Category Archives: Evolution

Survey also reveals practices show a fast recovery from the pandemic and the move to more customized care

IRVINE, Calif., July 26, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Kareo 2021 State of the Independent Practice report, a semi-annual survey that has become a principal source of information on the under-studied independent healthcare arena, reveals a far more optimistic, dynamic and growth-oriented prediction for small to mid-sized practices than could have been foreseen at the beginning of 2020. Download the report here.

The survey data discovered:

More than 50% of all independent practices emerged from 2020 with the number of patient visits the same (22%) or even higher (29%) than in 2019.

75% of independent medical practices expect to grow in 2021, up from 59% as reported in a previous Kareo survey conducted in 2019.

Even more optimistically, practices expecting their patient loads to shrink in 2021 fell to less than half of the 2019 findings (6% in 2021 versus 14% in 2019).

According to the report, this positive outlook can be attributed to multiple factors, many of them involving technology.

Dan Rodrigues, founder and CEO of Kareo, the leading provider of cloud-based clinical and practice management software for independent practices, stated, "Early in 2020, independent practices, like all small businesses, were suffering with declining visits and revenues and in many cases, being forced to close their doors for weeks or often months. A pulse survey conducted by Kareo in June 2020 found that 75% of independent practice respondents reported a decline in patient volumes, threatening this critical segment of the healthcare industry."

Rodrigues continued, "However, contrary to expectations, independent practices actually ended the year on an upswing. The data revealed that a renewed focus on the needs of their patients and a rapid, nimble adoption of technology solutions is what allowed practices to maintain and even enhance their patient relationships. The most significant of these technologies was telehealth."

Story continues

Prior to the pandemic, telehealth was a slowly adopted technology that many providers felt was a "nice-to-have" someday. In fact:

In 2019, the Kareo State of the Independent Practice survey and report showed the adoption rate of telehealth at 22%.

A survey Kareo conducted in March 2020 showed that the rate of telehealth usage nearly doubled to 41%.

By June 2020, a follow up survey showed that telehealth usage skyrocketed to 77%.

And by December 2020, that number had increased to 80% of independent practice respondents offering telehealth visits.

This dramatic adoption of telehealth was received mostly positively by independent healthcare providers, but also by their patients who were required to learn to use telehealth platforms to receive care and saw the benefit of the technology as a result.

While delivering care is always a high priority for independent practices, as shown in 2019 when 50% of participants cited it as their primary focus, in the 2021 report, that number has grown to 71%. This suggests that practitioners have a reinforced understanding of their role in patients' lives and health, perhaps prompted by the pandemic, as well as an increasing recognition of the consumerization of healthcare. As patients have assumed greater responsibility for their own healthcare costs, often due to an increased use of high deductible health plans, they have also exerted more active choice in finding providers that meet their expectations.

For more information about how providers feel about using technology in their practices in 2021 and other interesting insights from Kareo's recent survey, download the Kareo 2021 State of the Independent Practice report here.

About KareoKareo is the only cloud-based and complete medical technology platform purpose-built to meet the unique needs of independent practices and the billing companies that serve them. Today Kareo helps more than 75,000 providers across all 50 states run a more efficient and profitable practice, while setting them up to deliver outstanding patient care. With oices across the country, Kareo's mission is to help independent practices and the billing companies that support them succeed in an ever-changing healthcare market. More information can be found at http://www.kareo.com.

Contact: Lindsay Thompson Strategieslindsay@strategiesadpr.com714-656-0141Cell: 949-280-5854

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Kareo Survey Shows the Evolution of Independent Healthcare Practices Using Technology and Their Outlook for the Future - Yahoo Finance

Life reconstruction of Heterodontosaurus vocalizing on a cool Jurassic morning. Credit: Viktor Radermacher

Using an exceptionally preserved fossil from South Africa, a particle accelerator, and high-powered x-rays, an international team including a University of Minnesota researcher has discovered that not all dinosaurs breathed in the same way. The findings give scientists more insight into how a major group of dinosaurs, including well-known creatures like the triceratops and stegosaurus, evolved.

The study is published in eLife, a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal for the biomedical and life sciences.

Not all animals use the same techniques and organs to breathe. Humans expand and contract their lungs. Birds have air sacs outside their lungs that pump oxygen in, and their lungs dont actually move. For a long time, paleontologists assumed that all dinosaurs breathed like birds, since they had similar breathing anatomy. This study, however, found that Heterodontosaurus did not it instead had paddle-shaped ribs and small, toothpick-like bones, and expanded both its chest and belly in order to breathe.

Using a well-preserved fossil and high-powered x-rays, an international team including a University of Minnesota researcher has discovered that not all dinosaurs breathed in the same way. This video shows a 3D digitization of the newly discovered Heterodontosaurus specimen, the oldest ancestor of dinosaurs such as Triceratops and Stegosaurus. Credit: Viktor Radermacher

Heterodontosaurus is the oldest dinosaur in the Ornithischian line, one of three major dinosaur groups that includes Triceratops, Stegosaurus, and other duck-billed dinosaurs. The other groups are sauropods, or longnecks, and theropods like the T-Rex.

We actually have never known how these [Ornithischians] breathed, said Viktor Radermacher, lead author of the study and a Ph.D. student in the University of Minnesotas Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. The interesting thing is that Heterodontosaurus is the ancestor of this group and it has these [newly discovered] pieces of anatomy, but its descendants dont. What that means is that Heterodontosaurus is a missing link between the ancestors of dinosaurs and the bigger, charismatic species we know. This gives us a whole bunch of information and fills in some pretty glaring gaps in our knowledge of the biology of these dinosaurs.

The newly discovered Heterodontosaurus tucki specimen (left), along with the researchers digital reconstruction of the fossil (right), shows the dinosaurs unusual paddle-shaped ribs and small, toothpick-like bones. Credit: Viktor Radermacher

The researchers analyzed the new Heterodontosaurus specimen with high-powered x-rays generated from a synchrotron a giant, donut-shaped particle accelerator that spins electrons at the speed of light at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in France. Using those x-rays, they were able to digitally reconstruct the skeleton and identify the dinosaurs unique features.

The takeaway message is that there are many ways to breathe, Radermacher said. And the really interesting thing about life on Earth is that we all have different strategies to do the same thing, and weve just identified a new strategy of breathing. This shows that utilizing dinosaurs and paleontology, we can learn more about the diversity of animals on Earth and how they breathe.

For more on this discovery, read 200-Million-Year-Old Fossil Sheds Light on the Evolution of How Dinosaurs Breathed.

Reference: A new Heterodontosaurus specimen elucidates the unique ventilatory macroevolution of ornithischian dinosaurs by Viktor J Radermacher, Vincent Fernandez, Emma R Schachner, Richard J Butler, Emese M Bordy, Michael Naylor Hudgins, William J de Klerk, Kimberley EJ Chapelle and Jonah N Choiniere, 6 July 2021, eLife.DOI: 10.7554/eLife.66036

In addition to Radermacher, the research team included Vincent Fernandez, an ESRF beamline scientist and X-Ray technician at the Natural History Museum, UK; Emma Schachner, an associate professor at Louisiana State University; Richard Butler, a professor of palaeobiology at the University of Birmingham, UK; Emese Bordy, an associate professor at the University of Cape Town, South Africa; Michael Naylor Hudgins, a grad student at the University of Alberta, Canada; William de Klerk, emeritus curator of the Department of Earth Sciences at Rhodes University in Makhanda, South Africa; Kimberley Chapelle, a postdoctoral fellow at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; and Jonah Choiniere, a professor of comparative palaeobiology at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.

The research was funded by grants from South Africas National Research Foundation (NRF) and Department of Science and Technology (DST), the Palaeontological Scientific Trust, and the Durand Foundation for Evolutionary Biology and Phycology.

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Exceptionally Preserved Fossil Sheds Light on the Evolution of How Dinosaurs Breathed - SciTechDaily

My favorite thing to drink this summer has been a super refreshing cucumber-mint limeade. I first made it one hot evening when my 12-year-old son and I were getting ready to watch a Euro 2020 soccer match. We squeezed lots of limes, mixed the juice with a bit of sugar syrup and blitzed it together with a whole peeled cucumber until it was a beautiful pale green color. Then we poured it into our prettiest glasses over ice, topped up with soda water and garnished with mint. It hit every spot you want in a summer drink. My son drank his straight up, but I added a shot of tequila to mine to make it into a cocktail.

What, actually, is a cocktail? Its one of those words you can use hundreds of times in your life without ever asking where it comes from. In 19th-century America, cocktail was far from the only word for mixed alcoholic drinks. Like a sling (a drink made from brandy, rum or other spirits mixed with sugar, water and flavoring) or a toddy (much the same thing but with hot water and sometimes honey instead of sugar), cocktail originally meant a specific kind of mixed drink rather than mixed drinks in general. If history had taken a different course, we might all now speak of drinking drams, cobblers, coolers, smashes, juleps ormy personal favoriteslingflips.

In racing terms, a cocktail was originally a word for a horse that was a mixed breed rather than a thoroughbred. The idea of a cocktail-as-drink was that the alcohol was mingled with other ingredients, specifically with water, sugar and bitters (the original cocktail was basically a bittered sling). There were whiskey cocktails and gin cocktails and rum cocktails. These were excitingly flavored mixed drinks rather than pure spirit, and they were seen in the early 19th century as something you might drink in the morning, like coffee, to pep yourself up.

By 1917, when Tom Bullock published The Ideal Bartender, cocktails had assumed dozens of different forms, from Blue Blazer (flaming whiskey with sugar and lemon peel) to Leaping Frog (apricot brandy, lime and ice). The first Black American to publish a cocktail book, Bullock worked at the St. Louis Country Club and was renowned as the greatest mixologist of his time, versed in the art of the julep. He is sometimes credited as one of the inventors of the gimlet (gin and lime juice). It was said that his drinks were so good that no one could fail to finish one.

In more recent times, it seemed as if gimlets and juleps and slings were becoming archaiclike something out of the Mad Men erain contrast to the simplicity of a glass of wine or beer. But with the pandemic, cocktails are back and more exciting than ever. Sri Lankan-British mixologist Ryan Chetiyawardanathe founder of Dandelyan in London, which has been named the worlds best barlaunched an online Master Class series on cocktail making in March 2020 which had a far bigger response than anticipated. Mr. Chetiyawardana, whose latest bar is Silver Lyan in Washington, D.C., suggested to me that the reason cocktail making found new fans over the past year is because the act of making someone a cocktail feels very hospitable. By sharing in the act of cocktail making over Zoom, friends and family could feel as if they were actually in the same room, enjoying the same icy-cold drink with the same mix of flavors, getting tipsy in unison.

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The Long Evolution of the Cocktail - The Wall Street Journal

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Tom Bachik is the choice nail artist of celebrities including Selena Gomez, Olivia Rodrigo and Jennifer Lopez. However, while growing up, his passions were more around Shaun White than colorful nails.

The plan was to open up my own studio and custom paint racecar helmets and hockey masks and jet skis, said Bachik. He turned to the growing nail industry in the early 90s when he was expecting his first child and wanted more financial stability. Learning to became a nail technician was hard, but I love challenges, Bachik said.

Bachik started his career in nails by learning to do acrylic nails, which were all the rage in the 90s. From there, he witnessed the evolution of nail art firsthand.

Nails definitely follow fashion and follow the trends of whats happening in fashion, Bachik said. Minimalistic French manicures of the 90s took a sharp turn from the nail art-heavy 80s, characterized by airbrushing and bling. Now, nail art is seeing a resurgence, as a result of Covid, said Bachik.

People had time at home to play with their nails. And they wanted something fun to lift their spirits, he said.

As for the current nail trends, Bachik said there is no one-size-fits-all look. But, he said, Everyone wants a little bit of nail art.

Its either ornate and crazy, or its simple. Its pops of color, metallic accents, unique French nails, or a little gem or rhinestone here and there, just to give it a little bit of bling, he said.

Bachik shared with Glossy which nail trends his celebrity clients are wearing and what hes doing to match their vibe to their nail look.

Bright colors and abstract patternsA lot of [current nail trends] have to do with summer. Its the color and the brightness [that] make you happy, said Bachik.

Selena Gomez, one of Bachiks long-time clients, has not shied away from colorful manicures in the past. Most recently, she sported the look in her photoshoot for LaMariette, her new swimsuit line.

While Gomezs swimsuits heavily feature colors like pink, orange and blue, Bachik went with neon green nails. I wanted to make the nails pop, but yet tie to the whole look, said Bachik. I try to [do] whats going to be a little unexpected.

Fluid abstract nail art is also a huge trend, said Bachik. Its just random patterns, [like] swirls and lava lamp-style flowing patterns, he said. Takes on the trend include simple nudes with white flowy patterns, flowing patterns of black and white and Pucci [-inspired] swirls with two or three colors running through the nail.

Other patterns that are blowing up include flowers on each nail and small flowers covering the whole nail, Bachik said. Those are designs that just make you feel good.

The modern FrenchThe modern French manicure is another popular form of nail art that can be as fun or as subtle as a client wants. It often features both bright colors and matching pastel colors, Bachik said.

The younger girls want a lot of it [nail art], or they want it super bright. My older clients are more about simple versions of that, he said.

Most importantly, he said, is honing in on the emotional connection that nails are tied to, based on clients personalities.

Charlize [Theron] was all about, Give me something fun. Its summer, and vacations coming, and I want something cute and fun, Bachik said. He gave her a subtle twist on the classic French manicure by switching out the white tips to pops of neon on the corner of each nail.

We did every nail in a different color on Selena [Gomez]. With Heidi [Klum], we just did the tips. And with Charlize, we did just the corners. It varies, depending on their personality and what the occasion is, Bachik said.

Press-on nailsFor Olivia Rodrigos debut album, Sour, Bachik again focused on making sure her that nails tell her story. The manicure sported by Rodrigo in her albums cover art features black-and-white checkerboard nail art, as a nod to the pop-punk, grunge sound of her music.

Nails are the exclamation point at the end of the sentence, said Bachik.

For music videos and red carpets, Bachik has been a longtime fan of press-on nails to provide his clients with a custom look for a short period of time. I could actually create the looks on the clear tips ahead of time, [rather than spend] 3-4 hours doing a crazy set of nails on-set, said Bachik.

Most recently, Bachik has partnered with imPRESS Press-On Manicure.

Theyve got so many designs, and theyre really good about being on-trend, with pops of colors, small floral prints, modern French manicures nails, said Bachik. Jess Conte x ImPress Press-On Manicure Birthday Collection is the brands newest collection of press-on nails and allows people who may not be able to afford a session with Bachik to keep up with nail trends. It features hot colors like sage green and baby blue, as well as floral, polka dot and French manicure patterns, he said.

It appeals to the mass market; people love to follow Instagram and Pinterest accounts [featuring] crazy nail art, said Bachik. But they dont necessarily want to wear it themselves.

But with the right manicure, Its almost like someones whole confidence changes, said Bachik. Its so cool to watch that happen.

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Tom Bachik on the evolution of nail art and the latest celeb nail trends - Glossy

For some travelers, app-based food delivery companies like Grubhub and UberEats have already rendered hotel room service nearly obsolete.

A few pioneering players in the hospitality space, however, have found ways to use delivery apps to their advantage, leveraging new partnerships to put a modern, tech-enabled spin on traditional room service concepts.

In what it called a "first-of-its-kind" move, the recently opened Resorts World Las Vegas announced in June that it had inked a deal with Grubhub to launch On the Fly at Resorts World powered by Grubhub.

Billed as a new mobile ordering experience, On the Fly enables Resorts World Las Vegas guests to order from any of the megaresort's 40 food and beverage venues as well as select retail outlets, either via the Grubhub app or by scanning Grubhub QR codes located throughout the property. Orders can be placed for pickup or for delivery to either a guestroom or to Resorts World Las Vegas' 5.5-acre pool complex. Payments can be made by credit card or room charge.

For poolside deliveries, orders can be picked up from a secure, QR code-activated restaurant locker, which features touchless opening.

According to Resorts World Las Vegas president Scott Sibella, the On the Fly platform provides users with what he describes as "a completely new level of convenience."

"Grubhub has mastered the third-party delivery service," said Sibella. "Many guests are already familiar with the application and its functionality, [and] we've seen substantial early adoption rates of On the Fly."

Unlike the typical third-party delivery process, however, On the Fly's delivery logistics are handled by Resorts World staff members instead of independent delivery contractors.

For Grubhub, the partnership marks the company's first with a hotel and casino, but it likely won't be the brand's last.

Brian Madigan, vice president of corporate and campus partners at Grubhub, called the Resorts World Las Vegas tie-up a "natural fit to improve the guest experience."

"We're constantly looking for opportunities and partnerships that will improve the ordering and food delivery experience, and we see the hotel and resort space as prime for a shift to mobile ordering and delivery in the future," Madigan added.

A sample of a 2ndKitchen QR code room service menu offered at a Sextant Stays property. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Sextant Stays

Meanwhile, in the hybrid apartment-hotel hospitality space, Sextant Stays is also innovating on the delivery front.The company, which operates vacation rental apartment-hotels in New Orleans, Miami and other markets, recently linked up with delivery service company 2ndKitchen to offer a "next-generation" room service amenity to guests.

"2ndKitchen essentially gives us room service without having an on-site restaurant taking up a big footprint or worrying about inventory, labor and all these other costs," said Andreas King-Geovanis, founder and CEO of Sextant Stays. "It's a way to add an amenity without overhead."

Through 2ndKitchen, Sextant Stays is able to offer guests the ability to order off of what King-Geovanis calls a "white label" Sextant Stays-branded QR code menu, which features a selection of dishes from three to four local restaurants, all typically located within a five-block radius.

That proximity helps guarantee a timely delivery. Sextant Stays reports that between January and May, 2ndKitchen deliveries to Sextant Stays properties in Miami and New Orleans averaged under 30 minutes.

Moreover, 2ndKitchen doesn't take any delivery or service fees from the customer, with a tip being the only additional line item on a check. The company does take a percentage of each sale from participating restaurants, though King-Geovanis confirmed that that cost remains below the high restaurant fees associated with most big delivery app brands.

"What Airbnb, Vrbo and a lot of other companies are missing is the F&B component," said King-Geovanis. "Our goal is to provide a hotel experience with the same amenities and level of professionalism, with the comfort and space of staying in a home."

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Hotels open the door to the next evolution in room service - Travel Weekly

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Within the last year, procurement has truly become a catalyst of change for sustainability issues at the business level. But with sourcing and other procurement-related processes being integrated in nearly all parts of the global economy, it can be confusing to know what is right and wrong, especially from a legal perspective. Thats where countries can help with different laws, regulations and guidelines that promote sustainable sourcing practices.

Supply chains account for 80% of carbon emissions. But at the same time, procurement and supply chains become more vulnerable as environmental issues arise. Its a double-edged sword. Meanwhile, every country holds different laws, but increasingly, sustainability law is becoming international law. Countries are increasingly banding together to fight for sustainability in business and beyond.

How do you find the right procurement technology and vendor for your company? Spend Matters new 5-step Procurement Technology Buyers Guide can help with how-to documents, checklist templates and other tips.

The United Nations, for example, has the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) which works to strengthen environmental standards and practices at the country, regional and global level. The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty for climate change that 196 parties adopted in 2015. It entered into force in 2016.

The UN said in its 2019 environment report that 176 countries have some sort of environmental framework law, 150 have elevated environmental protection and healthy living conditions into their constitutions, and 164 have created cabinet-level bodies responsible for environment protection.

But at the same time, there are alarming levels of deforestation, loss of biodiversity and rising global temperatures. The UN report found that although there has been a growing trend in the last four decades of countries adding environmental laws and agencies, weak enforcement of these laws is the biggest hurdle toward a more sustainable world.

"This compelling report solves the mystery of why problems such as pollution, declining biodiversity and climate change persist despite the proliferation of environmental laws in recent decades, David Boyd, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, said in a press release. Unless the environmental rule of law is strengthened, even seemingly rigorous rules are destined to fail and the fundamental human right to a healthy environment will go unfulfilled.

And this is just environmental law. More countries are adding laws, regulations and provisions protecting workers from forced labor and other types of slavery as well.

Within widespread sustainability regulation, countries have deliberately targeted supply chains and procurement. Regulations specifically targeting these practices have increased in the last three or four decades.

It can be confusing, though. To sort through the weeds of regulation, Spend Matters created this timeline of some of the key sustainability regulations regarding procurement and supply chain. This is not an exhaustive list, but it includes some of the most major decisions in recent years.

If you are making the case for or are in the process of buying procurement technology be sure to try out Spend Matters TechMatch.

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ESG timeline: The evolution of global sustainability regulation in procurement and supply chain - Spend Matters

Christophe Frrebeau, CEO and co-founder of Della, discusses the evolution of AI in law.

AI-driven contract lifecycle management and analysis technology has been receiving lots of attention in the law firm and enterprise space recently. With Ironclad recently valued at $1 billion, Evisort raising $35 Million in Series B funding and Agiloft raising 45 Million. Not to mention Docusigns acquisition of Seal Software for $188 million last year. So, its unsurprising that the spotlight is fixed firmly on this space. With adoption, market consolidation and sales also increasing, it is clear that contract analysis is now seen as an investment with huge potential for both buyers and investors.

What is also clear is that the spike in interest, adoption, and investment comes from a universal need across the business world to boost productivity. Increased client pressures, the volume of work and, of course, Covid-19 have all accelerated digital adoption and the need to drive efficiencies in the way organisations are run. However, despite recent interest, contract analysis tools are not exactly new kids on the block, and as a nascent technology, there is still plenty of room for AI-driven contract lifecycle management and analysis technology to evolve to meet the ongoing needs of end-users, whether they are in law firms or corporate legal departments.

Contracts define who does what, at a defined price or prices, over a specified time. Contracts also determine who is responsible when things go wrong, whether in a transaction or in an overall relationship. Businesses have run on contracts for centuries. As a result, early attempts at using AI in law have focused on managing, or should I say detecting clauses in contracts. I like to imagine this as AI being used like a yellow highlighter going through your contracts and flagging the bits that require your attention. There is no question that this was, and still is a very significant step in the digitisation of the legal sector, enabling technology to take some of the burden from lawyers.

The crucial point is that this type of contract analysis technology isnt true AI. A lawyer still has to manually review a clause and spend time finding the answer to their specific question. If we want to use AI to its full potential in this process, we need a tool that does more than just highlights the clause that you need to review, but actually finds the answers to your questions, thereby providing you with actionable information quickly.

From a law firm standpoint, the new direction is clear: the client must come first. If not they will go elsewhere. From a technology standpoint, perhaps less so. Many solutions in the contract review market struggle to balance putting the client first and providing a solution that can service large numbers of customers with different needs. In an attempt to put their clients first, many in the contract analysis technology market train individual AI models for specific tasks. This training requires large amounts of niche legal data and human supervision to get the model up to speed. It is expensive and difficult to maintain. As a result, many legal tech vendors are oversimplifying a contracts role, by defining it as a single document containing a set of clauses. In short, they are standardising legal processes to fit their one size fits all solution.

Some vendors have started to notice these limitations and are building capabilities within their solutions to overcome them. For example, adding custom fields and tracking user-generated data points. However, despite them adapting to meet the needs of their clients, these bolt on capabilities often lead to increased complexity. So, rather than trying to get your contracts to fit the narrow criteria of your legal technology, wouldnt it be better if your contract analysis technology was flexible enough to provide the information your users actually need from any given contract? Rather than basing it on assumptions of what they might need on an oversimplified version of a contract.

The next step in contract analysis must be to help lawyers on both sides of the table to drive efficiencies in their contract management lifecycle. Moving from a traditional process, which requires a great deal of manual oversight, to true AI, which removes the burden of oversight and manual review from lawyers, while allowing them to remain in control. Contract analysis should not oversimplify legal processes. It should allow users to customise their tools to their specific needs and, crucially, it should be easy to use.

Ultimately, the goal of AI is to assist us, by making cumbersome tasks as painless as possible.

Dellas platform launched in January (2020), but it is already being used by small and large law firms across multiple countries and several large multinational corporations. Those law firm partners range in size, from top UK and European law firms, to smaller boutique providers and enterprise organisations. Dellas customers include: Eversheds Sutherland, Fidal, BCLP, Wolters Kluwer, and Content Square (USA). The smallest law firm currently using Della has 12 lawyers. Last year, Della launched a partnership with Wolters Kluwer to provide Della to their contract management platform customers.

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The Evolution Of AI In Law And Why The Contract Analysis Market Calls For The Next - Lawyer Monthly Magazine

This week on The Treatment, Elvis welcomes Journey guitarist and founding member Neal Schon. Schon formed the band in 1973 after an already successful career as a musician playing alongside Carlos Santana as well as part of the group Azteca. Schon has a vast collection of vintage guitars that will be auctioned off on July 31 with Heritage Auctions. Schon tells The Treatment about his R&B roots. He discusses working with Betty Davis (former wife of Miles Davis) on her groundbreaking funk album. And he talks about how Journeys iconic song Dont Stop Believin came to be.

The following interview has been abbreviated and edited for clarity.

KCRW: Welcome to The Treatment, the home edition. I'm Elvis Mitchell. My guest today played on some of the most epochal and trendsetting albums of the 70s and went on to found a little group called Journey. His name is Neil Schon, and he's auctioning off a few of his prized guitars on July 31, at Heritage Auctions. I think of you as being a guy who was a part of that big jam band movement out of the Bay Area in the 70s and also somebody who found himself in situations where you always got the right chemistry with people, be it with Carlos Santana, Greg Rolie, Greg Errico, or Steve Perry.

Neal Schon: I've been really fortunate and blessed to have met so many great musicians in my lifetime. I listened to a lot of different music growing up, and was influenced by many different types of music, a lot of soul and R&B. Journey has not really been about that for many, many years and was never really a blues thing. But my roots are all in blues and R&B. Really, that's the stuff that I know the best.

KCRW: Let's talk about Azteca for a minute, because that's a great configuration, a really cool band.

Schon: I was never completely in the band. There were about 25 members in that band, and it was really hard to get organized, as you can imagine, trying to get that many guys together and in the same place at the same time.

What's really interesting about the Azteca story is I played one show with them in San Francisco, and that is where I met Steve Perry. My friend Jackie Villanueva had introduced me to him after we played that night. He asked me to give Steve a ride to his car, so I gave him a ride, and I didn't know who he was. I didn't know that he was a singer. And then we met a couple more times, years after that, down in Los Angeles playing on the strip in little clubs. He came back and said, hey, I'm the singer. And I go, yeah, Greg is our singer, but it's great to see you again. I didn't know how great he was.

KCRW: You can't think about Steve Perry singing without that kind of Sam Cooke melisma.

Schon: Absolutely, and that was the flavor that came into the band. I think that truly set us apart from everyone else. Even though critics liked to categorize us in those days with many other bands. I never thought that we sounded like them. Steve brought in his roots, which were Sam Cooke and Otis Redding and many others, and it was R&B soul.

KCRW: Thinking about whats on "Caravanserai" like "Song of the Wind" which feels like kind of a jazz R&B jam to me.

Schon: It was totally a jam. That whole record, from what I recall about it, was pretty much a jam. Carlos [Santana] was in the middle of wanting to go into a completely different direction than we had gone in on the third album that I was lucky enough to be a part of. "Song of the Wind" was simply a couple chords that Carlos came up with, and we started jamming in his studio one day, and they rolled tape, and I ended up playing the first solo and he comes in in the middle, and then I played the last solo going out, and we're just improving. It's a great way to make records.

I've made a lot of records like that, as opposed to sitting down and really working out things. I mean, they're both great aspects about making records and attaining different audiences, but the new Journey album is about to encompass and put everything in one. We have all the hits I think that we'd ever need. We have a new record on the way that is just really slamming. I think it sounds amazing with the addition of Narada Michael Walden and Randy Jackson.

KCRW: The first Journey song you wrote- "Lights"- starts off with basically 16 bars of jamming before you get into the song.

Schon: Yep, we're getting back into that, which is just coming into a new era for the band, a completely new chapter and for me, I want to encompass it all. I want to encompass the beginning and where we are now.

KCRW: Even "Don't Stop Believin you don't jump into it right away. You just sort of take your time to lay down those opening chords. And that, to me, is a shrewd way of saying we're gonna take our time and make this work, and we trust that the audience will follow along with us.

Schon: Absolutely. To me, it's just a setup for vocals. It's completely the way I think all the time. I think we need to set up. The beginning of Don't Stop Believin," I wouldn't call that a jam. That's sticking the chorus in someone's mind, before the vocal actually starts. To me, a jam is doing Bitches Brew. Miles Davis: that's the jam. I've been doing a lot of that in my house during the pandemic, making outside loops for myself and trying to stay in tune with my fans and audience.

KCRW: What we're talking about is that way that this musical stew when you got started, it was all part of this kind of same thing. Everybody was probably listening to everybody else. We know that Miles was listening to Santana; everything seemed within reach in those days.

Schon: The thing that I loved about Miles and Santana was that nobody was afraid to go anywhere, at any moment. And everybody had to listen, because things would happen on stage that were not rehearsed. That's where the magic comes from. It's not from being stuck in a box, musically, where it's exactly like the record every night. You know, that's very easy to do. And it's very easy to emulate for anybody else to do too. Journey probably has more tribute bands than I've ever seen. I don't want to do the same thing they're doing. They're doing what we did a long time ago, so I want to keep on moving forward and doing some different things.

But, you know, these guitars, I've been collecting guitars for my whole life. And, I had 350 guitars at home that my wife let me have, and we were crawling over things. I was like, it's really time to let go of some of these axes. They're not my go-tos any longer even though they were.

Some of them are just so clean you could not imagine that they're vintage. I thought to myself, I could either do a museum and put these guitars in a museum, or I could let somebody else enjoy them. But I really feel like when you open something like that, it would be much like opening a restaurant where you have to be there managing it every day, and I'm still in the game of playing live. That's where my heart is. I love our fans, and I want to keep on performing until I can't anymore,

KCRW: I can't sit here and not ask you about what it was like to play on what I think is one of the most important funk albums of the 70s: that first Betty Davis album.

Schon: It was right after the Santana band disbanded and before I really started Journey. I was playing with Greg Errico at the time, former Sly and the Family Stone drummer. Betty Davis had contacted Greg Errico, so he suggested that I play on the record, too, with And that record is so funny. It was very ahead of its time. Now that I listen to it, and see how many people have come up to me about that record. It was done such a long time ago, and people are just still discovering it. She was ahead of her time. She was like rapping, singing way back then.

KCRW: Talking about who was playing with you, Greg Errico and Larry Graham, but also Merle Sanders on that record. And it's one of the great funk rhythm sections of all time. Also, what she was doing on that record was just being really kind of open, and you can't imagine there being a Madonna, or basically any of these kinds of women singers, without the example of Betty Davis.

Schon: She was wild. She was a free spirit is what I recall and remember about her, very outspoken on what she wanted. And it was a very interesting record for me to make. I was just like, wow, this is really different.

KCRW: You're going from Santana, to then working with Greg and Larry Graham, and then Betty, and then going off to Journey with Jon Cain, you find yourself in situations where it's been about chemistry as much as anything else. And we can feel that chemistry happening in these situations almost immediately for you.

Schon: Absolutely, there's always chemistry with great musicians. It's just opening your mind and listening a lot. Listen to everybody that you're playing with and where they're coming from. You shouldn't think so much. Everybody today thinks so much. There's a lot of technical, young guitar players today that are doing things that I couldn't even dream of doing. They're acrobatics of the guitar. If it goes by me, it's going by everybody else. They're like, sped up scales. And, I never studied scales to this day. I've been playing for many years now, and I've never studied scales. I just listened.

I'll sit down with a keyboard at home and make up some really wild chords. I've often talked to many people that are very well schooled, and they said, stay like that because I've often thought, well, maybe I should really study and learn exactly what I'm doing. And they said, no, don't because then you're just gonna have to forget about it to get back to where you are now.

KCRW: One of the guitars in the catalogue is listed as the "Don't Stop Believin" guitar. Can you walk us through the origin of that song?

Schon: When Jonathan came into the band, we got together and we started putting together new material for our new album that we had not created yet. Greg Raleigh had just left, so Jon came in one day, and he started playing the opening chords, that ends up being the verses, as well as the chorus and the vocal just changes on top of it. So he's playing the keyboard part, but there was really no baseline at that point, and I started playing bass guitar ideas of what to play against it, and I was trying to think of more of a Motown type thing. And that's how it came about.

It's the craziest arrangement because you have the intro, verse, then a breakdown, then a guitar solo. And I started just doing a symphony line, because I used to listen to a lot of symphonies. And that made Steven and Jon think about the lyrical side of the song, "she took the midnight train goin anywhere." So they thought that the guitar reminded them of a train traveling on the tracks and speeding up. So it was a really different type of arrangement, compared to other arrangements that were on the radio because, usually it's a verse, if there is a B section, a B section, it's quick, and then it gets to the chorus. And the chorus doesn't come till the very end of this song. So it's a wild arrangement.

But, whats really crazy is when we finished the whole "Escape" record, I heard that song, and I went, I think there's something special here. I think this song is going to be bigger than everything. And this is back in '81. And they released it, and it didn't get as big as the other songs that they released at that time on the radio. But to have it be like this worldwide anthem now is funny that I could sense that it was gonna be huge. I just didn't know it would take that many years.

See the rest here:

Neal Schon: The evolution of Journey | The Treatment - KCRW

A benchmarking study by the NSA Center for Assured Software found that the average SAST tool covers only 8 out of 13 weakness classes and finds only 22 percent of flaws in each weakness class. Based on these numbers, the average SAST tool is likely to find only 14 percent of the vulnerabilities in an applications code.

Security needs to be part of the development experience. This has given rise to the application security space. And, like the internet itself, it needs to evolve. AppSec 1.0 was built with waterfall methodologies in mind. These include static analysis software testing and penetration testing and it assumes that security is binary. You are either secure or insecure, there is no grey area. Yet it is in the grey areas, the zero days, where the attackers lurk. It then becomes a question of code coverage is your application security solution providing protect your organization?

Verification and validation testing is conducted in two different ways:

invalid set of inputs. The purpose of negative testing is to ensure the application remains stable in unexpected use cases. While this type of testing is typically conducted by security teams, modern DevOps shops may collaborate closely with QA or development teams.

Positive testing is easier to conduct. There is a finite number of features and flows introduced per release. Therefore, there is a finite combination of valid inputs to test. Thus, there is a clear definition of what done means. Security is, however, a game of cat and mouse. Organizations are always trying to stay one step ahead of the attacker. And when you are trying to stay ahead of something, speed (and agility) is everything. So negative testing is necessary.

Instead of looking at code as static, as either secure or insecure, AppSec 2.0 security testing understands the developer and attacker mindsets by identifying coding

mistakes early and often. Not only does this reduce costs but it results in faster time to market. Previously, with waterfall, developers were only given information as they needed it, when they needed it. The goal was to keep them focused and to only do what they do best. Dont pull them away if you dont have to. And, certainly, never come to them at the 11th hour market is demanding a change in the product or that theres a problem with something they weeks ago. Yet that is what happens in the modern world. Instead, organizations, in order to stay ahead, be innovative, yet they still need to think like an attacker. They need to know offense in order to implement defense. This is where fuzz testing plays a vital role.

Fuzz testing, or fuzzing, is a dynamic application security testing (DAST) technique for negative testing. Fuzzing aims to detect known, unknown, and zero-day vulnerabilities. Fuzzers send malformed inputs to targets. Their objective is to trigger bad behaviors, such as crashes, infinite loops, and/or memory leaks. These anomalous behaviors are vulnerabilities. Fuzzing helps organizations verify that the application works as expected, even in unexpected situations. This is key as ecosystems get complex. Its not just about people mistreating applications, its also about how an application will react if an integrated app misbehaves. In other words, if a system connected to your app acts up, can the app still function? Or will it crash. And if it crashes, does that allow for malicious code to run instead?

At a high level, fuzzing provides predictability. If testing is done continuously during the development cycle, this decreases time to market and should reduce the costs associated with the application over its lifetime. There will be a lower number of in-field issues when properly tested first. Fuzzing also contributes to productivity. Its a security test solution that protects developer productivity with zero false positives. Zero. The crashes that are reported are indeed reproducible vulnerabilities, allowing developers to address them quickly.

As the issues are shared and fixed, regression testing remembers the previous test crashes and verifies the remediations.

Fuzz testing is a heavy-weight yet versatile DAST solution that is able to conduct multiple types of testing across the SDLC. It runs quietly, continuously, and synchronously in the background as a part of the build process. Its also proven technology. Google, for example, identifies 80% of bugs with fuzz testing while the other remaining 20% is found through other means (SCA) or in production

There are different types of fuzzers available. Random fuzzers are just that: random. Its hard to tell how much code coverage is tested. Template takes known good input and mutates it. Again, its hard to tell how much code coverage there is. Guided fuzzing provides a roadmap, its more targeted. Here, the code coverage increases. to autonomously map out the usable parts of the

application for testing. Symbolic execution takes binaries and mathematically reasons through various logic and functions, so it can break into new areas of the program for further testing. Advanced fuzz testing is particularly effective for continuous testing because it aims to protect developer productivity at all costs. The key is autonomous test case management. Once Advanced Fuzz Testing identifies how, it breaks through functions, using guided fuzzing to craft test cases to test each branch. It uses the applications behavioral feedback to inform what test cases to generate next. If it identifies minor anomalous behavior, it will continue to probe by generating alternative variations.

See how continuous testing enables security teams to keep pace with development and operations teams in modern development, and to deliver deep integration and automation of security tooling.

Download the Whitepaper More Resources

This means better and more thorough testing and coverage. This is a significant breakthrough from conducting coverage-guided fuzzing alone. Guided fuzzers can be powerful with guidance from a technical security expert to help inform the fuzzer how to traverse through the code. However, without manual intervention, it will continue blindly, guessing inputs to break through

functions, which can result in breaking the code or the fuzzer being stuck for a while. It also deduplicates test cases to give developers the minimum set of test cases to thoroughly test the code.

For individual developers, theres component testing. As AFT identifies issues, developers are notified that there are issues. AFT has a zero false-positive rate and to prove it, it shares a test case also known as a witness to reproduce the issue. Theyre also provided system level

information that will help developers understand the consequence (from a technical standpoint) to the application. AFT runs deduplication. There may be a single defect. running all of them. AFT reduces them to the one test case. The point of this is to reduce testing efficiency.

The Value of AFT to the Development Team For development teams, theres regression testing. each owning a component of the larger application. Ideally, when the components are assembled, theyll work together seamlessly. This is hardly the reality. Google cites that 45% of bugs that they identify are through regression testing. AFT compiles the test case from each component for regression testing. This is where the dedup effort at the component level pays off in dividends because the regression testing time will be reduced through efficiency.

Time is of the essence in release cycles, especially in agile software development. Regression testing picks up where it left off, meaning it doesnt rerun regression tests reduces regression test cycles and ensures you continue to get the most out of your limited

The Value of Advanced Fuzz Testing

Fuzzing provides a proactive approach to security testing. It is the negative or non-functional testing. It shows whether or not an application can withstand unexpected situations, and it helps uncover zero days. One way to think about (and justify) Advanced Fuzz Testing is that it is penetration testing in a machine. Like pen testing, Advanced Fuzz Testing thinks box. However, there are benefits to Advanced Fuzz Testing not found with pen testing. Unlike pen testing, Advanced Fuzz Testing is continuous, not just a point in time. It can be done at human) speed. It can be performed at machine scale, and with machine accuracy. This coverage than what a human is capable of doing.

Learn more by downloading our Guide To Automated Continuous Security Testing

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Latest blog posts authored by Tamulyn Takakura. Read the original post at: https://forallsecure.com/blog/the-evolution-of-security-testing

More:

The Evolution of Security Testing - Security Boulevard

Tags: Professors, STEM

July 2021 This summer, were spending time in office hours with some of Drew Universitys amazing faculty to learn about what interests and inspires them and their research.

Today, were talking with Adam Cassano, Associate Professor of Chemistry, who has spent the summer in the Drew Summer Science Institute (DSSI) lab, and directing the Governors School of New Jersey Program in the Sciences, hosted by Drew, with OSHE administering the project partnership, and serving as a partner.

What do you think is the most interesting thing within your field of expertise?

Directed evolution of biomolecular function.

Explain

Directed evolution is an elegant combination of chemistry and biology to create new molecules for the benefit of humanity. Many potential biomolecular functionslike catalyzing a chemical reaction important for making drug molecules, or targeted binding to a specific protein in a cellcould be valuable in medicine and industry, but dont exist in naturally-occurring biomolecules. To gain access to these functions, we need to modify the existing biomolecules. Unfortunately, theyre so complex that predicting changes required to create and optimize a desired function is extremely difficult. Directed evolution harnesses the power of biology to maximize the desired function more efficiently.

Explain more

An existing biomolecule is mutated to create thousands of new versions. These new molecules then undergo a selection process, where only the molecules exhibiting the desired function survive the entire selection. Molecules that show initial activity undergo further mutation and the selection process becomes more rigorous to optimize the activity.

How do you bring this subject into the classroom?

In my course chemical biology, I introduce students to a number of selection techniques and strategies scientists use to evolve new functions. They also read about how some of these techniques are utilized in recent scientific literature. Finally, they come up with their own selection scheme to develop a molecule with new function.

Read more here:

Office Hours with Drew University's Adam Cassano - Drew Today