Hermit crabs face a uniquely competitive real estate market. They need bigger and bigger shells throughout their lives, but cant grow these homes themselves. So they rely on castoff snail shells, and are constantly on the lookout for better properties entering the market.

A study that will be published next month in the journal Physica A found that the distribution of these shells in one hermit crab population was surprisingly similar to the distribution of wealth in human societies.

That may make hermit crabs one of the first animals known to experience wealth inequality.

Ivan Chase, an emeritus professor at Stony Brook University in New York and the studys lead author, researches social systems in animals and described a phenomenon called the vacancy chain in hermit crabs in the 1980s.

When a snail dies on the beach, a crab that comes across the empty shell will inspect it closely, turning the shell over in its claws. If the crab decides this home is better than its current shell, it trades up. Another, usually smaller crab may soon find that crabs castoff and move in. Each vacancy lets about three crabs upgrade their shells, Dr. Chase said.

Dr. Chase had always wondered whether this system led to a kind of inequality among hermit crabs, with a few crustaceans hoarding the biggest homes. So in 2017, he and his co-authors started testing the idea. They gathered almost 300 hermit crabs from a Long Island beach and briefly removed the crabs from their shells. They weighed and measured each crab and its residence. Then they looked at how shells of different weights were distributed among the population.

The distribution curve they found peaked around medium-sized shells, then dropped as the shells got larger, before tapering off very gradually through the largest shells of all. This matches the shape of wealth distribution curves in many human societies.

The team used a number called the Gini coefficient to measure overall inequality among the crabs. It found a value similar to that in small human populations, though not as great as in todays large countries. The top 1 percent of hermit crabs owned only about 3 percent of the total shell weight, Dr. Chase and his co-authors noted: There are no Warren Buffetts or Jeff Bezoses. There is also no transfer of shells between crabs and their offspring.

What they discovered suggested that the distribution of shell sizes did not simply depend on crab biology. They did not find similar numbers of crabs in every size of shell, which would be expected if most crabs survive to old age (and if longevity determines shell distribution). Nor did they find that the smallest shells were most abundant, which might occur if crabs most often die young, or are preyed on at a steady rate throughout their life span.

Dr. Chase thinks the resemblance between crab and human inequality might come from similarities between crab vacancy chains and the ways people pass on wealth. While smaller crabs dont exactly inherit their wealth from bigger crabs, the largest shells are a scarce resource that only a few crabs are privileged enough to get their claws on.

Vacancy chains are just another way of transferring property, he said.

Although hes hesitant to draw any societal lessons from the crustaceans, he hopes hermit crabs can one day become a kind of model organism, like lab rats, for scientists studying wealth inequality.

The authors have nicely shown that the wealth distribution in crabs is humanlike, said Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, an anthropologist who studies human wealth inequality at the University of California, Davis. The pattern is very much like what researchers have found in small-scale human societies, both historic and contemporary, she said.

Although the transfer of wealth and property between people is an important contributor to inequality, Dr. Borgerhoff Mulder said many other factors matter too, such as social connections and individual differences in skills and education. She doubts vacancy chains are the whole story in crab society, either.

The notion that crabs can teach us about human wealth distribution may be a little preposterous, Dr. Borgerhoff Mulder added. But she said this kind of idea sharing between studies of humans and other animals is making social science, as a whole, richer.

Go here to read the rest:

Even Hermit Crabs Have Wealth Inequality - The New York Times

Its always better to involve us, says Kibarisho Leintoi, a 36-year-old Masai mother of eight children. Even though I cannot read or write, I know what I need for my family to live: we need healthcare and water. Water for the irrigation of her tomato farm and for her 5 goats and 5 cows. Without water, her income shrinks. She used to have the means to send two of her children to school; the others had to help with chores and guarding the cattle. But after a crop failed due to drought, one of those two children had to drop out when she couldnt afford the fees.

Kibarisho in maize field. Photo by UN-REDD Programme

In the past, a little spring of water would have sufficed for the community, but due to the increasing population and livestock pressure, that is no longer sufficient. The people of the Maji Moto community, near Narok county in Kenya, understood that a dam would help them collect the water so they could use it for irrigation and livestock.

The community selected a committee of seven people, among them Kibarisho Leintoi. The committee met with Indigenous Livelihood Enhancement Partners, an indigenous peoples organization that has been working to help establish communities identify and prioritize their needs. When the Maji Moto community told Indigenous Livelihood Enhancement Partners that they needed a dam, they trained the community in proposal writing and helped them find a sponsor. The funds were then overseen by the community after receiving training from Indigenous Livelihood Enhancement Partners on how to monitor and handle funds.

Kibarisho and Noormejooli at the dam. Photo by UN-REDD Programme

Indigenous Livelihood Enhancement Partners showcased that indigenous peoples have the capacity to implement projects and take ownership, with just the right training. After working with communities for many years, Indigenous Livelihood Enhancement Partners won the United Nations Development Programmes tender to develop stakeholder engagement and free prior and informed consent guidelines and toolkits. These will help donors and government to involve communities when setting up projects that affect their livelihoods.

It is important to know who to talk to in the community because in the Masai community, for example, you have a cultural leadership as well as an administrative leadership, says James Twala, programme officer on climate change for Indigenous Livelihood Enhancement Partners. The constitution spells out that in projects affecting their livelihoods, citizens should be involved.

Indeed, in 2010 Kenya adopted a constitution which has had profound consequences on how natural resources, including forests, are managed. Governance over natural resources is shared between the national and county level governments. The constitution requires public participation in the management, protection and conservation of forests. Consequently, various legislations such as the Forest Management and Conservation Act 2016 and the Climate Change Act 2016 target the process and engagement of local communities and minorities in environmental protection and monitoring, as well as benefit sharing. We are not making new laws but making sure that free prior informed consent is respected, continues Twala. Because when projects are community-driven, they feel ownership and the project has a better chance for longevity since the community feels personally and collectively responsible for taking good care of it and maintaining it long after the donor has gone.

James Twala discussing with Massai village elder. Photo by UN-REDD Programme

The guidelines developed by Indigenous Livelihood Enhancement Partners include consultative meetings where people express their needs and the community is informed of the details of the project, including costs. Then the community decides if they give their consent or not, and if they do, community leaders have the option of giving consent verbally or signing the agreement. This consent articulates what exactly will happen, the timeline and the outcome. And lastly, the community and the implementing entity is responsible for monitoring the implementation of the project.

The UN-REDD Programme has been a pioneer of innovative policies that value and protect forests and their social and ecosystem services. Commitments to human rights-based approaches, social inclusion and stakeholder engagement are vital to its mandate and work.

Since 2017, the United Nations Development Programme is the delivery partner for the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, and together with the Ministry of Environment and Forestry applied these guidelines in the development of the project document. During this process, stakeholders recommended a review of forest policy and legislation in Kenya to include the application of these guidelines as part of the REDD+ readiness process. This forest policy review has been initiated and is still ongoing to ensure that free prior informed consent is part of Kenyas forest policies. It gives the opportunity for communities to participate in the decision-making process on projects regarding the forests their livelihoods depend on, says Judy Ndichu, Technical Coordinator for the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility in Kenya.

See the article here:

Managing forests with community participation in Kenya - UN Environment

In the 1960s, NASA scientists were researching many aspects of space travel for humans.

Some of the products of that research were seen by the world, such as the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969. Others, like how to make food for astronauts out of carbon dioxide, were shelved.

But decades later, Lisa Dyson picked up where those scientists left off. A former strategy consultant with a doctorate in physics, she became interested in how to create protein in a more sustainable way and came upon the old research. She worked on the concept through Kiverdi, a company she founded, which came up with technology to develop protein from air.

Last month, Dyson announced the spinoff of a food company utilizing this technology, Air Protein. The firm, which is working on meat alternative products,expects to make an announcement about when and how they will come to market next year, she told Food Dive.

Dyson said people are becoming more aware of both the ecological impact meat production has on the planet, as well as the pressing need to better produce proteins to feed a growing population.

"This is a great opportunity to introduce an alternative that is super sustainable, significantly more sustainable than any land-based production," Dyson said."You don't need any arable land. You can keep your habitat untouched. You could scale vertically, you know, [producing food] rain or shine, day or night. In the production itself, you can produce the same amount of protein from a soy farm the size of Texas by just having an Air Protein farm the size of Walt Disney World."

Dyson hopes the new technology another way to make sustainable protein will revolutionize both the food business and the longevity of the environment.

While there is no way to get away from the deep science behind this concept, making edible protein from air sounds like science fiction.

NASA's report detailing how the technology works was published in 1967 as part of a more comprehensive study about how to support human life during a space mission longer than a year. Basically, they looked at hydrogenotrophs common microbes, some of which actually live in the human gut that can be used to turn carbon dioxide into a physical protein. NASA looked at harnessing these microbes to convert the carbon dioxide that astronauts would exhale into something they could eat.

Air Protein

Dyson, who gave a TED talk in 2016 about how this technology could work, has taken this research to the next level at her companies.They have developed fermentation vessels that can rapidly and efficiently convert gases to what looks like a protein-rich flour. She said facilities to do this are similar to breweries.

She didn't say where Air Protein's labs are located or how much equipment it has, but Kiverdi's main lab is in Pleasanton, California. Kiverdi has partnerships with other labs, and Dyson said there are several locations that will make Air Protein in the future.

The product made by these fermentation vessels is fairly versatile and has a neutral flavor, Dyson said. While it contains good nutritional credentials it has twice the protein of soy, all essential amino acids and B vitamins it can be used in many different ways. The process can help make meat analogs, pasta, cereals, shakes and protein bars, she told Food Dive.

But considering the vast environmental impact of meat and the protein needs of the human race, Dyson said meat analogs are the place to start even though the field is somewhat crowded. The company sent out pictures of a chicken substitute made from Air Protein with its press release. Dyson said they are still working on perfecting it. Air Protein is the only companywith this technology.

"These are using spices and different types and ways of techniques of taking the flour, and enriching it, and doing different things so that you can get the right texture and flavor," She said.

Air Protein is in development on many different plains, Dyson said.

She said there will be products in development under the Air Protein brand name, and she hopes to make an announcement about them next year. Meanwhile, Dyson said she is in discussion with some companies to form product partnerships, perhaps using Air Protein as an ingredient.She did not say what kinds of products those might be, but hoped to have announcements about those next year as well.

"We'll make many different types of products, and those products will have different groups of consumers that are excited about them," Dyson said. "And that's the benefit of what we're doing, is that we're not limited by one category."

"This is a great opportunity to introduce an alternative that is super sustainable, significantly more sustainable than any land-based production. You don't need any arable land. You can keep your habitat untouched. You could scale vertically, you know, [producing food] rain or shine, day or night."

Lisa Dyson

CEO, Air Protein

Dyson said she expects consumers to get excited and intrigued by Air Protein. Its target audience is any consumer, she said. The prospect of an ultra-sustainable and nutritious ingredient will make consumers want to try it, especially at a time when substitutes for animal-based products are the biggest trend in food.

Some of the NASA scientists who started the research that became both Kiverdi and Air Protein have been excited by Dyson's work, she said. Dyson has been able to blend her knowledge with their work and make air-based food a reality. And Dyson said she thinks this coupled with other sustainable practices like regenerative agriculture can be part of the solution to problems the world faces today.

"There's a range of things that need to come into play with our current food production processes becoming more efficient, becoming more sustainable," she said. "There's so many different things that we need to implement to create a more nutritious soil, healthy soil that can continue to produce crops over the ages. And produce food without the need for soil, without the need for arable land. ... I think that we need to see a plethora of ideas becoming reality."

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Can Air Protein help feed and save the world at the same time? - Food Dive

Dane Koch presented an award to Everyday Hero John Bingle Thompson .(Photo: Lani Garfield, Special to The Desert Sun)

Desert AIDS Project (DAP) held its 6th annual Everyday Heroes event on Dec. 1 at the Palm Springs Cultural Center to shine a spotlight on everyday individuals who inspire others.

CEO David Brinkman said he believes Everyday Heroes connects deeply to the humanitarian work of DAP because each of the honorees, in their own way, helps DAP do the work it does to remove roadblocks to human potential. The work of each of the honorees is heroic and deserves the type of recognition traditionally reserved for major philanthropists in the Coachella Valley.

Steve Kaufer, DAP board chair, opened the program to the standing-room-only auditorium, announcing that Everyday Heroes was born to honor the work of local individuals who, through their kindness and compassion, inspire us all. Kaufer reminded the audience that DAP serves more than 7,000 clients and provides 426 people with housing. And during the 2018-2019 fiscal year, DAPtested more than 2,784 people for HIVand more than 1,349 for Hepatitis C. On-site medical teams provided 5,354 dental visits and 7,160 behavioral health sessions.

Dane Koch, DAPs director of retail, introduced John Bingle Thompson, recipient of the Everyday Heroes award for his commitment to the Revivals retail store as a volunteer since 2015. I choose to volunteer at DAP because I, like most of us here tonight, have lost friends and family to HIV/AIDS, Thompson said as he accepted the award.

Everyday Hero Fiona Foyston seemed genuinely moved by being honored.(Photo: Lani Garfield, Special to The Desert Sun)

Ann Sheffer, co-chair and DAP board member, recognized Fiona Foyston for volunteering at DAP and other local organizations. She quoted Mahatma Gandi who said, The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.Foyston accepted the award by recognizing her grandfather, who instilled in her at an early age to be non-judgmental and to accept everyone as they are. If you want to give your little ones a unique gift, Foyston concluded, introduce them to the worthwhile adventures they can experience by helping others.

Everyday Hero Brett Klein talked about aging with HIV.(Photo: Lani Garfield, Special to The Desert Sun)

Co-chair Tom Truhe introduced Brett Klein, who was recognized for his engagement with and leadership roles in the local LGBT communities and HIV+Aging Research Project. Having lived with HIV for 27 years, he noted how he has become keenly aware of the immense need to understand and explore how aging with HIV can affect your body, mind, soul and healthy longevity.

Molly Bondhus and Wil Stiles were presented the first-ever Barbara Keller Community Action Award.(Photo: Lani Garfield, Special to The Desert Sun)

Co-chair and DAP board member Terri Ketover presented the first-ever Barbara Keller Community Action Award to local retail fashion iconsMolly Bondhus and Wil Stiles.

Molly and Wil are two of the most authentic people I have ever met, Ketover said, and their commitment to justice and humanity is unmatched. Bondhus and Stiles celebrated their boutiques 10th anniversary by donating $500,000 worth of new fashion to Revivals Stores to raise funds for DAP.

Truhe concluded the program by thanking his co-chairs Ketover and Sheffer, and DAPs major and event sponsors Steve Tobin and The Grace Helen Spearman Foundation, GileadSciences, Ann Sheffer and Bill Scheffler, Mike Williams and Canyon Pacific Insurance, Contempo Lending, Lulu California Bistro, News Channel 3 and KESQ, Palm Springs Cultural Center, Gay Desert Guide, The Standard Magazine, Leslie Barclays from Diageo Spirits and Smirnoff, Momentous Events, Promo Homo.TV, CV Independent, Hohn Paschal Photography and The Desert Sun.

At the afterparty, where refreshments weredonated by Jerry Keller and Lulu California Bistro, Willie Rhine, recipient of an Everyday Heroes award in 2018,shared that he appreciates DAP for honoring deserving community members who give back to their community quietly, volunteering their time without fanfare.

Susan Stein, Dr. Oscar Chamudes and Tom Truhe met up under the tent.(Photo: Lani Garfield, Special to The Desert Sun)

Among the community leaders enjoying the evening: former Senator Barbara Boxer, Donna MacMillan, Dr. Les Zendel, David Zippel and Michael Johnston, David Perez, Tom Oliver and Matthew Stocker, Jeffery Bernstein and Dr. Oscar Chamudes, Jeffrey Norman, Tad Green and Ed McBride, Lynn Hammond, Julie Makinen, Ellen Wolf, Gayle Hodges and Art Wedmore, Paul Clowers and Frank Goldstin, Andy Linsky, Kevin Bass, Stuart Leviton and Herb Schultz, Susan Stein, Jerry Keller, Brian Wanzek, Renee Glickman, Dennis Flaig-Moore, Albert Gonzalez and Rhine.

Khalil Gibran in "The Prophet" said it best: You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

Al Jones currently serves as chairman of the Palm Springs International Airport Commission, on the Desert AIDS Project Partners for Life Leadership Committee and on the CSU Palm Desert Campus Advancement Board. He is also an Allegro member of the Palm Springs Opera Guild and a former board member of Sanctuary Palm Springs and The LGBTQ Community Center of the Desert.

6th annual Everyday Heroes Awards 2019

Sunday, Dec. 1

Palm Springs Cultural Center

Benefiting Desert AIDS Project, 1695 N. Sunrise Way, Palm Springs

How to help: To donate or volunteer, call (760) 323-2118 or email info@desertaidsproject.org

Read or Share this story: https://www.desertsun.com/story/life/2019/12/13/everyday-heroes-honored-palm-springs-desert-aids-project/4380509002/

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Everyday Heroes who inspire honored by Desert AIDS Project - The Desert Sun

The longevity of a business is less about how well it does in the good times, and more about how it fares through the rough patches. A farm being resilient can come in many forms, but usually comes down to the strength of the management team running it and the financial nimbleness of the overall operation.

Amy Cronin is a hog farmer, Nuffield scholar and leader of an expanding farm business in Ontario, Missouri, and Iowa. Along with her husband and business partner Mike, Cronin Family Farms has a goal of striving to be the best. They may not always get there, Cronin says, but thats the goal.

Our vision at Cronin Family Farms is Progressive. Prosperous. Best in class, she says.

Having navigated through low hog prices, a major business expansion, a barn fire and now taking on a farm diversification project, Cronin says that communicating ahead of these challenges and decisions is key. We needed to have a serious conversation about how we deal with problems. How we dealt with problems was the determining factor on whether we would or would not expand, she says. We decided to look at our problems and an opportunity. When I look back on it, that is building resiliency.

Its this mindset on viewing challenges differently and using them to better themselves and their business that has allowed their farm to navigate hardship. Moving on is important, says Cronin. They choose to face their problems head-on, put them to bed, and move on. And thats part of resiliency, too dealing with things thoroughly and right away. Its important, she says, to deal with what keeps you up at night.

Innovation and diversification also play a key role in the numbers side of the business. But thats not all about technology, its about management and people. Cronin says theyre always looking at ways to do things differently and better, and that could mean adopting a new management style or creating their own way to do something and incorporating that into the business.

Diversification is key to risk management, yes, but Cronin says they also balance business needs with human needs. Labour is a huge part of making everything work, and Cronin recognizes the need to care for themselves so they can lead a dynamic and fantastic team and take care of them, too.

Cronin uses the quote by Francis of Assisi to guide much of what they do. We start by doing whats necessary, then we do whats possible, and soon we can do the impossible, she says. That impossible right now is making pans for their older children coming back to the farm. Whats necessary and now possible is diversifying into the chicken business. Starting with whats necessary and mastering that, means they can then move on to expanding what is possible for their farm.

Hear more from Amy Cronin in conversation with Bern Tobin at the Agricultural Excellence Conference:

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Master the necessary, do whats possible to build resiliency into your farm - RealAgriculture

The Safdies brothers explain their new movies title: Am I non-judgemental? Yes, that means my gems are uncut. Am I on edge? Yes, my gems are uncut. Do I have depth underneath the surface? Yes, my gems are uncut. Photo: Julia Cervantes/A24

Theres a certain rhythm to Uncut Gems and the way it reaches for things for basketball, for jewels, for wins and losses, for takeout from Smith & Wollensky. It revels in its own excess: every single character is talking at once, trying to buy or sell or cut a deal. Its the Diamond District in 2012 when our hero, Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler), is trying to play the part of 47th Streets slickest salesman. A pack of debt collectors are on his trail, but he compulsively romantically, maniacally keeps placing bets. When a middleman walks NBA power forward Kevin Garnett into Howards jewelry store, every moment after feels like a miracle and a curse all at once. Will Kevin come back with the black opal Howard loaned him as a token of good luck? If Howard can auction it off, is it worth as much as he says? Whats the Weeknd doing here?

Gems directors, the Safdie brothers Benny, 33, and Josh, 35 talk like the movies they make: theyll jump up to act out a story or pull out a cell phone to show a photo, speaking fast and a lot as they try to keep up with their next thought. A question about a set can easily prompt an erratic anecdote about the time they walked in on some guy curing meat in a random building in midtown Manhattan. I believe them when they tell me that they rewrote their movie several times, first basing Howards saga around Amare Stoudemire, then Kobe Bryant, and then Joel Embiid, before finally landing on Garnett. Each time, the story of an impossibly lucky gem was reimagined to fit the particulars of each NBA stars career. All of this is a box we put ourselves into, Benny says. We say, Oh we had to do this, we had to do that. We didnt actually have to shoot with a real basketball player and use real games, we chose to. Throughout the course of a conversation with Vulture, the brothers discuss their alternate Uncut Gems plots, the real-life Diamond District figures they befriended, and, of course, what the name of their movie even means.

Josh Safdie: I was trying to explain the whole gems uncut, cut my gems thing to someone. They were like, I dont get it. I was like, Well, this is my take on it. You want to know my take on it?

Hunter Harris: Yes.JS: I want to know your take on it first.

No, no, no. Im interviewing you, I want to hear what you guys have to say.JS: Heres my take on it Am I non-judgmental? Yes, that means my gems are uncut. Am I on edge? Yes, my gems are uncut. Do I have depth underneath the surface? Yes, my gems are uncut. If my gems are cut, Im like naked, ready to be seen. Im potentially dangerous. Uncut is very dangerous, but cut is extra dangerous, because it can have a sharp point. My value is hidden if my gems are uncut, so I have a deeper, bigger value. I might be a little flawed, but Im worth it. Thats gems uncut.

Ah, I see.JS: Ultimately I think its just a very fun play on words, but also, I think its deep. And yes, my gems are uncut.

Benny Safdie: Its also, like, Who are you to cut my gems?

Sort of, Have you no decency? Benny, the last time we spoke, you said that you thought of Howard as literally an uncut gem.BS: The idea is that hes rough on the outside, but if you scratched below the surface, you see the beauty, and you see these things that you didnt quite know were there at first glance. You need to understand him to really love and know who he is.

JS: To me, Howard being an uncut gem is like a corollary to the movie being a radical humanist film, which is kind of in a weird way, all of our movies. Our entire life weve grown up with very flawed people around us, and weve had to see past those flaws, or excuse them, to get at something that makes them relatable, or human, or worthy of value. In the jewelry trade, uncut gems are major gambles. You have to be a genius with your eye to find one [that is actually valuable].

BS: Its not easy to do. If you look at a flawed person and try to see who and what it is that makes them interesting, you learn more about people in general. If you see a stand-up person, sometimes that can make you feel a little bit uncomfortable. Its like, Oh, Im not that good. So if you see somebody who has flaws or issues, it reflects back on humanity in a bigger way.

Theres something else that just popped in my head: if you take a diamond, and its like a rough

JS: I hate diamonds.

Josh, why do you hate diamonds?JS: I mean, look, when you see an IF diamond an internally flawless diamond the purity of it is remarkable: Wow, that actually exists. Its beautiful to see a solid take the form of a liquid with a diamond. That is beautiful. But its the general PR huckster-ism of the diamond industry. Diamonds arent rare. Ultimately, theyre kind of boring Ill take an Indian Star sapphire any day over a diamond. Ill even take like, a cats eye. But like opals in general I mean, a pigeons blood ruby, whoa.

Why opals, specifically, for this movie?JS: Very early on, when we were deciding on which stone should be in the film, it happened to have been right when Ethiopia started to publicize their black opals. It was a big moment in the geological world. The Australians, who are known for their black opals, were actually really pissed about it. Theyre like, Uh-oh, we cant corner the market anymore, so they started an anti-Ethiopia PR campaign. And, sadly, the Ethiopian opals didnt have longevity to them. They started to craze and crack, they were less valuable, which was unfortunate.

JS: White opals are very unlucky, but the black opals are very lucky. And theyre brilliant. You can see the color in them. And they dont have the superstition against them that white opals have.

BS: Some people are afraid of them.

JS: Not black opals, no.

BS: Really?

JS: Well theres a stigma against opals in general, but people who know gems and energies and things, the black opal is an exceptional gem.

BS: But there is something to this idea that people can be afraid of a gem, afraid of an opal.

JS: White opals are predominantly very unlucky, yes. Particularly the Italians, they fucking hate them. They wont go near them. But, the black opal was considered the antithesis of the white opal. Theres a specific color pattern to a black opal its called the harlequin pattern, which is like the most valuable color pattern. Anyway, thats why I prefer a black opal to a diamond.

I want to talk about basketball. Were there other NBA players you reached out to, before Kevin?JS: It started with Amare Stoudemire, who was a Knicks player in 2010. Thats when we started the project. Hes famously a Black Jewish person, so the themes of the movie presented themselves in that way: Ethiopian Jewish tribe. Beta Israelites. Black opals, which were found by a Jewish tribe in the Beta Israelites in Welo mines. Amare is a very spiritual person. He calls himself the spiritual gangster.

But about 20152016, we were having trouble getting financing, finding the right person to star as Howard, and our agency suggested casting up and going with Kobe Bryant. But Kobe they didnt understand the themes of the movie. Hes a West Coast person, we needed East Coast games. Because we had to write around the reality of the games.

Sure.JS: But then I was like, You know what? Theres this one game at the Garden that Kobe dropped 60 points. Lets make that the gem game. And the gem will become a youth elixir, and [the movie will] be about reminding everybody whos the man. In that version, Howards like trying to reclaim his initial win. And, so then we spent two weeks rewriting the whole script, changing the vibe and the themes of the film.

Around Kobe?JS: Around Kobe. And then our agents are like, No, no, no. He doesnt want to act anymore. He wants to direct. And Id just spent two weeks fucking writing this thing! Hes like, Yeah, were not going to send it to him. I was like, What the fuck?!

So then we ended up with Joel Embiid. Because we were like, You know what, were going to update the movie. Its going to be a contemporary film. You want to use a contemporary player. And Joel Embiid presented himself. Before he was even playing in the NBA, he was a legendary Twitter user. He trolled Rihanna. Hes amazing. Hilarious, you know what I mean? And, so I was like, He could be interesting. He could play into the comedy of the film, because his humor is dry and droll. We ended up meeting him through his manager, and his manager ends up in the film.

Who is the manager in the movie?JS: She plays Kevins manager, Jenny Sachs. This is the way the cosmos works: shes studied psychiatry, and worked at a needle exchange. She weirdly saw Heaven Knows What [the Safdies 2016 film]. No one in the sports world saw Heaven Knows What, but she did. She was like vouching for us to Joel, and then we became friends with Joel. And I started going to the Sixers games, and working with Joel, and understanding. Then the themes of the movie became even more overt, with an African player. I was just like, Oh, this is about reclamation, this is about being empowered by reclamation. Joel was into that, things were moving. Now this is the Joel Embiid movie.

When I was writing the scenes, I would send them to Joel. Joel would read them, but mostly Jenny would be like, I dont know if he can do that. I dont know if this is too much. This scene might be too much to ask of him. I got a little nervous about that. But in the end, I knew he was such a cocky guy that it would have been fine. And then the schedule pushed into the NBA season, and we couldnt use an active player. So then we had a list of other players who were recently retired. We went back to Amare.

BS: The list wasnt like this [gestures widely] long.

JS: Amare wouldnt shave his head to match the games that we had to cut in between.

BS: But the thing is [laughs] all of this is a box we put ourselves into. We say, Oh we had to do this, we had to do that. We didnt actually have to shoot with a real basketball player and use real games, we chose to because

JS: We did have to.

Because how else do you make this movie?BS: Thats the point! But everybodys, Oh, just cast an actor.

JS: Someone did try to push that on us.

BS: Really, that is an idea that was put out there. Im like, Maybe you dont understand. Having a real player, and having a player act, and then using those real games on the television creates a good alchemy.

JS: Once we saw the new list [of available retired players], Kevin Garnetts name was on it. As a Knicks fan, I was so, like, We cant put Kevin Garnett in the movie. I hate him. But that was when my film intelligence was kind of eclipsed by my insane, schizophrenic, Knicks fandom, where I actually couldnt see past what I normally would have realized, which was that me hating Garnett is actually a testament to his incredible acting ability, and how he plays a great heel in the NBA. He can get people to despise him, based on his performance on a nightly basis of 20,000 people.

BS: And when we were talking to him, just the way that he told stories Id never seen anything like it before. He would set you up in the room, show you where people were sitting, who was behind him, the noises that were happening, the way the door closed.

JS: Put it this way, he sweats when he tells a story You have to remember, hes a superstar. He went from high school to the pros.

BS: He kind of underplays [his performance in Uncut Gems], like, Oh, I was just playing myself. I was just playing myself. Thats a very difficult thing to do, because you have to be comfortable.

JS: Hes playing the self that he created for the NBA.

Adam Sandler as Howard, wet and beaten in New York City, in a scene from Uncut Gems. Photo: Julia Cervantes/A24

So tell me more about the Diamond District, and re-creating this world that feels at once very alive but also hermetically sealed. How did you make that happen, particularly when Howards actual shop was built on a soundstage, right?BS: For us, it was actually hard because we like to shoot on location all the time. To do that on a stage was out of necessity. We couldnt physically shoot in a real jewelers place. We wouldnt have had a lease long enough, and getting up and down in these buildings is insane.

JS: The lease wasnt the problem.

BS: No, it was mainly just getting in and out of [a jewelers shop]. Theres a certain amount of elevators, and theres so many people going up and down all the time. We wouldnt have been able to get all the stuff in there to build it out. We had this whole idea that people would be coming into work on the district, they would kind of breathe this energy. So, once we moved into a stage, its like: How do we re-create that feeling, that vibe? By bringing a bunch of people there who worked in the district that are in the movie. Sometimes they werent even in the scene, but we had them there just to kind of breathe the energy.

JS: To me, the first major compromise of the film was agreeing to shoot the business on a soundstage. And by the business, I mean his showroom, his back room, the hallway, the elevator bays.

BS: But, for [the shoots that did take place on the streets of the Diamond District], we really wanted to capture the district as it was, kind of unfettered from us. Even though we were having a footprint there, we didnt want to disturb it. We kept it open, which you have to. Legally youre not allowed to close the street, because its business. We embraced that fully. Theres people just walking in and out of the frames, all the time.

JS: In 2012, after the first nostalgic draft was finished, I went and started to involve myself deep in the research in the Diamond District. Its a very consumers materialist world me not being able to buy anything there was actually like a major inhibitor of getting deep in with anyone.

So howd you do it?JS: I had to bring press clippings in, and try to prove that I was a real filmmaker. And, over time, those clippings became a little bit more impressive. Two years into my research, we made a documentary about a basketball player

This is Lenny Cooke?JS: Yeah, that reached the Diamond District crowd. They do a lot of business with athletes, and a lot of athletes were talking about the movie. They also stay on WorldStarHipHop, and the trailer blew up on WorldStar. I actually brought Lenny to the diamond district once, because he used to go. He went to Jacob the Jeweler. There was a jewelry shop called Rafael and Co., who were very helpful to us in the beginning, letting us see how the business operates. But there was another guy named Joe Rodeo. I had a friend, and the friend has since passed, but he was a real character. He was from New York. His name was Tuna. He loved going there, and making a big show of buying shit from these guys, like a watch, or what have you. Finally I was in, because I was now with someone who was buying stuff. When I got to go to the back rooms, I took photos. I wasnt sure that I was ever going to get back to this specific upstairs spot, because its pretty private. I took so many pictures the first time I went in there. I probably took like a hundred pictures of the weirdest stuff

BS: How about Joe?

JS: This guy. His name isnt even Joe! We met him and someone called him that, and they just went with it for a while. They were just like, Yeah, Joe. It was so strange. Joe owned a building 20 West 47th. His son Alon married into a very big family on 47th street, the Nektalov family. Theres a great New York Magazine piece about Nektalov. Nektalov was murdered on Sixth Avenue. Its a crazy story.

Oh my God.JS: So the Nektalov family is Leon Diamonds, and they were huge on the block. They were very hard to get in with. Richie Nektalov ended up helping [us]. Thats whose Rolls Royce it is in the movie that Judd Hirsch gets into.

BS: Thats Richie Nektalovs house, too, and hes also in the Passover scene.

JS: So, the tentacles were wide, you know? Eventually I got in with Joe and his son Alon. And Joe was very skeptical of us. Like, Who are these guys? Can we make money off of them? And I was just trying to earn my place. They showed us this huge penthouse. When I went up there for the first time, there was a guy curing meat, living on an air mattress. I have pictures of it. This guy had a bunch of meat hanging up from the ceiling.

BS: This is on Sixth Avenue and 47th Street, in the middle of Manhattan! Its unbelievable.

JS: Hes curing meat! Id told them I knew all these interior designers and architects. So hes like, If you can help me turn this into a lounge he had this big vision for it, with a sauna, and all this stuff Ill help you in exchange. So I ended up hiring an architect. I brought in this legendary interior designer, who weirdly has also since passed, Jim Walrod.

And then what happened?JS: I said, Ill do this for you Joe, in exchange for a six-month lease on a space in your building. It was the perfect size, but as Benny was saying, it became very impractical to actually shoot in it.

BS: Once you accept that okay, were not going to do it on location, well do it on the stage, you get to design. The design of [Howards shop] is just crazy to get into the details. We could design parts of the space to be a certain height, based on Kevin Garnetts height. So when he goes in, he looks much bigger.

JS: We made the ceilings about half a foot shorter, to make him look taller.

BS: Basically we have this whole space outfitted to look so real, and yet its totally fabricated. Every light was on its own color temperature, its own brightness. It was the most complicated lighting setup you could possibly have.

JS: This has nothing to do with 47th Street.

BS: It does. Its about capturing the vibe. You literally go so far to fake it, to make it look real.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Original post:

Benny and Josh Safdie on the Alternate History of Uncut Gems - Vulture

Purdue is looking for dogs to participate in a national study on the health and wellness of dogs.(Photo: provided by Purdue)

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. Purdue is looking for dogs. More specifically, your dog to volunteer as a participant in a national study that will be looking at the general health and wellness of dogs.

The Dog Aging Project is a collaboration between more than 40 scientists and researchers across the U.S. and will be looking at dogs of all breeds, mixes and ages. At Purdue, Audrey Ruple, an assistant professor of One Health Epidemiology in the College of Health and Human Sciences, is one the researchers leading the study and is hoping to recruit dogs from across Indiana.

Ruple, who is a veterinary epidemiologist specializing in dogs as a model of human health, said the goal of the study is to examine factors that maximize the health and longevity of dogs, which can be linked to the health and longevity of humans.

Humans and dogs have more in common than we might think sharing 650 million base pairs of genetic information with the canines which Ruple said makes the animals useful to study human disease processes. Dogs also have a sophisticated health care system, comparable to the human health care system.

Dogs are unique because they share our environment, Ruple said. They live in our homes, drink our water and sometimes eat our human food. We both have similarities, and we see a lot of similar diseases and health issues.

The Dog Aging Project will follow participating dogs to watch how different environmental and biological factors can affect longevity for the next 10 years, although the schedule could extend beyond that time. The research hopes to look at specifics that could affect longevity, including an individuals genome, proteome, microbiome, demographics and environmental factors.

Owners who nominate their dogs to participate in the study will complete a 200-question health and lifestyle survey as well as submit electronic medial records, likely through the dogs veterinarian. The study isnt limiting the types of dogs participating eitherdogs of all breeds, mixes and sizes are encouraged to participate.

Neither the dogs nor owners will be compensated for the research, butthere is no cost to participate. Researchers will be working closely with the primary care veterinarians of the dogs, who will be expected to visit for their regular annual examination.

Ruple said the study is a citizen scientist project, meaning the owners of participating dogs are considered to be research partners in the study.

The study is funded by a five-year grant from the National Institute of Aging, which is part of the National Institute of Health, as well as private donations.

The Dog Aging Project hopes to enroll tens of thousands of dogs to research by the end of 2020.

People can take a part in the scientific process, whether its for human health or dog health, Ruple said. Through this study, we can learn to not only be better stewards of their existence, but also for our own.

TO APPLY:For more information on the Dog Aging Project or to nominate your dog, visithttps://dogagingproject.org/

Emily DeLetter is a news reporter for the Journal & Courier. Contact her at (765) 420-5205 or via email at edeletter@jconline.com. Follow her on Twitter at @EmilyDeLetter.

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Purdue is looking for your dog to participate in a national scientific study. Here's how. - Journal & Courier

World Longevity Economy Size Projections, current USD

AI for Longevity has more potential to increase healthy Longevity in the short term than any other sector. The application of AI for Longevity will bring the greatest real-world benefits and will be the main driver of progress in the widespread extension of healthy Longevity. The global spending power of people aged 60 and over is anticipated to reach $15 trillion annually by 2020. The Longevity industry will dwarf all other industries in both size and market capitalization, reshape the globalfinancial system, and disrupt the business modelsof pension funds, insurance companies, investment banks, and entire national economies.

Longevity has become a recurring topic in analytical reports from leading financial institutions such as CitiBank, UBS Group, Julius Baer, and Barclays. At the recent AI for Longevity Summit in London, top executives from Prudential, HSBC, AXA Insurance, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Babylon Health, Insilico Medicine, Longevity.Capital, Longevity Vision Fund, Juvenescence, and Deep Knowledge Ventures came together to discuss the Longevity Industry. International policymakers and senior corporate executives shared learnings from Japan, Israel, Switzerland, the US, and the UK, and exchanged ideas on beginning to work together in a new social contract to enhance global prosperity equitably.

The 7th Continent - 1 Billion People in Retirement Globally

Switzerland is one of the most longevity progressive countries in the world with both high investment in biotechnology and the capacity to integrate AI into its economic, financial, and healthcare systems. Switzerland has the potential to be a world leader in both the Global Longevity Industry and the 4th Industrial Revolution. There are currently 100 companies, 80 investors, 50 financial companies, 35 research labs, 20 precision medicine clinics, 15 nonprofits, and 10 governmental organizations in the Swiss Longevity Industry. Switzerland is in an excellent position to retain its leading position by focusing on the optimal assembly of its existing resources to transform the challenge of demographic aging into a national asset.

Switzerland has a large aging population and Swiss investment banks are acutely aware of the oncoming demographic challenge. Switzerland is one of the most efficiently regulated and supervised financial centers in the world and has been leading transformative developments emerging from the digitalization of its banking and financial sector. Longevity-progressive countries typically have large aging populations, and aging populations have two longevity-progressive benefits: voting power and spending power.

Longevity Industry in Switzerland 2019

The digitization of finance, and novel financial systems which treat Longevity as a dividend, will play an integral role in the Longevity economy. According to a recent report by Aging Analytics Agency, Switzerland has the elements necessary to become a leading Longevity financial hub, including factors such as a lean political system that facilitates rapid implementation of integrated government programs, a strong research environment for geroscience, a strong research and business environment for digital health, and most importantly, international financial prowess.

Switzerland has the ability to develop several Longevity specific programs over the next several years. One program is a Longevity progressive pension system and insurance company ecosystem that accounts for both population aging (which threatens to destabilize the current business models of insurance companies and pension funds) and the potential for widespread healthspan extension. Another program is a national strategy for intensively developing Geroscience and FinTech to a state so advanced that it propels Switzerland into a central role in the international Longevity business ecosystem and a global leader in Longevity Finance. Switzerland is leading the digitization of financial markets and establishing itself as a catalyst for financial innovation on a global level. According to Aging Analytics Agency, 10% of all European FinTech enterprises are located in Switzerland.

Switzerland has a strong and productive geroscience community and has gained prominence among investors as a global biotech hub and hotbed of innovation. The Swiss Institute for Bioinformatics has recently identified large numbers of genetic markers directly linked to human life expectancy. Switzerland is also home to the prestigious Vontobel Prize for Aging Research.

The Convergence of 5 Mega Trends

BioValley

Switzerland is situated at one end of the BioValley - one of the leading life science clusters in Europe. This cluster is unique in that it spans across three countries, Switzerland, Germany and France, and includes Basel, a global life science hub. BioValley brings together important ingredients for a successful biotech cluster including a concentration of companies, rich availability of skills, experience within Life Sciences, and a world class research base. The cluster in Switzerland has in excess of 50,000 people working in the life sciences field including 15,000 scientists. There are 600 companies in the cluster developing therapeutic, diagnostic or medical devices to address a wide range of diseases in multiple therapeutic classes. There are 100,000 students enrolled in 10 universities and research institutions including University of Basel, Max Planck Institute, and Freiburg University. The cluster has produced a number of spin-out companies supported by a financial network including both public and private financing initiatives as well as traditional venture capital and private equity. The entire process of drug development is covered in the region, from research through to clinical and drug development, and manufacturing.

Longevity AI Consortium Expands to Switzerland

Longevity AI Consortium King's College London

In November 2019, Europes firstLongevity AI Consortium(LAIC)launched at King's College London. LAIC is currently developing collaborative research projects withDynamics of Healthy Ageing (DynAge)and theDigital Society Initiative (DSI)at the University of Zurich. The research will utilize AI technologies to predict the future cognitive ability of individuals using multimodal neuroimaging and risk factor data. Academics in Zurich will work in collaboration with colleagues at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience at King's College London. LAIC plans to establish several collaborative projects with the University of Zurich in 2020. The joint R&D between Ageing Research at Kings and University of Zurich forms the first phase of the global Longevity AI Consortium that will eventually be extended to Israel, Singapore, Japan and the US.

The Longevity Industry

AgeTech

FinTech banks are redefining the banking industry by connecting with a new generation of mobile-first consumers. However, FinTech banks are focusing on consumers who are middle-age and younger, not on the 1 billion people in retirement and the $15 trillion dollar market opportunity. As the share of the population over 60 increases, Swiss banks are lagging behind in finding solutions for this age group. Traditional banks, as opposed to challenger banks, are taking their first steps in AgeTech and adapting their infrastructure for people over 60.

WealthTech

The WealthTech Industry refers to a new generation of financial technology companies that create digital solutions to transform the investment and asset management industry. New companies have arrived on the scene offering advice based on AI and big data, micro-investment platforms, and trading solutions based on social networks. A growing aging population is one of the main drivers of innovation in WealthTech. Financial services innovators have an opportunity to enhance the financial lives of individuals over 60 by designing new solutions and adapting existing products and services for them. This is an opportunity to implement innovations that address financial health challenges head on.

Financial Wellness

As a core component of its mission to develop Switzerland into a leading international Longevity Financial Industry hub, Longevity Swiss Foundation plans on roadmapping the development of AI Centers for Financial Wellness. Whereas the proposed AI Centers for Longevity would focus on optimizing health, these centers would focus on the application of AI to the creation of methods and technologies to promote wellness in other areas including financial wellness, continuing education, psychological well being, neuroplasticity, and active social involvement. The planned development of AI Centers for Financial Wellness will enable financial stability over extended periods of healthy Longevity for Swiss citizens.

Switzerland could become the center of the Longevity Financial Industry. Given its geographic size and its reliance on international cooperation, its function in the Longevity Industry will be as a small but important node. Due to its status as an international BioTech epicenter and its reputation as one of the most progressive countries in terms of its financial industry, the prospects for Switzerland to lead the world in the development of its Longevity Financial Industry are strong.

Today, change occurs at the intersection of two or more scientific and technological domains. We are at the beginning of a trend where the degree of complexity and the number of convergence points will increase exponentially. The convergence of AI, advanced data science, and Longevity research will accelerate important medical breakthroughs that will benefit all humans. In the next decade, the Longevity Industry will impact many areas of our lives. Longevity policies enacted by governments and changes in the global financial industry will transform society. Achieving small but practical results in Longevity distributed at scale will have enormous and multiplicative effects on society. Extending the functional lifespan of humans by just one year will decrease suffering for tens of millions of people and will improve the quality of life for billions of people.

Click the box below to preview a new book that I co-authored with my colleague Dmitry Kaminskiy entitled Longevity Industry 1.0 - Defining the Biggest and Most Complex Industry in Human History.

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AI Will Drive The Multi-Trillion Dollar Longevity Economy - Forbes

The underlying message from the recent report released by the Senate Joint Economic Committee is clear from its title, An Invisible Tsunami: Aging Alone and Its Effect on Older Americans, Families, and Taxpayers. The report looks at the worrisome trend toward increasing social isolation among older Americans.

The report examines trends of social support among adults ages 61 to 63 from 1994 to 2014 by several measures think children living within 10 miles, married or cohabiting, and good friends in the neighborhood. Each trend line is down over the 20-year period. The report argues that older Americans in the future are unlikely to have the level of support from caregivers that they enjoyed in the past.

There are some countervailing trends that suggest the value of community is being rediscovered by aging Americans in recent years. For example, the number of retirees who say they moved within five years after retirement has fallen from a high of 23% in 1980 to 15% in 2015. When retirees pick up stakes, theyre most likely to move within the same county.

The urbanized retired population is likely choosing to stay near friends, family, and the cultural attractions, like sporting teams and theaters, that they have come to know well, write Matt Fellowes and Lincoln Plews in The State of Retirees.

The reports emphasize different data but agree that human connections are critical. Healthy social connections contribute to meaningful longevity.

One reason I focus so much on staying employed during the traditional retirement years is partly for the money. The other factor is that the workplace is a community.

The strength and depth of connections and social support is also critical when it comes to deciding where you will you live in your later years.

Most people want to stay in their current residence for as long as possible. Aging-in-place is an attractive idea. But you should investigate not only what it could be like to age in your home but also, more importantly, to age in your community. You dont want to be lonely.

Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, recommends thinking through these three questions in planning for a good quality of life with age: Who will change my light bulbs? How will I get an ice cream cone? Who will I have lunch with? Your answers should help you plan for aging in a home and community with strong connections and community support.

Chris Farrell is a senior economics contributor for Marketplace and a commentator for Minnesota Public Radio.

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Retirement planning needs to include keeping in touch with your communities - Minneapolis Star Tribune

Women live longer than men by an average of six to eight years, according to the World Health Organization. This intriguing trend is seen in nearly every country around the world, suggesting that it may be driven by profound biological differences between the sexes. And longevity may not be limited to human females; according to a sweeping new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a range of female mammals live longer than their male counterparts, too.

Scientists have long assumed this to be true, but according to the study authors, the assumption was based on a small number of case studies on wild mammals, or records of mammals housed in captivity, where lifespan and aging patterns are often not representative of conspecifics in the wild. For the new report, the researchers compiled and analyzed demographic data from different types of studies, including mortality estimates that had been obtained from long-term monitoring of wild populations, and mortality rates obtained from dead animals collected in the field. In total, the teams analysis covered 134 populations and 101 species, including lions, orcas, reindeer, and squirrels.

Among 60 percent of the populations studied, females lived longer than males. On average, their lifespans were 18.6 percent longer, which is considerably higher than the advantage for female humans, who live on average 7.8 percent longer than their male counterparts.

But why do such discrepancies exist between the sexes? Scientists have long sought to answer this question as it pertains to humans, and complex behavioral differences likely come into play. Men, for instance, are more likely to smoke, drink excessively and be overweight, Perminder Sachdev, a professor of neuropsychiatry at the University of New South Wales in Australia who has studied human longevity, told Times Markham Heid last year. They are also less likely to seek medical help and to adhere to medical treatments.

Biological factors may also drive the survival gap. Testosterone, for instance, increases levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol in men, putting them at greater risk of hypertension, stroke and heart disease.

Womens biology, on the other hand, may give them a boost. One theory posits that having two copies of the same sex chromosome confers protective benefits that govern longevity; women have two copies of the X chromosome, while men have X and Y chromosomes. Earlier this month, a study in Biology Letters gave credence to this hypothesis when it found a link between sex chromosomes and lifespan across more than 200 species. Female mammals, which have two of the same chromosomes, tended to live longer than males. The dual-chromosome trend applied to species that don't have X or Y chromosomes, too, and to species that in which males have two of the same chromosomes. For example, male birds, which have two Z chromosomes, have the survival advantage over females, which have one Z and one W chromosome.

The authors of the new study note that male mammals also devote substantial resources toward the growth and maintenance of secondary sexual traits, like larger body size or antlers. In certain environmental circumstances, these traits might come at a cost. When looking at bighorn sheep, for instance, the researchers found virtually no difference in lifespan between males and females in ranges where resources were consistently available. But in one location where winters are particularly harsh, there were significant sex differences in lifespan.

Male bighorn sheep use lots of resources towards sexual competition, towards the growth of a large body mass, Jean-Francois Lematre, first author of the new study, tells Matt McGrath of the BBC. [T]hey might be more sensitive to environmental conditions.

Both genetic variations and environmental conditions, in other words, likely play a role in sex differences in lifespan. Untangling these intertwined factors wont be easy, the study authors acknowledgebut further research, they write, will undoubtedly provide innovative insights into the evolutionary roots and physiology underlying aging in both sexes.

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Females Live Longer Than MalesAmong Humans and Other Mammals, Too - Smithsonian.com

Shonen, like many of the most popular genres in manga and anime, is one that can seem overstuffed with copycats.Dragon Ball Z's winning formula for longevity has a lot to answer for: over-powered, wide-eyed heroes who fight for the fun of it; tournament arcs; pointless power levels; reincarnations and a lot of shouting out the names of super-powered martial arts moves. Those that adore all this will put up with the repetition, largely for the sake of comfort viewing, and will argue that any perceived staleness is endemic to most popular genres of any entertainment.

But the sheer dominance of shonen means that its cookie-cutter nature is far more pronounced than others, as the industry behind it prioritizes safe, sure-fire hits than riskier creative ventures. Luckily, one of this year's biggest new anime releases,Dr. Stone, has been immune to this.

RELATED:Dr. Stone Lifts the Lid on Senku's Strange Connection to Ishigami Village

In a year whereBlack Clover,Fire ForceandThe Rising of The Sheild Herofail to add anything particularly new or noteworthy to the medium,Dr. Stoneis in better company amongst more exciting titles, like the historical epic,Vinland Saga and Mob Psycho 100 II, the creator ofOne-Punch Man's arguably superior twist on superheroes. Not to be forgotten in this breath is the second half of the third season ofAttack on Titan, which brought seismic revelations to Hajime Isayama's darkly political fantasy world in 2019. WhileDr. Stonehasn't achieved the breakout success ofAttack on Titan, the two are surprisingly comparable in their fresh feel and ideas they bring to shonen.

On the surface, the standard "teenagers save the world" premise is present in both series, as it is in the YA dystopian niche of storytelling that they could both technically be categorized within. To that point, both hook you in right away with a post-apocalyptic mystery at their core; mysteries that changed the course of human history. InAttack on Titan, that mystery is how humanity came to be trapped within a walled city surrounded by strange, man-eating giants.

InDr. Stone, the mystery is how humanity became trapped within stone husks, unable to reawaken for thousands of years. Their worlds are both futuristic and period-set at once, with antiquated technology and barbaric, kill-or-be-killed societies -- encasing a sci-fi engine within a setting typical of most fantasies. While both of their leading men strive towards great things, as any typical shonen hero does, their aims aren't as simple as just being the "best."

The goal in each is survival in the harshest environments.Attack on Titan's heroes are forced to do battle against the monsters that wander their limited world beyond the walls or defend the world within against the odd breach in their defenses; monsters that won't just kill them, but ingest them whole. Older generations are content to exist in a cramped but comfortable cage -- particularly those higher up in the societal order -- but the younger ones feel stifled by it, so much so that their thirst to explore and push their enemies back becomes an all-consuming one.

For Dr. Stone's newly-awakened characters, the change from 21st-century life to that of a brand new Stone Age is, to put it mildly, as much a shock to the system as seeing a colossal, humanoid head appearing over a hundred-foot wall is. Luckily, Senku, the story's central protagonist, is a scientific prodigy with an insatiable love of learning, making it his mission to bring the world back up to speed with the two million years of human advancement that were lost. This begins with things as rudimentary as clothing for warmth and flint for weapons to hunt for food, and gradually turns into glass-blowing and electricity generation. His quarrel with his rival, Tsukasa, is also a moral rather than a physical one: one wants to resurrect all of humanity indiscriminately while the other favors selecting only the youngest and strongest to rebuild a "better" world.Attack on Titanis riddled with its own tangled racial politics, but the less said about those the better before we head into both ethically and spoilery waters.

This is whereDr. Stonehas the edge onAttack on Titanin terms of the masterful way it localizes its stakes without losing any of their impact -- and why it's such a breath of fresh air in shonen. Fictional global catastrophes often fall flat when it comes to generating tension from audiences because they're simply too unimaginable for us to relate to. InAvengers: Infinity War, the loss of half of all life in the universe at the snap of Thanos' fingers was only relatable through the visible loss of characters we'd come to care about.Attack on Titanemploys a similar tactic to ground its sweeping scope with a gruesomely trigger-happy attitude towards key characters that would make G.R.R. Martin want to take notes.

RELATED:Dr. Stone's Riichiro Inagaki & Boichi Share Secrets of Shonen Jump Success

Dr. Stonecan create a similar level of tension by simply having Senku and his friends fetch a single, dangerous ingredient for one of his inventions. Though there are human enemies, the first season revolves mainly around the ultimate battle: man vs. nature, particularly, to make anotherGame of Thrones reference, with winter coming. In a way,Dr. Stonecould actually be better classified as a slice of life anime disguising itself as a sci-fi/shonen adventure: the challenges Senku faces are rooted in the everyday, elevated in difficulty by the constraints of his environment.

Though slightly less the case withAttack on Titan, both series' also prize intelligence and curiosity over action to make their storytelling truly scintillating rather than a visceral but throwaway affair. This is particularly true of the earlier parts of Isayama'sAttack on Titanmanga where even he would admit his art was still a bit rough around the edges. (The action sequences in the anime, however, are far from it.) What truly makes themactualsci-fi stories rather than sci-fi-adjacent stories -- as, say,Star Warsis -- is that they're concept-driven, while their world-building is both expansive yet meticulous. This world-building is also adjustably scalable within different phases of the two series' stories: claustrophobically small or tantalizingly big when it needs to be.

Dr. Stoneshould also be separately distinguished for slipping real science into the ears of those who thought they were tuning into a shonen spin onTarzan. LikeCells At WorkandFood Wars!,Dr. Stoneis just the latest in a line of secretly educational programming in anime. And above all else, it's just damn good fun to watch. How many stories set in the aftermath of a worldwide human disaster can you say that about?

New episodes of Dr. Stone air every Saturday night as part of Adult Swim's Toonami block. Season 1 is available to watch on Crunchyroll and Funimation.Attack on Titanwill return for a fourth season in fall 2020, though the show's exact release date is unknown at this time. It remains to be seen whether Season 4 will be split into two halves.

KEEP READING:Attack on Titan Is Secretly the Biggest Mecha Anime of the Decade

Guardians of the Galaxy: [SPOILER] Isn't Dead After All

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Dr. Stone Is Reinvigorating Shonen Anime the Way Attack On Titan Did - CBR - Comic Book Resources

The notion that weight determines your health is seriously disturbed. As a Registered Dietitian, I know firsthand that calculations like body mass index (BMI) are completely outdated and are a poor measure of health since they only look at weight and height. Looking beyond weight is important to understand what is going on inside your body. Just because you have a normal BMI doesn't necessarily mean you are healthy: enter the term "skinny fat."

The term first gained traction after a piece in Time Magazine profiled individuals who had "normal weight" but had some major underlying health issues. Medically described as metabolically obese normal weight, this refers to people who may have a normal weight or BMI but have risks for health problems in the same way as an outwardly obese person would. Although we don't like the term "skinny fat" as it is super shame-y, it is commonly used describe a serious health issue.

Does your diet primarily consist of excessive sugar, salt, and processed foods? Was the last time you visited a gym back in freshman year of college? Poor diet and lack of exercise, as well as a sedentary lifestyle, can lead to metabolic obesity. Most of us have a decent idea of whether or not we eat a balanced diet and stay active on a consistent basis.

Some more clinical indicators of being metabolically obese that you can discuss with your doctor include:

Diet, exercise, and lifestyle factors all play a huge part in maintaining good health and promoting longevity. Even if you have a normal BMI, high cholesterol and elevated blood sugar can put you at increased risk of heart disease and diabetes. Research has shown that poor diet and lack of exercise are also two key factors that can increase a persons risk of developing cancer.

A big danger for individuals who are metabolically obese is excess visceral fat. While subcutaneous fat (also known as "belly fat") is the layer of fat that sits directly under the skin and can be easy to see, visceral fat lies deeper and surrounds the internal organs. Visceral fat has been strongly linked to metabolic disease and insulin resistance, even for individuals with a BMI within the normal range. You may have heard of the apples and pears scenario that mimics body composition: pears tend to store fat in their lower extremities such as the hips and thighs, whereas apples tend to store fat in the belly. Individuals with an apple shape that store fat in the belly tend to have more visceral fat. Your waist circumference can give you a clearer picture: men should have a waist circumference of less than 40 inches and women should have a waist circumference of less than 35 inches. Cortisol, which is the stress hormone, can also increase how much visceral fat your body stores.

Stay hydrated: Did you know that up to 60% of the human adult body is made up of water? If there is one thing you can do for your health, its to start committing to your hydration. Try lining up your water bottles on your desk so you can see how much you need to drink by the end of the day. When you have a goal and can visualize it, meeting your hydration needs may be easier. You can even fill up a pitcher and keep it in your fridge as a reminder that it must be finished by days end.

Focus on fiber: Fibrous foods like fruits, vegetables, and whole grains are loaded with vitamins and minerals. Plus, fiber can help lower cholesterol levels and also control blood sugar. Fruits and vegetables also are full of water and can help you meet your hydration goal without having to down another water bottle.

Get moving: How are you spending the majority of your day? Are you sitting at a desk or laying on the couch practically 24/7? A study published in 2019 by the European Society of Cardiology found that 20 years of a sedentary lifestyle is associated with a two times risk of premature death. Regular aerobic exercise can also reduce the amount of visceral fat in your body. Consider getting a standing desk at work or just making an effort to get up and move more throughout the day.

Commit to your sleep: Ongoing sleep deficiency is linked to increased risk for several chronic diseases, including heart disease and diabetes. Commit to going to bed an hour earlier and avoid skimping on sleep. Plus, the extra rest may give you more energy to workout the next day.

Excerpt from:
What Is Skinny Fat? - How to Tell If You're Metabolically Obese - GoodHousekeeping.com

Temperatures Impact on COVID-19: Experts have varying views on whether heat can limit growth of the virus

Coronavirus: COVID-19 virus has now spread across over 110 countries with no known vaccine or cure. There has been a conjecture that increased temperature can kill the virus and that the onset of summer will lead to a breakdown in transmission of the virus. However, scientists do not have a definite answer on the influence of summertime temperatures on COVID-19, says Dr Laxman Jessani, Consultant, Infectious Diseases, Apollo Hospitals, Navi Mumbai.

He goes on to add: It has been observed that the virus can stay active for 8-10 days on dry surfaces and while it survives in the human body at 37 degree Celsius, they are heat labile like all viruses and are deactivated or destroyed when subjected to heat. However, the exact threshold temperature to deactivate COVID-19 is still unknown.

Around the world, while different experts have varying views on whether sunlight and heat can limit growth and longevity of the virus, they all agree that observing proper hygiene is more effective in preventing spread. However, the coronavirus is known to be sensitive to three things: Sunlight, High temperature, and Humidity. Sunlight affects the ability of a virus to grow while heat deactivates it.

Also read:Coronavirus Vs Flu: How To Spot The Difference? Know The Exact Symptoms

While experts debate on this matter, summer is still a month away and till then it would be prudent to adopt simple measures to help prevent transmission:

Washing hands regularly is an important prevention step for coronavirusPhoto Credit: iStock

Also read:Coronavirus: Our Expert Shares 7 Tips To Make Your Kids' Time Productive Amidst Shutdown Of Schools

Dr P. Raghu Ram, President of The Association of Surgeons of India, has a contrasting view on this. He says, "If this was the case then incidence of coronavirus in countries like Australia and Singapore should have been low. There is still a lot that we need to know about the novel coronavirus."

He goes on to add that even in the opinion of World Health Organization, we should not be relying on warmer temperatures to come and put an end to coronavirus outbreak.

Also read:Coronavirus: Your Queries Answered By Experts

(Dr Laxman Jessani is Consultant, Infectious Diseases, Apollo Hospitals, Navi Mumbai)

(Dr P. Raghu Ram is President of The Association of Surgeons of India)

Disclaimer: This content including advice provides generic information only. It is in no way a substitute for qualified medical opinion. Always consult a specialist or your own doctor for more information. NDTV does not claim responsibility for this information.

Excerpt from:
Coronavirus: Can Increase In Temperature Kill COVID-19? Experts Weigh In - NDTV News

Podcasts are nearly always an audio-based artform; however, the Green brothers John and Hank brought their shows The Anthropocene Reviewed, Delete This and Dear Hank and John to live audiences in St. Petersburg, Atlanta and Raleigh. Longtime fans of both the podcasts and the brothers other work gathered at the Ferst Center at the Georgia Institute of Technology to experience the emotional performances together. The profits from the tour went to the Partners in Health organization tasked with bolstering the public health infrastructure in Sierra Leone.

While the podcasts were the highlight of the minitour, there were also transitional acts where Steve the minotaur (who was definitely not just Hank wearing a mask) would talk in a poorly executed British accent. His appearances not only included a debrief of the upcoming segment, but also commented on public events and information regarding Partners in Health before introducing the next speaker. Steve managed to inject an extra layer of humor to an already humorous show with slapstick and silliness, as opposed to the inside-joke laden main events that followed.

The Anthropocene Reviewed with John Green

The Anthropocene Reviewed featured a stoic-looking John Green reading from a handful of papers as he reviewed Auld Lang Syne, the popular New Years Eve song, on a five star scale. While it may seem odd for John Green to dedicate an entire portion of the Minitour to a song that most people forget the words to every year, it is a comparable topic alongside the other aspects of the human-centered world he has reviewed on the show previously. His reviews have includedDiet Dr. Pepper, Halleys Comet and the Taco Bell Breakfast Menu among other strictly human topics.

The Anthropocene Reviewed may seem like an educational show to match the Green brothers Crash Course Youtube series, but it included the most emotional portions of the show. These moments included John recalling his time as a news writer in Chicago and the impact his late mentor, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, has had on his life from his start in the industry to the longevity of his brand loyalty to Adidas sneakers. John relates his own life to a topic with which the audience is familiar in a way that is incredibly relatable.

John Green finished this portion of the Minitour by having the audience sing Auld Lang Syne with him, bringing us together and lifting us from the air of nostalgia that settled over the audience.

Delete This with Hank and Katherine Green

Delete This is a behind-the-scenes look into Hank and Katherine Greens marriage as they discuss and critique both Hanks tweets from the week and the goings-on of Twitter as a whole. The conversation between the two ranged from Hank mansplaining boobs to the SPF value of beards. This segment was bolstered by the projector screen spanning the space above the couples heads, as the audience was able to read the tweets alongside the hosts.

At one point, the audience was able to participate in a Twitter game by responding to the phrase I love Georgia because and hitting the autocomplete suggestions on their keyboards to create a phrase that should result in a slight chuckle. I really enjoyed the interaction and found my autocompleted sentence intriguing: I love Georgia because Im not going through this semester, but Im gonna get the whole day done. The true humor from this segment came from seeing the whole audiences replies at once, which reinforced the feeling of community that underscored the entire show.

The strength of Hank and Katherines segment came from the ease of conversation between the couple. Their contagious energy and excitement overflowed into the crowd, leaving a flood of laughter throughout the Ferst Center.

Dear Hank and John with Hank and John Green

While the previous two segments of the show featured the Green brothers in their separate podcast endeavors, the finale featured the duo in all of their quirkiness. Dear Hank and John focuses on Hank and Johns answers to questions sent in by listeners, or in the case of the live-show, audience members. The advice included words of wisdom to an aspiring author, how to choose a personal, but not embarassing Twitter handle and how to approach a conversation with a stubborn peer. The content of the podcast could stand alone regardless of the hosts, but the Green brothers bring their special flare to the show that could not be emulated elsewhere. With the audience participation of live question-asking, Dear Hank and John finished the show with vivacious laughter.

The Green Brothers Minitour was an opportunity to experience live what, for most of the audience, has previously only been an audio-only experience. And while all the content shared during the show will be made available to the rest of the community, reducing childhood and maternal mortality abroad through the Partners in Health project made the experience an entertaining way to give back.

Read the rest here:
John and Hank Green Minitour: Live Podcasts for Charity - The Emory Wheel

Mangrove Capital Partners co-founder and CEO Mark Tluszcz is brimming with enthusiasm for whats coming down the pipe from health tech startups.

Populations armed with mobile devices and hungry for verified and relevant information, combined with the promise of big data and AI, is converging, as he sees it, into a massive opportunity for businesses to rethink how healthcare is delivered, both as a major platform to plugging gaps in stretched public healthcare systems and multiple spaces in between serving up something more specific and intimate.

Think health-focused digital communities, perhaps targeting a single sex or time of life, as were increasingly seeing in the femtech space, or health-focused apps and services that can act as supportive spaces and sounding boards that cater to the particular biological needs of different groups of people.

Tluszcz has made some savvy bets in his time. He was an early investor in Skype, turning a $2 million investment into $200 million, and hes also made a tidy profit backing web building platform Wix, where he remains as chairman. But the long-time, early-stage tech investor has a new focus after a clutch of investments in period tracking (Flo), AI diagnostics (K Health) and digital therapeutics (Happify) have garnered enough momentum to make health the dominant theme of Mangrove Capitals last fund.

I really dont think that theres a bigger area and a more inefficient area today than healthcare, he tells us. One of the things that that whole space is missing is just good usability. And thats something that Internet entrepreneurs do very well.

Extra Crunch sat down for an in-depth conversation with Tluszcz to dig into the reasons why hes so excited about mHealth (as Mangrove calls it) and probe him on some of the challenges that arise when building data-led AI businesses with the potential to deeply impact peoples lives.

The fund has also produced a healthcare reportsetting out some of its thinking.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity

TechCrunch: Is the breadth of what can fall in the digital health or mHealth category part of why youre so excited about the opportunities here?

Mark Tluszcz: I think if you take a step back, even from definitions for a moment, and you look around as an investor and we as a firm, we happen to be thematically driven but no matter who you are and you say where are there massive pockets of opportunity? And its typically in areas where theres a lot of inefficiency. And anybody whos tried to go to the doctor anywhere in Europe or around the world or tried to get an appointment with a therapist or whatever realizes how basically inefficient and arcane that process is. From finding out who the right person is, to getting an appointment and going there and paying for it. So healthcare looks to us like one of those arcane industries the user experience, so to speak, could be so much better. And combine that with the fact that in most cases we know nothing as individuals about health unless you read a few books and things. But its generally the one place where youre the least informed in life. So you go see your GP and he or she will tell you something and youre blindly going to take that pill theyre going to give you because youre not well informed. You dont understand it.

So I think thats the exciting part about it. If I now look around and say if I now look at all the industries in the world and of course theres interesting stuff happening in financial services, and it continues to happen on commerce, and many, many places but I really dont think that theres a bigger area and a more inefficient area today than healthcare.

You combine that with the power that were beginning to see in all these mobile devices i.e. I have it in my pocket at all times. So thats factor two. So one is the industry is potentially big and inefficient; two is theres tools that we have easy to access it. And there has been I think again a general frustration on healthcare online I would say of when you go into a search engine, or you go into Web MD or Google or whatever, the general feedback it gives you is youre about to have a heart attack or youre about to die because those products are not designed specifically for that. So you as a consumer are confused because youre not feeling well so you go online. The next day you go see your doctor and he or she says you didnt go to Google did you, right? I know youre probably freaked out at this point. So the second point is the tools are there.

Third Id say is that artificial intelligence, machine learning, which is kind of in the process of gaining a lot of momentum, has made it that were able to start to dream that we could one day crunch sufficient data to get new insights into it. So I think you put those three factors together and say this seems like it could be pretty big, in terms of a space.

One of the things that that whole space is missing is just good usability. And thats something that Internet entrepreneurs do very well. Its figure out that usability side of it. How do I make that experience more enjoyable or better or whatever? In fact, you see it in fintech. One of the reasons, largely, that these neobanks are winning is that their apps are much better than what you have from the incumbents. Theres no other reason for it. And so I think theres this big opportunity thats out there, and it says all these factors lead you to this big, big industry. And then yes, that industry in itself is extremely large all the way from dieting apps, you might think, all the way to healthy eating apps to longevity apps, to basic information about a particular disease, to basic general practitioner information. You could then break it down into female-specific products, male-specific products so the breadth is very, very big.

But I think the common core of that is we as humans are getting more information and knowledge about how we are, and that is going to drive, I think, a massive adoption of these products. Its knowledge, its ease of use, and its accessibility that just make it a dream come true if we can pull all these pieces together. And this is just speaking about the developed world. This gets even bigger potentially if I go to the third world countries where they dont even have access to basic healthcare information or basic nutritional information. So I would say that the addressable market in investors jargon is just huge. Much more so than in any other industry that I know of today.

Is the fund trying to break that down into particular areas of focus within that or is the fund potentially interested in everything that falls under this digital health/mHealth umbrella?

We are a generalist investment firm. As a generalist investment firm we find these trends and then anything within these trends is going to pique our interest. Where we have made some investments has been really in three areas so far, and well continue to broaden that base.

Weve made an investment into a company called Flo. They are the number one app in the world for women to help track their menstrual cycles. So you look at that and go can that be big, not big, I dont know. I can tell you they have 35M monthly active users, so its massive.

Now you might say, Why do women need this to help them track their cycles because theyve been tracking these menstrual cycles other ways for thousands of years? This is where, as an investor, you have to combine something like that with new behavioral patterns in people. And so if you look at the younger generation of people today theyre a generation thats been growing up on notifications the concept of being notified to do something. Or reminded to do something. And I think these apps do a lot of that as well.

My wife, whos had two children, might say which she did before I invested in the company why would I ever need such an app? And I told her, Unfortunately youre the wrong demographic because when I speak to an 18- year-old she says, Ah, so cool! And by the way do you have an app to remind me to brush my teeth? So notifications is what I think what makes it interesting for that younger demographic.

And then curiously enough this is again the magic of what technology can bring and great products can bring Flo is a company created by two brothers. They had no particular direct experience of the need for the app. They knew the market was big. They obviously hired women who were more contextually savvy to the problem but they were able to build this fantastic product. And did a bunch of things within the product that they had taken from their previous lives and made it so that the user experience was just so much better than looking at a calendar on your phone. So today 35M women every month use this product tells you that theres something there that the tech is coming and that people want to use it. And so thats one type of a problem, and you can think about a number of others that both males and females will have for whom making that single user experience better could be interesting. And I could go from that to ten things that might be interesting for women and ten things that might specifically be interesting for men you can imagine breaking that down. This is why, again, the space is so big. There are so many things that we deal with as men and women [related to health and biology].

Now for me the question is, as a venture investor, will that sub-set be big enough?

And that again is no different than if I was looking at any other industry. If I was in the telecommunications industry well is voice calling big? Is messaging big enough? Is conference calling big enough? All that is around calling, but you start breaking it down and, in some cases, were going to conclude that its big enough or that its not big enough. But were going to have to go through the process of looking at these. And were seeing these thematic things pop up all over the place right now. All over Europe and in the U.S. as well.

It did take us a little time to say is this big enough [in the case of Flo] but obviously getting pregnant is big enough. And as a business, think about it: once you know a womans menstrual cycle process and then she starts feeding into the system, I am pregnant; Im going to have a child, you start having a lot of information about her life and you can feed a lot of other things to her. Because you know when shes going to have a child, you can propose advice as well around heres how the first few months go. Because, as we know, when you have your first child, youre generally a novice. Youre discovering what all that means. And again you have another opportunity to re-engage with that user. So thats something that I think is interesting as a space.

So the thematic space is going to be big the femtech side and the male tech side. All of thats going to play a big role. One could argue always there are the specific apps that are going to be the winners; we can argue about that. But right now I guess Flo is working very well because those people havent found such a targeted user experience in the more generic place. They feel as if theyre in a community of like-minded women. They have forums, they can talk, they have articles they can read, and its just a comfortable place for them to spend some time.

So Flo is the first example of a very specific play that we did in healthcare about a year and a half ago. The first investment, in fact, that we made in healthcare.

The second example is opposed to that its a much more general play in healthcare. Its a company called K Health . Now K Health looked at the world and said what happens when I wake up at night and I have a pain and I do go to Google and I think Im going to have a heart attack. So can I build a product that would mimic, if you will, a doctor? So that I might be able to create an experience when I can have immediacy of information and immediacy of diagnostics on my phone. And then I could figure out what to do with that.

This is an Israeli company and they now have 5 million users in the U.S. that are using the app, which is downloadable from the U.S. app story only. What they did is they spent a year and a half building the technology the AI and the machine learning because what they did is they bought a very large dataset from an insurance company. The company sold it to them anonymized. It was personal health records for 2.5 million people for 20, years so we had a lot of information. A lot of this stuff was in handwritten notes. It wasnt well structured. So it took them a long time to build the software to be able to understand all this information and break it down into billions of data parts that they could now manipulate. And the user experience is just like a WhatsApp chat with a robot.

Their desire is not to do what some other companies are doing, which is answer ten questions and maybe you should talk to a doctor via Skype. Because their view was that at the end of the day in every developed country there are shortages of doctors. Thats true for the U.K.; its true for the U.S. If you predict out to 2030, theres a huge hole in the number of GPs. Part of that is also totally understandable; who would want to be a GP today? I mean your job in the U.S. and the U.K. is youre essentially a sausage factory. Come in and youve got 3 minutes with your customer. Its not a great experience for the doctor or the person who goes to the doctor.

So K Health built this fantastic app and what they do is they diagnose you and they say based on the symptoms heres what K thinks you have, and, by the way, heres a medicine that people like you were treated with. So theres an amazing amount of information that you get as a user, and thats entirely free as a user experience. Their vision is that the diagnostic part will always be free.

There are 5 million people in the US.. using the app who are diagnosing. There are 25 questions that you go through with the robot, K, and she diagnoses you. We call that a virtual doctors visit. Were doing 15,000 of those a day. Think about the scale in which weve been able to go in a very short time. And all thats free.

To some extent its great for people who cant necessarily afford doctors again, thats not typically a European problem. Because socialized medicine in Europe has made that easy. But it is a problem in the U.S.; it is a problem in Africa, Asia, India and South America. Theres about 4 billion people around the world for whom speaking to a doctor is a problem.

K Healths view is theyre bringing healthcare free to the world. And then ultimately how they make money will be things like if you want to speak to a doctor because you need a prescription for drugs. The doctor has access to Ks diagnostic and either agrees or disagrees with it and gives you a prescription to do that. And what were seeing is an interesting relationship which is where we wanted it to be. Of those 15,000 free doctor visits, less than one percent of those turn into I want to speak to a human and hence pay $15 (thats the price theyre charging in the U.S. to actually converse with a human). In the U.S., by the way, about a quarter of the population 75 million people dont have complementary insurance. That when they go to the doctor its $150. Isnt that a crazy thing? You cant afford complementary insurance but you could pay the highest price to go see a doctor. Such madness.

And then theres a whole element of its simple, and its convenient. Youre sitting at home thinking, Okay, Im not feeling so well and youve got to call a doctor, get an appointment, drive however long it takes, and wait in line with other sick people. So what were finding is people are discovering new ways of accessing information. Human doctors also dont have time to give empathy in an ever stretched socialized medicine country [such as in Spain]. So what were seeing also is a very quick change in user behavior. Two and a half years ago [when K Health started], many people would say I dont know about that. Now theyre saying convenience at least in Europe is why thats interesting. In the U.S. its price.

So thats the second example; much more general company but one which has the ability to come and answer a very basic need: Im not feeling well.

We have 5M users which means we have data on 5M people. On average, a GP in his life will see about 50,000 patients. If you think about just the difference if you come to K, K has seen 5M people, your GP Max has seen 50k. So, statistically, the app is likely to be better. We know today, through benchmarks and all sorts of other stuff, is that the app is more accurate than humans.

So you look at where thats heading in general medicine weve for a long time created this myth that doctors spent eight years learning a lot of information and as a result theyre really brainy people. They are brainy people but I believe that that learning process is going to be done faster and better through a machine. Thats our bet.

The third example of an investment that weve made in the health space is a company called Happify . Theyre a company that had developed like a gamification of online treatment if you have certain sicknesses. So, for example, if youre a little depressive you can use their app and the gamification process and they will help you feel healthier. So so far youre probably scatching your head saying I dont know about that But that was how they started and then they realized that hang on you can either do that or you can take medicine; you can pop a pill. In fact what many doctors suggest for people who have anxiety or depression.

So then they started engaging with the drugs companies and they realized that these drug companies have a problem which is the patent expiry of their medication. And when patents expire you lose a lot of money. And so whats very typical in the pharma industry is if youre able to modify a medicine you can typically either extend or have a new patent. So Happify, what theyve done with the pharma companies now, is said instead of modifying the medicine and adding something else to it another molecule for instance could we associate treatments which is medicine plus online software? Like a digital experience. And that has now been dubbed Digital Therapeutics DTx is the common term being used for them. And this company Happify is one of the first in the world to do that. They signed a very large deal with a company called Sanofi one of the big drug makers. And thats what theyre going to roll out. When doctors say to their patients Im diagnosing you with anxiety or depression. Sanofi has a particular medication and theyre going to bundle it now with an online experience and in all the tests that theyve done, actually, when you combine the two, the patient is better off at the end of this treatment. So its just another example of why this whole space is so large. We never thought wed be in any business with a pharma business because were tech investors. But here all of a sudden the ability to marry tech with medication creates a better end user experience for the patient. And thats very powerful in itself.

So those are just three areas where we have actually put money in the health space but there are a number of areas that one looks at either general or more specific.

Yeah it is big. And I think for us at least the more general it stays and its seen the more open minded were going to be. Because one thing you have to be as an investor, at least early stage like ours, completely open minded. And you cant bias your process by your own experience. It has to stay very broad.

Its also why I think clinician led companies and investors are not good because they come with their own baggage. I think in this case, just like in any other industry, you have to say Im not going to be polluted by the past and for me to change the experience going forward in any given area I have to fundamentally be ready to reinvent it.

You could propose a Theranos example as a counterpoint to that but do you think investors in the health space have got over any fallout from that high profile failure at this point?

With that company one could argue whos fault it really was. Clearly the founder lied and did all sorts of stuff but her investors let her do it. So to some extent the checks and balances just werent in place. Im only saying that because I dont think that should be the example by which we judge everything else. Thats just a case of a fraudster and dumb investors. Thats going to continue to exist in the future forever and who knows we might come across some of those but I dont think its the benchmark by which one should be judging if healthcare is a good or viable investment. Again I look at Flo, 35M active users. I look at K Health, 5M users in the US who are now beginning to use doctors, order medicine through the platform. I think the simplicity, the ease of use, for me make it that its undeniable that this industrys going to be completely shaken up through this tech. And we need it because at least in the Western world are health systems are so stretched theyre going to break.

Europe vs the US is interesting because of the existence of public healthcare vs a lack of public healthcare. What difference does that make to the startup opportunities in health in Europe vs the US? Perhaps in Europe things have to be more supplementary to public healthcare systems but perhaps ultimately there isnt that much difference if healthcare opportunities are increasingly being broken out and people are being encouraged to be more proactive about looking after their own health needs?

Yeah. Take K Health where you look at it and say from a use example its clear that everywhere in the world, including US and Europe, people are going to recognize the simple ease of use and the convenience of it. If I had to spend money to then maybe make money then I would say maybe the US is slightly better because theres 75M people who cant afford a doctor and I might be able to sell them something more whereas in Europe I might not. I think it becomes a commercial question more than anything else. Certainly in the UK the NHS [National Health Service] is trying to do a lot of things. It is not a great user experience when you go to the doctor there. But at the end of the day I dont think the difference between Europe-US makes much of a difference. I think this idea that what these apps want to tend towards which is healthcare for everybody at a super cheap or free price-point I think we have an advantage in Europe of thinking of it that way because thats what weve had all our lives. So to some extent what I want to create online is socialized medicine for the world through K Health. And I learnt that because I live here [in Europe].

Somebody in the US not the 75M because they have nothing but all the others, maybe they dont think theres a problem because they dont recognize it. Our view with K Health is the opportunity to make socialized medicine a global phenomenon and hoping that in 95% of the cases access to the app is all you need. And in 5% of the cases youre going to go the specialists that need to see you and then maybe theres enough money to go around for everybody.

And of course, as an investor, were interested in global companies. Again you see the theme: Flo, K Health, Happify, all those have a potential global footprint right off the bat.

I think with healthcare there are going to be play that could be national specific and maybe still going to be decent investments. You see in that in financial services. The neo banks are very country specific whenever they try to get out of their country, like N26, they realize that life isnt so easy when you go somewhere else. But healthcare I think we have an easier path to going global because there is such a pent up demand and a need for you to just feel good about yourself Most of the people who go through [the K Health diagnostic] process just want peace of mind. If 95% of the 15k people who go through that process right now just go, Phew, I feel okay then weve accomplished something quite significant. And imagine if its not 15,000 its about 150,000 a day, which seems to be quite an easy goal. So healthcare allows us to dream that TAM in investor terms, target addressable market is big. I can realistically think with any one of the three companies that Ive mentioned to you that we could have hundreds of millions of users around the world. Because theres the need.

There are different regulatory regimes across markets, there are different cultural contexts around the world do you see this as a winner takes all scenario for health platforms?

No. Not at all. I think ultimately its the user in terms of his or her experience in using an app thats going to matter. Flo is not the only menstrual cycle app in the world; it just happens to be by far the biggest. But theres others. So thats the perfect example. I dont think theres going to be one winner takes it all.

Theres also (UK startup) Babylon Health which sounds quite similar to K Health

Babylon does something different. Theyre essentially a symptom checker designed to push you to have a Skype call with a human doctor. It answers a bunch of questions, itll say, Well, we think you have this, lets connect you to a real doctor. We did not want to invest in a company that ever did that because the real problem is there just arent enough doctors and then frankly you and I are not going to want to talk to a doctor from Angola. Because whats going to happen is there arent enough doctors in the Western countries and the solution for those type of companies Babylon is one, theres others doing similar things but if you become what we call lead generation just for doctors where you get a commission for bringing people to speak to a doctor youre just displacing the problem from in your neighborhood to, broadly speaking, where are the humans? And I think as I said humans, they have their fallacies. If you really want to scale things big and globally you have to let software do it.

No its not a winner takes all for sure.

So the vision is that this stuff starts as a supplement to existing healthcare systems and gradually scales?

Correct. Ill give you an example in the U.S. with K Health. They have a deal with the second largest insurance company called Anthem. Their go-to-market brand is called Blue Cross, Blue Shield. Its the second largest one in America so why is this insurance company interested? Because they know that

So theyre going to be proposing it, in various forms, to all their customers by saying, Before you go see a doctor, why dont you try K?

In this particular case with K theres revenue opportunities from the insurance companies and also directly from the consumer, which makes it also interesting.

You did say different regions, different countries have different systems yes absolutely and theres no question that going international requires work. However, having said that, I would say a European, an Indonesian and a Brazilian are largely similar. Theres sometimes this fallacy that Asians, for instance, are so different from us as Western Europeans. And the truth is not really when you look at it down into the DNA and the functions of the body and stuff like that. Which you do have to do, though. If we were to take K to Indonesia, for example, you do have to make sure that your AI engine has enough data to be able to diagnose some local stuff.

Ill give you an example. When we launched K in the U.S. and we started off with New York, one of things you have to be able to diagnose is called Lyme disease which is what you get from a tick that bites you. Very, very prevalent in the Greater New York area. Not so much anywhere else in the States. But in New York, if you dont have it it looks like a cold and then you get very sick. Thats very much a regional thing that you have to have. And so if we were to go to Indonesia wed have to have thing like Malaria and Dengue. But all that is not so difficult. But yes, theres some customization.

There are also certain conditions that can be more common for certain ethnicities. There are also differences in how women experience medical conditions vs men. So there can be a lot of issues around how localized health data is

I would say that that is a very small problem that is a must to be addressed, but its a much smaller problem than you think it is. Much smaller. For instance, in the male to female thing of course medical sometimes plays differently but when you have a database of 5 million of which 3 million are women, and 2 million are men, you already have that data embedded. It is true that medications work better with certain races also. But again very tiny, very small examples of those. Most doctors know it.

At the big scale that may look very small but to an individual patient if a system is not going to pick up on their condition or prescribe them the right medicine thats obviously catastrophic from their point of view

Of course.

Which is why, in the healthcare space, when youre using AI and data-driven tools to do diagnosis theres a lot of risk and thats part of the consideration for everyone playing in this space. So then the question is how do you break down that risk, how do you make that as small as possible and how do you communicate it to the users if the proposition is free healthcare with some risk vs. not being able to afford going to the doctor at all?

I appreciate that, as a journalist, youre trying to say this is a massive risk. I can tell you that as somebody whos involved in these businesses it is a business risk we have to take into consideration but it is, by far, not insurmountable. We clearly have a responsibility as businesses to say: if Im going to go to South East Asia, I need to be sure that I cover all the weird things that we would not have in our database somewhere else. So I need to do that. How I go about doing that, obviously, is the secret sauce of each company. But you simply cannot launch your product in that region if you dont solve in this case Malaria and Dengue disease. It doesnt make sense [for a general health app]. Youd have too many flaws and people will stop using you.

I dont think thats so much the case with Flo, for instance But all these entrepreneurs who are designing these companies are fully aware that it isnt a cookie-cutter, one-size fits all but it is close to that. When you look at the exceptions. Were not talking about I have to redo my database because 30% or 20% its much, much smaller than that.

And, by the way, at the end of the day, the market will be the judge. In our case, when you go from an Israeli company into the U.S. and you have partners like Blue Cross, Blue Shield, theyve tested the crap out of your product. And then youre going to say well Im going to do this now in Indonesia well you get partners locally whore going to help you do that.

One of the drawbacks about healthcare is, I would say, making sure that your product works in all these countries. And doesnt have holes in the diagnostic side of it.

Which seems in many cases to boil down to getting the data. And that can be a big challenge. As you mentioned with K Health, there was also the need to structure the data as well but fundamentally its taken Israeli population data and is using it in the U.S. You would say that model is going to scale? There are some counter examples, such as Google-owned DeepMind, which has big designs on using AI for healthcare diagnostics and has put a lot of effort into getting access to population-level health data from the NHS in the U.K., when at the same time Google has acquired a database of health records from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. So there does seem to be a lot of effort going into trying to get very localized data but its challenging. Google perhaps has a head start because its Google. So the question then is how do startups get the data they need to address these kinds of opportunities?

If were just looking at K Health then obviously its a big challenge because you do have to get data in a way. But I would say again your example as well you have a U.S. database and does it match with a UK database. Again it largely does.

In that case the example is quite specific because the dataset Google has from the department of Veterans Affairs skews heavily male (93.6%). So they really do have almost no female data.

But thats a bad dataset. Thats not anything else but a bad dataset.

Its instructive that theyre still using it, though. Maybe that illustrates the challenge of getting access to population-level healthcare data for AI model making.

Maybe it does. But I dont think this is one of those insurmountable things. Again, what weve done is weve bought a database that had data on 2.5 million patients, data over 20 years. I think that dataset equates extremely well. Weve now seen it in U.S. markets for over a year. Weve had nothing but positive feedback. We beat human doctors every time in tests. And so you look at it and you say theyre just business problems that we have to solve. But what were seeing is the consumer market is saying holy shit this is just such a better experience than Ive ever had before.

So the human body again is not that complex. Most of the things that we catch are not that complex. And by the way weve grown our database from the 2.5M that we bought we now have 5M. So we now have 2.5M Americans mixing into that database. And the way they diagnose you is they say based on your age, your size, you dont smoke and so on perhaps they say they have 300,000 people in their database like you and theyre benchmarking my symptoms against those people. So I think the smart companies are going to do these things very smartly. But you have to know what youre using as a user as well If youre using that vs just a basic symptom checker that I dont think is a particularly great new user experience. But some companies are going to be successful doing that. At the end the great dream is how do you bring all this together and how do you give the consumer a fundamentally better choice and better information. Thats K Health.

Why couldnt Google do the same thing? I dont know. They just dont think about it.

Thats a really interesting question because Google is making big moves in health. Theyre consolidating all their projects under one Google Health unit. Amazon is also increasingly interested in the space. What do you make of this big tech interest? Is that a threat or an opportunity for health startups?

Well if you think of it as an investor theyre all obviously buyers of the companies youre going to build. So thats a long term opportunity to sell your business. On the shorter term, does it make sense to invest in companies if all of a sudden the mammoth big players are there? By the way, that has been true for many, many other sectors as well. When I first invested in Skype in the early days people would say the telecom guys are going to crush you. Well they didnt. But all of a sudden telecom, communication became the current that the Internet guys wanted thats why eBay ultimately bought us and why they all had their own messenger.

What the futures made of we dont know, but what we do know is that consumers want just the best experience and sometimes the best experience comes from people who are very innovative and very hungry as opposed to people who are working in very large companies. Venture capitalists are always investing in companies that somehow are competing one way or another with Amazon, Facebook, Google and all the big guys. Its just that when you focus your energy on one thing you tend to do it better than if you dont. And Im not suggesting that those companies are not investing a lot of money. They are. And thats because they realize that one of the currencies of the future is the ability to provide healthcare information, treatment and things like that.

You look at a large retail store like Wal-mart in America. Wal-mart serves largely a population that makes $50k or less. The lower income category in North America. But what are they doing to make you more loyal to them? Theyre now starting to build into every Wal-mart doctors offices. Why would they do that? Is it because they actually know that if you make $50k or less theres a high chance you dont have an insurance and theres a high chance that you cant afford to go see a doctor. So theyre going to use that to say, Hey, if you shop with us, instead of paying $150 for a doctor, itll be cheaper. And were beginning to see so many examples like this where all these companies are saying actually healthcare is the biggest and most important thing that somebody thinks about every day. And if we want to make them loyal to our brand we need to offer something thats in the healthcare space. So the conclusion of why were so excited it were seeing it happen in real life.

Wal-mart does that so when Amazon starts buying an online pharmacy I get why theyre doing that. They want to connect with you on an emotional level which is when youre not feeling well.

So no, I dont think were particularly worried about them. You have to respect theyre large companies, they have a lot of money and things like that. But thats always been the case. We think that some of these will likely be bought by those players, some of those will likely build their own businesses. At the end of the day its whos going to get that user experience right.

Google of course would like us all to believe that because theyre the search engine of the world they have the first rights to become the health search engine of the world. I tend to think thats not true. Actually if you look at the history of Google they were the search engine of the world until they forgot about Amazon. And nowadays if you want to buy anything physical where do you search first? You dont search on Google anymore you search on Amazon.

But the space is big and theres a lot of great entrepreneurs and Europe has a lot to offer I think in terms of taking our history of socialized medicine and saying how can tech power that to make it a better experience?

So what should entrepreneurs that are just thinking about this space what should they be focusing on in terms of things to fix?

Right now the hottest are the three that I mentioned because those are the ones that weve put money into and weve put money in because we think those are the hottest areas. I just think that anything where you feel deep conviction about or youve had some basic experience with the issue and the problem.

I simply do not think that clinicians can make this change in any sector. If you look at those companies I mentioned none of the founders are clinicians in any way shape or form. And thats why theyre successful. Now Im not suggesting that you dont have to have doctors on your staff. For sure. At K Health, we have 30 doctors. What were trying to do is change the experience. So the founder, for instance. was a founder of a company called Vroom that buys and sells cars online in the States. When he started he didnt know a whole lot about healthcare but he said to himself what I know is I dont like the user experience. Its a horrible user experience. I dont like going to the doctor. I can change that.

So I would say if youre heading into that space your first pre-occupation is how am I going to change the current user experience in a way thats meaningful. Because thats the only thing that people care about.

How is possible that two guys could come up with Flo? They were just good product people.

For me, thats the driving factor if youre going to go into this, go into it saying youre there to break an experience and make it just a way better place to be.

On the size of the opportunity I have seen some suggestions that health is overheated in investment terms. But perhaps thats more true in the U.S. than Europe?

Any time an investor community gets hold of a theme and makes it the theme of the month or the year like fintech was for ten years I think it becomes overfunded because everybody ploughs into that. I could say yes to that statement sure. Lot of players, lot of actors. Moneys pouring in because people believe that the outcome could be big. So I dont think its overheated. I think that weve only scratched the surface by doing certain things.

Some of the companies in the healthcare space that are either thinking of going public or are going public are companies that are pretty basic companies around connecting you with doctors online, etc. So I think that the innovation is really, really coming. As AI becomes real and were able to manage the data in an effective way But again youve got to get the user experience right.

Flo in my experience why its better than anything else one is its just a great user experience. And then they have a forum on their app, and the forum is anonymized. And this is curious right. I think they anonymized it without knowing what it would do. And what it did was it allowed women to talk about stuff that perhaps they were not comfortable talking about stuff if people knew who they were. Number one issue? Abortion.

Theres a stigma out there around abortion and so by anonymizing the chat forum all of a sudden it created this opportunity for people to just exchange an experience. So thats why I say the user experience for me is just at the core of that revolution thats coming.

Why should it be such a horrific experience to be able to talk about that subject? Why should women be put in that position? So thats why I think user experience is going to be so key to that.

So thats why were excited. And of course the gambit is large. You think about the examples I gave you can think of dietary examples, mens health examples. When men turn 50 things start happening. Little things. But theres at least 15 of those things that are 100% predictable I just turned 50 and given theres so much disinformation online I dont know whats true. So I think again theres a fantastic opportunity for somebody to build companies around that theme again, probably male and female separate.

Menopause would be another obvious one.

Exactly You dont know who you can talk to in many cases. So thats another opportunity. And wow there are so many things out there. And when I go online today Im generally not sure if I can believe what I read unless its from a source that I can trust.

Originally posted here:
Mangrove Capital's Mark Tluszcz on the huge mHealth opportunity and why focusing on UX is key - TechCrunch

One of the oft-voiced constraints on the longevity, or perhaps durability, of Russian power is that of its demographic decline. If there is a mainstay of wisdom in Washington, it is that Russias underperforming economy, and a terrible demographic outlook, mean that Russia doesnt have a long game. President Barack Obama echoed this view in 2014:

I do think its important to keep perspective. Russia doesnt make anything. Immigrants arent rushing to Moscow in search of opportunity. The life expectancy of the Russian male is around 60 years old. The population is shrinking.

A 2019 RAND report voiced similar sentiments: The Russian population is likely to shrink. Counterbalancing Russian power and containing Russian influence will probably not place a growing burden on the United States. The RAND team illustrates that Chinas population is also declining, but at a marginally lower rate than Russias. China is, of course, called the pacing threat, despite its looming population decline, whereas Russia is a declining power, because its population will decline somewhat faster than Chinas. Such proclamations are hardly confined to Washington defense intellectuals. Joe Nye declared in 2019 that Russias population may fall from 145 million today to 121 million by mid-century as part of an argument for why Russia is a country in decline. These statements are based on questionable, or dated information, playing with statistics to paint a picture more dire than exists.

First, it is not fair to take the worst-case scenarios for any countrys demographic future and advance murky numbers as though they represent the likely outcome. The median scenario predicted by U.N. demographers for Russia suggest a population decline of approximately 7 percent to 135 million by 2050 not exactly the roughly 17 percent contraction Nye predicts. Russia does face population decline, as do many developed countries (including many American allies), but what does that mean for Americas strategic future? Will demographics prove a determinant of power in this century? And how should U.S. strategists, policymakers, and military leaders integrate the notion of demographic decline into their thinking about the long-term confrontation with Russia?

The prospective decline of Russias population is not only overstated but is also unlikely to substantially constrain Russian power or make the country less of a problem for the United States. Such notions are not only based on bad information, they have also become an alibi for the absence of U.S. strategy on what to do about Russia. Policymakers should not seek solace in the proposition that Russia will run out of people, ceasing to be a power of its own accord. Critically, there is much the Russian state could still do to improve or worsen the direction of Russias demographic profile over the coming decades. Discussions of Russias demographic demise are too fixated on the population size, avoiding more important questions about the quality of human capital and the relevance of population to power. The evidence suggests that Russia isnt going anywhere, and future generations of Russians are more likely to contribute to its revival rather than its decline.

Is Demography Destiny?

Demographics are an important though often misinterpreted factor in assessing a countrys power. Hal Brands put it eloquently:

A countrys people are taproot of its power in many respects. A large working-age population serves as a source of military manpower. Far more important, a relatively young, growing and well-educated population is a wellspring of the economic productivity that underlies other forms of international influence. All things equal, countries with healthy demographic profiles can create wealth more easily than their competitors.

Nick Eberstadt, an established researcher on demographics, writes: Although conventional measures of economic and military power often receive more attention, few factors influence the long-term competition between great powers as much as changes in the size, capabilities, and characteristics of national populations.

Yet the conversation on demographics can tend towards the simplistic, focusing on population size rather than the qualitative dimensions that make up human capital such as education or health. This represents a fundamental problem in strategy discussions that can at times seem rooted in a dated pursuit of land, people, and resources. In the 19th and 20th centuries, more people meant more economic output in industrial and agrarian economies that were manpower intensive. A larger population base was essential for mass mobilization armies. In large-scale industrial warfare, the country with a larger population and millions more industrial workers stood a good chance of simply attriting and outlasting an opponent with less manpower. More people meant larger armies, and the ability to replace losses. Few countries know this history better than Russia, which has historically benefitted from being the most populous nation in Europe.

At the same time, however, having more people does not readily translate into greater power. If it did, then Nigeria, Indonesia, or Bangladesh would be among the worlds strongest nations. Yet while they are more populous, they are not more wealthy, powerful, or influential than much smaller European states. A larger population is only beneficial to a country that is able to educate, employ, and leverage that potential. In many cases, a large and rapidly growing population generates immense social pressures and challenges faster than it does power. Michael Beckley argues that standard indicators exaggerate the power of populous countries like China, in his 2018 article The Power of Nations: Measuring What Matters. Thus, while we should not forget Stalins adage that quantity has a quality of its own, it is equally important to consider that what matters most is what countries do with their human capital rather than just how many people they have on the books.

Population matters less for military power. Wars are no longer fought by mass mobilization armies; instead, technology has multiplied destructive power such that the soldier is increasingly alone on the battlefield. As firepower and range have increased, the need for manpower has decreased compared to the great power conflicts of the 20th century. Quantity and mass remain important in modern warfare, but few countries are able or willing to support sizable forces. Military expenditure and political will are todays defining constraints on the size of standing armies in middle- and high-income countries, more so than the actual availability of people to serve. Russia remains one of the few exceptions in this regard, maintaining a high degree of defense spending and increasing the size of its military over the past decade at a time of limited manpower availability.

No less significant is the modernization of nuclear weapons by the worlds great powers, chiefly held by the United States and Russia, which has always made doubtful the proposition of a prolonged conventional conflict between the main nuclear weapon states. Strategic and non-strategic nuclear weapons represent a demographic equalizer, whereby no matter what happens in Russias demographic future, it will still be able to inflict unacceptable damage to the United States or Europe.

Russias Demographic Challenge

Russias demographic decline is borne of two factors: a demographic crisis in the late 1980s and 1990s, the aftereffects of which will create a second demographic dip in the coming decades, and an unusually high mortality rate. Not enough Russians were born those decades, and those that were born then are dying faster than people of the same age in other industrialized European nations. Although Russia is a major net beneficiary of labor migration, which helps arrest population decline, immigration cannot compensate for the expected population dip.

How important is this issue for Moscow? Well, for President Vladimir Putin, its among his top priorities. He has frequently emphasized population growth as an important factor in rebuilding Russias global status. In 2017, Putin stated, Demography is a vital issue that will influence our countrys development for decades to come. Through countless speeches, including the latest January 15th Federal Assembly address, he has emphasized the demographic challenge. The presidential order, signed in May 2018, delineating national goals and strategic priorities through 2024, lists achieving stable population growth as its first objective. Indeed, years of effort and investment has arrested or stabilized some of the worst indicators, leading to a dramatically improved picture compared to the dire predictions based on data in the mid-2000s.

Despite appreciating the stakes, Russian leadership will struggle to address Russias demographic challenges. Such difficulty is in part due to the fact that since 2014, Russia has engaged in a host of foreign policy gambits that are visibly exacerbating the demographic problem from lower birth rates due to poor economic conditions to urban Russians choosing to leave the country. Russias economic recession beginning in 2013 and sanctions resulting from the confrontation with the West have served to increase a steady exodus of urban Russians, which began in 20112012 when Putin returned as president.

As a consequence, post-2015 policies have reduced the net benefit of migration, while squandering an opportunity to pour resources into arresting Russias demographic decline through policies intended to boost birth rates. All of this means that Russias demographic policy faces strong headwinds today, created in part by Russias foreign policy choices, and as time runs its course, may face harsher realities in the 2040s and 2050s. The outlook will vary considerably depending on the policies that Russia chooses to implement.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

Russias demographic trends improved considerably between 2000 and 2015, but the country faces a coming generation that will have substantially fewer women of child-bearing age, an aftershock of the crisis in the 1990s. This means that despite numerous improvements to the overall health of the Russian people, arresting the crisis of the 1990s, Russia is still facing an unavoidable long-term decline in total population.

In 2017, life expectancy became the highest it has ever been in Russia or the Soviet Union, at 72, although quite a lot shorter for men than women. This puts Russia at the bottom of life expectancy for developed Western countries, but it is a marked improvement from the previous decade. Average male life expectancy is still quite low, in large part because of alcohol-related deaths. Yet alcohol consumption has fallen by more than a third since 2006, and one study argues that the proportion of men dying before 55 has been reduced by 37 percent. The fertility rate has climbed considerably, converging with that of the United States. This rate is still below the population replacement rate of 2.1, but Russia has made strides in recovering from the nadir of the late 1990s. Deaths are down, infant mortality is less than half of what it was 30 years ago, and a host of health indicators have improved from that period to 2015. Unfortunately, Russias mortality rate remains far too high by European and international standards, with men representing the most at-risk population.

Statistics on human capital and productivity also tell a more positive story. The U.N. Human Development Index has continued to increase Russias rating, from .734 in 1990 to .824 in 2018. Meanwhile, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development shows the growth rate in Russian labor productivity as being much higher than that of the European Union. These are crude measures, but they indicate improvements in the quality versus just quantity of human capital in Russia.

Yet Russia is a country that is still dealing with the aftereffects of the decline of the Soviet Union and the demographic crisis that followed. The current challenge is a steady aging-out of the working population, losing as many as 600,000 annually over the next six years. The replacements for aging Russian workers were not born in the 1990s, and hence they are not here today to take up jobs in the Russian economy. This is the consequence of the mass emigration, social, and economic crisis of the 1990s that still haunts Russia. In the long term, Russia is likely to go from a population of around 146 million today to perhaps 135 million in 2050, according to the 2019 United Nations World Population Prospects report. The World Bank is more pessimistic, suggesting it might be as low as 132 million. This is a 7.5 percent to 9.5 percent decrease, representing median scenarios, while worst case (but least probable) estimates take those expectations lower towards a fall of 12 percent.

However, an authoritative report published by the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) painted a much more dire scenario. According to their work, with changes in policies on fertility, mortality, and migration, an inertia-based scenario could take Russias population down to 113 million by 2050. This was the source of the dire predictions for a depopulation of Russia in the coming decades, but it was calculated in 2009, based on 2005 data. The evidence is clear that the original inertia scenario, which predicted a decline to 140 million by 2020, has not developed. The net Russian population only began shrinking in 2019 and is still above 145 million. Russias statistical services latest figures also offer an average prognosis of decline to 143 million by 2035 with a worst case scenario of 135 million, and an optimistic one of 149 million.

RANEPAs figures, when updated in 2015, showed a different inertia scenario that places the Russian population at around 128 million by 2050. Given the current trajectory, it appears more probable that Russias population decline will end up between the more optimistic scenarios and the inertia scenario, landing somewhere in the 130 to 135 million range by 2050. This study emphasized that Russia has a unique window of opportunity right now, because it currently has one of the worlds highest shares of population in the active reproduction and working ages (15-60 years). This includes a high percentage of people in the prime working and parenting ages (20-40). In their assessment current Russian efforts to address fertility, mortality, and migration, fall short of what will be required to achieve more positive scenarios.

Much of the conversation on Russias demographic prospects also misses an important fact: Russia, like the United States, maintains its population in part through migration. Russia is the principal labor market for the former Soviet space, benefitting from net labor migration. Western media outlets are replete with sensational headlines about educated Russians fleeing the country in recent years. Russian emigration has increased considerably since 2012, and many have argued that those emigrating represent the countrys creative class. Indeed, Russias statistical agency Rosstat does show 377,000 departing from the country in 2017. However, the very same statistics show that 589,000 immigrated to the country in that year, for a net gain of about 211,000.

The brain drain effect appears overstated. Most in and out migration is likely migrant labor from Central Asia, rather than entrepreneurial geniuses emigrating en masse. Russia is a significant beneficiary from immigration, which in part helps compensate for its own fairly low birth rates. There is unfortunately indistinct math on how Russian migrs are counted according to Rosstat, which understates the number of Russians emigrating because it doesnt count them as having left unless they cancel their registration in Russia.

The Demographic Price of Russias Foreign Policy

Not only does Russias period of imperial collapse still cast a long shadow, but the demographic recovery from 2000 to 2015 also faces a second challenge from Russias economic and political crisis of recent years. Russia is in economic stagnation; that is, with anemic GDP growth of ~1.3 percent in 2019, well below the global average. Economic recession and uncertainty have a naturally negative impact on family planning and birth rates. Russias birth rate has flattened out since 2014 and begun to decline again, sinking to 2011 lows. Deaths still exceed births, and even with immigrants, Russias population has entered a steady state of decline in part because of underlying economic and political conditions. The problem is not lost on the government, even though the consequences of this second dip may not be felt until the mid-2030s. State policies have helped avoid worst case scenarios, but they cannot avert the inevitable.

Although mortality had been improving considerably from 2005-2013, mortality rates have Russias deputy prime minister for social and health policy, Tatyana Golikova, made clear in the spring of 2019 that mortality trends have changed to a negative outlook. Several Russian regions have witnessed an increase in mortality rates in 2018, which has contributed to the countrys first recorded population decline in a decade, falling by about 87,000 last year. Problems in the healthcare system are particularly acute in Russia, from a lack of clinics and doctors, to shortages of medicine. The governments efforts to tackle mortality face reversals in regions worst hit by economic problems. As poverty increases, mortality rises, and birth rates again decline. Thus, the Russian state must now address the current crisis with new measures, while at the same time retaining focus on the long-term strategic problem of population decline.

There is a worrisome potential relationship between demographics and Russias foreign policy today, including the long-standing practice of passportization. During his annually televised question and answer session in 2018, Putin suggested that one of the solutions to the demographic problem is liberalizing citizenship policy to integrate Russian compatriots. The implied message was that Moscow sees refugees from conflict as a potential positive in light of the demographic challenges the country faces compatriots, or those Russia considers to be part of the Russian world (Russki Mir), are part of the solution.

In the long run, demographics, not geopolitics, may prove Putins chief error in undertaking a confrontation with the United States. Undoubtedly, Moscow can keep up the contest, but it will come with a strategic price tag for Russias future during a crucial decade when the country needs to focus resources on its demographic problem. The population structure will change in the 2030s such that a second demographic dip will become more pronounced, rendering later efforts less effective. There is an inherent tradeoff between Moscows prioritization of the countrys demographic health and its geopolitical pursuits, and this does not seem to be accepted by the national leadership.

Military and Manpower

The Russian military has revised and increased its force structure since 2013 with new divisions and regiments. This naturally raises the question: Who exactly will man many of the new units being created in the Russian armed forces? The picture is far from rosy, and the units will undoubtedly have formations based on a partial mobilization structure, but the Russian military is in much better shape than it has been since the collapse of the Soviet Union and is certainly at its highest levels of readiness in decades. Increased birth rates starting in 2000, and improvements to health standards from 2000-2015, mean that manpower availability is going to increase, likely until 2033, as will the overall pool of those available for military duty (ages 18 to 27).

Perhaps remarkably, the Russian armed forces have been increasing in size over the past five years, all while facing a constrained availability of manpower and higher economic competition for those they would seek to recruit as volunteer servicemen. The available male serving population was in decline from 2008 to 2018. Yet despite being under such stringent conditions, the Russian armed forces expanded to perhaps somewhere near 900,000 in overall size, and the contract share of the force is around 394,000, or more than half of those enlisted. This means that the number of conscripts Russias armed forces need every year has declined substantially and will continue to drop. The Russian Ministry of Defense also changed its policy in 2018 to allow conscripts to elect to perform two years of volunteer contract service instead of one year of compulsory duty.

Tackling draft evasion and corruption has also allowed the Russian military to get more out of what they have. Russias draft board, or Voenkomat, has spent years fighting the pervasive problem of those seeking to evade the draft by purchasing health exclusions or disqualifications. Over the next 14 years, there will not be substantial pressure on manpower availability for service. Afterwards, the armed services will be operating in a much more competitive environment, with declining manpower availability starting around 2033. Additionally, the relevance of manpower constraints as they pertain to warfighting beyond the 2030s remains in question, as modern militaries grow even stronger in firepower, technological force multipliers, and use of autonomous systems, depending more on the quality rather than the quantity of personnel deployed. Plus, Russia will always find enough people to man its arsenal of strategic and non-strategic nuclear weapons.

Implications for Great Power Pursuits

The remaining question is whether Russia will face a classic guns versus butter choice, as the working population shrinks, forcing the state to choose between military modernization and pensions. Brands predicts:

Russia will face Hobsons a choice between pouring scarce resources into old-age pensions and inviting the political tumults that austerity could easily bring. Nuclear weapons and the capacity to create mischief through information warfare will keep Moscow in the game, but Russias underlying geopolitical potential will continue bleeding away.

So far, this prediction is not coming true. Russian resources are not particularly scarce, and its unclear what geopolitical potential has been bleeding away. Such sentiments are common among defense intellectuals and international relations theorists, but the evidence behind these arguments often fails to impress. If theory checks in with practice, it will find that Russias GDP continued to grow, as did labor productivity, while the population contracted in 2019. The argument that Russia is in decline is largely premised on a puzzling comparison between Russias influence today and the Soviet Union, which broke into 15 countries almost 30 years ago.

Moscow is already addressing the question of pension reform, and has weathered the resultant political tumults, while at the same continuing to spend sizable sums on its military potential. Thus far, the Russian government has decided to sequester defense spending, decreasing it slowly over time, while imposing austerity on social benefits by increasing the retirement age in 2018. Moscow is reconciling these priorities by choosing to spend less on both, taking a somewhat opposite route than what Washington might have taken. Hence, the U.S. governments debt-to-GDP ratio stands at 106 percent, whereas Russias is one of the lowest in the world, at around 15 percent. In 2019, Russias net public debt fell to zero as the country amassed sizable foreign exchange reserves relative to its rather small amount of debt.

Much of what strategists perceive to be inevitable is actually contingent, a function of choice and strategic investments. Demographics advantage the United States, but they do not doom Americas great power adversaries, nor should they confer a general ease that others will face choices America does not. Russias demographic outlook is a complex question, but the facts suggest that there is no imminent collapse facing the country. In recent years, that future appears much less dire than it did, but clearly bleaker than it has to be. The extent of Russias long-term demographic decline remains in question given how much of the problem can be redressed or exacerbated by government policies. One cannot exclude a change in the nature of Russias political or economic system over time, which may seem a distant proposition today, but is not unrealistic when looking out to the 2030s or 2040s.

Instead of talking about Russias or Chinas uncertain demographic future, U.S. policymakers should pay closer attention to the demographic situation of their own allies, like the Baltic states, which is more dire. Latvias and Lithuanias populations have been in constant decline since 1991, and Ukraines is particularly problematic. Russias demographic picture should be compared to the countries the United States is concerned with defending from Russia. As Nick Eberstadt explains:

[T]he EU and Japan have both registered sub-replacement fertility rates since the 1970s, and their fertility rates began to drop far below the replacement level in the 1980s. In both the EU and Japan, deaths now outnumber births. Their working-age populations are in long-term decline, and their overall populations are aging at rates that would have sounded like science fiction not so long ago.

Given that the United States is most likely to fight in contests abroad, on the foreign soil of countries to which it extends deterrence, there is a more important question: How do allied demographic futures compare to those of our adversaries in their regions? The short answer is not favorably. As a consequence, the overall burden for the United States of confrontation, economic competition, and deterrence is only going to increase in the coming decades.

The core Russian problem is not demographics, but the fact that the economy and the political system are unable to tap into the talent and human potential of that country. Russia has the requisite attributes to be far more powerful and influential than it is today, with fewer people. The country endures as a great power in the international system despite the best efforts of policy wonks and defense strategists to wish it away. Adam Smiths adage that there is a great deal of ruin in a nation serves well here in setting expectations. Russias comparative weakness should not be confused for an inability to play an important role in European affairs, or check U.S. foreign policy abroad. Russia does have a long game, but it is not clear that Washington has a long game for dealing with Russian power in the world.

Michael Kofmanis director and senior research scientist at CNA Corporation and a fellow at the Wilson Centers Kennan Institute. Previously he served as program manager at the National Defense University. The views expressed here are his own.

Image: Kremlin

See the article here:
Russian Demographics and Power: Does the Kremlin Have a Long Game? - War on the Rocks

TAIPEI, TAIWAN - FEBRUARY 03: A woman walks out of a store wearing a mask as Taiwan issues a new ... [+] order that each resident must use a NHI card to buy surgical masks and can only buy two per week in stores recognized by National Health Insurance on February 03, 2020 in Taipei, Taiwan.Taiwan faces supply issues of surgical mask amid the coronavirus crisis, and the government have issued an order that each resident must use a NHI card to buy surgical masks and can only buy two per week. With over 17,390 confirmed cases of Novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) around the world, the virus has so far claimed 362 lives.There are 10 confirmed cases without any death case. (Photo by Gene Wang/Getty Images)

One things for sure about the Coronavirus which originated in Wuhan, China: nobody knows how bad it will be for human lives and the global economy. That is not stopping experts from trying to estimate that toll. Meanwhile the U.S. market seems to be bouncing back with the S&P 500 futures up 1.3% after rising on February 3.

The human toll of the virus is increasing. By February 3, the Coronavirus had infected 17,000 people and claimed 360 lives primarily in mainland China, according to the Wall Street Journal. By February 4, the total had risen to 20,438 confirmed cases and 420 deaths, according to the New York Times, which noted the good news that 632 people had recovered from the disease.

One expert Warwick McKibbin, a professor of economics at Australian National University estimates that the outbreak could reduce global economic growth by $160 billion four times the $40 billion economic impact of 2003s SARS epidemic, according to Bloomberg. This estimate is based on the quadrupling of Chinas share of the global economy since 2003 to 17% of global economic output.

On January 31 Goldman Sachs estimated that the virus to cut between 0.4 and 0.5 percentage points at an annual rate from U.S. economic output in the first quarter of 2020, with growth rebounding in the second quarter, leaving minimal impact on full-year growth, according to the Journal. Goldman expects the Coronavirus to reduce Chinas GDP growth from 5.9% to 5.5% while a longer outbreak could cut that growth rate to 5%.

In a February 1 interview, MIT professor Richard C. Larson said that hysteria-driven overreaction to the Coronavirus could be the biggest economic cost and that he sees too much uncertainty now to build models to predict that impact.

Global Reactions to Coronavirus

Fear of the Coronavirus and Chinas integration has caused repercussions around the world. As Bloomberg wrote, In New Zealand, a bath furnishings seller told a customer that the German-designed shower head he ordered is unavailable because the factory in Shanghai is closed. Out in California executives of REC Group organized a supply chain war room to plan around an anticipated trucking shortage and port logjam in China. In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia is rallying support for an emergency OPEC meeting on concern oil demand will falter.

On February 4, Macau, a gambling center, announced a two week shutdown, according to the Times. Other responses include:

MIT Expert On Uncertainty And Overreaction To Coronavirus

Larson who served as principal investigator on six years of pandemic research supported primarily by the Centers for Disease Control said that the Coronaviruss future trajectory is uncertain. However, he noted that this years U.S. influenza has taken a far greater human toll killing about 10,000 Americans so far and infecting over 19 million.

Moreover, Larson believes that over-reaction to the Coronavirus could exact a higher economic toll than the progression of the disease itself. My personal opinion is that the current hysteria in some domains (such as the selling out of face masks and terminating all flights to and from China), are over-responses, he said. He also thinks that a big benefit of this global response could be to reduce the incidence of this years seasonal flu.

His understanding of the physics of the Coronavirus its longevity in the air and on hard surfaces and ability of the human body to fight it do not now appear to him to differ significantly from the flu.

While there is no way to control these physics, individual and collective changes in behavior can limit Coronaviruss spread. Larson said this means social distancing namely minimizing close contact with infected or infectious individuals, avoiding closed rooms, and self-quarantining by those who think theyve been exposed and hygienic behavior changes e.g., [washing] hands several times a day with the hottest water tolerable and singing happy birthday to yourself a couple of times!

Larson thinks the number of infected people will follow a typical pattern over time. As he explained, Usually it is initially exponentially increasing, then continues to increase in a decreasing positive slope, hits a maximum (having zero slope), and then slowly drops to zero. [The underlying chemistry and biology] of Coronavirus suggests it would follow the same pattern [as the flu virus].

He thinks it is too early to develop a model that predicts the economic impact of the Coronavirus. one has to know when one knows enough to create a reliable model, reliable enough for policy informing. With only very noisy data [and] limited sample sizes, available now, [I think] it is too soon to try to create a systems model of the progression of this disease.

He suspects that the Chinese government is underreporting the number of deaths and those infected by the Coronavirus. The first is most likely deliberate but the second is a natural consequence of under-reporting or late reporting or no reporting of mild cases, he said.

Larson speculates that overreaction to the Coronavirus could impose its highest economic costs. But if our response is a pendulum swinging way too far towards unwarranted hysteria, the dominant economic costs could come from our over-response and not to the progression of the disease itself, he said.

But as Larson suggested, the societal response could have a big impact on the Coronaviruss progression and if the response now is an over-response that higher cost could turn out to be an investment that saves lives.

The rest is here:
MIT Expert: Overreaction Could Boost Coronaviruss Economic Impact - Forbes

As the population looks to elect a President over the age of 75, the exact opposite is happening in the workplace. In 2018 the Equal Opportunity Commission, the nations workforce watchdog, issued a report stating that although Congress had outlawed age discrimination it still remains a significant and costly problem for workers. The AARP survey found that

Ageism (a euphemism for age discrimination) is so pervasive that people dont know its illegal. Somehow, in todays culture, experience and knowledge gained over years are not seen as a commodity. Its visible in three areas:

The conclusion of many surveys and studies show that most organizations are unaware that they are discriminating against older workers. It is so ingrained in our culture that older people are tired of working and want to retire. There is no anti-age harassment policy or training in most Human Resource departments because no one thinks its happening.

Peter Cappelli, a management professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania states that, every aspect of job performance gets better as we age. I thought the picture might be more mixed, but it isnt. The juxtaposition between the superior performance of older workers and the discrimination against them in the workplace makes no sense.

The solution seems obvious, make organizations aware that in the 21st century ageism is a relic because weve been blessed with longevity. That puts the onus on the companies. Yet, most organizations think of the bottom line: younger talent work for less money.

For todays older worker, the idea is to keep your value front and center.

Be confident of who you are and what you know and use President John Kennedys famous line, Ask not what your country/company can do for you, as what you can do for your country/company.

One attorney, Mr. Real Estate, has mastered the value-add. His law firm will not let him retire because his experience is too beneficial and his name still attracts the big development clients. Another criminal prosecutor, known for convicting Presidents, is in demand for his knowledge of criminal law and is retained by the criminal defense team or law enforcement.

As for staying relevant do not cede to Mark Zuckerbergs infamous remark that young people are just smarter. It was his company, Facebook, that was made to look stupid, by older, experienced, knowledgeable hackers who created false identities and used Facebook to promulgate false narratives and infiltrate our 2016 election.

For senior boomers who want to work, tech talk and tech action are a must. Competent use of Smart Phones, Computers, text, email, initials and emojis prove that youre in the know. The good news, that is a one-week course maximum! The years of experience and hard gained knowledge priceless! Mr. Zuckerberg proves that inexperience is costly to both the bottom line and reputation

See more here:
AGEISM ALIVE AND WELL - ParentYourParents.com

Along with an international research team renowned professor and scientist Claudio Franceschi have described the mechanisms underlying chronic inflammation and identified several risk factors leading to the disease including infections, physical inactivity, diet, psychological stress, industrial toxicants, and environmental factors.

"Today, chronic inflammatory diseases are at the top of the list of death causes. There is enough evidence that the effects of chronic inflammation can be observed throughout life and increases the risk of death. It's no surprise that scientists' efforts are focused on finding strategies for early diagnosis, prevention and treatment of chronic inflammation," says Claudio Franceschi.

The study published in Nature Medicine identifies certain social, environmental, and lifestyle factors that contribute to systemic chronic inflammation, which when taken together are the main cause of disability and mortality around the globe.

Franceschi insists that lifestyle, effects of stressors, history of vaccination, along with social and cultural characteristics of each individual beginning at the first days of life into adulthood should be determined in as much detail as possible and taken into account as a tool in research of the aging processes to establish the trajectory of human aging.

The mechanisms of chronic inflammation are being adopted by a number of scientists, research into chronic inflammation continues as there is a way to go before scientists fully understand the role of chronic inflammation in aging and mortality to be able to more accurately predict changes in ones health through their lifespan.

Franceschis years of work have resulted in the theory of inflamm-aging, in which aging is a general inflammation process that involves the entire body and provokes aging related diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, atherosclerosis, and Alzheimers disease.

The concept of immune aging enables the characterization of immune functions of an individual and predictions of the causes of mortality more accurately than chronological age. In addition to the known inflammation biomarkers the scientists note that additional biomarkers of the immune system which differ from person to person, in particular the subgroups of T- and B- lymphocytes, monocytes need to be studied more.

Findings may lead to new approaches for early diagnosis, prevention, and treatment for diseases associated with systemic chronic inflammation; prevention and treatment of inflammatory processes will slow down aging and prolong life.

The Digital Personalized Medicine for Healthy Aging mega grant project is being implemented at the Lobachevsky University of Nizhny Novgorod at the Center for Healthy Aging and Active Longevity with the goal of making breakthroughs in the search for aging markers, early diagnosis of age related diseases, and achieving active longevity under the guidance of Franceschi.

See the rest here:
Chronic Inflammation Identified As The Cause of Accelerated Aging - Anti Aging News

by Tamara Ghandour

I often get asked questions such as, How do I add value now that this software can do part of my job? or is there a role for me now that Artificial Intelligence is taking over the world? My answer is always this:

You could find yourself on the fast path to irrelevancy or you can adapt, elevate your game, and leverage the digital disruption thats inevitable in all our worldsall you have to do is be more human. The choice is yours.

And to make it easier once you make the choice to be more human in the age of digital disruption, here are 5 podcasts that will help you separate yourself from the pack, stand out in a cluttered world, and deliver tremendous value in your work and life.

Hidden Brain: The most powerful tool we have is right between our ears yet most of us have zero idea how to truly use it. Not because we arent intelligent, but because that intelligence happens by magic behind the black curtain. But, as Hidden Brain shows us, the real power is in understanding how this magical gelatinous thing works. Hidden Brain by NPR helps you understand unconscious patterns that shape your human behavior, your choices, and direct your relationships. Recently I listened to the episode Emotional Currency.

Inside LaunchStreet with Tamara Ghandour: In the age of digital disruption, Tamara reminds us that our greatest competitive advantage is to be more human. At the forefront of human-centered innovation, Tamara will help you unlock the key to gaining the competitive advantage through the power of innovation so you can perform at your peak, ignite innovation, and have a strong, valued voice in the world. A combination of neuroscience, behavioral psychology, 25 plus years of experience brought together in a really personal, tangible and accessible to all kind of way. Im a little biased on this one of course. Recently, I listened to the episode How To Get Unstuck.

The Moth: A collection of real-life stories told without notes that will fill you with hope and connection. Short, poignant, and powerful, the stories presented on The Moth range from love and regret to passion and opportunity. They will make you feel deeply connected to humanity in a way Facebook, Instagram, and texting simply cant. I love The Moth because, in a time where the news is dominated by negativity and the latest and greatest disruption, The Moth will remind you that emotion, communication, and storytelling are still relevant in todays complex times. Recently I listened to the episode War, Barbie Dream House, Coco and a Nekkid Man.

Legendary Life with Ted Ryce: Interviewing the top minds in nutrition, fitness, and performance, Ted brings you more than just an eat less, workout more perspective to health. As a longevity champion, he delves into everything from keto, to stress management to communication. Lets face it, good physical and mental performance is the foundation for having the energy you need to perform at your peak, rise up and win. Recently I listened to the episode Why Everything You Think About Aging May Be Wrong With Dr. Charles Brenner.

HBR Ideacast: A mix of the most brilliant minds in business and leadership, HBR Ideacast brings you insights and tactics into elevating your game in work and life. This podcast covers a range of topics ranging from how to create new habits to how to delight customers. And because it comes from Harvard, they get to bring the leading voices in a range of topics that impact how you perform in work and life. Recently I listened to the episode The Right Way To Form New Habits With Author James Clear.

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

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Tamara Ghandour of GoToLaunchStreet is a TED speaker and entrepreneur. From building and running multimillion dollar businesses, advising Fortune 500 like Disney, Procter and Gamble and RICOH on fostering innovative ideas and people. Tamaras life is about breaking through the status quo for game-changing results, and thats what her keynotes, online programs and assessments can do for you.

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Five Podcasts That Will Help You Stay Relevant, Gain the Advantage and Win: In Other Words Be More Human in an Age of Technology Take-over -...