Daily Archives: September 2, 2021

The hatchlings of the invasive cane toad in Australia don't stand a chance against their deadliest predator: cannibal tadpoles who guzzle the hatchlings like they're at an all-you-can-eat buffet. But now, the hatchlings are fighting back.

They're developing faster, reducing the time that hungry tadpoles have to gobble them up, a new study finds.

"If cannibals are looking for you, the less time you can spend as an egg or hatchling, the better," said study lead researcher Jayna DeVore, who did the research as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Sydney and is now a biologist for the Tetiaroa Society, a nonprofit conservation organization in French Polynesia.

Developing quickly, however, has its pitfalls. Compared with typically growing hatchlings, those that grew faster fared worse when they reached the tadpole stage of life, the researchers found. So it isn't "worth it to try to defend yourself in this way unless cannibals are definitely coming for you," DeVore told Live Science.

Related: Image gallery: Invasive species

The cane toad (Rhinella marina) is a poster child for invasive species. The warty toxic toad, notorious for gulping down anything that fits into its wide mouth, is native to South America. In the 1930s, farmers in Queensland, Australia, thought the toad would be the perfect predator to gobble up beetles that were destroying sugarcane fields. But with no natural predators Down Under, the toad population ballooned from only 102 individuals to more than 200 million, according to WWF Australia.

Another reason for their population spike is that female toads can lay more than 10,000 eggs at a time in small ponds. "When these eggs first hatch, the young can't swim or eat yet, so they can pretty much only lie there on the bottom of the pond until they develop into tadpoles," DeVore said.

The hungry tadpoles strike during this vulnerable hatchling period. "Once the hatchlings develop into tadpoles, they are too large and mobile for other tadpoles to eat them, so the cannibals have to work quickly if they want to consume them all," DeVore said.

Tadpoles that cannibalize the younger generation are doing themselves a huge favor; they're getting nutrients and eliminating later competition for resources. "When I first saw this behavior in the wild, I was amazed at how voraciously cane toad tadpoles sought out cane toad hatchlings and ate them," DeVore said. To determine whether this behavior was "normal" or whether it was an adaptation to extreme competition among invasive cane toads, DeVore and her colleagues compared Australia's invasive cane toads with the native-range ones, or cane toads from their indigenous regions.

Several experiments revealed that the invasive toads both the hatchlings and the cannibalistic tadpoles are evolving at breakneck speed.

In one experiment done more than 500 times with different individuals, DeVore and her colleagues placed one tadpole in a container with 10 hatchlings. Although the native-range tadpoles did engage in some cannibalism, "we found a hatchling was 2.6 times as likely to be cannibalized if that tadpole was from Australia than if it was from the native range," she said.

Moreover, the invasive tadpoles were much more attracted to the hatchlings than the native tadpoles were. In another experiment, the team placed tadpoles in a pool with two traps; one trap held hatchlings, and the other was empty. "In Australia, the cannibalistic tadpoles were attracted to the hatchlings; the odds that an Australian tadpole would enter the trap containing hatchlings were about 30 times those of it entering the empty trap," DeVore said.

Related: Survival of the grossest: 8 disgusting animal behaviors

In contrast, the native-range "tadpoles were not attracted to the hatchlings; they were just as likely to enter the empty trap as the hatchling trap," she said. "This demonstrated that this strong attraction to the vulnerable hatchling stage, which is what helps the cannibalistic tadpoles to detect and locate their victims in Australia, is not present in the native range."

To fight back, invasive hatchlings have evolved an escape strategy. When the researchers compared the time eggs and hatchlings spent developing, they found that the invasive toads developed faster than the native-range ones.

In both groups, "we found that cane toad clutches from Australia developed more quickly; they reached the invulnerable tadpole stage in about four days, whereas native range clutches took about five days," DeVore said.

In addition, the invasive hatchlings had a more "plastic," or flexible response than the natural-range hatchlings when a cannibal tadpole was present; the hatchlings from Australia were "more likely to be able to smell when cannibals are around and actually accelerate their development in response," DeVore noted.

While these strategies helped the hatchlings survive, they paid for it later. The researchers tested 1,190 tadpoles for survival, development, growth and plasticity, and found that those that developed faster as eggs and hatchlings to escape cannibalism fared worse and developed more slowly at the tadpole stage than the native-range tadpoles, the team found.

Could the cane toads eat themselves into extinction? Probably not, DeVore said.

"Australian cane toads may well be their own worst enemy, but I wouldn't expect them to go extinct anytime soon," she said. That's because the cannibals benefit too much from eating their own kind. After gaining nutrients and limiting competition, the cannibalistic tadpoles "transform into toads more quickly and at a larger size," she said. It's even possible that these "successful" toads will more rapidly invade new places in Australia.

"The good news is that cannibalism can control population growth," DeVore said. "So, although cane toads are unlikely to drive themselves extinct, these cannibalistic behaviors may help to regulate their abundance post-invasion."

The study was published in the Aug. 31 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Originally published on Live Science.

Link:

Cannibal toads eat so many of their young, they're speeding up evolution - Livescience.com

Image credit: Robert W. Booessenecker, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.

The media are currently abuzz with claims of a newly discovered fossil from Egypt: a four-legged whale. Here are some prominent headlines:

And so on. The headlines are accompanied by an artists depiction of what was supposedly found. See above. The image is attributed to one of the co-authors of thetechnical paper, geologistRobert W. Boessenecker.

The NPR story warns:

We regret to inform you that your nightmares are about to get worse.

A team led by Egyptianscientistshave dug up a 43 million-year-old fossil in the Sahara Desert in Egypt of a now-extinct amphibious four-legged whale.

Thats right, folks a whale with legs.

The problem with these claims? Thats right folks they didnt find any of the fossils legs. Everything you just read about this fossil is the product of imagination. In fact, if you check thetechnical paperyoull learn that they found very little of the fossil at all. Figure 1 from the paper, whichcan be seen online here, shows the bones that were discovered shaded in red. Zoom in and look at the drawing in the middle. You may notice, as I said, a curious absence of red-shaded leg bones.

Also absent: the pelvis, the vast majority of ribs and vertebrae, and the front portion of the snout. Undoubtedly the organism had these bones, but to call this a whale with legs, or to unequivocally depict it as some species transitional between terrestrial mammals and whales (as seen above), is to impose a huge amount of evolutionary imagination on the situation.

Consistent with all of this, the paper notes in the abstract that what they did find was a partial skeleton, later stating, The new species is based on a partial skeleton. A complete description of the bones is provided later in the paper as follows:

an associated partial skeleton of a single individual including the cranium, the right mandible, incomplete left mandible, isolated teeth, the fifth cervical, and the sixth thoracic vertebrae and ribs. The holotype is the only known specimen.

Perhaps this organism had four legs. Perhaps it had flippers. Perhaps it was closely related to whales. Perhaps it has nothing to do with whales. No one really knows. The simple fact of the matter is that we know hardly anything about this creature because, again, so very little of it was found. Forcing this species into an evolutionary paradigm to fit preconceived ideas about cetacean evolution, and promulgating headlines about a four-legged whale, is beyond belief. Actually, I take that back. Belief belief in an evolutionary paradigm is the thing thats driving these headlines.

Imagination. Belief. Thats putting it politely, which I insist upon doing. We all have imaginations, and we all have beliefs. So in that sense this is understandable. But if I werent so polite, a variety of other terms could be used to describe telling the public this fossil represents a four-legged whale.

Is it any wonder that people dont trust overhyped evolutionary claims made by the media, or by some scientists?

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Evolutionary Imagination and Belief Drive False Claims of a Four-Legged Whale - Discovery Institute

Inkay is a Psychic & Dark Pokemon recently launched in Pokemon Go. While the Pokemon is vulnerable to Fairy and Bug moves, its deals maximum damage through attacks like Night Slash and Tackle. The Pokemon can also be evolved into Malamar with 50 candies. Inkay and its evolutionary form Malamar are making their debuts in Pokemon Go during the Psychic's Spectacular event which will begin on Wednesday, September 8, 2021, at 10 AM local time to Monday, September 13, 2021, at 8 PM local time.

As mentioned on the PokemonGoLive website, trainers can complete themed Field Research Tasks in order to encounter event-themed Pokemon like Woobat, Inkay and more. When the event begins on September 8, 2021, Inkay-themed Field Research Tasks must be revealed in the game. On completing such tasks, a trainer would be rewarded an encounter with Inkay. Additionally, a trainer might encounter the Pokemon in the wild.

Inkay and its Evolution, Malamar, will be making their Pokmon GO debuts! Inkay will evolve only under unique circumstances. Trainers who have journeyed through the Kalos region inPokmon XandPokmon Ymay have an inkling as to what those circumstances might be! ~ Pokemon Go Live blog post

As stated earlier, Inkay will be available in the wild, through Field Research Tasks and in one-star raids. While the general spinning at the PokeStops and applying incense might work, players must be prepared to catch the Pokemon as and when one appears in the wild, or in one-star raids. The Pokemon is weak Fairy and Bug Type Pokemons, which deal 160% and 256% damage to the Pokemon respectively.

By completing themed Field Research tasks, you can encounter event-themed Pokmon like Woobat, Inkay, and more. ~ Pokemon Go Live blog post

Inkay can be evolved into Malamar with the help of 50 Candies. Malamar is also a Psychic & Dark Pokemon which is vulnerable to Fairy and Bug moves. Its strongest moves are Foul Play and Psycho Cut. The Pokemon has a maximum CP of 2,359. It is slightly difficult to evolve Inkay in Malamar as the candies might be tricky to collect. Whether Malamar will be available as a form is unclear, and how to catch Malamar is not clear.

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How to catch Inkay in Pokemon Go? Check evolution guide to Malamar & where to find tips - Republic World

Australian sugarcane farmers began using cane toads (Bufo marinus) as a form of pest control in their fields in 1935but soon enough, they became a pest themselves. The warty amphibian with thick ridges above their eyes and highly poisonous olive-brown skin devours anything it can fit in its mouth from tiny rodents to birds. When the toads became established in the country, the species had no natural predators. The invasive species has since expanded its reach across large areas of Northern and Eastern Australia with more that 200 million cane toads hopping around the country, reports Nature's Max Kozlov.

Without predation to keep population numbers low, cane toad tadpoles began to eat their peers, reports Ars Technica's John Timmer. The cannibalistic behavior appears to be an evolutionary response to the toad not having another competing species, causing the toads to turn on the only species competing for resources: themselves.

However, researchers at the University of Sydney have found that tadpoles are evolving ways to avoid becoming a snack, such as developing at faster rates to reduce the amount of time they are vulnerable to other ravenous tadpoles, reports Laura Geggel for Live Science. The study was published this week in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In the species' native South American habitat, cane toad tadpoles have previously been observed eating their peers. However, cannibalistic behavior occurs more often in Australia. To see if the behavior results in differences between native and invasive species populations, researchers gathered toads from South America and Australia and bred them. Then, they introduced one large tadpole to a group of ten tiny hatchlings just emerged from their eggs. The team discovered Australian tadpoles were 2.6 times more likely to cannibalize hatchlings than South American tadpoles, Nature reports. But once hatchlings were too big to be cannibalized, the older tadpoles left them alone. Similarly, older tadpoles did not have an appetite for other tadpoles their size and age.

While South American toads spent five days at the hatchling stage, Australian toads only spend three days in this stage, suggesting that the pressures from being cannibalized cut their development time by half, per Ars Technica.

"We found that cane toad clutches from Australia developed more quickly; they reached the invulnerable tadpole stage in about four days, whereas native range clutches took about five days," says study author Jayna Devore, a University of Sydney herpetologist, to Live Science.

The find may give researchers an understanding of how competition within a species ignites an evolutionary arms race and drives rapid evolution.

"The good news is that cannibalism can control population growth," DeVore tells Live Science. "So, although cane toads are unlikely to drive themselves extinct, these cannibalistic behaviors may help to regulate their abundance post-invasion."

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Without Predators, Cannibalistic Cane Toads Eat Their Youngand It's Rapidly Accelerating the Species' Evolution - Smithsonian Magazine

Significance

Invasive species are known for their ability to achieve high densities within their introduced range. Hence, invaders often face strong competition from members of their own species. Mechanisms for reducing intraspecific competition may therefore be favored in invasive populations, such as cannibalism, in which individuals kill and eat intraspecific competitors. Here, we find that toad tadpoles from invasive Australian populations have evolved both a strong behavioral attraction to the vulnerable hatchling stage and an increased propensity to cannibalize these younger conspecifics. In response, these toads have also evolved multiple strategies for reducing the duration of the vulnerable period, indicating an evolutionary arms race between the cannibalistic tadpole stage and the vulnerable egg and hatchling stages in invaded habitats.

Biotic conflict can create evolutionary arms races, in which innovation in one group increases selective pressure on another, such that organisms must constantly adapt to maintain the same level of fitness. In some cases, this process is driven by conflict among members of the same species. Intraspecific conflict can be an especially important selective force in high-density invasive populations, which may favor the evolution of strategies for outcompeting or eliminating conspecifics. Cannibalism is one such strategy; by killing and consuming their intraspecific competitors, cannibals enhance their own performance. Cannibalistic behaviors may therefore be favored in invasive populations. Here, we show that cane toad tadpoles (Rhinella marina) from invasive Australian populations have evolved an increased propensity to cannibalize younger conspecifics as well as a unique adaptation to cannibalisma strong attraction to vulnerable hatchlingsthat is absent in the native range. In response, vulnerable conspecifics from invasive populations have evolved both stronger constitutive defenses and greater cannibal-induced plastic responses than their native range counterparts (i.e., rapid prefeeding development and inducible developmental acceleration). These inducible defenses are costly, incurring performance reductions during the subsequent life stage, explaining why plasticity is limited in native populations where hatchlings are not targeted by cannibalistic tadpoles. These results demonstrate the importance of intraspecific conflict in driving rapid evolution, highlight how plasticity can facilitate adaptation following shifts in selective pressure, and show that evolutionary processes can produce mechanisms that regulate invasive populations.

All data are available in the Supplementary Materials. Note that a subset of the invasive range data used here were also used in DeVore et al. 2021; here we incorporate these results into larger datasets to make comparisons between the native and invasive range.

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The evolution of targeted cannibalism and cannibal-induced defenses in invasive populations of cane toads - pnas.org

Itd be easy to get the impression that realtime 3D is really coming of age. For a long time, all computer graphics looked like well Tron, at best, and often not nearly as slick.

Then pre-rendered 3D started looking good enough for things like spaceships, and now were able to clamber almost (but not quite) all the way out of the uncanny valley in which CG humans have often lived. Realtime CG renderers have not been idle, of course, and ever since 2007s seminal Crysis, Nvidia and AMD, and the people who write the code, have been pushing hard to make video games look as good as movies.

And havent they? Were now using code written to draw video games, things like Unreal Engine, to produce graphics for LED volumes that were expecting to look photorealistic. OK, that doesnt often involve human beings, but recent releases such as Cyberpunk 2077and Watch Dogs: Legion are both, if occasionally, capable of producing scenes capable of provoking a fleeting impression of a real city being just the other side of the thin film transistors. Isnt this convergence; can we expect to see a future in which the difference between pre-rendered and realtime 3D becomes irrelevant?

Well, maybe, but this isnt it. Until very recently, video games invariably used what was fundamentally a development of techniques going decades. First, we started making 3D objects out of triangles. Why triangles? Because no matter where we put three points in space, they always describe a two-dimensional, flat area. At first, the triangles werent even filled in wireframe graphics you could see straight through. Next, we figured out things looked better if we filled them in solid. Then we started sticking bits of image data onto those triangles, so that theyd have some texture, and about the same time started taking notice of where virtual light sources were in the scene to make the triangles brighter or darker.

That level of technology worked out okay through the 2000s, but there are some obvious things it didnt do, things that pre-rendered 3D could. Until recently video games couldnt show accurate reflections they could sometimes do something that sort of looked like a reflection of the environment in a chrome surface, but look closely, and it was just a fixed image that didnt represent changes in the environment thats being reflected. They also didnt show shadows, at least not without a lot of workarounds, and shadows of unmoving objects such as terrain and buildings were pre-rendered into images then pasted onto the triangles to simulate light and shadow.

That creates on good example of the sort of limitations realtime 3D engines often impose in order to achieve what they do. Ever wonder why you cant blow up walls in the average first-person shooter? Because, at least in part, the pre-rendered lighting stops being valid if you move a large shadow-casting object out of the way. Maya (or its renderer) renders that sort of things fresh, every frame, or at least it can if it needs to.

Still, combine all those reasonable-looking but actually very inaccurate tricks together, evolve for ten or fifteen years, and we get Crysis. It should be very clear, though, that a lot of shortcuts are involved. That spectacular mountain range? A fixed background image; you can never go there. The fine detail on your sci-fi rifle? The rivets are clever types of image mapping, so dont look too close. That mountainside full of trees? Geometry instancing allows the system to use multiple copies of the same tree, scaled and rotated and scattered. Statue reflected in a pool of water? Thats the time-honoured technique of taking the picture of the statue, flipping it upside down, and relying on the irregular surface of the water to hide the fnords.

Problems occur with that statue if, for instance, we cant see the top of the statue because were looking down at the water, but we should be able to see the reflection of the top of the statue. We cant flip an image we havent rendered. Basically, video games cheat. A lot. Thats fine, when it works. The problem is that all the workarounds become more work than doing it properly.

Define properly? Well, for a short while, since, say, the release of Nvidias RTX series, games have been at capable of cheating slightly less, through ray tracing. Situations like that reflecting pool become a little more reliable if we actually work out where the rays of light would go for real. Its easier conceptually, if not computationally, and lots of workarounds are still required. One workaround that should be recognisable to prerendered CG people is noise reduction, based on the fact that we cant sample every ray from of every light for every pixel on the screen. We sample a random selection, which gives us a noisy image, and we apply noise reduction.

And that is something thats very much in common with the approaches used by conventional 3D graphics software. With that and ray tracing, theres certainly growing commonality between realtime and non-realtime renders, and therefore no surprise that things seem like theyre starting to converge. What we need to recognise is that the scope and scale of what realtime 3D can do is necessarily limited, for all of the reasons weve considered here. In 2021, were some way from being able to create arbitrarily large and complex scenes and accurately simulate all of the lighting in realtime in the way we can in software like Cinema 4D, where itll have some time to go away and think about things.

Still, its hard to complain that some of the most respected television currently in production is using technology that was unequivocally built to bring Playstation owners joy, and with great success. Without video games, wed have no GPU processing, no realtime LED volumes, and, most importantly of all, no Cyberpunk 2077. Ill be busy for the next hour or so.

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The battle for realism: The evolution of realtime 3D graphics - RedShark News

E

volution has gone live in South Africa with online gaming services for SunBet, the online betting arm of Sun International Hotel and Casino Group, announced the company on Wednesday.

The live casino content provider will power online live games for SunBet through an agreement with Bede Gaming. The SunBet online sportsbook, which now includes Evolutions online live dealer games, tables, and game shows, recently went live to players on desktop and mobile. Ezugi, Evolutions sister brand in the area of Live Casino, will see its offering going live in the coming weeks.

We are enormously excited by the potential of the SunBet partnership, said Dean Finder, CEO of Evolution Services SA. Our live dealer solutions are extremely complementary to the existing Sun International and SunBet offering, not only in terms of replicating the land-based gaming experience but also by extending and diversifying their existing and very strong online sports betting offering.

The agreement with Evolution gains SunBet full access to the Evolution and Ezugi live games portfolio, including Roulette, Blackjack, Baccarat, as well as new generation online live game shows such as Gonzos Treasure Hunt, Crazy Time and Lightning Roulette. Moreover, live Poker variants and First Person/RNG versions of key Evolution titles will also be available.

Nitesh Matai, General Manager Sports Betting at Sun International, said: In sports betting, SunBet is renowned for its astounding online betting experience across a whole range of sports, complete with sophisticated features such as action bets, over 100,000 live in-play events and cash out. The world-class Evolution and Ezugi online live dealer offering now takes our online service for our customers to another level.

Sun International is one of the largest land-based casino operators in South Africa, and its portfolio also includes five-star hotels and resorts, including Palace of the Lost City at Sun City. By having secured this partnership with Evolution, Sun International aims at extending its casino experience beyond land-based venues and regular operation times.

Perhaps most exciting of all is that it provides all the live exhilaration of a visit to a modern casino plus a new generation of incredibly entertaining live game shows that offer huge variety and choice, added Matai.

By launching Evolutions offering, land-based customers will be able to play at flexible times, even when they are unable to visit the physical casino in person, as well as enabling the casino operator full flexibility and the ability to maintain the customer relationship at times when venues have restricted opening due to South Africas Covid protocols and curfews, describes a press statement.

Link:

Evolution goes live in South Africa with SunBet - Yogonet International

The venue isnt the only thing that has changed over the last 20 years of RedBull Rampage. This awe-inspiring event has an illustrious reputation and has been tested by both man and machine since 2001. The event has evolved from a ragtag group of freeriders gathering in the desert with customized bikes, to a world-class event that hosts athletes who spend the entire year training for this one competition. Although the crowds and coverage have grown like the features that riders take on, much has remained the same here in the Utah desert. Great leaps have been made in bike design thanks to technological advances and more acceptance of this extreme style of riding. Riders can now tackle bigger obstacles at higher speeds, ride more safely, and have faith that things will stay spinning round when they touch back to Earth on the backside of these monstrous drops.

Kyle Strait, two-time RedBull Rampage winner.

Christian Pondella

Crashes still happen but riders are calculated thanks to better equipment.

Christian Pondella

The early years saw a wide array of unique suspension designs & technology.

Christian Pondella

The Trek Session has been piloted by some of the most talented riders

Christian Pondella

In the middle years downhill bikes were replaced with more trickable bikes

Christian Pondella

Early freeriders helped push the limits of what was possible in MTB.

Christian Pondella

Carson Storch knows his equipment will hold up to massive G-forces.

Garth Milan / RedBull Content Pool

Modern-day bikes are helping riders send it farther than imagined.

John Gibson / RedBull Content Pool

Trek bikes are on podiums of riders like Brandon Semenuk & Brett Rheeder.

Paris Gore/RedBull Content Pool

This image of Cedric Gracia shows how short and compact the frames were

Christian Pondella

When looking at bicycle technology and equipment improvements there are a few major areas that allow riders to go bigger and faster than ever before. We asked Kyle Strait, two-time winner and the only athlete to have competed in every RedBull Rampage since 2001 what the biggest changes in bike technology have been. Without hesitation Strait replied, Geometry and suspension.

When looking at a profile image of a bike, geometry is one of the most notable changes. When riders and engineers discuss bike geometry, or geo, theyre referring to the points, length between points, and angles of the frame. Two of the biggest geometrical gains in the last 20 years come at the front half of the bike. The head tube angle and reach. Reach is the intersection point measuring the distance from a vertical line drawn up from the center of the bottom bracket to the top center of the head tube. Twenty years ago, mountain bikes still pulled much of their sizing, geometry and dimensions from road or cross-country mountain bikes.

Frame numbers have changed in every dimension from front to back, but one of, if not the most important angles is the head tube angle. The head tube is the large front tube that the fork slides through, and they have gotten drastically slacker in the last 20 years. A slacker head tube angle gives the bike a longer wheelbase, slows down the steering and puts the front wheel out in front of the rider further. A welcome feeling when dropping vertical pitches or trying to make smooth turns at speed.

Since much of the geometry theory and design carried over from decades of road or cross-country bike experience, freeriders and downhillers were limited by the 67-degree head tube angles found on some bikes. Modern day bikes are often running head tube angles as slack as 62-63 degrees, which is a huge difference over the length of the fork.

As head tube angles got slacker and reach dimensions grew longer, riders found increased confidence and stability. This progression in stability and confidence have helped evolve the size of features and terrain thats possible to navigate at RedBull Rampage. Looking at a side-by-side of a bike from 2001 to 2021 and youll see a much longer bike overall, with very few overlapping points of contact.

The early freeriders helped push the limits of mountain bike development

Christian Pondella

Another major improvement in bike technology comes from the suspension. Bikes have gone from having six inches of poorly damped travel to over eight inches of highly tunable and compliant suspension. Like many of the bike brands you see in the early photo galleries from RedBull Rampage, suspension companies and trends have faded. Early RedBull Rampage athletes rode coil-sprung shocks, and many competed on inverted forks from brands like 5th Element and Avalanche. The trend has definitely changed and most athletes these days are seen on air shocks with Fox or Rock Shox equipment found under the majority of the riders.

04

2004: A portly Specialized Big Hit with a Marzocchi Monster T fork

Christian Pondella

Thanks to the last two decades of riders pushing the envelope, engineers have worked to do the same on the design front. Computer animated design programs, finite element analysis, and lots of other high-tech steps are used to develop and check strength, life cycles and durability of products. This has resulted in bikes getting lighter, stronger, and more reliable.

Back in the day it wasnt uncommon for an aluminum or chromoly downhill bike to weight over 50 pounds. Todays downhill bikes can be made from thinner aluminum or carbon fiber and easily hit 34 pounds. With 15 less pounds of mass underneath them, riders can now spin, flip and maneuver much easier than they could before.

The bikes look raw & industrial compared to the modern works of today

Christian Pondella

Working in unison with the frame improvements are a number of new industry standards that have helped components evolve to be much stronger and longer lasting. For example, early mountain bikes carried over axle standards from road and cross-country mountain bikes, which were ill-equipped for the demands of off-road riding. In 2001 many of the riders were on thinner axles that were also narrower at 135mm spacing. Todays axles go up to 20mm thick, while rear end axle spacing is 150mm or even 158mm on some bikes. This wider spacing allows hubs to be much stronger, with better triangulation for the spokes to help keep wheels spinning true despite huge side loads from landing 360s or massive whips.

Other components like tires, handlebars, and brakes have also seen massive gains. New rubber compounds and sidewall stiffness increases have helped improve traction and reduce the chances of flat tires while more powerful 4-piston brakes have replaced unreliable 2-piston brakes found on early 2000s bikes. Handlebars have also increased in thickness to 35mm from 31.8mm or 25.4mm thick bars originally found on mountain bikes. This means a more precise steering feel and the ability to run much wider bars for increased leverage and a more powerful riding position.

The result of all these changes is a completely different mountain bike that is leaps ahead of what early competitors took to the slopes of the first RedBull Rampage with. To some they may look just like another bike, but to the discerning eye these modern freeride machines share little with their predecessors beyond the two wheels that keep them rolling down the mountain. Changes in geometry, suspension technology and better components all work together to help these riders push the limits of what is possible on the worlds most demanding stage. Its impossible to talk about bike development and technology without acknowledging the limits early riders pushed on their modified and sometimes homemade freeride machines at the early RedBull Rampage events. They helped create a new discipline of riding, pushed bike development and entertained viewers around the world for two decades. Cheers to the riders and bikes of Rampage.

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The Evolution of Bikes at Red Bull Rampage: Two Decades of Progression - Red Bull

by Athol YatesWarwick, U.K.: Helion and Co., 2020. 380 pp. $69.95, paper.

Reviewed by Sterling JensenUAE National Defense College | All views are those of the author.

Middle East QuarterlyFall 2021

https://www.meforum.org/62612/review-evolution-of-the-armed-forces-of-uae

Yates' timely book recounts the history, challenges, and internal dynamics of building the most competent and modern military in the Arab world. Long dependent on foreigners to underwrite their security, Gulf Arab countries are facing the hard reality that global powers, particularly the United States, are little interested in being security guarantors in a region where ethno-sectarianism shapes geopolitics. Yates, of Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, argues that the United Arab Emirates' (UAE) armed forces have set a different course, helping the country steer in a more favorable direction.

The book has three parts: the physical, cultural, and political environment of the UAE military; its defining characteristics; and the evolution of each main force (army, navy, air force). Yates details how the UAE's federation was built on compromise, cunningness, and cooptation, and how this history has shaped the armed forces. The various rulers moved from developing their own armed forces for defending local interests to creating a unified and integrated military for the wider national interest. The second and third sections provide a descriptive and well-researched overview of the forces' core missions and institutional histories. The book concludes with an assessment of the UAE armed forces' effectiveness and discusses the cultural challenges facing Arab militaries.

The book's main strength is that it does not shy away from the region's taboos, such as the history of distrust among the different emirates, challenges to federation, and an objective assessment of operational successes and failures. Discussing these issues makes the accomplishments of the UAE military more credible and convincing.

What is missing, however, is a more satisfying analysis of the sustainability of the UAE armed forces' progress. What helped the UAE armed forces become what they are today does not guarantee that their success will continue. The author assumes that the UAE military will advance as long as the country's enlightened leadership remains militarily savvy, is willing to spend big, and continues to wield a heavy hand in shaping the military's institutional culture. While the author points out that military culture must be aligned with national culture in order for it to sustain success, he does not assess whether that is likely to happen.

Despite this blind spot, the book is a deeply-researched and courageous attempt to give a transparent assessment and objective history of one of the most consequential and successful modern Arab militaries.

Related Topics: Persian Gulf & Yemen | Sterling Jensen | Fall 2021 MEQreceive the latest by email: subscribe to the free mef mailing listThis text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete and accurate information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.

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Review of The Evolution of the Armed Forces of the United Arab Emirates - Middle East Forum

The treatment for any disease constantly evolvesparticularly when the disease in question is caused by an emerging pathogen.

Unfortunately, skeptics continue to use the changing science around the treatment (as well as the prevention and spread) of COVID-19 as evidence that it is somehow not up to snuff. Nothing could be further from the truth, in most cases, at least when it comes to caring for patients with severe disease.

On that score, although there is still no cure for the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, there are treatments that do provide some relief.

In a study published on August 17 by Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers from across the country have attempted to chronicle the narrative arcfor lack of a better phraseof COVID-19 care. The Cliffs Notes version (forgive the data reference): The story starts with hydroxychloroquine, continues through remdesivir, and ends (at least for now) with dexamethasone and some cautious optimism.

Earlier in the pandemic, patients and clinicians were desperately looking for COVID-19 treatment, Hemalkumar B. Mehta, PhD, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, told Contagion. Unfortunately, the use of hydroxychloroquine was based on weak scientific evidence [and] media coverage and hype increased public interest in hydroxychloroquine. As soon as the scientific evidence showed no benefits and possible harms of hydroxychloroquine, clinicians stopped using it. The case of hydroxychloroquine provides a good reminder that solid scientific evidence should be a major driver for COVID-19 treatment.

Over the course of the study period, February 1, 2020 through February 28, 2021, among 137,870 people hospitalized with confirmed or suspected COVID-19, 8754 (6.3%) received hydroxychloroquine. However, use of the drug increased during March 2020, peaking at 42%, and started to drop by April 2020, as new data emerged demonstrating that it offered little, if any clinical benefit. By February of this year, just 0.6% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients were given the drug.

Conversely, 29,272 (21.2%) of the study patients were given remdesivir and 53,909 (39.1%) were administered dexamethasone over the 13-month study period, gradually increasing throughout. Indeed, following release of results from the RECOVERY (Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy) trial in mid-June, 78% to 84% of patients on invasive mechanical ventilation received dexamethasone or another glucocorticoid, the researchers found. Remdesivir use peaked at 27% in February.

However, even this increased use might not have been sufficient. Of the patients who may have benefited from dexamethasone, for example, approximately 1 in 5 patients did not receive the steroid, according to Dr. Mehta. Its use peaked at 53% of potentially eligible patients in November 2020 and stood at 33% in February, but these figures vary substantially across health centers (intraclass correlation coefficient, 14.2%).

We found that remdesivir and dexamethasone were used variably across health systems [and] we need to ensure that these drugs are given to the right patients and used consistently to improve outcomes among patients hospitalized with COVID-19, Mehta said. For example, there is compelling evidence that dexamethasone is beneficial to those with COVID who are hospitalized and require supplemental oxygen. Because the pandemic is still ongoing, we must continue to generate scientific evidence on COVID-19 treatment to help patients and clinicians select appropriate drug therapies.

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Public Health Watch: Tracing the Evolution of COVID-19 Treatment in Hospitalized Patients - Contagionlive.com