Daily Archives: July 3, 2017

Hoffmann 76 was the last downtown service station standing when its owners decided it was time to shift gears.

So successful was the repair and maintenance aspect of Jeff and Rick Hoffmanns business, they often couldnt find enough space to queue the cars to which they wereattending.

In 2005, the brothers sold their property at Fifth and G streets, moving to new digs at 2613Second St. where Hoffmann Automotive was born.

The business legacy began in the 1970s when Davis High graduates Jeff and Rick worked at what once was known as Ray Moss Union.

I was working nights, my wife was at the university days and we never really saw each other, recalls Jeff, who with wife Susan was expecting the birth of son Jason.

Then in 1979, Jeff had an opportunity to buy the place from Ray, explains Rick, who had served six years in the National Guard and hadnt worked at Moss when his brother did.

No escrow, nothing like that, Jeff says. I just wrote Ray a check at the dinner table and it was done. It was a different time.

That was 1979. The Union 76 folks had a mandate called Minuteman Service.

(Union) was really, really big on customer service, customer focus and we believed it, too, Rick says.

We knew how to treat people, or we thought we did: Treat them the way youd want to be treated, Jeff explains. I didnt know (anything) about being in business for myself. I just knew I liked cars and I had the opportunity to buy this gas station.

Rick concurs: We just did (business) the common-sense way. We were nice to people, we did things other places didnt do.

Remember getting your oil checked, windows washed, tire pressure topped off? Long time ago, but

To this day, that lets-get-it-right approach remains evident at Hoffmann Automotive.

Nine employees, including Jeffs wife and son Jason, are on staff.

The elements that 26-year-old Jeff Hoffmann embraced when he took over as one of the youngest 76 dealers in America are stillin place.

Its pretty simple, Rick adds.

Oh, and about that policy of being nice to customers?

Rick Hoffmann met his wife Diane the gas station

She kept coming in kept dropping hints and dropping hints. She kept trying to ask me out, but I was oblivious to all this, he remembers.

We had a rule: we were nice to everybody and waited on customers, right? We kept work and play separate.

Finally, Diane had to ask Mr. Nice Guy out.

hoffman old W

Bob Isaacs aims to get a hole-in-one in this June 1979 photo to promote a Kiwanis golf tournament. Jeff Hoffmann shows off the tires to be given to the best golfer. Enterprise file photo

hoffman aerialW

An aerial photo shows the site of the Hoffmanns Union 76 station at Fifth and G streets in downtown Davis. Courtesy photo

HoffmannNewW

Rick Hoffmann, left, and his brother Jeff have owned Hoffmann Automotive since 1979. They moved their business from Fifth and G streets where they owned a Union 76 station for 26 years to 2613 Second St. in 2005. Sue Cockrell/Enterprise photo

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Centennial: The evolution of friendly, efficient Hoffmann Automotive - Davis Enterprise

Evolution is usually very slow, a process of change that takes thousands or millions of years to see.

But for influenza, evolution is fast and deadly. Flu viruses change rapidly to escape the bodys defences. Every few years, new variants of flu emerge and cause epidemics around the world.

Controlling the spread of flu means dealing with this ongoing evolution. Each year, experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) must make their best guess about how the virus will change in order to choose which flu strains to include in the annual vaccine.

This work is difficult and uncertain, and mistakes have real consequences. Worldwide, flu infects several million people each year and causes hundreds of thousands of deaths. In years when predictions miss the mark and the flu shot is very different from circulating strains, more people are vulnerable to infection.

In the past several years, advances in genome sequencing have begun to shed light on the beginnings of viral evolution, deep within individual infections. We wondered whether, for flu, this information might give us an early glimpse of future global evolutionary trends.

What could a single persons flu infection tell us about how the virus changes across the world? As it turns out, a surprising amount.

Looking deep inside an infection

Every step in flus evolution begins with a mistake. As viruses copy themselves within an infected person, they sometimes mutate, creating small changes to their genetic blueprint.

Most mutations are harmful to the virus because they break the machinery it needs to function. But every so often, a mutant virus survives, and even thrives. Viruses play a constant game of cat-and-mouse with the human immune system. Sometimes, a mutant virus may be just different enough to escape the bodys notice.

A mutant virus with this kind of advantage can multiply quickly and come to dominate the infection. Eventually, it may even spread from person to person, and from there, start spreading around the world.

Recently, its become easier to track how viruses change within the human body. The same advances that have made it cheap and easy to sequence human genomes are changing how we study viruses. For the cost of sequencing a single human genome, we can sequence thousands of viruses from throughout an infection to track new mutations as they arise.

These mutations can show us how the virus reacts to challenging environments within the human body. For HIV, where infections often last years or even decades, evolution can be substantial, even within a single person. In particular, viruses often evolve drug resistance in response to antiviral treatment.

Tracking flu evolution in four long infections

We recently tracked viral evolution in four cancer patients who had flu infections lasting several months. Most flu infections last about a week, which limits the amount of change that can occur. But in patients with weak immune systems, infections can last a long time, with severe effects.

How did flu change within these long infections? By sequencing viruses from different times during the infection and comparing their genomes, we were able to identify new mutations and track their fates.

Each subplot represents one site in the virus where mutations can occur. Mutant viruses are shown in orange, and their frequencies rise and fall over time. Xue et al. eLife 2017;6:e26875, CC BY

Evolution acted in a matter of weeks. One clear example was resistance to Tamiflu. The patients we studied were taking the drug to control their infections. But, as in prior studies, viruses carrying drug-resistance mutations eventually emerged. These mutations might partly explain why the infections lasted so long.

Drug-resistance mutations werent the only evolutionary changes we saw. Half a dozen mutant viruses, all just slightly different from one another, would sometimes compete simultaneously in a single person.

These competing viruses made evolution a complicated affair. A mutation that started spreading one week would sometimes go extinct the next. Presumably, it was outcompeted by an even better mutation.

In some cases, we found the exact same mutations in viruses from different patients in our study, even though we could tell that the patients did not infect each other. Wed only very rarely expect such similarities to happen due to chance. The viruses may have hit on similar adaptations in response to evolutionary challenges. Some of these mutations may have helped the virus avoid the immune system, echoing other studies.

Whats more, many mutations within these patients matched mutations that later spread around the world. In the spikes of flus outer coat, which help the virus enter host cells, the mutation N225D emerged in three of the four patients in our study. By 2015, about eight years after our patients were infected, most flu viruses around the world carried the exact same change.

For us, this was unexpected. Evolution is full of trade-offs, and some mutations that help flu adapt within people may slow its transmission from person to person. We also didnt know whether evolution in such unusually long flu infections would match patterns of change around the world.

But in our study, flu evolution in individual people showed striking similarities to evolution around the globe. We could see hints of some global evolutionary trends within just a few individuals.

As technologies continue to improve, its becoming easier to look deep inside flu infections, like we did. WHO labs sequence flu strains from thousands of people every year to monitor flu evolution. Researchers are sequencing more and more strains in ways that let us catch mutations as they first arise within individual people.

Each of these thousands of infections is like a separate evolutionary experiment. By comparing mutations that appear in different infections, we may get a sense of evolutionary possibilities and constraints.

Somewhere down the line, this kind of information may help forecast flus evolution. For now, at least, its uncovering some of the dynamic processes of evolution that take place within each of us.

Katherine Xue, Doctoral Student in Genome Sciences, University of Washington and Jesse Bloom, Associate Member, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Affiliate Associate Professor of Genome Sciences and Microbiology, University of Washington

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Evolution is usually very slow, a process of change that takes thousands or millions of years to see.

But for influenza, evolution is fast and deadly. Flu viruses change rapidly to escape the bodys defences. Every few years, new variants of flu emerge and cause epidemics around the world.

Controlling the spread of flu means dealing with this ongoing evolution. Each year, experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) must make their best guess about how the virus will change in order to choose which flu strains to include in the annual vaccine.

This work is difficult and uncertain, and mistakes have real consequences. Worldwide, flu infects several million people each year and causes hundreds of thousands of deaths. In years when predictions miss the mark and the flu shot is very different from circulating strains, more people are vulnerable to infection.

In the past several years, advances in genome sequencing have begun to shed light on the beginnings of viral evolution, deep within individual infections. We wondered whether, for flu, this information might give us an early glimpse of future global evolutionary trends.

What could a single persons flu infection tell us about how the virus changes across the world? As it turns out, a surprising amount.

Looking deep inside an infection

Every step in flus evolution begins with a mistake. As viruses copy themselves within an infected person, they sometimes mutate, creating small changes to their genetic blueprint.

Most mutations are harmful to the virus because they break the machinery it needs to function. But every so often, a mutant virus survives, and even thrives. Viruses play a constant game of cat-and-mouse with the human immune system. Sometimes, a mutant virus may be just different enough to escape the bodys notice.

A mutant virus with this kind of advantage can multiply quickly and come to dominate the infection. Eventually, it may even spread from person to person, and from there, start spreading around the world.

Recently, its become easier to track how viruses change within the human body. The same advances that have made it cheap and easy to sequence human genomes are changing how we study viruses. For the cost of sequencing a single human genome, we can sequence thousands of viruses from throughout an infection to track new mutations as they arise.

These mutations can show us how the virus reacts to challenging environments within the human body. For HIV, where infections often last years or even decades, evolution can be substantial, even within a single person. In particular, viruses often evolve drug resistance in response to antiviral treatment.

Tracking flu evolution in four long infections

We recently tracked viral evolution in four cancer patients who had flu infections lasting several months. Most flu infections last about a week, which limits the amount of change that can occur. But in patients with weak immune systems, infections can last a long time, with severe effects.

How did flu change within these long infections? By sequencing viruses from different times during the infection and comparing their genomes, we were able to identify new mutations and track their fates.

Each subplot represents one site in the virus where mutations can occur. Mutant viruses are shown in orange, and their frequencies rise and fall over time. Xue et al. eLife 2017;6:e26875, CC BY

Evolution acted in a matter of weeks. One clear example was resistance to Tamiflu. The patients we studied were taking the drug to control their infections. But, as in prior studies, viruses carrying drug-resistance mutations eventually emerged. These mutations might partly explain why the infections lasted so long.

Drug-resistance mutations werent the only evolutionary changes we saw. Half a dozen mutant viruses, all just slightly different from one another, would sometimes compete simultaneously in a single person.

These competing viruses made evolution a complicated affair. A mutation that started spreading one week would sometimes go extinct the next. Presumably, it was outcompeted by an even better mutation.

In some cases, we found the exact same mutations in viruses from different patients in our study, even though we could tell that the patients did not infect each other. Wed only very rarely expect such similarities to happen due to chance. The viruses may have hit on similar adaptations in response to evolutionary challenges. Some of these mutations may have helped the virus avoid the immune system, echoing other studies.

Whats more, many mutations within these patients matched mutations that later spread around the world. In the spikes of flus outer coat, which help the virus enter host cells, the mutation N225D emerged in three of the four patients in our study. By 2015, about eight years after our patients were infected, most flu viruses around the world carried the exact same change.

For us, this was unexpected. Evolution is full of trade-offs, and some mutations that help flu adapt within people may slow its transmission from person to person. We also didnt know whether evolution in such unusually long flu infections would match patterns of change around the world.

But in our study, flu evolution in individual people showed striking similarities to evolution around the globe. We could see hints of some global evolutionary trends within just a few individuals.

As technologies continue to improve, its becoming easier to look deep inside flu infections, like we did. WHO labs sequence flu strains from thousands of people every year to monitor flu evolution. Researchers are sequencing more and more strains in ways that let us catch mutations as they first arise within individual people.

Each of these thousands of infections is like a separate evolutionary experiment. By comparing mutations that appear in different infections, we may get a sense of evolutionary possibilities and constraints.

Somewhere down the line, this kind of information may help forecast flus evolution. For now, at least, its uncovering some of the dynamic processes of evolution that take place within each of us.

Katherine Xue, Doctoral Student in Genome Sciences, University of Washington and Jesse Bloom, Associate Member, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Affiliate Associate Professor of Genome Sciences and Microbiology, University of Washington

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Katherine Xue, Jesse Bloom | The Conversation

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How flu changes within human body may hint at evolution of global trends - Business Standard

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

In the US there have been many attempts to expunge evolution from the school curriculm or demand that creationismthe idea that all life was uniquely created by Godis given equal treatment in science textbooks. While all these have failed, the government in Turkey has now banned evolution from its national curriculum.

US creationists want both views to be presented, to let children decide what to believe. Bids to reject this are wrongly characterized as attempts to shut down debate or free speechto promote a scientific, atheistic, secular, ideology over a more moral, ethical, commonsense religious worldview.

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Turkeys decision goes much further. This isnt about claiming equal treatment, its an outright ban. The government justifies it by claiming evolution is difficult to understand and controversial. Any controversy however is one manufactured by ultra-religious communities seeking to undermine science. Many concepts in science are more difficult than evolution, yet they still get taught.

Evolution, creationists argue, is just a theory its not proven and so up for debate. Evolutionary trees (especially for humans) are regularly re-drawn after new fossil discoveries, showing how poor the theory is. After all, if the theory was correct, this wouldnt keep changing. Often, creationists will pose a challenge for science to prove how life started, knowing that there is not yet a firm, accepted theory. Finally, theres the king of all arguments: if we all evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?

These arguments are packed with factual inaccuracies and logical fallacies. Evolution doesnt need an explanation of how life started. It simply describes how life develops and diversifies. Humans did not evolve from monkeyswere great apes. Modern apes, including humans, evolved from now extinct pre-existing ape species. Were related to, not descended from, modern apes.

Creationists fail to understand that evolution itself is not a theory. Evolution happens. Life develops and diversifies, new species come into existence. We can see intermediate life forms right now, such as fish that are transitioning to living on land and land mammals that recently transitioned into aquatic life. The theory of evolution explains how evolution takes place. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace first described the mechanism that drives the changenatural selectionin 1858.

Creationists also fail to understand the difference between a theory and a law in science. This is something that even science graduates suffer from, as Ive noted in my own research. Theories explain scientific concepts. They are evidenced and accepted by the scientific community. Theories are the pinnacle of scientific explanation, not just a hunch or a guess. Laws however have a different role, they describe natural phenomena. For example, Newtons laws of gravity do not explain how gravity happens, they describe the effects gravity has on objects. There are laws and theories for gravity. In biology however, there are few laws, so there is no law of evolution. Theories do not, given sufficient proof, become laws. They are not hierarchical.

A third issue is the lack of understanding of the nature of science. Science aims not to find some objective truth, but to elicit an explanation of natural phenomena. All scientific explanations are provisional. When new evidence is found that contradicts what we think we know, we change our explanations, sometimes rejecting theories that were once thought to be correct. Science is always working to try and falsify ideas. The more those ideas pass our tests, the more robust they are and the greater our confidence is that they are correct. Evolution has been tested for nearly 160 years. Its never been falsified. Science only deals with natural phenomena, it doesnt deal with or seek to explain the supernatural.

Banning good science undermines all science, especially considering evolutions place underpinning modern biology, with plenty of evidence to support it. For mainstream scientists, the fact that evolution happens is neither seriously questioned nor controversial. Any controversy in discussions of evolution resides in the role natural selection has in driving diversity and change, or the pace of that change.

This ban on teaching evolution in Turkish schools opens up the possibility that alternative, unscientific ideas may enter science teaching, from those who believe in a flat earth to deniers of gravity.

How do we deal with the apparent schism between religious belief and scientific evidence?

My research and approach has been to distinguish between religion, a belief system, and science, which works on the acceptance of evidence. Beliefs, including but not limited to religious beliefs, are often held irrationally, without evidence, and are resistant to change. Science is rational, based on evidence and is open to change when faced with new evidence. In science, we accept the evidence, rather than choose to believe.

Turkeys move to ban the teaching of evolution contradicts scientific thinking, and tries to turn the scientific method into a belief systemas if it were a religion. It seeks to introduce supernatural explanations for natural phenomena, and to assert that some form of truth or explanation for nature exists beyond nature. The ban is unscientific, undemocratic and should be resisted.

James WilliamsisLecturer in Science Education attheSussex School of Education and Social Work, University of Sussex.

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Erdogan vs. Darwin: Turkey will pay the price for removing evolution ... - Newsweek

LISBON, PORTUGAL - JULY 23: Lyon's forward Alexandre Lacazette celebrates scoring Lyons goal during the Friendly match between Sporting CP and Lyon at Estadio Jose Alvalade on July 23, 2016 in Lisbon, Portugal. (Photo by Carlos Rodrigues/Getty Images)

Arsenal: Alexandre Lacazette the last nail in Kylian Mbappe coffin by Andrew Dowdeswell

Arsenal: Riyad Mahrez the perfect Alexandre Lacazette sequel by Andrew Dowdeswell

Alexandre Lacazette is seemingly set to sign for Arsenal. The Lyon striker has arrived in North London for a medical, ahead of completing a 52-million move. It is an extremely exciting move that is the type of high-profile signing that fans have been pining for. But there is much more to this addition than meets the surface.

To provide a little context for the impending signing of Lacazette, we must travel back to last summer. In very similar circumstances, Arsene Wenger was searching for a replacement for Olivier Giroud. But it is not a simple like for like replacement that Wenger is wanting to find.

In his quest to find an alternative striking option, Wenger was looking for a very particular type of player: a pacy, dynamic, direct centre-forward who can run the channels, stretch defences with their quickness and sharpness, and create space for the plethora of creative, ingenious attacking midfielders behind them as a result.

That is most definitely not the player that Giroud is. That is not to say that he is a bad player. He has a unique set of skills that few others in European football can replicate. His strength and size cause problems for opposing defences, while he boasts an excellent first touch with great awareness, meaning he is the perfect focal point with his back to goal, excelling in the neat interplay that Wenger demands of his teams.

Lacazette arriving is a sign that Wenger is wanting to alter his tactics.

There is a change and an evolution coming to the Arsenal. But there is more than just an alteration on the pitch that the addition of Lacazette eludes to.

His signing is also very different to that of the usual Arsenal transfer dealings. He will break the clubs record fee for a player, he is a big-name, high-profile star who has been pursued by several other sides, and will be added to the squad early in the window, showing a convictionand intention in the transfer window that is usually criticised for being so painfully absent.

The transfer is an exciting one, one that brings an element of optimism and hopefulness to the future. But it is also one that signals a changing of the times at the Emirates, and that is perhaps the most promising element of all.

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Arsenal: 52 million Alexandre Lacazette signals change and evolution - Pain In The Arsenal

Mashable

Florida residents can now challenge how climate change, evolution are taught in school Mashable Now in Florida, residents could possibly do the same with textbooks about the science behind climate change and evolution. Last week, Republican Gov. Rick Scott signed legislation that makes it easier for any Florida resident to object to classroom ... New Florida law lets any resident challenge what's taught in science classesThe Spokesman-Review all 8 news articles »

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Florida residents can now challenge how climate change, evolution are taught in school - Mashable

Briefs| Travel

By Star-Advertiser News Services

Posted July 02, 2017

July 2, 2017

Updated July 2, 2017 12:05am

ASSOCIATED PRESS / 2007

A stilt walker cruised the playa during the Burning Man festival in Gerlach, Nev. The festival is featured in an exhibit at the Nevada Museum of Arts.

RENO, Nev. >> The City of Dust exhibit is on display at the Nevada Museum of Arts in Reno.

The Reno Gazette-Journal reports the exhibit, which traces the more than three-decade evolution of Burning Man, opened to the public Saturday.

Burning Man is an annual event that started as a bohemian beach gathering in San Francisco in 1986 and has morphed into a modern-day pop-up city in Nevadas Black Rock Desert.

More than 68,000 people flock to the desert each year to form a temporary metropolis dedicated to community, art, music, self-expression and self-reliance.

The 300-piece collection of Burning Man relics will remain open until Jan. 7.

After the exhibition in Reno, it will travel to the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., in spring 2018.

This years Burning Man gathering is scheduled for Aug. 27 to Sept. 4.

Genoa creates special airport waiver for famed pesto sauce

ROME >> The Italian port city of Genoa has taken pride in its famed pesto sauce to new heights by granting special airport waivers for those who cant get enough of the basil and pine nut pasta sauce.

Genoas airport is letting travelers take as much as 500 grams of pesto (about 2 cups) in their carry-on luggage, exempting them from the 100-milliliter rule (about 6 tablespoons) for liquids in carry-on baggage. The catch: Passengers must make a donation of 50 cents or more to a charity that airlifts sick children to hospitals.

The airport said in a statement this week that some 500 euros (about $558) had been raised in the first 20 days of the initiative, which was inspired by the anguish of having to confiscate so many jars of pesto from foodies trying to get them through security.

thefamilybackpack.com

If mother knows best, why not turn to a whole lot of moms and dads for help in planning your next family adventure?

>> Name: thefamilybackpack.com

>> What it does: The easy-to-use website curates the best of family travel blogs for tips, advice, information and inspiration.

>> Whats hot: The website is not just about where to go; it is also stocked with important articles about allergies, vaccinations, bedbugs and illness. The site is particularly good for new parents and families who have not traveled a lot with young kids. Find articles such as Six Tips for Surviving Airline Travel With a Baby (The Wandering Daughter) and Flying With an Infant: Long-Haul (Babies Who Travel). The tips section aims to relieve stress with articles such as How to Get Your Kids More Excited About Vacation (Stuffed Suitcase) and Advice From Seven Years of Traveling With My Kids (This Is My Happiness). Dont miss the Educational Resources section for activities and games, photography tips, printables and more.

>> Whats not: The Destination section is divided into North America, Africa, Asia, Europe, South America and Oceania. There are plenty of posts within each, but the section could benefit from a city directory or a map of articles within.

Jen Leo, Los Angeles Times

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Burning Man exhibit documents evolution of Nevada event - Honolulu Star-Advertiser