bruyneel: "I don't think we can start the Tour de France with those kind of doubts and uncertainty. It's bad for the riders and there's already enough suspicion around. No one, not the riders, or the media or the fans will be able to focus on the race. I don't think the Tour de France needs this and I hope there will be something resolved soon for everybody's sake."

In typical cycling fashion, the riders and teams tried to just push through and pretend like there was nothing wrong until the very last minute.

News Flash: Astana Wrth leaves the Tour

"Dutch television's sports anchorman Mart Smeets has just reported that the Astana-Wrth team has left the Tour de France."

Active Bay, the Astana-Wrth team's management company, confirmed they would withdraw from the Tour. "In view of the content of the dossier sent to Spanish authorities, Active Bay has decided, in accordance with the Ethical Code signed between the UCI ProTour's teams [for riders not to race while under investigation for doping], to withdraw from the Tour de France those riders that appear in the above-mentioned dossier."

News Extra: More riders named by UCI, Leblanc: "An open Tour with clean riders", Team CSC: Ignorance or bluff?, McQuaid: Saddened rather than shocked

As the UCI issues a statement naming nine riders from the Tour start list who should be excluded from the race: "The involvement [of these riders] does not mean that an anti-doping violation has been established. However, the indications of the mentioned report are serious enough."

Tour director Jean-Marie Leblanc: "We will ask the teams concerned to apply the ethical charter that they've signed and to expel the implicated riders. If they don't, we will do it ourselves."

"I hope we can all start serenely on Saturday. This is an organised mafia that spreads doping practices. I hope we can clean up everything now; all the cheats should be kicked out. then, maybe, we will get an open Tour with clean riders; a Tour in which there is space for ethics, sport and entertainment."

Ivan Basso: "My opinion is that I work hard for this Tour, and I think only about this race. My job is to ride the bike fast, and after the Giro, I put 100 per cent [effort into] the Tour de France. I only read what has been written... I don't know more."

UCI President Pat McQuaid: "This is hard for cycling, but I have to look at the positive side. It has to be a message to all the other riders in there that no matter how clever you think you are, you will eventually get caught out."

News Extra: More riders suspended: Basso and Mancebo out, Ullrich's ex-trainer calls it a "catastrophe", Belda questioned

ASO public relations man Bernard Hinault told radio RTL that he expects 15-20 riders to be ejected before the day is out. The UCI will then ask the national cycling federations to start disciplinary proceedings against the riders named in the Spanish network.

Teams spokesman Patrick Lefevere said that there will be no replacements for the riders who have been taken out. "We have unanimously decided to send all the riders who are on the list home, and not to substitute them."

News Extra: Team CSC faces the press, Mancebo ends career, New doping charges for CSC?, Reactions to Ullrich suspension, Bruyneel maintains focus

CSC and manager Bjarne Riis remained defiant until the team's afternoon press conference when he finally caved to pressure and withdrew Ivan Basso from the Tour.

"Shortly before 2pm Friday, Team CSC manager Bjarne Riis and spokesperson Brian Nygaard walked into the salle de presse in Strasbourg's Palais de la Musique et de Congres to deliver a statement and answer questions. But with the room soon morphing into a boxing arena with around 200 journalists and photographers all wanting a piece of the action, the crowd moved to the much larger conference de presse in the Auditorium Schweitzer.

"Maybe most of you have heard already. We had a meeting with all the teams this morning, and in that meeting, we made a decision - I made a decision - that Ivan would not participate in the Tour," began Riis.

"If I let Ivan do the Tour, I can see all of you here - and there's a lot more outside - there will be no race for him, because he will be hunted, day and night. It won't be good for Ivan, it won't be good for the team, and it certainly won't be good for the sport."

Cyclingnews' live coverage of the 2006 Tour de France began on July 1 with the pithy comment: "Welcome, dear readers, to the new Tour de France. This is a more slimmed-down version of the old Tour de France, with fresh faces, lower power-to-weight, and doesn't give you heartburn. After Operacin Puerto caused 13 to be removed from the Tour's starting list yesterday, we will see a Tour without top favourites Jan Ullrich, Ivan Basso, Alexandre Vinokourov, or Francisco Mancebo. Taking a positive approach, one could say Operacin Puerto has been a real shot in the arm for cycling, and one that it has needed for a while," wrote Jeff Jones.

By the end of the Tour de France, some 58 riders were named in the affair, although some - including Alberto Contador - would later be cleared of involvement. Others were never formally identified.

After the immediate flood of news wore off, the Operacin Puerto thread became more of a marathon than a sprint. The anti-doping authorities had little power to sanction riders since the Spanish courts blocked federations from taking any action against athletes until their legal proceedings concluded.

Their legal proceedings did not conclude for almost ten years.

In between all the talk of doping, Cyclingnews still managed to get out news about the upcoming Tour de France. At least news that Fuentes used the names of riders' dogs as codes there was at least some comic relief. In his live coverage of the Tour, Jones tried to keep fans' spirits up with jokes about the case, but as the days went on the coverage turned exclusively to the Tour.

It was, after all, the first Tour de France after Lance Armstrong retired and the Tour was reinventing itself after seven years of the Texan's domination.

The maillot jaune changed hands ten times - with Thor Hushovd, George Hincapie, Tom Boonen, Serhiy Honchar, Cyril Dessel and Oscar Pereiro taking turns in yellow before Floyd Landis had his first day in the lead on stage 11, gave it up to Pereiro after the Spaniard went in a breakaway on a sizzling day to Montlimar and gained half an hour, then got it back on Alpe d'Huez, lost it on La Toussuire, then went on a 130km rampage on stage 17 and eventually won the Tour de France.

Of course, it wasn't long before his positive for testosterone was announced and the long, gruelling fight Landis put up before finally having his title stripped, and yet another exhausting news cycling of doping ensued.

Fans should have known what was going on, Jones says. It started with Festina and continued apace for eight more years until Operacin Puerto and beyond and was splashed all across Cyclingnews.

"Doping was a theme, especially in the Armstrong years. But until Operacin Puerto, you could have seen each case as a one-off, there was some deniability. But with Puerto, it was proof that doping was almost everywhere.

"As a fan, it was hard to get your head around the fact that everyone was doping. I thought, 'no - not Ullrich, he's too classy' - but it was a gradual realisation. How do you watch the sport knowing that?

"That time we were mourning the sport a bit. There's denial, anger and then finally acceptance. Of course, sport isn't separate from human nature - on the bike they're super-human but they are still just human beings in the end.

"It changed how I watched the sport - I could appreciate the spectacle but it just wasn't what it used to be."

By the end of 2006, Jones would leave Cyclingnews to start a bike-themed site called BikeRadar, the next year, Gerard Knapp would sell the site to Future with Daniel Benson taking over as managing editor.

The site continued to grow despite the fans' disillusionment, and the dark years left behind in the archive that still exists as the 'autobus'.

In the years after 2006, the Spanish courts opened and closed the Operacin Puerto case. Then opened and closed it again, opened and closed it yet again, until it finally came to trial in 2013.

By then, it was more a denouement than a climax. It took place the same year that Armstrong, banned for life, confessed to having doped throughout his career, after the mountain of USADA Reasoned Decision documents had already detailed it all.

Fuentes was given a one-year suspended sentence but posted bail and had his punishment overturned three years later. The main legal problem was that doping was not a crime in Spain in 2006, so authorities went after Fuentes under public health laws.

The case provided physical evidence of the doping practices at the time: EPO in the banked blood showed riders were using the drug to boost red blood cells in the off-season then storing the blood for reinfusion before a big race.

Fake names and secret code words made Puerto into something like a dime-store novel : Basso: "I am Birillo", Scarponi: "I am Zapatero", Fuentes: "I am the famous cycling criminal". Jorg Jaksche finally broke down the omerta by telling all. From Ivan Basso's "I only intended to dope" to Tyler Hamilton's tell-all book The Secret Race, Operacin Puerto provided yet another example of what cycling was until 2006.

It also exposed deficiencies in the anti-doping rules and helped lead to provisions for violations based upon evidence other than analytical tests. After hiding behind a wall of legal obfuscation and a carefully crafted calendar, Alejandro Valverde ('piti') was finally and definitively linked to Fuentes two years later.

The Italian CONI's anti-doping prosecutor Ettore Torri used guile and allegedly falsified documents to obtain the evidence suspected to be the Valverde's banked blood over the Christmas holiday, and then, when Valverde finally was forced to cross into Italy during the 2008 Tour de France, doping controllers could get a sample and prove Valverde's guilt through a DNA match. He was finally suspended in 2010.

The trial, then, offered little that was new, but did bring some humorous and sardonic anecdotes:

Jrg Jaksche when asked to clarify his performance in the 2006 Tour de Suisse.

"I said it wasnt a race, more of a club championships. He asked me to clarify what I meant. So I said yes, it was a club championship. The winner of the race was Jan Ullrich, a client of Fuentes, second was Koldo Gil, a client of Fuentes, third was me, fourth was Vicioso, another Fuentes client, sixth was Frnk Schleck. Everyone in the court, even the judge was laughing. It was ridiculous.

The Spanish courts continued to delay any action by anti-doping authorities well after the court case concluded. A judge ordered the evidence destroyed, while WADA and the UCI were forced to appeal, navigating delays until finally - the evidence from the case was long past the statute of limitations under the WADA Code.

When the evidence was at last handed over to anti-doping authorities in July, 2016, it was more than ten years after the fact. A German researcher performed DNA testing on 116 blood bags, getting 27 unique fingerprints, but could only confidently link seven athletes - four active, three retired - but what sport they competed in remains unknown.

Although it was suspected that athletes from football, tennis, and athletics were involved in Fuentes' doping ring, cycling took the hardest hit in the media and of course, on Cyclingnews.

The case changed the way fans viewed the sport and, now that Armstrong has confessed and the full scope of doping in the 1990s and 2000s has become clear, the scepticism was well warranted.

The cheaters haven't won, however.

The explosion of the internet from 40 million to 4.5 billion users over Cyclingnews' history has brought in new fans who follow its new stars and, hopefully, a sport with greater integrity. The formation of WADA, the hard work of investigators and the increased independence of anti-doping bodies are still rooting out cheaters, as Operation Alderlass has shown.

Cyclingnews no longer has to resort to 'News Flash' since converting to single news posts in 2009, replacing Dreamweaver and FTP with several iterations of content management systems and site designs, and we are still working 24-7-365 to bring the latest news to your fingertips.

Hopefully less and less will be about doping.

Here is the original post:

Operacin Puerto, the evolution of the internet and the Cyclingnews News Flash - Cyclingnews.com

WASHINGTON, D.C. (WDVM) After going 1-2 in the preseason, the Washington Wizards prepare for their season opener at Philadelphia, on Wednesday December 23rd.

In their last preseason game, the Wizards managed to squeak by with a win, beating the Detroit Pistons, 99-96; in a game where Russell Westbrook, and Davis Bertans made their debuts in a Wizards uniform.

Ahead of the season, Scott Brooks addressed the media on Monday; giving his explanation about the expectations he has for his team, and how to juggle them this season.

We want to compete every night. said Scott Brooks, Weve added some really good players. Weve added some toughness, weve added some size, we signed back one of the best shooters in the world in Bertans. And Russell and Brads leadership has made some pretty good improvements as this preseason has gone on. And I think that is going to continue to happen. There is so many similarities with those two guys, theyre all about winning and this is going to give all of us a chance to win.

The Washington Wizards did announce that Rui Hachimura will be out for three weeks, due to an eye infection. Specifically, bi-lateral epidemic keratoconjunctivitis. Rui averaged 13.5 points per game, and 6.1 rebounds per game for the team last season as a rookie.

I was hoping last week, thinking that it would clear up in two or three days, he could be back on the court, couple more days later hed be back. But he has a severe case, Brooks said. Its a long season. I know sometimes when youre in the grind it doesnt seem every game is so important and so critical, but hes a young player, and he needed those reps and practice and training camp, those exhibition games. Were going to have to figure it out without him until he comes back.

Unfortunately, with Ruis situation, but I think we can be able to manage that, as best as we can. We have a very competitive team. continued Coach Brooks, on the season expectations, This is this year is not like last year at all, where the minutes lot of the minutes were, lets face it; lot of the minutes were establishing identity and lot of the minutes were developmental minutes. This is different. We got some really good players that are ready now, so some of the guys that maybe played a little bit more minutes last year probably wont play as many more minutes this year but thats a good thing cause that means we have a better team.

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Scott Brooks confident in evolution of team, ahead of regular season start - WDVM 25

Following a pattern of familiarity for health lawyers, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has released a substantial Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) in December at the end of an administration. The NPRM is intended to revise the Privacy Rule under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Because comments are not due until after the new Biden administration takes office, the fate of this NPRM is unclear. At the same time, this NPRM reflects two key issues of concern to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in its current incarnation: improving patient access to health information (a goal presumably shared by a new administration) and expanding opportunities for increased information sharing in specific contexts (primarily focused on coordinated care and sharing with social service organizations).

The access principles - while detailed and somewhat technical - generally seem consistent with policy goals that have been applied for more than a decade, as government tries to find easier means to allow patients meaningful and useful access to their own information. The more challenging elements of this NPRM stem from the desire to expand information sharing. While pursuing admirable goals (who is against coordinated care?), these elements present much more complicated policy issues and raise a broad variety of concerns in connection with the overall debate about health care privacy.

Originally published in Health Law Weekly - December 18, 2020.

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The New HIPAA NPRM - The Latest and Greatest in the Evolution of the HIPAA Privacy Rule - JD Supra

Photo: Lime Kiln Lighthouse, San Juan Island, via Wikimedia Commons.

I was just about to type out my life story when I realised that whoever is reading this really wouldnt be interested. Instead Ill cut to the chase:your work at Discovery Institute may have saved my life.

So began the email sent to us at cscinfo@discovery.org. The 18-year old writer named Reuben, from a small town in the United Kingdom, went on to describe how he had found us during his search for organizations that dealt with origin-of-life research. His thoughtful and insightful email revealed much about his journey.

Methodological naturalism (and its associated atheism) is a very depressing thing to be told is the truth. This is what I was essentially told when introduced to the scientific factof Darwinian evolution at sixth form A-level biology (kinda like high schoolin the U.S. I think). No one else in my class seemed to care that this brilliant sciencetold them that the universe is completely meaningless, life a complete accident, and their sense of selfin fact a worthless illusion.I felt very small.

Then Reuben came acrossMichael BehesDarwins Black Boxand the idea of irreducible complexity. It made sense to him and provided scientific evidence for design. Now he has watched nearly every one of our videos onYouTube and is readingForesightby Marcos Eberlin.

More than that, he discovered Discovery Institute and expressed his sincere gratitude for the work made possible by people like YOU.

Thank goodness I live in a time where fields such as biochemistry are actually (to my great delight) revealing intelligence and planning.But I want to thank you all so so much.Because it is not easy to stand up against the paradigm. To be branded as religious hereticsby proud, often arrogant people. The layman is never going to question them, and the vast majority of young scientists are brainwashed into joining them.But not me, and I can thank you for that.

As I read Reubens email, it warmed my heart to knowthe impact our donors have made on this young mans lifethrough their support of the Center for Science & Culture.Would you consider joining them?

Without our supportersthere would be no books by Michael Behe, Marcos Eberlin, Stephen Meyer, Michael Denton, and others. There wouldnt be awide-array ofYouTubevideoscritiquing Darwinian evolution and providing scientific evidence for intelligent design. There would most certainly not be aneducational and research network circling the globethat will be a resource to him now and in the future.

In 2020, ourEducation and Outreach Initiativereached over32,000 people through53 events(live and virtual), with360,000+ more viewsof the videos onYouTubeafter the events. OurSummer Seminarprogram engaged57 participantsfrom11 countries, 100 percent of whom would recommend the program to others.Generous donors made all this possible and your support todaywill continue those programs in 2021.

Reuben is now connected to a welcoming and vibrant community of like-minded people who will stay in touch with him and mentor him throughout his education.Hes the lucky one.

There are many more out there like him.We need you beside usto provide thehopeandencouragementandpurposethat they need to survive and thrive in their educational and career endeavors. Reuben and I hope you will consider a life-saving gift today.

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Reuben's Story A Light in Troubled Times - Discovery Institute

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Semiconductors are one of the modern worlds essential industries, making possible so much of what we rely on or take for granted: internet access, high-speed computers with high-speed memory, even the thermostats that control our air conditioning there isnt much, tech-wise, that doesnt use semiconductor chips.With the end of 2020 in sight, its time for the annual ritual of evaluating the equities for the New Year. Wells Fargo analyst Aaron Rakers has cast his eye on the chip industry, tagging several companies as likely gainers next year.The analyst sees several factors combining to boost demand for chips in 2021, including cloud demand, new gaming consoles, and a market resolution to the future of the PC segment. Overall, however, Rakers expects that memory chips and 5G enabled chips will emerge as the drivers of the industry next year. The analyst expects that semiconductor companies, as a group, will see between 10% and 12% growth over the next 12 months.Thats an industry-wide average, however. According to Raker, some chip companies will show significantly higher growth, on the order of 30% to 40% in year ahead. We can look at those companies, along with the latest TipRanks data, to find out what makes these particular chip makers so compelling.Micron Technology (MU)Among the leading chip makers, Micron has staked out a position in the memory segment. The company has seen its market cap expand to $78 billion this year, as shares have appreciated 32% year-to-date. The surge comes on a product line heaving on computer data storage, DRAM, and flash storage.Look back at 2020, Micron has seen revenues increase each quarter, from $4.8 billion in Q1 to $5.4 billion in Q2 to $6.1 billion in Q3. Earnings came in at 87 cents per share, up from 71 cents in Q2 and 36 cents in Q1.The calendar third quarter was Microns 4QFY20, and the full fiscal year showed a decline due attributed to the COVID pandemic. Revenue came in at $21.44 billion, down 8.4% year-over-year, and operating cash flow fell to $8.31 billion from $13.19 billion in FY19. During this past quarter, Microns 1QFY21, the company announced the release of the worlds first 176-layer 3D NAND chip. The new chip promises higher density and faster performance in flash memory, and the architecture is described as a radical breakthrough. The layer count is 40% higher than competing chips.Looking ahead, Micron has updated its F1Q21 guidance, predicting total revenue of $5.7 billion to $5.75 billion. This is a 10% increase from the previous guidance.Wells Fargo's Aaron Rakers calls Micron his top semiconductor idea for 2021. He points out a deepening positive view on the memory, and in particular the DRAM industry. DRAM accounts for approximately two-thirds of Microns revenue and over 80% of the companys bottom-line profits. In addition, Rakers notes Microns technology execution 1Znm DRAM leadership; recently outlined 1nm ramp into 2021, as well as Microns move to 176-Layer 2nd -gen Replacement Gate 3D NAND to drive improved cost curve. We would also highlight Microns execution on graphics memory (e.g., GDDR6X), Multi-Chip Packages (MCPs), and High-Bandwidth Memory (e.g., HBME2) as positives.In line with these comments, Rakers rates Micron shares a Buy, along with a $100 price target. This figure suggests room for 41% growth in 2021. (To watch Rakers track record, click here)Micron has 24 recent reviews on record, breaking down to 19 Buys, 4 Holds, and 1 Sell, and giving the stock a Strong Buy from the analyst consensus. Shares are priced at $70.96, and recent appreciation has pushed them almost to the $74.30 average price target. But as Rakers outlook suggests, there may be more than just 4.5% upside available here. (See MU stock analysis on TipRanks)Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)With $6.5 billion in total sales last year, and a market cap of $110.7 billion, AMD is a giant company but it doesnt even crack the top five of the worlds largest chip makers. Still, AMD has a solid position in the industry, and its x86 processors provide stiff competition for market-leading Intel (INTC). AMD shares have shown solid growth this year, and are up 101% as 2020 comes to a close.The share growth rides on the back of steady revenue gains since the corona crisis peaked in Q1. AMDs Q3 top line came in at $2.8 billion, up 55% from the $1.8 billion recorded in the year-ago quarter and beating the forecast by 10%. Earnings, at 37 cents per share, were up 220% year-over-year. The company credited the growth to solid results in the PC, gaming, and data center product lines, and boasted that it was the fourth consecutive quarter with >25% yoy revenue growth.AMD announced last month a new product for the scientific research market, the Instinct MI100 accelerator. The new chip is billed as the worlds fasted HPC GPU, and the first such x86 server to exceed 10 teraflops performance.Covering AMD for Wells Fargo, Rakers wrote: We remain positive on AMDs competitive positioning for continued sustained gradual share gains in PCs We also believe AMDs deepening data center GPU strategy with new Instinct MI100 GPUs and the release of RoCM 4.0 software platform could become increasingly visible as we move through 2021. AMDs roadmap execution would remain an important focus 7nm+ Ryzen 4000-series, new RDNA Radeon Instinct data center GPUs (MI100 / MI120), and the 3 rd -gen 7nm+ EPYC Milan CPUsRakers stance supports his Buy rating, and his $120 price target implies a 30% one-year upside to the stock.The Moderate Buy analyst consensus view on AMD reflects some residual Wall Street caution. The stocks 20 recent reviews include 13 Buys, 6 Holds, and 1 Sell. AMD shares are selling for $91.64, and like Micron, their recent appreciation has closed the gap with the $94.71 average price target. (See AMD stock analysis on TipRanks)Western Digital Corporation (WDC)Closing out the Wells Fargo picks on this list is Western Digital, a designer and manufacturer of memory systems. The companys products include hard disk drives, solid state drives, data center platforms, embedded flash drives, and portable storage including memory cards and USB thumb drives. WDC has had a tough year in 2020, with shares down 19% year-to-date. Still, the stock has seen gains in November and December, on the heels of what was seen as a strong fiscal 1Q21 report.That earnings report showed $3.9 billion in revenue, which was down 3% year-over-year, but the EPS net loss, at 19 cents, was a tremendous yoy improvement from the 93-cent net loss in the year-ago quarter. The earnings improvement, which beat the forecast by 20%, was key for investors, and the stock is up 30% since the quarterly report. The company also generated a solid cash flow in the quarter, with cash from operations growing 111% sequentially.Wells Fargos Rakers acknowledges WDCs difficulties in 2020, but even so, he believes that this is a stock which is worth the risk.Western Digital has been our toughest constructive call of 2020 and while we believe calling a bottom in NAND Flash (mid/2H2021?) remains difficult and WDs execution in enterprise SSDs will remain choppy, our SOTP analysis leaves us to continue to believe that shares present a compelling risk / reward. We continue to believe that Western Digital can drive to a ~$7/sh.+ mid-cycle EPS story; however, we continue to think a key driver of this fundamental upside will not only be a recovery in the NAND Flash business, coupled with WDs ability to see improved execution in enterprise SSDs, but also a continued view that WDs HDD gross margin can return to a sustainable 30%+ level, Rakers opined.To this end, Rakers rates WDC a Buy along with a $65 price target. Should the target be met, investors could pocket gains of 29% over the next months Where does the rest of the Street side on this computer-storage maker? It appears mostly bullish, as TipRanks analytics demonstrate WDC as a Buy. Out of 11 analysts tracked in the last 3 months, 7 are bullish, while 4 remain sidelined. With a return potential of 9%, the stocks consensus target price stands at $54.44. (See WDC stock analysis on TipRanks)To find good ideas for tech stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks Best Stocks to Buy, a newly launched tool that unites all of TipRanks equity insights.Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the featured analysts. The content is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment.

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Dr. Michael Everest Embraces Medical School Evolution Over The Years - Yahoo Finance

Heidi Johnson Published 11:30 p.m. CT Dec. 22, 2020

The University of Wisconsin Division of Extension has traditionally relied heavily on in-person meetings and conferences to share the latest research on agricultural production topics.However, the pandemic certainly threw a curve ball to this information-delivery model.(Photo: Courtesy Photo)

This year has certainly challenged Wisconsin farmers, from market interruptions to disruptions in day-to-day operations due to the pandemic.In Extension, our mission is providing farmers with the information they need to run their businesses, so we are especially attuned to how the pandemic has changed the way farmers receive information.

We have traditionally relied heavily on in-person meetings and conferences to share the latest Extension research on agricultural production topics.The pandemic certainly threw a curve ball to this information-delivery model.

We were fortunate in Extension to have already been dabbling with virtual learning platforms, so we felt, at least slightly, prepared to continue to try to reach farmers through these means. But that didnt mean we didnt face lots of challenges and a steep learning curve.I will share some observations of challenges and opportunities weve learned along the way.

Internet accessibility and stability of access is a major issue across our state. Although, weve noted that it doesnt initially appear that participation in our Extension events (and other virtual learning events) has waned, it has made us consider whether the audience engaged in these offerings has changed from our traditional audiences.Are we now leaving out audiences without internet access but have gained new audiences that didnt want to travel to events or prefer to sign on to things virtually?We havent had enough time to explore this question but will certainly be something to consider.

Internet access isnt the only technology issue to consider when engaging in virtual learning. There is also the issue of interacting and using technology platforms.It can be frustrating for participants when they cant figure out how to sign up, sign on or interact in a virtual learning event and providing real-time technology support can be challenging for virtual event hosts.It appears that the technology companies have been equally busy during the pandemic improving user interfaces, but we still have a way to go before everyone feels comfortable using the various platforms.

One of the interesting challenges that weve noted as we move into the heavy conference and meeting season for agriculture is that, in a virtual learning environment, the options are nearly endless and many times overlapping.For those of us engaged in the education sector, we have noted that presenters and topics are often repeated from event to event.This made sense when events were separated by geography and registration fees but becomes messy when they are offered virtually and often free.More coordination and collaboration would help to solve some of these challenges, given time to make those connections.

Being divorced from the constraints of the time and money involved in traveling, opens a world of possibilities for farmers and other agricultural professionals looking to learn.Currently it is just as easy to participate in events in New York state as it is to participate in Wisconsin.This really widens the options and opportunities for learning and hearing from producers and experts in other regions.

While virtual learning offers many opportunities, we know that it will never fully replace human interaction.Some of the best conversations that Ive had with farmers, where new ideas and concepts were exchanged, were in the hallway after a meeting or rolling the cob with a smaller group after a field day.The biggest thing that is missed in a virtual learning environment is the happenstantial conversations that make us feel connected.We in Extension also use these casual conversations to help us understand the evolving needs and ideas generated by our clientele to inform university research.

While we will never completely give up in-person events, this pandemic has taught many of us that a hybridized approach between in-person and virtual events may help us experience the best that both has to offer. We have learned a lot and feel sure that, in some ways, this will change the way we do our work forever.

Heidi Johnson(Photo: UW Extension)

Johnson is theAgriculture Institute Director atUW-Madison, Division of Extension

UW Extension(Photo: UWEX)

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The evolution of virtual learning for farmers and agribusiness professionals - Wisconsin State Farmer

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The following wasoriginallypublished on March 18, 2020.

There is a joke abouta cat on a roof:

A man left his cat with his brother while he went on vacation for a week. When he came back, he called his brother to see when he could pick the cat up. The brother hesitated, then said, Im so sorry, but while you were away, the cat died.

The man was very upset and yelled, You know, you could have broken the news to me better than that. When I called today, you could have said he was on the roof and wouldnt come down. Then when I called the next day, you could have said that he had fallen off and the vet was working on patching him up. Then when I called the third day, you could have said he had passed away.

The brother thought about it and apologized.

So hows Mom? asked the man.

Shes on the roof and wont come down.

Jokes when analyzed lose their humor. At the risking of my bludgeoning this particular joke, the premise here is that people more readily accept shocking news when its given to them in partial steps. Not, The cat is dead, but first, The cat is on the roof. Something like that is going on in the debate about evolution. As biochemist Michael Behe explains in the Introduction to his new book, out today A Mousetrap for Darwin:Michael J. Behe Answers His Critics the public is being prepared very slowly for the demise of Darwinian evolutionary theory. It wasnt planned that way, but it is how things are playing out.

As popular media and biology textbooks present the matter, all is still well with Darwin. He is on the roof, but safe. ID scientists, such as that scoundrel Michael Behe, may pose their anti-science challenges. However, it is merely a gentle breeze on a cats fur.

But wait Actually, the cats fate has advanced a step beyond that. Behe writes:

Since the turn of the millennium a raft of distinguished biologists have written books critically evaluating evolutionary theory.Noneof them think that Darwins mechanism is the main driver of life. It may surprise people who get their information about the state of science from gee-whiz puff pieces in the mainstream media, but, although strong partisans still hold out, the eclipse of Darwinism in the scientific community is well-advanced. A few years ago the journalNaturepublished an exchange between two groups of scientists, one defending Darwin and the other saying its time to move on. Its nice to have defenders, but when an idea has been around for 150 years wished well by all right-thinking people, investigated to death by the scientific community and a piece appears in the worlds leading science journal saying its time to move on, then its time to move on.

The question of course is, move on to what? Those books by scientists dissing Darwin offer their own clever ideas, but so far the scientific community isnt buying any of them. All the new ideas self-organization, facilitated variation, symbiosis, complexity theory, and more are quickly concluded to be nonstarters, to have the same problems as Darwins theory, or both. In the absence of an acceptable replacement and because of its usefulness as a defensive talking point in fending off skepticism from the public intellectual inertia maintains Darwinism as textbook orthodoxy.

Actually, for Darwinism, the situation is even worse thanthat. Books by Behe, and other ID theorists doing an independent of audit of evolutionary thinking, find devastating faults in the theory.

But hold on, the critics have their responses to the ID proponents. They say Behe never answers their rebuttals! As a trio of prominent scientist authors, Nathan Lents, Joshua Swamidass, and Richard Lenski,wrotein the journalSciencelast year in reply Dr. Behes bookDarwin Devolves(emphasis added):

That sounds pretty bad. He ignores critics. He double down on his claims that have already been refuted. He fails to engage. Behes purported unresponsiveness was one of the main themes of the attack by Lents et al. Surely the cat is safe after all. It is on the operating table. It may be under veterinary anesthesia but is expected to recover just fine. Right?

Unfortunately for Darwins partisans, no. Dear Sir or Madam, we regret to inform you of the passing of your pet theory. Claims that Mike Behe doesnt answer critics are massively refuted now with the publication of his new book. It is556 pages of answers to critics, all written with Behes customary wit and rigor. The chapters cover the range of criticisms that have been aimed at his books. Some, including devastating answers to Lents, Swamidass, and Lenski, were published first by us here atEvolution News.

This giant book is among the strongest indicators yet that the cat is dead. The public hasnt been informed yet and evolution theorys loyal defenders are in denial. Its just a matter of time, though. Michael Behe demonstrates as much inA Mousetrap for Darwin.Order your copy now!

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#7 Story of 2020: Darwin Is on the Roof - Discovery Institute

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by Celina Young

Gardening has always been a great avenue for human exploration and innovation. Because gardening has been an essential component to mankinds survival, we are now afforded access to historical records that show the evolution of this multi-beneficial, outdoor activity.

Initially, gardens served the convenient purpose of allowing people to grow food near their homes and lower the risk of meddling animals. Safety and survival were the only priorities. In the prehistoric era (approx.10,000 B.C.), humans would discard all plants that didnt produce food. The mere concept of aesthetic gardening was a byproduct of the emergence of sedentary civilizations. Recreational gardening is an activity that can be traced back as far as 3,000 B.C. in Mesopotamia, which is currently the Middle East. The intent of this outdoor space later shifted to aid in philosophical stimulation and visual enjoyment. Gardens began to be viewed as a place of thought and reflection.

One unique aspect that has made gardening sacred throughout history is that there have been several purposes, techniques, and gardening styles that transcended cultures. West Asia pivotally influenced Europe with landscaping techniques. Egyptians were one of the first cultures to record their style of ornamental horticulture, which is the calculated arrangement and tending of decorative plants. By the fifth century, gardens were a staple in refined European villas. The gradual expansion of the Roman Empire spread gardening information throughout the country as well. The Aztecs created floating gardens, called chinampas, to grow produce on patches of land that rested upon lakes. Culture has always shaped gardening based on which practices worked best for specific regions.

In the 21st century, horticultural architecture has become an investment and an expensive commodity. Gardening may serve as a feasible career for some and a materialized asset for others. Did you know that in the United States, the average cost to have your external space landscaped is about $14,000? This is a clear indication that people value the aesthetic benefits of gardening. In addition to beauty, later generations have recognized the therapeutic perks. Our society has deemed garden-related experiences as therapeutic pastimes. With the increase of mental health awareness, outdoor recreation is suggested as a coping strategy. Medical research evidently proves that gardening supports and boosts the mental and physical health of an individual.

From the age of early man to contemporary times, gardening is a crucial aspect of human existence. Being outside in the garden has provided much more than just nostalgia; its the foundation of mankind. Without gardens, who knows where we would be?

Celina Young is a philanthropist, human advocate, and a current AmeriCorps VIP Fellow working with Goin Native Therapeutic Gardens. As a recent graduate of Cal State Dominguez Hills with a bachelors degree in human services, Celina has made helping others her priority. When shes not aiding in the development of nonprofit organizations, she spends her time blogging, watching podcasts, and walking her dog on the beach.

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Goin' Native: Evolution of Gardening - Capistrano Dispatch