Category Archives: Evolution

By Gregg Miller, MD

The hospitals role in healthcare is shifting as we begin to emerge from the pandemic. Existing hospitals are designed to operate near capacity. And over time, weve built our finances, floor plans, staffing models, and workflows around a high patient census.

However, the role of hospitals is changing before our eyes. Although its hard to believe while we are in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, acute care will shift toward community-based virtual delivery, and only the sickest patients will require face-to-face inpatient care. As a result, hospitals will serve a smaller but super-acute population. This raises the question: How can health systems adapt to this new paradigm?

Rethinking staffing

As the patient population trends sicker, hospitals that rely on staffing benchmarks from a bygone era could quickly find their teams overwhelmed. These highly acute cases will require more intensive nursing care. Clinicians will require additional time at the bedside and afterward to document more complex encounters. This population will also demand more patient education and assistance with social support like food, shelter, and transportation.

Clinging to outdated staffing models could also stoke the fires of burnout. In the past, acute care clinicians could rely on having a few easy patients on every shift. Spending just half an hour on a simple case freed them to spend two hours on a more complex one. But as our inpatient census grows more acute, these opportunities will disappear. Its therefore imperative that hospitals start planning for the future before its thrust upon them.

From competition to coordination

The burden of caring for a highly acute patient population could incentivize hospitals to work together. To some degree, COVID-19 has already kick-started this trend. To better weather the pandemic, hospitals created pathways to report test results, positivity rates, hospital capacity, and other key metrics. A standout example is the state of Arizona, which established a centralized network to allocate beds, which likely saved lives during their summer surge.

This spirit of solidarity was apparent even among competitors. In the Seattle area where I practice, leaders from Swedish Health Services, UW Medicine, and EvergreenHealth coordinated information and agreed to share ventilators, protective equipment, and other resources. I sincerely believe this goodwill helped us to successfully weather the nations first COVID-19 surge and could serve as a blueprint for future hospital partnerships.

The possibilities of such networks are endless. To concentrate resources and expertise, tomorrows hospitals might organize into high-volume centers of excellence specializing in certain acute conditions. Whats more, community hospitals could improve their finances by pooling staffing, back-office, and infrastructure costs.

Taking hospital care to the community

For as long as most of us have been working in acute care, weve defined ourselves by practice location. Even the names of our specialties (ED physician, hospitalist) reflect this narrow geographic focus. In other words, we limit our impact to a piece of earth a little bigger than a football field.

However, even before the pandemic, small-scale programs demonstrated that hospitals could safely manage many inpatients at home with telehealth providers and mobile care teams. And throughout 2020, ER teams have used virtual care to screen, treat, and follow up with patients in mobile medical trailers, cars, fever clinics, homes, prisons, and skilled nursing facilities.

This shift toward virtual care could solve some of acute cares toughest challengesfrom access and costs to ED crowding. To succeed in a post-pandemic world, we must therefore shoulder the responsibility of stepping out into our communities, meeting patients where they are, and bringing them the care they need. Successful acute care teams will follow our primary care colleagues embracing telehealth.

What will we achieve in 2021?

2021 could be a watershed year for acute care. While I dont have a crystal ball, experience suggests were moving toward implementation for virtual front door and ED triage models. These could help greatly increase hospitals ability to absorb COVID-19 and flu surges one winter from now. At the same time, programs like hospital at home and telefollow-up could greatly expand inpatient capacity.

I also expect acute care to accelerate its shift outside physical locations like hospitals, emergency departments, and medical pavilions. The sooner health systems begin adapting to this new reality, the more resilient they will be in a rapidly shifting healthcare landscape. Its important to realize that there will be no return to normality and that our post-COVID-19 world will be a different ballgame. And as any good coach knows, its never too early to start preparing the players (and the fans) for change.

Learn how Vituity physician leaders are leading the future for their hospitals and health systems.

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The Evolution of Hospital-Based Care: Learnings From the Pandemic - FierceHealthcare

What if a greater race of beings were to make flageolets (flutes) or buttons out of our bones?

Henry David Thoreau

The so called civilized people? They had no excuse. They hunted for what they called trophies, for the excitement of it, for pleasure, in fact.

Romain Gary,The Roots of Heaven,1958

Compassionfor animals is intimately associated with goodness ofcharacter,and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a goodman.

Arthur Schopenhauer

"As for trophy hunting, I think it is probably the kind of animal killing that most resembles murder - murder in the first degree. It is done with planning (premeditation) and without provocation or biological justification. The animals are entirely innocent creatures killed only for ego-gratification and fun. It's time we began to see this practice as akin to murder."

Kirk Robinson, executive director of theWestern Wildlife Conservancy

Photo credit: Lysander Christo

Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.

Milan Kundera,The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Henry David Thoreau never made it to Africa but must have known what Europeans did to the great, great elephant herds centuries ago. Hundreds of thousands killed for fun. The big game hunters dont like to admit their betrayal of life because its big business. Men like Hemingway who created a lifestyle out of brutality and unabashed vanity. Thoreau surely knew what had happened to the great whale pods of his time. But unlike the Inuit of the Arctic, whalers rarely ate whale. The Inuit would have been aghast at the way the white man treated whales and the way they massacred them without mercy in the hundreds of thousands. And later on in the 20th century with harpoon guns. They would have said we had lost our minds. And when one hears Paul Watson describing his defense of whales and what the Russians were doing, taking the purest oil on earth in order to lubricate Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, he knew we had gone totally mad. We have lost our bearings as a species. The whalers of old, they happily took their oil and their teeth and their baleen. Whales became a resource and their great populations were wasted. Elephants became a resource and they were exterminated to a vestige of what they once were.

This argument very much like the feud between the Hatfields and McCoys will no longer hold weight in 20 or 30 years. If nature is still kicking, for many species, it will be a miracle. There is a catastrophe brewing for much of the natural world thanks to climate change. Seals are dying, whales are being beached and land mammals are starting to suffer as the 300 or so elephants can prove this summer in Botswana. We can no longer afford to assassinate the innocent.

My grandfather didnt like fascists and the subjugating mindset that came with it. He and LeClerc defeated a Panzer brigade of the Nazi army, dead set on taking Paris in August 1944. It was neutralized and France was saved. He was fighting for freedom and as such was captivated by the great writer Romain Gary whose book TheRoots of Heavenis one of the supreme masterpieces of the 20th century. Morel, the central character, is fighting for the rights of elephants who at mid-century may have numbered perhaps several million. Elephants for Gary were the worlds great sentinel for freedom. So to think that there are those who have enjoyed and actually looked forward to putting a bullet in an elephants brain is an atrocity of the highest order, totally counter to the tribes who used to hunt elephants just to survive. Hunting in tandem with poaching devastated their numbers over the last half century. Today maybe 400,000 forest and savanna elephants remain. The entire ecology of half of Africa depends on them.

Who are the would be warriors, that would love to open up the entirety of Yellowstone? Trophy hunters of course. Not to feed oneself but to say one has conquered a grizzly, to say one has vanquished a mountain lion. To adorn ones mantelpiece. The ultimate act of betraying the wild, which is the greatest legacy of this very young country. Something for which the Native nations would be aghast. Killing for fun? Instead of having a sanctuary to go to, unique in all of America and the most remarkable we have outside of Alaska, some would have it open season to bagging grizzlies or wolves or bears and cougar. Quite simply astounding that this scenario could even be contemplated. Rob Wielgus, one of the preeminent predator experts in the country from Washington State University demonstrates how the trophy hunting of adult male lions increases the number of lions and the number of attacks on livestock. Very similar results with leopards in Africa with their highly acute territorial imperative. Robs work helped stop mountain lion hunting in the state. But of course, certain statesmen like Joel Kretz, a trophy hunter from rural Washington, was elected on a platform to hunt lions.And not coincidentally the greater percentage of lions reside in his district. The previous administrationattempted to push this extreme group of people run wildlife management on our national wildlife refuges. It was only a recent ruling that just managed to stop scheduled hunts in Wyoming and Idaho in the greater Yellowstone area that would have allowed 23 bears to be killed.

Opening up Yellowstone to hunting probably wont happen because a measure of sanity will strike down this nightmare scenario, but the fact that it was wished, is the height of folly that our species owns. Most recently it was Edward Abbey who would have howled with suffocating embarrassment for what we had done to America when he exclaimed, God bless America. Lets save some of it. And if a certain breed of huntsmen had had their way a great portion of the 48 states in terms of wilderness would have been utterly sacrificed.

North America has long had its breed of conquerors who took over the Native nations and subjugated the wildlife, for profits and also for fun. There is fun, there is sport and then there is subjugation. If we are used to conquering and mutilating humans, we unleash strange death wishes upon the other. It is about the conquest of the other, 20 million buffalo exterminated, and the bounty hunting of rare, charismatic, dangerous animals of the world, an activity that begs the question, why?

Why kill for fun? Some have mentioned, it is an addiction. Like mainlining heroin. Others say that psychologically, it is an ego driven need to pretend that we are in control of nature, although with climate change that will soon change, and for all time. In the midst of the sixth extinction, many species are facing elimination, forever, all thanks to us. To find the targets of our misspent hunting cravings will be harder than ever. James William Gibson, professor of sociology at California State University, has tackled some of the underpinnings of our societal malaise and paramilitary culture in which men attempt to restore a sense of power and masculinity. Inhis bookWarrior Dreams- Paramilitary Culture in Post Vietnam America,1994, he surgically and precisely underscores the structure of a Rambo Culture in America. Warriors fighting and one may say even hunting outside the established order.

The killing of an animal for fun or leisure or so-called sport or for any reason but survival is murder as many have suggested but few are willing to admit. Max Weber, one of the supreme figureheads of sociology of the 20th century, emphasized how modern mans disenchantment with nature and refusal to accept nature as alive, led to the dismantling of Creation. To be made into a commodity. Nature has to be dominated and subdued. But Nature is alive. Each animal is assuredly alive and an irreplaceable gift, the greatest this Earth harbors. To sacrifice one in the name of fun is fundamentally evil, but it demonstrates the warrior class to an extreme.

Photo credit: Lysander Christo

In America the continued baiting and snaring of black bears in Montana and Idaho, which can impact grizzlies, continues to this day. Wolves decimated over the last few hundred years, continue to be shot in the West and the last administration even made it easier for wolves and bears to be lured by doughnuts and then shot, although almost 70 percent of Alaskans oppose the killing of bears in their dens, and the killings of wolf pups by hunters which by any standard should be considered a monstrosity. Future generations, when predators are almost gone, will ask, what on Earth were we thinking or feeling for beings trying desperately to hold on for dear life.

What we need as a species is to recreate the self, the character and soul of what it means to be human. The hunting rational for conservation does not serve the others and it does not support short term or long range conservation efforts. We no longer need to kill to survive except under extreme or unique situations as Indigenous people have done for millennia. Reserves in Africa, the motherland of the hunting experience, have been denuded of its game across entire wilderness areas, most notably in the Selous of Tanzania, where 60 percent of the countrys elephants roamed until a few years ago. Where trophy hunters have been allowed, on most occasions, poachers have pursued their prey. Picture a 12-year-old girl with the carcass of a dead zebra or giraffe. Where did she learn this behavior? The wild giraffe population has dropped by 40 percent in the last generation. If one wants science and numbers, there it is.

From over 140,000 giraffes to 80,000 in less than a generation. The great sentinel of the plains are in free fall. Giraffes are among some of the first beings children marvel at when their parents buy them toys or teach them to speak. In the future, childrens first words after dada and mama, after the wild has become a memory, might very well be com-pu-ta.

The animals that introduced children to life will roam only as effigies in the imagination. It will not just be a sad world. It will be an irremediably, irreducibly, tragic world bleeding from every eco-system on Earth.

Lets not forget that the mindset is not just America. It is British and French and Italian and German and now more than ever Chinese who are lusting after species, literally, on their last legs. Too many species are being lost, including half of all mammal species whose numbers are declining and a fifth of all mammal species are at risk of disappearing from earth. Forever.

Will it be worth having children where nothing breathes except the human face? Many childrensimply do not know if they will have a future due to climate change and the 6th extinction. The Extinction Rebellion that started in the UK just a few years ago is a direct response to humanitys subjugation of the natural world for millennia. It is no coincidence that the movement started in the former British Empire.The great hunter ethos exemplified in Teddy Roosevelt, was assimilated into American culturefollowing the British model. Hunting a single unique, often keystone predator species for the purposes of hunting does not improve an areas biodiversity, which is plummeting all over the planet. Animals were not the ones thrown out of paradise. Only Adam and Eve were.

There is an entity called the Congressional Sportsmen Foundation that enables you to hunt eland for a few thousand dollars in Africa or black bear here in the United States. Recreation is one thing but the deliberate obliteration of a being for entertainment is not something we as a species can afford any longer.Everywhere ecosystems are in jeopardy and predator species are plummeting. Many of the most charismatic, most sought after species for the most elite hunters are endangered worldwide. The black bear population is not an issue for now, but their great cousins up north in the melting Arctic most definitely are.

The price tag on a polar bear, which used to nourish Indigenous communities and which are now hunted solely for their fur or body is obscene and a sacrilege. The polar bear will disappear from an overheating Earth within several generations. The foundation of their being is melting and no self-respecting Inuit would have hunted for fun in the old days if you listened to the Inuit elders or Rasmussen, back a hundred years ago. It would have been abhorrent. In equal measure, no self-respecting Maasai warrior would ever, ever have killed a lion for fun. The greatest warriors on Earth have now become lion guardians.

For a senator or outdoorsman from the U.S. or a businessman from China to pay $100,000 to simply put a bullet through the brain of the largest predator on Earth demonstrates how far we have lost ballast and why the world is convulsing. In January 2014, The Guardianran an articleRapid Loss of Predators a major environmental threat. On land and in the sea. Sharks, one of the key components of the immune system of the oceans are in free fall. Many thousands have been caught in shark fishing tournaments for fun off Montauk and many others coastal cities. Many have had to reform. Tournaments saw the light, but many shark populations have been reduced by 70 percent as well. Some scientists fear sharks might not even survive. They go back almost 500 million years ago. How dare us.

Between major global climate upheaval we are all experiencing and the very fragile state of democracy worldwide with people clamoring for food, water and resources, species are being decimated. They literally have nowhere to run. The aerial shooting of wolves, the baiting and killing of grizzlies or black bears or mountain lion in North America is insanity and hubris writ large. Maybe humans, so divorced from the survival days of yore are bored out of their minds. Its possible.

Photo credit: Lysander Christo

There are many arguments for why trophy hunters kill.Hunters can absorb the high costs of hunting, which enhances their status as men, mostly men, although some of those hunters stop as they get older and feel more vulnerable to lifes last days and start to feel compassion for other living beings.

We have been social predators for eons only out of sheer necessity. A long time ago, our species was an innocent killer, as Jane Goodall and Hugo van Lawick can testify in their first book on jackals, spotted hyena andwild dogs calledInnocent Killers, 1970. All that changed with civilization and the domestication of animals. We know the story. Our destructive potential imposed on nature especially in the last 200 years with the industrial revolution, has developed in tandem with the ability to inflict pain on ourselves on a mass scale. Innumerable species decimated and vanquished at the hand of man. It is part and parcel of a larger mindset of conquest and subjugation. What we do to ourselves we have inflicted on the others. So, to ask why trophy hunters crave to kill begs the question, where does this strange, aberrant behavior come from.

It stems from psychology but philosophers such as Arthur Schopenhauer had partial explanations for the need to kill. It is a stain on our karmic DNA. In the old days we needed to hunt for food, and except for the last remaining tribal groups on Earth, humanity no longer needs to do so to survive.Trophy hunting is of an entirely different breed than hunting out of sheer necessity. Schopenhauer exclaims, The assumption that animals are without rights, and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance, is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.

Strangely, as our civilization approaches its peak years and possibly senility it may behoove us all to ask why some of us insist on killing for fun. The entire foundation of our morality is breaking down. The gap between rich and poor, between peoples of different colored skins, between men and women and between human and non-human is increasing. The inequality is numbing to the point of mini revolutions across the globe. The need to subjugate has been engraved into civilizations fingerprint for millennia now. Today it has taken on unique proportions because it is an industry bringing in tens of millions of dollars, money which mostly stays in the industry. The Native people of Africa, already moved out of prime hunting grounds, are not allowed to hunt. But foreigners, of course, are.

Why we may never understand the reasons people hunt animals astrophies,Xanthe Mallett, a criminologist,reports, research shows increased levels of hostilityand a need for power and control are associated with poor attitudes towards animals, among men in particular. Mallett also writes, "another paperhas linkedpersonalitytraits of some people who hunt for sport to a different triadof behaviors, known ominously as the dark triad. This includesnarcissism(egotistical admiration of ones own attributes, and a lack of compassion),Machiavellianism(being deceitful, cunning and manipulative) andpsychopathy(lack of remorse orempathy, and prone to impulsive behavior).

In a study published in 2016 during the heyday of the elephant slaughter authored by Scott Creel, Jessie Msoka, Eli Rosenblatt, Twakundine Simpamba and others, the authors underscore that:

Trophy hunting has had negative effects on lion populations throughout Africa, and the species serves as an important case study to consider the balance of costs and benefits, and to consider the effectiveness of alternative strategies to conserve exploited species. Age-restricted harvesting is widely recommended to mitigate negative effects of lion hunting, but this recommendation was based on a population model parameterized with data from a well-protected and growing lion population.

The research by Brent Staplekamp who actually collared Cecil the lion before he was killed by a trophy hunting dentist from the U.S., suggests that lion hunting is not sustainable. His experience in Hwange, the largest park in Zimbabwe shouldsilence all skeptics once and for all.

Today the lion population is decreasing across Africa. Some say there are 30-25 thousand left, some say as few as 10,000. When will they be as rare as cheetah, who may number no more than 7,000, maybe 1,000 less. When I was first in Kenya as a teenager of 15, there may have been as many as 40,000 cheetah. The elephant herds of Africa have taken a direct hit losing 30 percent of the their numbers in the last 15 years. The black rhino hovered close to 70,000 individuals in 1970. Today maybe 5,000. To auction off a black rhino in Namibia for $350,000 as happened in 2015, flies in the face of reason. Was that animal really worth more dead than alive? The outrage against that particular killing was widespread and begs the question: Is this the best humanity can do to preserve its most fragile species?

Not that long ago, there were more than 40,000 tigers in India and maybe 80,000 in all of Asia. Between 1875 and 1925 the rich and aristocrats of Europe killed off the vast, vast majority of Asias most formidable predator. India now has maybe 1,600 tigers. Is there going to be a price tag to shoot a tiger five years from now for $1 million, $5 million, how about $50 million?

I, for one, would rather see the Sistine Chapel fall to pieces, the unique vision of one man, just one man, however talented he may have been, than to lose for all time a single species whether it be the mountain gorilla, elephant, lion, tiger, polar bear or any whale species on this planet. We are riding on the razors edge of insanity when the body parts of species on the near edge of extinction continue to motivate adult men, mostly men, for killing purposes.

With all the money at hand in the world, conservation and the business elite need to mobilize economic resources in tandem, because we now know that natures financial score card, what she yearly gives back in terms of ecosystem resources of the planet is more than double what humanity makes each and every year in terms of GDP. Economy and ecology have to come together.

Photo credit: Cyril Christo and Marie Wilkinson

I asked a priest at a temple in India what would happen to humanity if we lost the tiger. He said, it will not matter because there will not be humanity any more. In a park, almost serene beyond comprehension, the great 65 feet statue of Vishnu the protector, preserver and sustainer of the world lies in the forest where about 8 tigers per square kilometer roam the sanctuary. Buddhist monks used to meditate in caves where tigers patrolled the jungle. The grown men of the world steeply infused with the last remnants of Rambo style mentality, still suffering the stress and horrors of post Vietnam, post 1960s social dislocation, continue to execute the greatest exemplars of the life force on Earth.

If big game hunters were to enter even one of the caves at Bandhavgarh, sit very quietly for an hour in a way Buddhist monks used to 2,000 years ago, and maybe indulge in a moment of utter tranquility such as most of them have never done before, exit that cave,and stare profoundly into the eyes of a tiger at 20 feet, they would be utterly silenced and irreducibly haunted and transfigured by a vastly more coherent being. But I suspect there are a few hunters today who would follow in Yuri Yankosvkys footsteps when he left Russia after the Russian Revolution and became a tiger hunter living on tiger steaks and vodka. The tigers bred in China for tiger wine are shameful beyond measure. The deer bred in Texas by the thousands for the biggest horns is craven.

To track down an endangered argali sheep in Mongolia, the one inscribed on hunters life list of trophies is mindless. While no-one is allowed to kill a tiger in India the black market still exists. One day many species will become as rare as the Bengal, Sumatran tiger or Siberian tiger. But there are those who dream of hunting them. They continue to be poached. With changing monsoon patterns with heat indexes expected to rise across Asia, how will the tiger survive? How will humanity survive?

Unbelievably enough, an elephant can still be targeted for the asking price of $40K. How on Earth anyone would want to shoot one of the pillars of the world is beyond comprehension.But the estimated value of an elephant over its lifetime may be over 1.5 million dollars, many, many times what it is worth as a lifeless, mute, inert, devastated lump of obscenity hanging on someones wall, or as a tusk encased in glass. When will this come to an end? When will there be only 1,000 elephants left in the wild protected by electric fences and armed guards? By then there will be nothing left of the wild.

What exactly will it take to come to our senses? You know, when a child looks at a live being and then is told that adults, or their parents enjoy, actually enjoy the slaughter of that being, that child is severed from the world forever asElephant Song, the remarkably insightful film from Canada makes abundantly clear. We have reached the tail end of morality on this Earth as a species. A few more millimeters and we will have reached the point of no return. The Convention on Biological Diversity seeks to stave off the bleeding of nature while nature still exists in some measure. But we are running out of time. The Arctic and Antarctic melting are starting to make short work of our vanity. We need to wake up.

There may come a time, when teachers will have to explain to their students what Nature was. That Nature came to an end abruptly in the 21st century out of greed and utter arrogance. The end, not just of the proverbial elephants tail, but the lifeline to existence, which are its species. We have the next four years and maybe this decade, and then it will be over. I promise. Unless we make an about face.

The clinical dimension of loss where 70 percent of the worlds animal populations have been eliminated in the last two generations is incalculable, ecologically, and in terms of the human psyche, psychologically and spiritually. It is why more people are addicted to drugs than ever. Why more people are taking their lives than ever. Why more people are deciding not to have children than ever. Because not only are they being left behind, the species that gave them a reason to marvel and wonder, are diminishing.We have precisely this decade to turn things around before the possibility of living viably on this Earth disappears.

Recently, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, the explorer, was able to convince the WWF to change its endorsement of trophy hunting. Which speaks volumes about this inimitable explorer and about one of the very largest conservation groups on the planet. Change is possible. Fiennes wrote about Boris Johnson, as the leader of the country that incited trophy hunting more than any other in modern times when he said that he hoped that the prime minister would understand that hunting was about cruelty. "Bullying bastards are involved and people who are vain sticking lovely dead animals on their walls. This preeminent British adventurer was the oldest to climb Mt. Everest and has crossed both polar ice caps summoned by a spirit virtually unmatched in modern times. So whenKilling Game: The Extinction Industry2020 by Eduardo Goncalvescame out, he had to call out the WWF for its diabolic practice of supporting trophy hunting and called out the practice for what it was, the perfidy of killing for its own sake.

Released five years after the killing of Cecil the lion, the book made an impact and especially on the WWF. They were shamed as should every killer, every hunter who wantonly destroys life for fun, not for venison, not for food, but for plain old entertainment. In this extraordinary time of extreme vulnerability, life can no longer be taken for granted. To hold onto antiquated models of human behavior does humanity and Earth a grave injustice. As Eduardo exclaims, All forms of animal cruelty, persecution, and murder are unjustifiable. But this is perhaps the most senseless and vile form of animal exploitation of all. It is people killing animals literally just to amuse themselves.Nine out of ten people want trophy hunting banned and the vast majority want to see all forms of trophies banned not just endangered species who could well disappear in the next few years, let alone the next generation. If the WWF can change its stand on one of humanitys most heinous practices, so too can the executioners of the wild, called trophy hunters.

But the greatest argument of all comes of course from science. Incontrovertibly so. The maximum sustainable yield concept that hunters might use, lets say in taking out a few dozen, or even a hundred deer out of population of lets say a thousand over a year leaves the remaining population with more unfit individuals. Those with the biggest horns, the largest tusks, if taken out, leave the less fit in the overall population. The conspecific competition between the strongest males in a species is reduced by targeting the ones with the largest horns, which erodes and undermines natural selection. Trophy hunting is artificial selection.Trophy hunting impairs genetic selection for the hardiest individuals. Trophy hunting stops evolution or rather causes reverse evolution.

We can no longer afford to turn a deaf ear to the future. For if we do not act now, the future will be silent except for the guile laden, war ravaging, profit mongering voice of a young species, called Homo sapiens, that took the life force for granted and conducted itself in a manner that led to the 6th extinction now upon us. For far too long men thought they were superior to women. For far too long whites thought they were superior to people of color. For far too long humans have thought they were superior to animals. For far too long humans thought of themselves as the crowning achievement of life on Earth. If life persists with even the semblance of the species Earth once had by centurys end, it will be a miracle. If we dont, the hunters of the world will have plenty to answer for because their ethos, their conduct is part of the warrior behavior that puts a bullet in an elephants brain because it can. We are very close to the point where nature simply has no use for us anymore. We are unraveling the life force.

Sometimes with the barrel of a gun.

Anyone who has doubts about the psychosis involved with the deer breeding farms in Texas should go down to that state and look around. To shoot deer with the biggest horns, Hornography, as Gibson calls it. Africas situation with the near shut down of tourism should not be an excuse for ramping up the hunting industrys quota for the greatest mammals on Earth. The death industry imposed on the innocent is very much part and parcel of our militarized civilization. And we will have to invent incredible excuses for the incredulous children who will have lost wonder and childhood forever. We are very close to the razors edge. We need to be very careful this decade. We are about to lose the meaning of life. Which is life itself.

As Werner Herzog, the visionary filmmaker once exclaimed after makingCave of Forgotten Dreams

I do not want to live on a planet where there are no lions anymore.

Our species used to kill to survive, because we did not have a choice. Today we have to choose life before it withers before the great cosmos of what this Earth once encompassed. The animals of the world, the backbone of existence, have been treated like expendable resources and garbage for far too long. The cavemen of 50,000 ago had far more respect for life. Animal populations are collapsing and our civilization will too. Native people always took the weakest individuals, as I was just told by a Gwichin elder in Alaska. They respected the leader, the strongest of the bunch. Our civilization simply does not. Unlessunless we change the heart of our humanity. In this extraordinarily fragile pandemic time, we should all know what that means.

Perhaps when all is gone and there is quite nothing to expect to find in the forests of the world we can look back with utter shame at what was and remember the great short story,The Most Dangerous Game,by Richard Connell in 1924 wherein the protagonist, a man, is hunted because he has cunning, courage and reason which supposedly the other animals do not. From the story:

"It will be light enough in Rio," promised Whitney. "We should make it in a few days. I hope the jaguar guns have come from Purdey's. We should have some good hunting up the Amazon. Great sport, hunting."

"The best sport in the world," agreed Rainsford.

"For the hunter," amended Whitney. "Not for the jaguar."

"Don't talk rot, Whitney," said Rainsford. "You're a big-game hunter, not a philosopher. Who cares how a jaguar feels?

"Perhaps the jaguar does," observed Whitney.

"Bah! They've no understanding."

"Even so, I rather think they understand one thing--fear. The fear of pain and the fear of death."

"Nonsense," laughed Rainsford. "This hot weather is making you soft, Whitney. Be a realist. The world is made up of two classes--the hunters and the huntees. Luckily, you and I are hunters.

As Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, who has spent years with the Bushmen back in the 1950s and knew the old Africa like very few on Earth magisterially explains, Yes, poaching and trophy hunting are different, but only from the human point of view. The two disgusting practices are identical from the wildlife point of view, especially for endangered species which seem to attract unusually large numbers of trophy hunters.

We have to change as a species before its too late.

Learn more aboutCyril Christo and Marie Wilkinson's work at their website.

WALK THUNDER trailer from Last Stand Films on Vimeo.

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Why trophy hunting is on the wrong side of history and evolution | TheHill - The Hill

WWE NXT star Toni Storm is convinced that WWE will bring back Evolution, an all-womens pay-per-view event which was first held in Oct. 2018.

While speaking to Kenny McIntosh of Inside The Ropes and SPORF, Storm said the event is crucial for WWE to keep the momentum going with the ongoing womens evolution.

I would love it, and I think there will be [another one], said Storm. Its important that we keep the momentum going for this womens revolution. Its really important to me. Its the best thing to ever happen to my career. So Im sure, in the future, there will be another one. No doubt.

At the inaugural Evolution event, Storm defeated reigning NXT Womens Champion Io Shirai in the final of the 2018 Mae Young Classic tournament.While looking back at that match, Storm said the win over Shirai put her on the map and filled her the confidence.

That was probably the most emotional day that I had ever had in my entire career, recalled Storm. I think it really put me on the map that night and, ever since, things have been just smooth sailing. That was the momentum that I needed to get myself to where I am now. Its cool going in to TakeOver knowing that I know exactly how to beat Io and I know everything about it. It fills me with confidence. Its good.

Storm also touched upon how surreal it was to be backstage at Evolution and watching trailblazers such as Lita and Trish Stratus, who she grew up idolizing.

The whole the whole night was crazy because, if I remember correctly, my match with Io was on after the Battle Royal and thats where they brought back, like, everyone that I grew up watching. So, Im stood there waiting to go out and do this match and just one after the other Its just one person after the other that I grew up watching.

It was really surreal to me. Id never really been in that environment before. So yeah, I was like, Wow, here I am. Im finally getting to where I want to be. Evolution was very special to me and its its been good ever since.

Storm will face Shirai and Mercedes Martinez in a triple-threat match for the NXT Womens Championship at this Sundays NXT TakeOver: Vengeance Day.

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Toni Storm On Possibility Of Evolution II: There Will Be Another One, No Doubt - Wrestling Inc.

In the past decade, the single-family rental market has evolved from individual units owned and rented out by small landlords to large scale operations by big investors with significant portfolios of houses. Some of the large companies entering the market are building units specifically to rent or creating communities of single-family rentals to be professionally managed like an apartment complex.

Bloomberg's Patrick Clark last week tackled the topic, pointing out that single-family rentals are drawing interest from institutional money, and that builders and apartment firms are pushing into that corner of the market.

While a study last summer showed the interest in SFR has been increasing since recovery from the Great Recession, Clark's article notes that the pandemic has ignited Americans' desire for larger living spaces and thus sparked a new level of "Wall Street zest" for this sector of suburban real estate.

Clark notes that big investors including J.P. Morgan Chase and Nuveen Real Estate recently have bet on the supposition that "there are lots of Americans who want spare bedrooms and backyards, but dont have cash for down payments."

Its really an inflection point in SFR, Michael Carey, Senior Director for Altus Group, an advisory firm, told Bloomberg. It used to be an alternative asset class. Now people look at it as a solution.

Low housing inventory means builders including Lennar Corp., the largest U.S. homebuilder by revenue, are launching campaigns of unprecedented focus on rental-specific builds.

Clark writes that apartment companies also are investing big in SFR. Greystar Real Estate Partners, for example, could go from managing 1,500 to 25,000 homes in the next five years, according to the company's Executive Director Mike Clow.

Three years ago I would have said this was a fad, Clow told Bloomberg. But its become more prevalent because its filling a need for consumers.

While small landlords still own the vast majority of single-family rentals, the pandemic has accelerated the interest in SFR, and some see a convergence of apartment companies, large-scale investors, and mom-and-pop landlords on the horizon.

"Most real estate investment trusts that specialize in apartments still believe that theyre in a different business than single-family landlords, Jeffrey Langbaum, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence told Clark. "Others, however, see the logic in companies offering tenants everything from downtown apartments to suburban homes."

Gary Beasley, CEO at Roofstock, a platform for acquiring single-family rentals, told Bloomberg that he's been thinking of this convergence of apartment and SFR landlords for a long time. He says this innovative outlook might "allow landlords to service customers throughout their life cyclestarting with an urban apartment in their 20s, moving them to a suburban rental home in their 30s, and perhaps even selling them a home in the 40s."

SFR stakeholders won't want to miss this year's Five Star Single-Family Rental Summit, scheduled for May 12, 2021, at the Four Seasons Las Colinas in Dallas. Click here or on the banner below for more info.

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The Evolution of the Single-Family Rental Market - DSNews.com

Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Stefan Qin was just 19 when he claimed to have the secret to cryptocurrency trading.Buoyed with youthful confidence, Qin, a self-proclaimed math prodigy from Australia, dropped out of college in 2016 to start a hedge fund in New York he called Virgil Capital. He told potential clients he had developed an algorithm called Tenjin to monitor cryptocurrency exchanges around the world to seize on price fluctuations. A little more than a year after it started, he bragged the fund had returned 500%, a claim that produced a flurry of new money from investors.He became so flush with cash, Qin signed a lease in September 2019 for a $23,000-a-month apartment in 50 West, a 64-story luxury condo building in the financial district with expansive views of lower Manhattan as well as a pool, sauna, steam room, hot tub and golf simulator.In reality, federal prosecutors said, the operation was a lie, essentially a Ponzi scheme that stole about $90 million from more than 100 investors to help pay for Qins lavish lifestyle and personal investments in such high-risk bets as initial coin offerings. At one point, facing client demands for their money, he variously blamed poor cash flow management and loan sharks in China for his troubles. Last week, Qin, now 24 and expressing remorse, pleaded guilty in federal court in Manhattan to a single count of securities fraud.I knew that what I was doing was wrong and illegal, he told U.S. District Judge Valerie E. Caproni, who could sentence him to more than 15 years in prison. I deeply regret my actions and will spend the rest of my life atoning for what I did. I am profoundly sorry for the harm my selfish behavior has caused to my investors who trusted in me, my employees and my family.Eager InvestorsThe case echoes similar cryptocurrency frauds, such as that of BitConnect, promising people double-and triple-digit returns and costing investors billions. Ponzi schemes like that show how investors eager to cash in on a hot market can easily be led astray by promises of large returns. Canadian exchange QuadrigaCX collapsed in 2019 as a result of fraud, causing at least $125 million in losses for 76,000 investors.While regulatory oversight of the cryptocurrency industry is tightening, the sector is littered with inexperienced participants. A number of the 800 or so crypto funds worldwide are run by people with no knowledge of Wall Street or finance, including some college students and recent graduates who launched funds a few years ago.Qins path started in college, too. He had been a math whiz who planned on becoming a physicist, he told a website, DigFin, in a profile published in December, just a week before regulators closed in on him. He described himself on his LinkedIn page as a quant with a deep interest and understanding in blockchain technology.In 2016, he won acceptance into a program for high-potential entrepreneurs at the University of New South Wales in Sydney with a proposal to use blockchain technology to speed up foreign exchange transactions. He also attended the Minerva Schools, a mostly online college based in San Francisco, from August 2016 through December 2017, the school confirmed.Crypto BugHe got the crypto bug after an internship with a firm in China, he told DigFin. His task had been to build a platform between two venues, one in China and the other in the U.S., to allow the firm to arbitrage cryptocurrencies.Convinced he had happened upon a business, Qin moved to New York to found Virgil Capital. His strategy, he told investors, would be to exploit the tendency of cryptocurrencies to trade at different prices at various exchanges. He would be market-neutral, meaning that the firms funds wouldnt be exposed to price movements.And unlike other hedge funds, he told DigFin, Virgil wouldnt charge management fees, taking only fees based on the firms performance. We never try to make easy money, Qin said.By his telling, Virgil got off to a fast start, claiming 500% returns in 2017, which brought in more investors eager to participate. A marketing brochure boasted of 10% monthly returns -- or 2,811% over a three-year period ending in August 2019, legal filings show.His assets got an extra jolt after the Wall Street Journal profiled him in a February 2018 story that touted his skill at arbitraging cryptocurrency. Virgil experienced substantial growth as new investors flocked to the fund, prosecutors said.Missing AssetsThe first cracks appeared last summer. Some investors were becoming increasingly upset about missing assets and incomplete transfers, the former head of investor relations, Melissa Fox Murphy, said in a court declaration. (She left the firm in December.) The complaints grew.It is now MID DECEMBER and my MILLION DOLLARS IS NOWHERE TO BE SEEN, wrote one investor, whose name was blacked out in court documents. Its a disgrace the way you guys are treating one of your earliest and largest investors.Around the same time, nine investors with $3.5 million in funds asked for redemptions from the firms flagship Virgil Sigma Fund LP, according to prosecutors. But there was no money to transfer. Qin had drained the Sigma Fund of its assets. The funds balances were fabricated.Instead of trading at 39 exchanges around the world, as he had claimed, Qin spent investor money on personal expenses and to invest in other undisclosed high-risk investments, including initial coin offerings, prosecutors said.So Qin tried to stall. He convinced investors instead to transfer their interests into his VQR Multistrategy Fund, another cryptocurrency fund he started in February 2020 that used a variety of trading strategies -- and still had assets.Loan SharksHe also sought to withdraw $1.7 million from the VQR fund, but that aroused suspicions from the head trader, Antonio Hallak. In a phone call Hallak recorded in December, Qin said he needed the money to repay loan sharks in China that he had borrowed from to start his business, according to court filings in a lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. He said the loan sharks might do anything to collect on the debt and that he had a liquidity issue that prevented him from repaying them.I just had such poor cash flow management to be honest with you, Qin told Hallak. I dont have money right now dude. Its so sad.When the trader balked at the withdrawal, Qin attempted to take over the reins of VQRs accounts. But by now the SEC was involved. It got cryptocurrency exchanges to put a hold on VQRs remaining assets and, a week later, filed suit.Asset RecoveryBy the end, Qin had drained virtually all of the money that was in the Sigma Fund. A court-appointed receiver who is overseeing the fund is looking to recover assets for investors, said Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss. About $24 million in assets in the VQR fund was frozen and should be available to disperse, he said.Stefan He Qin drained almost all of the assets from the $90 million cryptocurrency fund he owned, stealing investors money, spending it on indulgences and speculative personal investments, and lying to investors about the performance of the fund and what he had done with their money, Strauss said in a statement.In South Korea when he learned of the probe, Qin agreed to fly back to the U.S., prosecutors said. He surrendered to authorities on Feb. 4, pleaded guilty the same day before Caproni, and was freed on a $50,000 bond pending his sentencing, scheduled for May 20. While the maximum statutory penalty calls for 20 years in prison, as part of a plea deal, prosecutors agreed that he should get 151 to 188 months behind bars under federal sentencing guidelines and a fine of up to $350,000.That fate is a far cry from the career his parents had envisioned for him -- a physicist, he had told DigFin. They werent too happy when I told them I had quit uni to do this crypto thing. Who knows, maybe someday Ill complete my degree. But what I really want to do is trade crypto.The case is U.S. v Qin, 21-cr-75, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan)(Updates with comment from prosecutor and case caption)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.2021 Bloomberg L.P.

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COFACE SA: Governance evolution Bernardo Sanchez Incera appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors - Yahoo Finance

Avery Anderson III couldnt recognize himself after his freshman campaign.

His 3-point shot was gone and his confidence went along with it.

He made a measly 2 of 23 3-point attempts, a whopping 8%.

Anderson was determined to fix his broken shot during the offseason, and gym closures amid the COVID-19 pandemic werent going to stop him.

I was going anywhere I could get shots up because I never shot like that in high school. I dont know what happened, Anderson said. I just knew I had to keep grinding to get back to where I was.

He watched countless hours of film with his father and the father of one of his high school teammates. Together, they noticed Anderson brought the ball up too high before beginning his shooting motion.

They corrected the mistake and brought the ball down to his natural shot pocket around his right shoulder.

His confidence was back and so was his shot.

This season, Anderson hovers around 40% shooting from distance, the benchmark number of an elite shooter.

Coach Mike Boynton said Andersons prior shooting woes were because of a lack of comfort in the offense.

Avery was a ball-dominant, elite, athletic, scoring guard in high school and really all his life, Boynton said. He came here and he had to transition to playing less on the ball.

Now, Boynton believes Anderson has gotten more comfortable playing alongside other ball-dominant guards such as Cade Cunningham.

Anderson said he revels in being the go-to guy when the ball handler needs to find an open shooter.

Im taking pressure off some of the main scorers like Cade and Isaac (Likekele) and giving them another spot to look at if they get double-teamed, Anderson said. They have that kick out when they get double-teamed.

sports.ed@ocolly.com

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Green light: The evolution of Avery Anderson's 3-point shot - Daily O'Collegian

In honor of Black History Month, the Alamo is hosting a virtual event discussing how slavery evolved in Mexico, Texas, and the U.S. during the early 19th century.

The event, called "The Alamo Addresses: Slavery in Texas, Mexico, and the U.S. from 1820 - 1846 - An Interactive Discussion," will allow participants to learn about how slavery factored into the time period before and after the Texas Revolution.

Carey Latimore, Ph.D., associate professor of history at Trinity University and author of the Alamo's report on Civil Rights in San Antonio: WWII to 1960s, will discuss how slavery changed during the early 1800s.

News from around the state of Texas.

"The impact of slavery continues to leave its mark on our nation," Carey Latimore said. "I am honored to have this opportunity to engage in this most important topic at the Alamo. There is so much more to discuss than I can possibly fit into a single event. Knowing that, we will focus on how Texas fits into the broader context of slavery's evolution in the region during this period."

The virtual event will be hosted by Texas Representative Babara Gervin-Hawkins, and it will feature an interactive Q&A session with participants in real-time.

The event is free, and it will be available via Zoom at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday.

Spots for live participants are limited, so viewers must reserve a spot on theAlamo.org.

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The Alamo Hosts Virtual Event Discussing the Evolution of Slavery in Early 1800s Texas - NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

Durban-based tech company, immedia has invested R10-million to help African media entrepreneurs to build sustainable community radio by using Fabrik (www.Fabrik.cloud), a set of cloud-enabled digital tools that empower media entities to live-stream shows, grow and engage with audiences around the world, and benefit financially by monetising their audiences.

The 25-year-old company, which has the backing of Microsoft and the Industrial Development Corporation, has been developing their Fabrik technology since 2017. Fabrik allows media entrepreneurs to upend the traditional notion of we broadcast and you receive, by creating a feedback loop that directly helps the stations and listeners that use it to leapfrog old technology, to become citizen journalists, and find their strategic space in a digitally transformed world. It is already being used by 15 commercial clients, including radio stations Gagasi FM, Smile 90.4FM and YFM.

As part of its Digital Leap programme (https://bit.ly/2Z8oQme), immedia will be giving its platform to qualifying media entrepreneurs across Africa for free for a year. This includes consultation, training and support to help monetize the technology, cumulatively valued at R10 million.

Phil Molefe, a veteran of broadcast radio in South Africa, Fabriks Head of Business Development & Strategy, says the programme was key to the companys vision to spearhead media transformation. He says the uptake of Fabrik by energetic entrepreneurs at community radio stations showed how empowering the suite of digital tools is. It enables them to deepen their relationship with their audience and monetise it sustainably because the quality of their engagement with listeners is meaningful.

Building stable, sustainable community radio across Africa

Molefe points out that while community media is often under-resourced and struggles to retain skills, the companys case studies have shown that it is more than possible for them to thrive and that the Digital Leap programme is the kind of opportunity they need, and can succeed on. Fabrik helps media entrepreneurs by solving key challenges for them, including:

Fabrik has a range of users, and about 60% of their listeners have an opt-in relationship with their broadcasters. By building and growing owned communities, stations then stand to benefit financially by serving highly relevant ads to their digital listeners. In addition, where sales conversions on social media are around 2%, Fabrik users enjoy 8%.

According to Tamie Mbombo, head of Marketing and PR at Izwi loMzansi, one of the largest community radio stations in South Africa, says that the platform has revolutionised the stations engagement with its listeners, and has led the digital charge with featured podcasts and integrated advertising campaigns on the Izwi mobile app. Community medias aim is to provide trusted information and expression, and Fabrik has helped do that, he says.

A change of mindset is required

The Fabrik team made some interesting observations based on the experiences of early adopters of the technology, including around community radio, where many advertisers and business decision makers are often dismissive of the audience. For example, one of our clients is a station with an audience in the LSM 4-6 range. That audience is typically regarded as too poor or too marginalised to go digital and yet our clients are proving that they are taking to it like ducks to water, Molefe says.

He says that the take up by media entrepreneurs, either regarded as on the fringes or as outliers, is the best showcase for Fabrik. They are doing what they do because nobody told them they couldnt and it is proving to be a great leveller. Weve seen how powerful this platform is in the community media space, which is why we are looking at boosting the rate of transformation.

Applications for the Fabrik Digital Leap programme are now open. For more information visit the website (https://bit.ly/2MXxy4e) or contact Jonathan Lumley at jonathan@fabrik.cloud.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Fabrik.

About Fabrik:The Fabrik (www.Fabrik.cloud) platform helps broadcast entities build independent, valuable and trusted communities in a safe space that you own and manage. Fabrik gives you progressively deeper data insights into your own community through real-time, human engagement. With the Fabrik platform and its impressive suite of services including customer data and insights and a powerful mobile application, you can grow audiences, increase customer engagement, gain valuable audience insights and statistics to help optimise content, and ultimately monetise your radio station.

For more information visit http://www.Fabrik.cloud.

Phil Molefe, Business Development and Strategy Lead at Fabrik, is a veteran journalist and Media Executive with a wealth of experience in both the print and electronic media that spans nearly 40 years.

Jonathan Lumley, Clients, Channels and Markets Lead at Fabrik, is a radio promotions veteran who now empowers stations to bring new value to their audiences and advertisers through innovative technology-enabled workflows and campaigns.

Africanews provides content from APO Group as a service to its readers, but does not edit the articles it publishes.

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Community radio gets a R10m boost to accelerate the digital evolution in Africa - Africanews English

Scientists have cracked the world's largest animal genome to better understand the evolution of life on land.

Researchers say the Australian lungfish, native to the Burnett and Mary Rivers, is the closest living fish relative to humans and other land dwellers.

A group of European scientists, led by evolutionary biologist professor Axel Meyer from the University of Konstanz in Germany, sequenced 43 billion DNA building blocks, 14 times larger than the human genome.

The sequencing was only made possible through recent technological advancements.

Through analysis of the genetic mapping, the scientists linked the emergence of fish onto land 400 million years ago by observing the lungfish's physical characteristics, including its ability to breathe air and use its fins like limbs.

"Among the fishes, they are our closest living relatives, we are sure about this now," Professor Meyer said.

"We can see a lot in the genome and in the biology of the lungfish that helps us understand what the features must have been important for the conquest of land."

Finding the link between fish and life on land has been a lifetime passion and journey for Professor Meyer.

As a child, he read Old Fourlegs, a book about a prehistoric fish known as a coelacanth being caught in a South African fishing net.

Professor Meyer has spent the last three decades studying evolutionary biology and genetics, but the lungfish's DNA sequence was too complicated to code until now.

Assembling a team from laboratories in Konstanz, Wurzburg and Hamburg in Germany and Vienna in Austria, Professor Meyer was finally able to crack the animal world's longest DNA code.

"If you want to leave water, you have to be able to breathe air and not continue to rely on breathing through your gills, so you have to have lungs," Professor Meyer said.

"Then you have to be able to walk on land, and that's a different thing to accomplish for a fish that is used to being neutrally buoyant and paddling with their fins.

"Lungfish, if they moved on land, would have to crawl like a salamander and they already do that underwater."

The Australian lungfish is a protected species that was first described in 1870 by zoologist Gerard Krefft.

It is a common sight in the Burnett and Mary River with people fishing or canoeing often receiving a fright after mistaking the nearly 2-metre fish for a crocodile.

The fish rises to the surface and makes a large gasping noise as it breathes air.

There is still much to learn from the fish that hasn't changed in 100 million years and has been popularly described as a "living fossil".

Scientists still don't know how long the species live for, with the oldest lungfish dying in captivity in 2017 after being taken from the wild in 1933.

And while the ability to use its single lung to stay alive out of water makes it quite unique in the fish world, Professor Meyer understands it's the bone structures of its fins, including finger bones, that sets it apart from the other species of lungfish.

It can also help explain the evolution of animal life on land.

"The Australian lungfish has a bone structure that is similar in the basic arrangements of the bones to our upper arms or to our legs," he said.

"There is one strong humerus, the upper arm bone, and then two bones that branch off like our lower arm, then come the digits.

"That makes the Australian lungfish much more interesting than the South American or African lungfish."

Professor Meyer and the European science laboratories involved in the sequencing will continue their research and focus on the other species of lungfish DNA.

Professor Meyer hopes to visit the Wide Bay region in Queensland to study the Australian lungfish in its natural environment. He feels they are an important living link to the past we can continue to learn from.

"Both the coelacanths and lungfish are really, really important," he said.

"They are the only lineages still alive that tell us something that might have happened 400 million years ago.

"Of course, paleontologists have found fossils that are even closer to us, that show features of limbs and other aspects of their body. But these creatures are no longer alive. You are only dealing with rocks."

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Ancient Queensland fish 'close living relative' to humans, scientists believe - ABC News

Five nights into the NBA season, when the Pacers dismantled the Chicago Bulls, a number of Indiana players left their imprint on the contest.

Former Rookie of the Year Malcolm Brogdon finished with 18 points and six assists. Two-time All-Star Victor Oladipo caught fire, going 5-for-5 from deep en route to 22 points. Domantas Sabonis, an All-Star himself, logged 22 points of his own and had a triple-double. Swingman T.J. Warren, continuing his NBA bubble-based flamethrowing, managed to outscore everyone, logging a game-high 23 points.

Far less distinguishable in the lopsided box score that evening was center Myles Turner, who tallied 9 points, five rebounds and one assist on 4-for-8 shooting a performance that wasnt all that far off from his seasonlong averages of 13.7 points, 6.7 boards and 1.1 assists on 51 percent shooting from the field. And a closer look at Turners metrics shows that his statistics this year are near-carbon copies of his four prior seasons, a span in which he averaged 13.2 points, 6.9 rebounds and 1.3 dimes on 49 percent shooting.

[The Best NBA Players, According To RAPTOR]

The 24-year-olds numbers havent budged, showing a Gorilla Glue-style consistency from one year to the next. While that could be spun as a negative teams clearly prefer when young players improve their scoring by leaps and bounds, like Jerami Grant or Christian Wood theres evidence that Turners game has evolved immensely, even as his counting statistics have hardened in historic fashion.

Among NBA players who had logged at least five seasons by the age of 25, Turners total year-over-year movement in points, rebounds and assists per game is tied with Greg Monroe for the second-lowest of any player in a five-year span in modern NBA history. (We measured a players movement by adding together the absolute value of change in each per-game statistic from year to year.)

Smallest year-over-year movement in points, rebounds and assists per game over a five-year period for players age 25 or younger, since 1977

Movement is calculated by summing the absolute value of change in each per-game statistic from year to year. Players had to average at least 10 points per game each season.

Source: Basketball-Reference.com

In that sense, Turner is a bit like basketballs version of Khris Davis, the Texas Rangers slugger who once hit exactly .247 in four consecutive seasons. But while Daviss reaction to his lack of year-to-year change was largely sanguine, Turner objects to the implication that his game hasnt evolved.

If people are going to judge me on my numbers and not watch how Im performing on the floor, I think theyre doing themselves a disservice. You can deep-dive all you want, but it doesnt fully translate, Turner said. Ive grown on both ends, year in, year out.

[2020-21 NBA Predictions]

Turners claim that hes more than just his box score is undeniable. Take that blowout win over the Bulls back in December. He managed to swat four shots, including two in the first five minutes of the game, but the full story went deeper. Chicago, which shot a season-worst 37.4 percent from the field that evening, never found a rhythm from close range when Turner was nearby.

After the first two swats, players grew more mindful of Turners presence. Both Tom Satoransk and Coby White dished the ball off quickly to teammates mid-drive after seeing Turner step up to protect the paint. In another situation, Turners presence changed a shot from White, who lofted an awkward runner a tick or two earlier than he otherwise would have, prompting a miss from the second-year guard.

At 57.9 percent from inside the paint, the Bulls have been one of the NBAs most efficient teams from that part of the floor this season. But against Indiana, they connected on just 31.8 percent, or 7-for-22, of their shots from the paint with the rangy, hawk-like Turner on the court. (Further highlighting Turners impact: Chicago shot far better, 10-for-20, in the paint that night when Turner was off the floor.) Aside from making the close-range shots more challenging, he also forced players to make kick-out passes that took the Bulls out of prime scoring range. On some level, this explains how Turner finished that game as a plus-15 in plus-minus without having monster box-score stats.

The outing was far from an outlier. Much like they did with Roy Hibbert before, the Pacers guards funnel opposing ball-handlers into the lane, allowing them to challenge Turner at the rim. They arent shy about the strategy: Indiana allows more drives to the basket per 100 possessions and more close-range attempts than any team. Yet the Pacers are also the best at stopping those point-blank looks. And Turner, an early Defensive Player of the Year candidate who averages an NBA-best 3.6 blocks per game, can single-handedly take credit for the elite goalkeeping.

So far, Turner has held opponents 16.5 percentage points beneath their averages when shooting from within 6 feet of the rim, second among players who defend at least four such shots per game, according to NBA tracking data. And in a sign that points to his evolution, this is the third year in a row hes improved in the metric. After holding foes 4.5 percentage points below their normal shooting averages around the cup in 2017-18, he held them 8 points below their average in 2018-19, and then kept them 10.9 points under that threshold in 2019-20, per NBA Stats.

Taking advanced metrics like those into account, Turners defensive contributions stand out far more than his traditional offensive numbers do. FiveThirtyEights RAPTOR metric which leans on a high-level combination of box score metrics, tracking data and plus-minus has the Indiana big man rated as the leagues second-most impactful defender this season, behind center Clint Capela.

None of this even touches on the refinements Turner has made on the offensive side of the ball over time.

Most noteworthy: The 6-foot-11 big man, who used to take 97 percent of his shots from 2-point range, now takes almost half his attempts from behind the 3-point arc, giving his team more space to operate within. He appears to have a greater awareness of when to run from one rim to the other in transition, versus when its better to fan out to the corner in those situations. And heading into Wednesday nights games, he was taking a bigger chunk of his threes from the corner, where hes shooting a respectable 38 percent.

A mere box score wouldnt explain the context behind these shifts: That Turner has been a part of three largely different regimes, from the one with Paul George, to Oladipo, and now with Sabonis. Or that there have been serious questions about whether Turner and Sabonis fit together dating back to 2017-18, when the Pacers got drilled by 8.7 points per 100 possessions in the 270 minutes the duo shared on court together.

[Joel Embiid Changed His Offseason Conditioning. Now Hes Playing Like An MVP.]

First-year coach Nate Bjorkgren, who came over to the club as an assistant from the Toronto Raptors a team that frequently played two bigs at once has quickly altered the dynamics of the Pacers offense. Much of Bjorkgrens attack is predicated on being able to play the two bigs together. Where former coach Nate McMillan embraced taking quick, midrange shots if they were left open, Bjorkgren has encouraged his players to pull the trigger from outside far more often. And in Turners case, being more comfortable from the perimeter allows more breathing room for dribble-handoffs and playmaking chances with the ascendant Sabonis, a screen machine who operates from the same elbow area that Turner once occupied.

Even if box scores fail to capture the tweaks and triumphs Turner has made in his game, that doesnt mean there arent clear areas for improvement still. If Sabonis shines as a passer, Turners passing represents something far more dull, where logging a 1:1 assist-to-turnover ratio would be a positive development. At the same time, the Pacers certainly wont complain about his 62.2 percent true-shooting mark so far fueled by vastly improved 2-point shooting which is the best of Turners career by a sizable margin.

From where Turner sits, he doesnt mind if the most widely used numbers paint him as static. He sees a downside in trying to change them. If you start looking at your numbers and stuff as a player, you start getting in your own head and maybe start doing things that are out of character that your team doesnt need you to do, he said. As long as my numbers translate to winning, thats all I care about.

Neil Paine contributed research.

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Myles Turners Game Has Evolved. The Box Score Doesnt Know It Yet. - FiveThirtyEight