Daily Archives: September 4, 2021

If $H$ is hermitian then $U=e^{-itH}$ is unitary if and only if $t$ is real. Making a change of variables $t=itau$ won't change that. The point is that when you do a Wick rotation to imaginary time you are not making a simple change of variables - a change of variables after all can't actually affect the physics.

The basic place where an imaginary time quantity arises is the thermal density matrix$$ rho = frac{e^{-beta H}}{Z}$$with $beta=1/(k_BT)$ the inverse temperature, which to have physical meaning must be real. This is the same thing as $U$ for an imaginary time $t=-ibeta$. This should be enough to convince you that in the vast majority of cases when talking about imaginary time one really does consider the time to be imaginary, and not purely real as needed for $U$ to be unitary.

In a QFT context, the Wick rotation is less physical and more of a mathematical trick - there you decide that the observables $O(t)$ asked for are hard to compute along the real line and instead compute them along the imaginary axis $O(it)$ and hope that the resulting formulas are analytically continuable to the entire complex plane.

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quantum mechanics - Why is imaginary time evolution non ...

"Life finds a way." With dinosaurs on the loose in the United States, Jurassic World Evolution 2 fully embraces Ian Malcolm's famous warning. We're going to learn what life is like living among these thunder lizards.

Frontier Developments says players will encounter over 75 dinosaurs species within this sequel. We likely won't learn exactly which dinosaurs are included prior to the game's November 9 launch, but Frontier is trickling out videos that highlight some the new additions and returning favorites.

With an expanded focus on marine and flying reptiles, there should be a diverse amount of creatures to study and perhaps contain within your theme parks. The wider variety also means more ways that guests can be devoured. We all want to know if a flying dinosaur can feed the Mosasaurus by dropping a guest into the lagoon.

The list below rounds up all of the known dinosaurs that will be in Jurassic World Evolution 2. We're currently sitting at just under half of what we can expect to see in the game. Odds are some of the hybrids like the Indominus Rex will return, and will likely be joined by other Frankensteined monstrosities. We also don't know if Frontier is adding dinosaurs from the ongoing Camp Cretaceous Netflix show. Bumpy would surely be a draw for parks.

We'll update this list whenever new dinosaurs are announced or discovered and will also provide a full list upon the game's release. Here are the known dinos:

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All Of The Known Dinosaurs In Jurassic World Evolution 2 ...

Photo: Tesla factory, by Steve Jurvetson / CC BY.

Lets say someone asks you, Do you believe in evolution? You dont have time to give a 30-minute answer outlining the different meanings of the word evolution and the evidence pro and con for each, and you know your questioner wouldnt listen to a 30-minute answer anyway. The other individual wants a simple yes or no. However, if you say yes it will be assumed you believe Darwins implausible theory on the origin of species, and if you say no it will be assumed you believe all species were created in six days several thousand years ago.

So what do you say? Heres my suggestion:

Yes, I believe in the evolution of life, and I believe in the evolution of automobiles, but I dont believe either could have happened without intelligent design.

If you watch the second half of the videoWhy Evolution Is Different, you will see why this is actually a very informative and reasonable answer. Like automobiles, life evolved step-by-step, but not really gradually. The video points out how similar the fossil record is to the history of human technology, with obvious similarities between each new invention and previous designs but with large gaps where major new features appeared. That is for the same reasons: gradual development of the new organs that gave rise to new orders, classes, and phyla would require the development of new but not yet useful features. Gaps among known orders, classes, and phyla are systematic and almost always large, wrote Harvard paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson. So Darwinism could not explain the development of these new features even if they did occur gradually and they dont.

The video highlights further similarities between the evolution of life and the evolution of human technology. With automobiles, if you try to to sketch an evolutionary tree showing which models evolved from which, you may be able to produce a tree that is generally reasonable. But closer inspection shows that car species do not really fit so nicely into a tree structure: often even the designers might have a hard time identifying the ancestor of a particular model because it inherited ideas from several different automobile lineages. Contrary to Darwinian expectations, the evolutionary tree of life is equally confused. There are many indications that humans might have evolved from earlier primates, or that birds might have evolved from reptiles (though this evolution was not gradual). But hereconvergencealso confuses things greatly. Similar new features (e.g., the echolocation abilities of bats and dolphins) and similarnew genesoften appear independently in distant branches of the supposed tree of life, suggesting common design rather than common descent. In fact, Winston Ewert has shown in a 2018BIO-Complexityarticle that instead of a tree, the history of life is much better modeled by adependency graphlike we see in the evolution of software development!

This video carries the analogy between the evolution of life and the evolution of automobiles even further. It invites us to imagine that human engineers were able to design cars with fully automated car-building factories inside, with the ability to build new cars and not just normal new cars, but cars with car-building factories insidethem.If we left these cars alone to reproduce themselves, generation after generation, there would inevitably be duplication errors. But who would possibly imagine that these duplication errors, guided by natural selection, could ever accumulate into more advanced car models? Human-designed self-replicating machines are still pure science fiction, so we really have no idea how living species are able to pass their current complex structures down through many generations, much less how they could evolve even more complex structures.

If you offer the above-suggested reply, you may then be asked to explain why you dont believe evolution could have happened without design when most scientists still insist that it must have. Again you know you only have a few seconds to reply, so may I suggest:

I dont believe that the four fundamental, unintelligent forces of physics alone could have rearranged the fundamental particles of physics on Earth into computers, science libraries, and cell phones, for the same reasons I dont believe tornadoes will ever run backward and turn rubble into houses and cars.

And if you watch the first half ofWhy Evolution Is Different,you will see that this is a very informative and reasonable answer, too.

By the way, theold versionof this video has been updated. The above links are to the new version. And notice there are subtitles in English, Spanish, Polish, and Dutch.

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Do You Believe in Evolution? A Short Answer - Discovery Institute

Opposable thumbs and walking upright are just two of the many developments brought on by the process of human evolution over many millennia. It may seem that humans are a stable speciesfully decided in our anatomy with little variation over the generations. However, this is not exactly true. Humans are still evolving. A new study published in the Journal of Anatomy has found that over the past century, more and more humans have a third artery in their forearm in addition to the previously typical two.

This research on human evolution was conducted by Dr. Teghan Lucas at Flinders University and Professor Maciej Henneberg and Dr. Jaliya Kumaratilake at the University of Adelaide. The team focused on the forearm, which typically contains the radial and ulnar arteries. They examined 80 forearms of cadavers donated to science by Australians of European descent. Aged 51 to 101, the individuals were all born in the 20th century. The team found that 30% of these modern Australians had a sizable third central artery in their forearms, known as the median artery.

The median artery has long been known to anatomy experts. It forms in utero to supply blood to the hands of a developing fetus. In most people the artery is replacedstill in uteroby the development of the radial and ulnar arteries. However, some people retain the median artery through development and into their adult life. It can continue to function, providing the benefit of extra blood to the hand. It runs along the median nerve and can also increase the risk of carpal tunnel syndrome.

To examine how humanity has evolved with the respect to the median artery, the researchers did some historical investigation. The median artery has been documented in autopsies since the 18th century. Dr. Lucas said in a statement, The prevalence was around 10% in people born in the mid-1880s compared to 30% in those born in the late 20th century, so thats a significant increase in a fairly short period of time, when it comes to evolution. This may indicate that this element of human evolution is an accelerating change in general anatomy.

Dr. Lucas elaborated, This increase could have resulted from mutations of genes involved in median artery development or health problems in mothers during pregnancy, or both actually. If this trend continues, a majority of people will have median artery of the forearm by 2100. While the evolutionary purpose and cause of the increased retention of a median artery may still require some research, the body part is not the only one to change over the time. For example, humans have recently re-developed a bone in the knee known as the fabella, which decreased in incidence and then rebounded in the present century. What is certainly clear is that we humans remain an evolutionary work in progress.

h/t: [Science Alert]

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More and More Humans Have an Extra Artery, Proof of Ongoing Evolution - My Modern Met

Evolution is typically a slow processbut one toad species may have inadvertently figured out a way to speed it up: by eating their young.

Cane toads are native to Central America, but they were introduced to countries around the world in a failed effort to provide pest management on farms. The venomous species thrived in these new placesand in Australia, especiallyand are now considered one of the globe's most invasive species.

In Australia, the toads have no natural predators and will eat practically anything, including birds and small mammalsa combination of factors that has led to a rapid population boom, resulting in millions of cane toads across the region.

Because cane toads in Australia do not have any predators, the species' only threat lies in each other. If the population gets too big, cane toads will be forced to compete for increasingly scarce resources.

As a result, they began to eat their own hatchlings to keep their population numbers in check. This sort of cannibalistic behavior has been observed in the species' native populations, reported Smithsonian Magazine, but it is far more common in Australia, where the lack of predators makes overpopulation their primary concern.

However, a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) now suggests that young toad hatchlings are adjusting rapidly in an effort to avoid the cannibalistic behavior of their elders.

Within Australian cane toad populations, tadpoles will devour the hatchlings laid in ponds by female toads. "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," explained the study's lead researcher, Jayna DeVore, to Live Science.

The cannibalistic behavior can only take place during this brief periodmerely a few daysbefore hatchlings have matured into tadpoles. "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," added DeVore.

As a result, cane toad hatchlings have started to develop at a faster rate than seen in their native populations, effectively minimizing the window where they may be eaten by tadpoles. Explained DeVore: "If cannibals are looking for you, the less time you can spend as an egg or hatchling, the better."

Developing faster may save hatchlings from an unfortunate, cannibalistic fate, but the accelerated maturation rate has its downfalls. Those that spent less time as hatchlings are less successful once they reach the tadpole stage.

While cannibalism seems like the sort of behavior that may lead to a population declineor even extinctionDeVore doesn't believe that's on the horizon for cane toads. "Australian cane toads may well be their own worst enemy, but I wouldn't expect them to go extinct anytime soon," she told Live Science.

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

Newsweek has reached out to DeVore for further comment.

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Invasive Cannibal Frog Species is Accelerating Evolution by Eating Its Own Offspring - Newsweek

The last two decades have witnessed the relentless march of global capital and technical expertise, and, with it, the advance of a distinct building typologythe supertall skyscraper. From Central Park South to the shores of the Persian Gulf, to the megalopolises ringing the South China Sea, the supertall is now an increasingly common physical manifestation of commercial and national prestige. SUPERTALL! 2020, an exhibition currently on view at New Yorks Skyscraper Museum, examines this trend and explores the structural innovations therein.

The exhibition combines two prior shows examining the topic at the Skyscraper Museum; Worlds Tallest Building: Burj Dubai in 2007, and SUPERTALL! in 2011. Both set a baseline height of 1,250 feet (the height of the Empire State Building) for their surveys, which included supertall skyscrapers in varying states of completion. SUPERTALL! 2020 presents a similar script and highlights a dozen such towers through the display of physical models and narratives of their respective structural and facade systems.

Size isnt everything and SUPERTALL! 2020excels in its explanation of how developments in architectural technology and building program have reshaped the form and layout of such projects. The show cites the rapid evolution of computational design as fundamentally altering the former predominance of rectilinear massing and replication of floorplan story on story, a circumstance accompanied by the greater use of bearing-wall or mega-column concrete structural systems; a significant shift away from steel frame construction. The exhibition also notes a shift from the single-use skyscraper of yore to those that stack multiple functions vertically, often with a tapered form that incorporates deeper floorplates at the lower levels to accommodate office space and a more slender profile towards the top for residential or hotel use.

Of particular note, especially for the New York audience, is the considerable curatorial space devoted to our very own nexus of supertall skyscrapers, Billionaires Row. There, aided by floorplans and models of 432 Park Avenue and 111 57th Street, the exhibition effectively conveys their deft innovation in skyscraper design, the former possessing a slenderness ratio of 10:1 and the latter a startling 23:1. The layout also emphasizes their economics; many of the towers on the stretch only have one or two apartments per floor to maximize the salable area, a critical strategy to buff up the profit margins for projects with construction and acquisition costs of thousands of dollars per square foot.

The exhibition is accompanied by a virtual lecture series, WORLD VIEW: Designing Global Supertalls, which was conceived as a semester of related talks. The 13-part series includes detailed presentations by the architects and engineers of supertalls featured in the exhibition and dives into the design decisions that shaped them and the structural systems that hold it all together.

SUPERTALL! 2020The Skyscraper Museum39 Battery PlaceThrough January 2022

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SUPERTALL 2020! examines the structural evolution of the supertall skyscraper - The Architect's Newspaper

Throughout the Altcoin Evolution series, we have taken a closer look at the potential gains and pitfalls that will define the path forward for cryptocurrencies not named Bitcoin (BTC) or Ethereum (ETH).

The behemoths of the crypto market have clearly set themselves apart from the rest of the pack, and while they may be subject to these potential outcomes, its fair to say at least today that these cryptos have a completely different perspective than virtually any other crypto or blockchain project.

That being said, what can altcoins do to gain traction and become more competitive on a larger scale? Lets recap what weve covered throughout this series.

We highlighted a few projects, particularly around the booming NFT space, that have done this quite well. Sign contracts. Find partners. Make connections. As the broader crypto industry continues to assess what altcoins can provide to daily operations, there are sure to be consistent opportunities. Having a foot in the door when these situations arise is almost certainly beneficial.

Arguably the most compelling argument for the evolution of altcoins is to specialize one particular aspect (low gas fees for transactions, speed, etc.), but be capable in a variety of areas. Of course, projects are going to want to maximize value by having technical capabilities across the board that are ahead of the curve.

However, taking the technical and foundation aspects aside, what we honed in on most was the extras for altcoins the selling points that arent inherent to the blockchain technology being used on certain projects. This is why NFTs made for great examples. A majority of NFTs work off of Ethereum, which is known for having higher transaction costs. So how can projects find other selling points to grab ahold of? Thats what weve looked to address in the duration of Altcoin Evolution.

Related Reading | Crypto Has Arrived In Hollywood, And The Stars Are Loving It!

In Part I, we laid out the groundwork for the inherent challenges that crypto projects often face in the market. We went on to discuss those with more depth in the following three pieces in the series.

We started off with accessibility. With emerging exchanges and platforms, accessibility becomes an increased focal point for rising altcoins. Platforms like UniSwap and SushiSwap have increased accessibility for intermediate consumers. All the while, more widely-used platforms such as Coinbase have placed an emphasis on supporting more tokens. Of course, it takes technological fundamentals, a strong whitepaper, and great marketing even just to be considered for some of the more well-known exchanges and platforms.

By Part III of the series, we began to start scratching the surface of nailing down the importance of a digestible use case. This can often come as shifts in global activity come over time. For example, the economic impacts of COVID-19 are often cited as a growth driver for projects like Axie Infinity, which has taken a prominent position in the NFT marketplace. Axies have essentially formed internet economies that individuals in developing countries can utilize.

In our final discussion around challenges for emerging projects, we highlighted a number of different buckets that we often see some of the best altcoin sales pitches utilize. Some projects lean into more than one of these buckets: Partnerships & IP, Aggressive Interest Rates / Rewards, Decentralization, Versatility, and Low Cost.

Before we close the books on Altcoin Evolution, lets take a closer look at prime examples of each of these buckets that are executing today. Earlier in the series, we highlighted the OMI token and the associated ECOMI project, who have sealed NFT partnerships with companies like Marvel on their VeVe marketplace.

DeFi and CeFi companies like BlockFi, Nexo, and Celsius have been offering aggressive interest rates for storing tokens on their respective platforms; these firms have built massive enterprises simply off of loaning crypto and incentivizing crypto consumers to hold their tokens with these platforms, providing interest rates substantially more aggressive than what weve seen in traditional banking.

Decentralization is a core component of almost any crypto project although many projects can be significantly more centralized than others. However, the crypto community has long recognized the importance of decentralization. One example of this recognition is NFT marketplace Raribles recent move to a more decentralized format, implementing $RARE tokens and giving platform users a greater voice in the future of Rarible.

Versatility can often be seen in projects like Cardano or Polygon. Both respective projects flex the versatility muscle, working across a variety of spaces. Both projects have been building ecosystems around DeFi, smart contracts, NFTs, and a whole lot more.

Finally, the attribute of low cost can often draw in mass consumers. Dogecoin has often had major appeal from its cheap price relative to other tokens, and many mainstream Bitcoin critics have said that the high price of one BTC would dissuade new potential crypto consumers from buying in. While this can be positioned as a mental battle, it is still one that is present in todays crypto discussions, and there is an appeal to having a cheaper token for many emerging projects.

That closes the books on Altcoin Evolution. We appreciate you stopping by each week and look forward to our next altcoin-focused series.

Our team at NewsBTC provides a special thank you to Jerry Sena for his insight, feedback and contributions to this series.

Related Reading | Bittrex Global CEO Declares Dubai Will Gain Benefit From Cryptocurrency Market Expansion

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Altcoin Evolution - Part V: The Closing Recap - NewsBTC

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Global topographic uplift has elevated speciation in mammals and birds over the last 3 million years - Nature.com

The lepidosaur fossil was not just any lepidosaur, but the first member of this group that evolved away from the others. That puts it at the top of that lineage and provides key evidence of how lizards first evolved from more primitive reptiles. That kind of respect is shown in the name the scientists chose for it: Taytalura alcoberi, meaning father of the lizards in the Quechua and Kakn languages of the native Andean people of Argentina.

Taytalura is the earliest evolving lepidosaur, but it is not the oldest lepidosaur fossil ever found. That honor belongs to a 242 million-year-old squamate and a 234 million-year-old sphenodontian. That suggests an older Taytalura fossil may one day be found.

Regardless, the age discrepancy shows that these very early lepidosaurs lived side by side with squamates and sphenodontians, known as true lepidosaurs, for at least 10 million years during the Triassic period, a fact that was previously unknown.

The researchers used micro-CT scans of the three-dimensionally preserved head to analyze the fossil. It allowed them to compare this early lepidosaurian skull with later lepidosaur and other reptiles. The researchers, for instance, noticed that the skull of the first lepidosaurs looked substantially more like those of sphenodontians than squamates and that squamates represent a major deviation from the older skull patterns. They also found Taytalura teeth differed from those in any living or extinct group of lepidosaurs.

Another surprising finding involved where the fossil was discovered. Till now, almost all fossils of Triassic lepidosaurs have been found in Europe. This is the first early lepidosaur found in South America. It suggests lepidosaurs were able to migrate across the planet (which then was all still one supercontinent) very early in their evolutionary history.

That type of mileage is impressive for such a small creature. While its impossible to accurately estimate the total body length of this lizard-like reptile, the one-inch head suggests it likely could fit in the palm of a human hand. The creature most likely fed on insects from desert environments that it shared with some of the oldest dinosaurs in the planet, said Simes. [It] was most likely preyed upon by some of the first dinosaurs to walk on Earth, he said.

The researchers hope to explore older rocks in Argentina or other parts of South America and find older members of this lineage. The hope is to determine the exact time when the entire group originated, which will be critical in understanding the long evolutionary history of reptiles to help those that exist today.

Lepidosaurs survived across three out of the five big mass extinctions on Earths history during the last 260 million years, Simes said. By accurately reconstructing the long evolutionary history of lepidosaurs, we may be able to tell in much greater detail how they successfully survived and flourished across major environmental shifts in Earths past and how they may be impacted by modern human-induced climate change.

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Analysis of 231-million-year-old fossil sheds light on reptile evolution - Harvard Gazette

The past year has changed the way people buy and sell homes, with new buying and selling options gaining traction in the marketplace. In addition to the well-known iBuyers, these include a more recent category of companies such as EasyKnock, Homeward, Knock and Ribbon. The details of these programs vary, but one common denominator is dramatically increasing the consumers power as a homebuyerhence our preferred term for these companies, Power Buyers, coined by global real estate tech strategist Mike DelPrete.

zavvie facilitates thousands of agent requests for Power Buyer and iBuyer offers each month. Analyzing the offer flow, we are most impressed by two megatrends that have important implications for real estate practitioners:

1. Power Buyers are enjoying 2X to 10X growth this year by solving the biggest marketplace problem: lack of inventory. This makes it hard for potential sellers to buy a house, creating a chicken-and-egg scenario. Power Buyers solve this for sellers by helping them buy without a loan contingency before they sell.

We conducted a study of offers made by one of our Denver partner brokerages, revealing that buyers with a loan contingency needed to make an average of seven offers before going under contract, while buyers utilizing a Power Buyer program had a 1:1 offer-to-acceptance ratio. For sellers and buyers, power buyers are a game changer.

2. The iBuyers are making stronger offers than ever. In fact, on average, their offers came in at an impressive 104.1% of market value during the first half of the year. Anecdotal reports from brokers across the country confirm that iBuyers are often making offers above prices expected on the open market.

At the same time, iBuyer service fees dropped from 7.2% in 2020 to 5.1% at the end of Q2 2021. Moreover, their average concession for home repairs fell from 3.6% to 1.9%. Combined, thats 3.8 percentage points lower, equating to a 35% reduction in the consumers costs of selling to an iBuyer. That dramatic decrease brings the iBuyers fees in line with what sellers pay on the open market.

For agents, the takeaway is that iBuyers are making great offers, and these offers may be the best option for their clients. Agents who arent requesting these offers are missing outand arguably not fulfilling their fiduciary duty to sellers.

Modern brokerages arent standing idle. They are proactively getting out in front of these changes and co-opting the Power Buyers, iBuyers and other options for selling and buying. By adapting to the changes in the marketplace, theyre getting more deals done.

These trends and others are presented in more detail in our mid-year Seller Preferences Report at zavvie.com/seller-preferences.

Stefan Peterson is co-founder and chief data officer of zavvie, a technology company that is empowering the modern agent by making it easy to provide todays consumers all the selling options: iBuyers, bridge and open market. For more information, visit zavvie.com.

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The Next Evolution of iBuyers: 'Power Buyers' - RisMedia.com