Category Archives: Evolution

In 2017, the five-month Battle of Marawi waged by Islamic State-affiliated groups in the southern Philippines highlighted the gravity of the Islamic State threat within the country. Moreover, it highlighted the likelihood that the Philippines would remain the epicenter of the Islamic State threat in the region. Since the recovery of Marawi, it has become even more critical to understand the evolving nature of Islamic State-linked activity in the country, and its regional implications.

As the second of a four-part series on the Islamic State in Southeast Asia, this report provides an overview of the characteristics of Islamic State-linked operations in the Philippines between 2014 and 2019, highlighting the instrumental value of the Islamic State brand for local groups. Drawing on open-source materials, the report examines the factors that contributed to the rise of the Islamic States influence and activity, specifically within the context of the Philippines, and analyzes its impact on local militancy during and after the Battle of Marawi.

The losses experienced by Islamic State affiliates during the Battle of Marawi deeply changed the structure of Islamic State-linked militancy in the Philippines, moving from the united front of the Maute Group and ASG-Basilan led coalition during the battle to an increasingly decentralized structure. The findings of this report underline the Islamic States evolving nature and the appeal of allegiance for local groups in an environment that is marked by numerous other challenges such as poverty, clan rivalries, criminal violence, as well as a long-running communist insurgency. The change in the nature of the Islamic States presence in the country indicates fewer Marawi-style sieges and more targeted attacks, and an increase in the use of suicide attacks.

Read more at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point

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Rising in the East: The Evolution of the Islamic State in the Philippines - HSToday

The role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in various industries has been long discussed. While no one denies its potential to change the face of an industry, how best to leverage it is still up for debate. AI in healthcare is not a new discourse either, and with governments across the globe pushing the cause, the revolution has frankly only started. It has the power to disseminate more fastidious, efficient, and impactful interferences at precisely the right moment in a patient's care journey.

According to a survey, the global healthcare AI market will grow from $4.9 billion in 2020 to $45.2 billion by 2026. From neurology to radiology and risk assessment to chronic diseases such as cancer more and more avenues are now being explored. It can also help maintain and interpret data, make arbitrations, and even carry discussions. But how much of it is hype, and what's really beneath the surface?

Technologies, such as clinical decision support systems and predictive analytics help providers stay ahead of unexpected deterioration and chronic illnesses, as well as risks like antibiotic resistance. BCIs or Brain-computer interfaces can restore cardinal adroitness to those who feared them lost forever.

Magnetic resonance imaging or MRI scans are considered one of the most expensive singular procedures a hospital can run. However, it is believed that these expenses can be cut down with the help of ML, hence bringing the total charges down and enhancing patient satisfaction.

In fact, an industry report predicted that AI could reduce healthcare costs by as much as 50 percent and improve outcomes by up to 40 percent a couple of years ago. In a survey, 63 percent of professionals agreed that AI would benefit patients with cancer and heart ailments.

Simply put, AI can assist our clinicians, not only in the moment of care but before and after that too.

HIT is an even mature domain. Real-time mapping of all factions in the life-cycle of a patient's healthcare facility using physical, virtual, and synergy data processes across people, places, systems, and devices, is something that has been helping care providers across the world for some time now.

With ever more reliable techniques for accumulating and aggregating data, such as demographic illness trends and outcomes optimum designs for healthcare facilities are now being created based on community-focused care models, surgery vs. recovery times, and palliative care trends, among other things.

In monetary terms, AI can potentially generate $18 billion in savings for the healthcare industry by automating administrative tasks.

Headways in HIT offer the prospect of providing personalized care by taking into reckoning granular patient diversities. ML uses images, clinical notes, and other data points for several clinical duties, such as detecting diabetic retinopathy and distinguishing between malignant and nonmalignant skin lesions in dermatoscopic images.

Former research has ascertained that machine learning using clinical notes to augment lab tests and other structured data is more precise than an algorithm using structured data singly to stratify patients with rheumatoid arthritis and prognosticate mortality, and the incipience of critical care arbitrations in intensive care environments.

AI's ability to distinguish among patients, separating them, sometimes brings with it the uncertainty of augmenting subsisting biases, which can be particularly worrying in sensitive fields like healthcare. Since data sustain machine learning models, predilection can be encoded by modelling preferences or even within the data itself if not done right.

Additionally, this powerful technology gives rise to a neoteric set of ethical hurdles that must be recognized and alleviated since AI in HIT has a formidable potential to endanger patient preference, safety, and privacy.

How do we equipoise the pros and cons of AI in HIT? There is an advantage in speedily mainstreaming AI technology into the healthcare system, as AI raises the opportunity to enhance current care delivery models' efficacy and quality.

However, there is a need to mitigate ethical hazards of AI implementation in HIT, including threats to privacy and confidentiality, apprised acquiescence, and patient autonomy and to consider how we can integrate AI in clinical practice.

AI, which includes natural language processing, ML, and robotics, can be implemented in almost any domain of medicine. This also incorporates its latent contributions to biomedical research, medical education, and healthcare delivery.

A concept, which theoretically seems a must-have is still looked down upon by a section of professionals. Critics often question the very relevance of AI in healthcare. Fewer still believe that it is only a question of time before physicians are rendered obsolete by this technology type.

Let's get to the core of the entire deliberation and ask: Should AI, which supposedly has a better success rate than manual work, be used to supplant or augment people in critical healthcare decisions over traditional methods?

A closer inspection of this technology's role in healthcare delivery is warranted to bring forth its current strengths, limitations, and ethical complexities. Ease of use, familiarity with legacy processes, over-simplification of medical complexities at the time of data visualisation, among others, have been traditionally cited as an argument against the use of emerging technologies.

The last thing HIT champions should do is to neglect their concerns and address them with complete honesty.

The solution can be brought down to one single logic: A technology ecosystem that lets care providers do what they love doing the most, which is providing care, should be at the core of all developments. Stakeholders should become flexible in consolidating AI technology but ensure that it stays as a complementary accessory and not a surrogate for a care provider.

AI in HIT will, undoubtedly, have extensive consequences that revolutionise the practice of medicine, remodelling the patient experience and physicians' daily routines. Nevertheless, there is much to do before laying down the precise ethical framework for using AI securely and efficiently in healthcare as supplemental appurtenances.

Ultimately, physicians will still treat patients, regardless of how much AI changes the delivery of care: there should and will always be a human element in the practice of medicine. No matter how high the confidence rating for the diagnosis or therapy recommended by an AI program may be, humans and their reactions to treatment are infinitely variable at the individual level.

The conversations about AI replacing the human essence in healthcare are groundless, and no technology in the near future would ever have the potential to do this.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)

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The reality of AI in healthcare: promises, roles, evolution, and more - YourStory

Key Takeaways

The history of programming languages went in one direction and one direction only; with each new language, things became more complex and more abstract. Then, just a few years over a decade ago, Go got started at google. And programming languages went the other way, put a bet on simplicity and things well crafted. That recipe is kept to the day and you can say that it can start straight away writing Go code without too much of a hurdle. Thats impressive when you just think that most of the popular and reliable pieces of modern software are written in GoDocker, Kubernetes, Prometheus, and the list can continue. To understand where Go is coming from and more importantly where it is going, InfoQ reached out to Steve Francia, a core member of the Go programming language team at Google responsible for strategy and product.

InfoQ: Thank you for taking the time to answer a couple of questions from our readers. Can we start by asking you to introduce yourselves and describe your role and day-to-day job at Google?

Steve Francia: I am Steve Francia, a core member of the Go programming language team at Google responsible for product and strategy.

InfoQ: You have credited technical challenges and engineering challenges as the sparks that ignited Go thirteen years ago. Was there anything else? What were the official programming languages at Google then, and what was missing?

Francia: The primary motivation for creating Go was the recognition that our systems have grown in complexity. To keep up with exponential "Google scale" growth, complex systems were designed to address our needs. Over time new complex systems were built on top of these foundational systems/libraries and languages. People too often dont think of the hidden costs of complexity. The truth is that code is read many more times than it is written. Team velocity is significantly burdened by complexity. In contrast, Go is simple. It takes an afternoon to learn. The code is very straightforward and readable. This simplicity empowers teams to collaborate in ways never before possible.

InfoQ: How did it all start? Was it a top-down request, (management asked for a language to address the needs), or was it bottom-up? The famous 20% of innovation from Google? Engineers doing what they do best -- solving problems?

Francia: Nobody ever asked for Go. It wasnt really a 20% project. It was a conversation that led to a research project that gained traction and was adopted wider than anyone imagined. Of course, there was interest across Google from up and down the chain in finding ways to reduce complexity and increase productivity.

InfoQ: A saying in the start-up world is if you arent ashamed of your product on the day of the launch, you are probably too late. Go went public in 2011 when support for it was added to Google App Engine and YouTube started using Vitess. Was Go production-ready at launch or did people struggle to build things with it?

Francia: Go launched at the right time for Go. There was a lot of the foundation that was right, but there is a lot more in Go today that wasnt in the early releases -- which is common in open source. Most obviously, there was no "go" command, so things that Go does so naturally today like "go build" were much harder in the earlier days.

The biggest advantage of releasing early was that it enabled the community to participate in the design process of Go. Major contributions that were a big part of Gos success were provided by the community.

Our very first public releases of Go were production-ready in the sense that programs built with Go were performant and stable in production, but the Go authoring experience was still missing a lot of polish that the Go team and community were able to subsequently shape together.

InfoQ: Looking back, what was the most technical problem that you needed to address while building Go?

Francia: This is a hard one. It kind of implies that weve finished Go. I think there have been many "hardest" technical problems the Go project has addressed over the years and we are continuing to address very challenging technical issues. We are currently working on adding generics support to Go. Adding generics is a challenging task on its own, but we also want it to still feel like Go, meaning that using generics increases readability. Thats a very hard thing to do and something some of our key people have been thinking about for more than 10 years.

Over the past few years, we addressed some of the largest challenges regarding how 1dependencies are managed. We added module support to Go without introducing diamond dependencies or dependency hell, which no language has done before.

Another set of challenges is Gos history of consistent performance improvements in each release. One way this has manifested is in the reduction in garbage-collection pause latency from seconds to milliseconds to microseconds. This has been transformative for Go and critical for its success in services.

InfoQ: If you would have to restart Gos implementation, what would you do differently? Why?

Francia: With the advantage of hindsight, and as someone who has helped shape Go today, but wasnt around for the first few years, I honestly would change very little. Its a beautiful, well thought out language, and while it isnt perfect, its very nice to use.

There are a few small tweaks that I wish wed made, but to discuss them would put too big of a spotlight on really trivial things. Instead, if we could do it all over again, I wish wed made the same mistakes, only sooner. Go is growing very fast, around every 18 months the Go user base doubles in size. This means that a change made today vs. five years ago impacts around 10 times as many people.

The dependency management Go has today is amazing, but it arrived maybe five years later than it should have. This delay made an already hard problem much harder and caused undue stress on the community as a result.

Similarly, the big language change we are working on now is generics. It will impact the community in a significant way. If we could do it all over again, with the hindsight of understanding how important this feature would be, I wish we would have started work in earnest on it maybe seven years earlier.

InfoQ: What does the Go programming language still lack?

Francia: As a language, generics are really the only major feature were missing and as I said earlier, we are currently focused on it. There is a playground available where you can use the prototype language feature today and give feedback.

Beyond this, most of the work to be done is refinements and polish, largely in the space around the language itself. For tooling, we have plans to improve the authoring, releasing, and editing experience. We are also working on helping people make better decisions about their dependencies.

InfoQ: Go was started at Google, but it is open-source now. Whos calling the shots these days on what will be implemented?

Francia: In November 2020, Go celebrated 11 years of open source. Go has a well-defined proposal process that determines the entire direction of the project. Ideas and experiences come from everywhere -- every corner of the community. They are posted to the project on Github as proposals. From there the community weighs in on how they feel about the proposal and help to refine the idea further. The proposal committee meets weekly to review the open proposals. Currently, there are six committee members, four of whom are Googlers. This weekly meeting is mostly "gardening," the decisions almost always happen from the community discussions on the proposal issues themselves. Unless the issue discussion has a clear consensus of yes, the proposal is declined. By design and intent, changes to Go happen slowly and deliberately in the open. The process is designed to reinforce this.

InfoQ: How did Gos ecosystem evolve with its increasing popularity? Go was mainly focused on networking and infrastructure at first. How did its usage evolve over the years?

Francia: One of the fascinating things about Go is how its journey took the project on a very different path than the founders had initially planned. They began Go with the intent of building a replacement for the popular high-performance server-side programming languages, which at the time were Java and C++. The founders thought that a simpler language could dramatically increase productivity for this class of developers while retaining performance.

While Go made some inroads with Java and C++ engineers, most of Gos early adoption came from dynamic language programmers, coming from languages like Python, Javascript, Ruby, and PHP. It turns out that Go initially appealed far more to the dynamic class of language who saw an opportunity to retain productivity while dramatically increasing performance.

As Go and its ecosystem has matured, Gos adoption has extended into the enterprise, and the initial audience of Java, C++, and C# engineers have accelerated their adoption of Go.

One of Gos distinguishing features is that with a small language, most of the innovation happens in the ecosystem. We are consistently surprised by the creative and diverse directions that the community is taking Go. Gos strength is still the cloud/server applications that Go is such a good fit for, but it turns out that Go is a really good fit for a lot of other types of applications as well. DevOps/SRE, CLI, web applications, and data processing have all taken to Go. Now we are seeing Go used for microcontrollers, robotics, gaming, and more.

InfoQ: Kubernetes, Docker, and Prometheus are all written in Go. Are there any other tools written in the language?

Francia: There are far too many tools to list here. Some of the more popular tools I use regularly are:

A more extensive list can be found on Awesome Go.

InfoQ: Go is highly efficient and reliable when it comes to networking and systems programming, but what would be a space where Go wouldnt fit?

Francia: Speaking for myself, I think there are only three modern languages today. Each was thoughtfully designed to address different shortcomings of prior generation languages, resulting in each excelling at largely different things and complimenting the others well. Heres how I see the three languages:

I think the majority of "modern" workloads over the next 10+ years will be written in one of these languages. Of course, there will always be legacy workloads that need to be supported, so please dont read this as suggesting any languages demise. And there are definitely areas where niche languages like R, SQL, and even Javascript, have a role to play.

InfoQ: Steve, I remember attending a conference a couple of years back in Budapest where you held a workshop about using Go. I had the feeling that you would recommend Go more to your enemies than to your friends -- why was that?

Francia: That was a great conference and my first time in Budapest. Ive been back a few times since, its one of my favorite cities, such charm.

Many years ago now, I was working for MongoDB. My role there was leading the developer experience team which meant I was responsible for everything that touched our users. This included documentation, websites, developer relations, the MongoDB interface, and designing and engineering our integrations with languages and frameworks. It was a very broad and challenging role that required my team to write in over 10 different programming languages (and several human languages as well). I had used many languages myself over my career up to that point and made it a goal of being able to contribute to each of our languages. At the time I considered myself a polyglot and reveled in this opportunity to extend my experience and learn about these different languages.

At first, we focused on supporting the most popular languages, while I kept looking for what "the next language" might be. My first "next language" that I learned was Scala, thanks to Martin Oderskys free online course in Scala. I enjoyed learning the language and kept searching. The next language I tried was Go. I fell in love. It was like someone designed a language just for me. I spent a lot of my free time, mostly 3+ hours a day on a train commuting to Manhattan, writing Go software. This is where Hugo, Cobra, Viper, Afero, and many other libraries and applications were born.

In the process, I learned I wasnt a polyglot, I just hadnt found my language yet. Since the moment I first used Go, Ive immersed myself in the Go community and ecosystem, giving trainings around the world, speaking at many conferences, and organizing several events. Ive spent the last seven years telling anyone who will listen about Go and along the way I somehow convinced the Go team and Google to let me join them. Beyond this, Ive also helped countless others tell their stories, many of which are on Go.dev.

InfoQ: Go is 13 years old, so a teenager. What do you think about it? Is it the reliable type making the life of its users easier or still rebellious and moody, making it tricky to work with?

Francia: As a user, I think Go has never been better. The migration to modules happened quite smoothly. Go is very stable and its performance keeps getting better. The Go tooling also keeps getting better and better. Go.dev is a great one-stop resource, centralizing all the end users references, tutorials, documentation, and libraries from the entire community in one place. I might be biased, but as a Go user first, long before joining the Go team, Im very happy with where Go is now and where were going.

InfoQ: What would you recommend as a toolbox for Go development?

Francia: One of the great things about Go is that it really meets you where you are. Go development is pretty much identical on Mac, Linux, or Windows, and Gos cross-compilation makes it trivial to build for any arch and OS. With the introduction to the gopls language server, all editors and IDEs have a great experience writing Go. The Go tooling that ships as part of the Go distribution contains everything a developer needs to get started with the language.

I split my time between the three OSs, though I mostly develop on Windows using either VSCodium or Vim. I use the Cobra tool and library a lot, but my personal use of Go these days is mostly building little CLI apps and utilities to automate or streamline tasks so it fits well.

InfoQ: How steep is the learning curve for somebody starting from scratch with Go? What would your recommendations for a greenhorn be?

Francia: As I mentioned earlier, one of Gos biggest strengths is how easy it is to get started. People are often shocked, but its really true -- you can read and digest the entire Go spec in an afternoon. You can learn Go in a weekend. Within a couple of weeks, you can be proficient in writing Go. Some are even faster than this. If you come to the language with the experience of a few other languages, you can pick up Go very quickly.

When we meet with companies that have adopted Go, this is one of the most consistent things they tell us. Go is just so easy to pick up.

InfoQ: What would be the prerequisites for a Go newb?

Francia: Honestly, just time and interest. Go is for everyone. There are some great getting started resources on go.dev curated from across the community.

InfoQ: Gos evolution was surprising for everybody, including yourselves. Where do you see Go in the next decade?

Francia: If we look across the history of computer languages, the vast majority of the mainstream languages hit their stride between 1520 years in. This is true for Java, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, and many others. In the 13 years since its inception, Go has established a great foundation and is becoming a mainstream language. Go has distinguished itself as simultaneously providing high performance and high developer productivity.

Over the next 10 years, the massive shift towards cloud computing will only continue to accelerate. Companies want to reduce their time to market, decrease their operating costs, and increase their security. The first phase of this migration will largely be migrating their existing workloads to the cloud. Go has a key supporting role to play here providing API bridging to enable "legacy" workloads to run on cloud services. The second, much more significant phase, will be the industry shifting to take advantage of the unique cloud offerings, increasingly moving to cloud-native application development. In these cases, Go is the clear choice.

All cloud providers are writing their critical infrastructure in Go. As companies look to modernize, what company wouldnt want to use a safe and secure language, battle-tested over decades of critical workloads from some of the worlds largest companies, a language that will both reduce development costs and dramatically reduce their operating costs? In short, Go will be synonymous with cloud development, and cloud development will grow to be the overwhelmingly largest segment of the industry.

InfoQ: What should I have asked you but didnt?

Francia: It is impossible to talk about a language and not talk about its community. In a very real sense, Go exists because of the millions of people around the world writing in Go. The Go community is strong, welcoming, and diverse. This year, like everyone, the Go community had to adapt, and adapt it did. All around the world, Gophers came together and helped each other. 30 (virtual) conferences were held. Hundreds of meetups (mostly virtual) and significant growth in participation on /r/golang and Gopher slack. Two noteworthy new community-led programs were launched to help new Gophers play-with-go.dev and mentoring.gobridge.org.

We are grateful for all of the Gophers around the world who are contributing to the thriving ecosystem that is Go and look forward to the bright future of Go together.

Over the past 25 years, Steve Francia has built some of the most innovative and successful technologies and companies which have become the foundation of cloud computing, embraced by enterprises and developers all over the world. He is currently product and strategy lead for the Go Programming Language at Google. Previously, he held executive/director roles at Docker, MongoDB, and the Drupal Association leading engineering, product, developer relations, operations, and open source. Steve is the creator of Hugo, Cobra, Viper, spf13-vim, and many additional open-source projects, and he has the unique distinction of leading five of the worlds largest open-source projects. He is a published author, speaker, developer, mentor, and above all, a father of four. Outside of technology, Steve likes photography, travel, skateboarding, punk rock, and dystopian films.

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Go Language at 13 Years: Ecosystem, Evolution, and Future in Conversation with Steve Francia - InfoQ.com

Scientists have described the ways an ancient "crazy beast", which lived alongside dinosaurs on Madagascar approximately 66 million years ago, broke the rules of evolution.

Officially called Adalatherium hui, which literally translates from Malagasy - the national language of Madagascar - and Greek as "crazy beast", the mammal was discovered earlier this year and announced in the journal Nature.

Now a team of 14 international researchers have published their comprehensive 234-page monographic treatment examining the creature's bizarre evolutionary history and features.

It was about the size of a modern cat or an opossum, according to researchers at Stony Brook University in the US, and the skeleton is the most complete for any mammal ever discovered from this era in the southern hemisphere.

The animal is also surprisingly large for mammals of its time, which were believed to be about the size of mice, and is expected to have burrowed to hunt for food and avoid dinosaurs.

The 234-page treatment, consisting of seven separate chapters, is part of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) Memoir Series, a special yearly publication that provides a more in-depth treatment of the most significant vertebrate fossils.

Among the crazy beast's notable features are its spine, which contains more trunk vertebrae than most other mammals, its muscular hind limbs that were placed in sprawling position - similar to modern crocodiles - and its brawny sprinting front legs that were tucked underneath the body.

It had a strange gap in the bones at the top of its snout, and front teeth which - like a rabbit's - combined with back teeth which were "completely unlike those of any other known mammal, living or extinct".

"Knowing what we know about the skeletal anatomy of all living and extinct mammals, it is difficult to imagine that a mammal like Adalatherium could have evolved; it bends and even breaks a lot of rules," said Dr David Krause.

According to the scientists, if only the creature's back teeth had been found, the mystery of the animal would remain to this day.

Adalatherium's complete skeleton was found in rocks in Madagascar that were dated to near the end of the Cretaceous, roughly 66 million years ago.

By this time, Madagascar had already been an island separated from Africa for over 150 million years and from the Indian subcontinent for over 20 million years.

"Islands are the stuff of weirdness," says Dr Krause, "and there was therefore ample time for Adalatherium to develop its many extraordinarily peculiar features in isolation."

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Scientists describe 'crazy beast' that lived among dinosaurs and seems to break rules of evolution - Sky News

A skeleton of an island fox. Credit: University of Missouri

University of Missouri researcher adds to timeline of human evolution by studying an island fox.

Nearly two decades ago, a small-bodied human-like fossil, Homo floresiensis, was discovered on an island in Indonesia. Some scientists have credited the find, now nicknamed Hobbit, as representative of a human ancestor who developed dwarfed features after living on the island, while others suggest it represents a modern human suffering from some type of disease because of its distinct human-like face and small brain.

Colleen B. Young, a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Missouri, has always been naturally curious about the nature of the human footprint, or how humans impact their environments and vice versa. She believes the Hobbit adjusted from a longer-legged version of itself to meet the demands of an isolated, island environment.

Homo erectus, considered our recent ancestor, likely developed its long legs over time in order to increase its ability to walk long distances as its environment expanded, Young said. So, when humans arrived on that island in Indonesia and became isolated, their bodies once built for efficiency over long distances were probably no longer beneficial for their new environment. Instead, a smaller body size probably improved their lifestyle.

Bones of foxes used in analysis. From left to right: femur, tibia, radius, and humerus. Credit: University of Missouri

Young, who is working on her doctorate in biological anthropology in the College of Arts and Science, tested several popular assumptions about the characteristics of Homo floresiensis by comparing an island fox from Californias Channel Islands with its mainland U.S. relative, the gray fox. Young said upon arrival, the island fox underwent a 30% reduction in body size and developed smaller body features that are different than the mainland gray fox. She believes this change in body size was likely due to adjustments the island fox made to survive in its new, isolated environment.

The gray fox is a migratory, omnivorous animal, similar to our recent ancestors, Young said. This study indicates that animals living on islands that become smaller in size may also have distinct limbs and body features just because of their new island environment. Therefore, the distinctive body features on the small-bodied Homo floresiensis are probably products of evolving in an island environment, and not resulting from suffering from diseases.

Young said this animal model, which includes taking into account the surrounding ecosystem, can help scientists better understand the body size and limbs of Homo floresiensis, and how they relate to human ancestors. She thinks this model can also help open new doors in the field of anthropology.

The popular idea that every little difference in a fossil means the discovery of a new species is probably not as accurate as we once thought, Young said. There was probably a lot more variation going on throughout human evolution than we first thought, and these findings exemplify that variation can occur just by migrating to and living on an island. Were just starting to scratch the surface.

Static allometry of a small-bodied omnivore: body size and limb scaling of an island fox and inferences for Homo floresiensis was published in the Journal of Human Evolution. Funding was provided by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program grant.

Reference: Static allometry of a small-bodied omnivore: body size and limb scaling of an island fox and inferences for Homo floresiensis by Colleen B. Young, 1 November 2020, Journal of Human Evolution.DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2020.102899

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A New Clue to the Timeline of Human Evolution - SciTechDaily

Photo: Tap dancing, Iowa State College, 1942, by Jack Delano, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Editors note: We are delighted to celebrate the publication of the new bookA Mousetrap for Darwin: Michael J. Behe Answers His Critics. What follows is an excerpt, drawn from Irreducible Complexity: Obstacle to Darwinian Evolution,inDebating Design: From Darwin to DNA, eds. William Dembski and Michael Ruse (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Authors note: Whenever professors get together to talk, somebody eventually says, Hey, lets write a book on this! (We get to add it to our CVs.) ForDebating Design, the philosopher of biology Michael Ruse and design theorist William Dembski gathered contributions in 2004 from some true academic luminaries: geneticist Francisco Ayala, philosopher of science Elliott Sober, complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman, physicist Paul Davies, theologians John Polkinghorne and Richard Swinburne, and more. Also included were Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller and myself, taking shots at each other.

Rather than showing how their theory could handle the obstacle, some Darwinists are hoping to get around irreducible complexity by verbal tap dancing. At a debate between proponents and opponents of intelligent design sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History in April 2002, Kenneth Miller actually claimed (the transcript is available at the website of the National Center for Science Education1) that a mousetrap isnt irreducibly complex because subsets of a mousetrap, and even each individual part, could still function on their own. The holding bar of a mousetrap, Miller observed, could be used asa toothpick, so it still had a function outside the mousetrap. Any of the parts of the trap could be used as a paperweight, he continued, so they all had functions. And since any object that has mass can be a paperweight, then any part of anything has a function of its own. Presto! there is no such thing as irreducible complexity! Thus the acute problem for gradualism that any child can see in systems like the mousetrap is smoothly explained away.

Of course the facile explanation rests on a transparent fallacy, a brazen equivocation. Miller uses the word function in two different senses. Recall that the definition of irreducible complexity notes that removal of a part causes thesystemto effectively cease functioning. Without saying so, in his exposition Miller shifts the focus from the separate function of the intactsystemitself to the question of whether we can find a different use (or function) for some of theparts. However, if one removes a part from the mousetrap I pictured, it can no longer catch mice. Thesystemhas indeed effectively ceased functioning, so thesystemis irreducibly complex, just as I had written. Whats more, the functions that Miller glibly assigns to the parts paperweight, toothpick, key chain, etc. have little or nothing to do with the function of the system of catching mice (unlike the mousetrap series proposed by John McDonald), so they give us no clue as to how the systems function could arise gradually. Miller explained precisely nothing.

With the problem of the mousetrap behind him, Miller moved on to the bacterial flagellum and again resorted to the same fallacy. If nothing else, one has to admire the breathtaking audacity of verbally trying to turn another severe problem for Darwinism into an advantage. In recent years it has been shown that the bacterial flagellum is an even more sophisticated system than had been thought. Not only does it act as a rotary propulsion device; it also contains within itself an elegant mechanism to transport the proteins that make up the outer portion of the machine, from the inside of the cell to the outside.2Without blinking, Miller asserted that the flagellum is not irreducibly complex because some proteins of the flagellum could be missing and the remainder could still transport proteins, perhaps independently. (Proteins similar but not identical to some found in the flagellum occur in the type III secretory system of some bacteria.3) Again he was equivocating, switching the focus from the function of the system to act as a rotary propulsion machine to the ability of a subset of the system to transport proteins across a membrane. However, taking away the parts of the flagellum certainly destroys the ability of the system to act as a rotary propulsion machine, as I have argued. Thus, contra Miller, the flagellum is indeed irreducibly complex. Whats more, the function of transporting proteins has as little directly to do with the function of rotary propulsion as a toothpick has to do with a mousetrap. So discovering the supportive function of transporting proteins tells us precisely nothing about how Darwinian processes might have put together a rotary propulsion machine.

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Excerpt: An Obstacle to Darwinian Evolution - Discovery Institute

Punctuated Equilibrium (n) the hypothesis that evolutionary development is marked by isolated episodes of rapid speciation between long periods of little or no change

The idea of punctuated equilibrium, which Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge first posited in 1972, is that evolution, in fact, does not happen steadily on some uniform, predictable trajectory. The theory answered some lingering questions, such as why the fossil record doesnt seem to support Charles Darwins notion of gradualisma reality that puzzled Darwin in his lifetime as well. In fact, Gould and Eldredge argued that stasis is the natural order of the world, and evolution as we understand it only happens in rare cases. And when it happens, it happens fast.

Its safe to say that when their influential paper was published, they were not thinking about the sport of golf. And yet, how else can you explain 2020 on the PGA Tour if not by punctuated equilibrium? How else can you explain a year where so much happened, and so quickly?

When we talk about agents of change, it starts with Bryson DeChambeau. The revolution he instigated in 2020 is about more than just becoming a bigger version of himself. Its about more than his diet, or his workout regimen, or the clever techniques hes used to become one of the longest hitters in the sport with an impressively improving short game. These are all examples of the changes hes ushered in, and they are examples that may persist or may become outmoded when someone else has a better idea.

DeChambeaus true contribution is how he changed the paradigm. With one fell swoop, he changed not just how he approached the sport, but how everyone must now approach the sport. Speed training wasnt quite a thing until Bryson made it a thing. He already has a legion of imitators (and a legion of detractors, of course), and theyll be following his example in more than just lifting weights. DeChambeaus lasting legacy, even if he quit golf tomorrow, is that he has changed the way that a professional golfer must think about the game. It wasnt just about gaining more distance, but how to gain that distance in integrated manner that allows for sustained results and improvement beyond what many thought possible. Hes willing to try anything to achieve the ultimate goal of shooting low scores, and what seemed radical and perhaps even gimmicky at first now just seems necessary.

When we talk about sudden jumps, we have to talk about the evolution of youth. You might expect that an exciting group of young players emerge as serious competitors every year on the PGA Tour, but in fact it seems to happen in waves. The last wave emerged into prominence around 2014-15, headed by Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas and a few others who are now reaching 30, and those players and their elders continued to dominate for the next few years. Then, starting late last year and continuing into 2020, a three-pack of stellar young guns emerged: Collin Morikawa, Matthew Wolff and Viktor Hovland. I interviewed and wrote about all three at the Players Championship in March, just a day before the world came to a screeching halt, and each in their way was obviously exceptional. Then, when play resumed, Morikawa became the first to break through at a major with one of the greatest pressure shots in PGA Championship history:

Like DeChambeaus evolution, Morikawas success signified more than just a signature win for a young player. It was a sign of what he and Wolff, who was in contention at the PGA and finished runner-up at the U.S. Open, and Hovland are capable of, even in the most arduous circumstances. Hitting that shot, and winning the PGA Championship, signaled to the golf world that these young players arent just interesting novelty acts who might round into top form eventuallyin every way, physically, psychologically, and competitively, they are ready to compete with the best. That, too, is a sign. These are the heirs of Tiger, and what struck me when speaking to them was just how polished they are. Its a sign of the times; theyre trained to win, and theyre trained to deal with winning. That has not always been the normal state of events, but here we are. And in the last PGA Tour event of the year, at Mayakoba, it was too perfect that Hovland seized the title from the field with a bold birdie putt on the 18th hole:

In microcosm, you can see the sudden jumps play out in other big results, too, especially with Dustin Johnson leaping to the next stage in his legacy with a Masters win (leaving behind the Adam Scott/Justin Rose excellent players with one major tier in the rearview), and Jon Rahm turning potential into results with two huge wins and a brief stay at No. 1 in the world. Even Augusta National, by inviting Lee Elder to hit the ceremonial first tee shot in the spring of 2021, took an unexpected step away from the sadder aspects of its own history.

Of course, as with anything, we cant talk about 2020 without talking about COVID-19. Its the fundamental story of everyones year, from golf to literally any other arena you can name. On a societal level, it can feel like devolution; the very opposite of progress. But evolution happens in strange ways, and the PGA Tours reaction to the pandemic after an uncertain weekend at the Players Championship when everything changed is, paradoxically, one of the great examples of adaptation we had in the sports world. On a nuts-and-bolts level, the theory of evolution argues that changes within a species happen due to genetic mutations that confer an advantagein other words, happy accidents. The coronavirus was nothing if not a societal mutation, and not a beneficial one. But the response, which managed to bring golf back in a way that was relatively safe and catastrophe-free, represented its own kind of evolution in the flexibility of a large governing organization.

Life is only getting stranger, and while it would be nice to believe that a vaccine will bring our worries to an end, a better bet would be that the adaptability the tour has shown this year is a skill that might have to be demonstrated again, and possibly soon. To evolve into a league that is capable of such institutional agility might not have meant life-or-death, exactly, but it was critical at a critical time. And it could be again.

As a catch-all term, evolution isnt exactly synonymous with golf. In fact, the history of the sport has often been one of strenuously avoiding evolution, sometimes successfully, against the currents of society. In 2020, though, the floodgates broke on the course and off, and a longstanding equilibrium was dramatically punctuated. Whatever happens next, theres no going back.

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Professional golf was at the mercy of evolution in 2020 - GolfDigest.com

DR. KEN BRIDGES| Waxahachie Daily Light

Millions of people around the world are looking to Christmas in 2020 as a time of hope and look to the holiday as a turning of the page from one disastrous year into a brighter 2021.Though the day comes to a markedly different environment than the previous year,many of the old traditions will stay intact for many families.In theUnited States, Christmas traditions have changed steadily over the years; and millions still hold faithful to the original purpose of veneration of the birth of Christ and celebrating the message of peace and harmony.

Early Christians celebrated Easter more with the death and resurrection of Jesus as the embodiment of Christian ideals.However, by the fourth century AD, the birth of Jesus also began to be noted with special church observances also.However, it was a matter of some debate when it should be observed.Some marked the birth of Christ on March 28, while others noted November 18.Neither the Roman Empire nor Hebrew officials inJudeakept birth records, so there was no certainty as to the particular day.In the early centuries after the crucifixion of Christ, Christians faced brutal persecutions, torture, and executions for their faith, so the message became more important than the particular calendar day.

After the legalization of Christianity within theRoman Empire, Pope Julius I declared around AD 350 that December 25 would be the official observance, but it was only a special church service and not seen as a gift-giving occasion.The Christmas Eve mass or communion service is still an important Christmas tradition for many American families.

By the 16th century, Christmas slowly became more than a church service.The tradition of the Christmas tree originated inGermanyin the 1500s when candles were attached to evergreen trees. InGermanyespecially, the day became a celebration noted for singing, parties, feasts, and drinking. The Puritans who arrived inNew Englandin the early 1600s were appalled by such displays, which they considered sinful. As a result, Puritan leaders banned observances of Christmas well into the 18th century. InMassachusetts, Christmas was against the law for more than 20 years in the late 1600s.

It was knowledge of the differences by which New Englanders and Germans typically observed the day that inspired George Washington to cross the Delaware River on Christmas Night 1776 to stage a surprise attack on the Hessian outpost atTrenton,New Jersey. After a brutal series of losses that summer and fall,Washingtonknew he had to turn the war around. He knew the German mercenaries the British had hired to pursue them would be too distracted by their own Christmas parties to suspect an attack during winter. At dawn on December 26, he surprised and overwhelmed the exhausted and hungover Hessian revelers to change the course of history.

German settlers brought many Christmas traditions to theUnited States, particularly Christmas trees by the late 1700s and many notable Christmas carols, such as Silent Night were originally German.

But Christmas as a holiday emerged slowly.Louisianawas the first to declare Christmas a state holiday in 1837, and only a handful of states followed suit within the next few years. It did not become a federal holiday until 1870.

Even the tradition of exchanging gifts did not emerge quickly.However, the gift-giving tradition expanded rapidly in the 1820s and 1830s, with merchants quickly looking to capitalize on the holiday. Christmas trees began to be sold widely across the North in the 1850s, with the first electric Christmas lights sold in 1882, but many families did not have Christmas trees until the early 1900s and most ornaments were handmade.

Christmas is celebrated today even in non-Christian households as the spirit of giving and peace has transcended its original religious meaning for some. Far from the shopping crowds, Christmas still has a magical place in the heats of young and old alike.In a quiet moment, many remember that Christmas is still a time of generosity for others.And Christmas is still a time of peace in our hearts and in the world, as we are reminded of the gift of one precious life, of brotherhood, and of the harmony for which the holiday was born.

Dr. Ken Bridges is a writer, historian and native Texan. He holds a doctorate from the University of North Texas. Bridges can be reached by email at drkenbridges@gmail.com.

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Bridges: The evolution of Christmas as festival and holiday - Waxahachie Daily Light

Some mistakenly think of indie games as being frozen in a perpetual world of platformers. But advancements in visual and computational power have helped spark a recent renaissance among indie studios, which has resulted in an upswing in the diversity, quality, and execution of indie games.

In just a few short years, indie studios and lone developers have gone from making retro-inspired games for niche PC audiences to producing console hits that compete head-on with games produced by big studios. But whats driving this shift, and wheres it heading?

The major change has been the new readiness that exists among the console platforms to embrace and support small studios and help promote their games. As a result, we are seeing the traditional path of creating a game for a desktop device and then, if its successful, releasing it on console, starting to reverse, with studios starting new projects with a console release at the front of the queue.

The opening-up of the console channels represents a huge opportunity and incentive for indies, which has acted as a major catalyst for developers to raise standards across the board. That PlayStation decided to include indie game Bugsnax among its PS5 launch titles further illustrates this blossoming relationship. But while Bugsnax might be free for PS Plus members to download, its important to note that many premium indie games are now shifting similar units to titles from major publishers. For example, Forager on Steam alone has sold over 600,000 copies, which is a very respectable return.

Its important to mention the role of the game engines in this. In recent years, many of the tools and engines have been striving to make their features more and more accessible to noncoders and young people, thus bringing new communities and talent into the indie space, as young people who try it out are getting further and carrying it on.

As a consequence of being more accessible, weve seen the adoption of game design by teachers into high school curricula, to support the learning of computing, problem-solving, and creativity; and colleges using game engines in the teaching of art. This has helped to attract many more young people into games, causing a huge influx of young people with game design experience and fantastic creative energy who are looking to bring their own ingenuity to the indie game making process.

Above: Hades is a game of the year contender.

Image Credit: Steam

Over the last year or so, Ive been absolutely amazed by the level of intricacy and beauty that Ive seen in some of the games being produced by small indie studios and lone wolf developers. This intricacy simply wasnt possible a few years ago.

Im talking about studios such as HopFrog, whose 8-bit inspired adventure gameForager beat over 300 games from 30-plus countries to be voted GameMaker Best Game of 2020. Then youve got Hades, by Supergiant Games, a beautifully deep and expansive game nominated alongside triple-A games like Final Fantasy VII Remake for Game of the Year.

Youve also got the excellent battle royale game Fall Guys by Media Tonic, the most downloaded PS Plus game ever and one which has sold over 7 million units on Steam. Some of the games in development from first-time developers, such as Sbug Games Webbed and Very Positives Overcrowd, display exceptional elegance and execution.

One studio thats continuing on a major upward trajectory is Butterscotch Shenanigans. Their latest release, Levelhead, is a classic example of a game that has managed to harness the latest tools and advanced capabilities to create something totally ambitious and truly inspiring. Levelhead allows players to build whatever they want, and we took that very seriously when it came to just how many items players could cram into a level, said Butterscotch cofounder Sam Coster. Rather than have a restricted total set players could use per level, we optimized both the art (traditional 2D animated creatures and objects) and the games code to make the biggest, most complicated levels possible. Players have returned the favor by reproducing classic games, creating musical compositions, and building entire miniature RPGs.

The range and diversity of indie games that are available now has given developers a new sense of freedom to zero in on strong creative ideas and storytelling, rather than being predominantly hung up with aesthetics. Chimeric Games lead developer Jeffrey Nielson, whose space combat RPGNova Drift was one of our Best Game finalists, believes that indie games have finally emerged from the dark age, where every project was obsessed with 3D roaming cameras, whether or not it was the right call for that game. 3D isnt groundbreaking or a mandate anymore, its just another tool in the toolbox, says a relieved Nielson. Now that graphics serve the creative vision, and not the other way around, we can continue where we left off decades ago as there is still so much to explore in the 2D game-space. Once again, were starting to see beautiful traditional mediums make their way into gaming and far greater diversity in both perspective and presentation.

Above: Nothing like a campfire.

Image Credit: Epic Games Store

Its clear from the studios I speak with that theres a huge amount of energy, creativity, and optimism coursing through the indie community right now. The big question is, where is the indie games market heading?

I believe that player demand and expectation will be at the heart of the change that we expect to see in the future. Simple and fun gameplay shouldnt be at the expense of visual effects. The availability of easy-to-use tools to create and manipulate animations, and capabilities such as shaders and particles, will make these more advanced techniques used more widely in the Indie space.

In GameMaker, coder-designed effects will be less synonymous with the genre as we see more artists getting their hands dirty in game engines, with more collaboration between coders and artists in indie projects. By being more hands-on with the game engine, artists will have more control over the implementation of their work, and so aesthetic quality will be significantly enhanced.

The opening up of consoles to indie developers means that we expect to continue to see more of a console-first approach by indie developers in the coming months. We have recently experienced this with new titles from PC-focused developers who are talking about console at inception, not as a final destination for their game.

The implications of a console-first approach are twofold for indie games. The need for polish is clear, and it shows the capability of indie studios to live up to this expectation. The other implication is the need to support complexity and depth in indie games. This isnt about the graceful swan, its the underwater bit. Complex user inputs, big storytelling, and immersive gameplay require a lot of behind-the-scenes organization and capability, and we see the advances in game aesthetics leading to more advanced indie games which will require more from the GameMaker engine, and so these are going to be future challenges for us.

But for the players, the futures bright, as indie creativity will be less likely to be at a compromise on quality.

Stuart Poole is the general manager of YoYo Games, the creator of the GameMaker Studio 2 game engine.

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The renaissance and evolution of indie games - VentureBeat

George M. Thomas|Akron Beacon Journal

'Ma Rainey' actor Glynn Turman looks for the dignity in his portrayals

Actor Glynn Turman talks about appearing in "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" and working with the late Chadwick Boseman.

George M. Thomas, Akron Beacon Journal

Ma Rainey a captivating character study. xxxD

Some may not know the name, but its a guarantee they know actor Glynn Turmans face due to a career thats spanned more than 50 years on stage, television and movie screens.

Turman, whose film career dates back to 1971, has lived and acted long enough to see the television and film industries evolve to the point where Netflix the streaming service that releases his latest piece of work, Ma Raineys Black Bottom recognizes the importance of Black voices and stories and has turned one of playwright August Wilsons seminal works into a captivating character study debuting Friday. Its already had a limited run in theaters.

He sees the difference from the days when he found a leading role in the Blaxploitation horror flick J.Ds Revenge, a film about ghostly possession.

J.D. Walker, the boss talker, the water walker, he said smiling when asked about that juncture in his career.

Black actors have walked a significant path since those days, and hes relishing the progress.

I'm very impressed with all the work that we're doing as the young people are getting behind the scenes, he said. As show runners, as writers, as directors, as producers, as people with content that they bring to the networks, in positions as part of the networks. That was what the fight was back then in the days that we're talking about.

Turman understood back then the power was held behind the scenes.

That's what we were wanting. We had enough in front of the camera. We had enough actors and actresses, but we didn't have anyone who could control the narrative, he said. And [controlling] the narrativeis when you make the impression and the depth and change the face of the world, the way that the world looks at you.

Controlling that narrative allows stories such as Moonlight, directed by Barry Jenkins, and Selma, helmed by Ava DuVernay, to see the inside of screen. A service such as Netflix, which has demonstrated a commitment to working with Black creatives, continues the evolution with the release of Ma Rainey, which is directed by George C. Wolfe.

Set on a hot summer day in a Chicago recording studio before eventual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum inductee Ma Rainey (played by Viola Davis) conquers the recording medium, it explores the social and economic plight of Rainey and her band Levee (Chadwick Boseman), Cutler (Colman Domingo), Slow Drag (Michael Potts) and Toledo (Turman) in the 1920s.

Toledo, a worldly, wise, dignified and intelligentpiano player, represents the kind of character that embodies much of Turmans work, be it the Army colonel in The Cosby Show spinoff A Different World or Doctor Senator, the consigliere of a Black organized crime family in 1950s Kansas City in the most recent iteration of the TV series Fargo.

Many of his portrayals represent complicated characters who have much more than initially can be seen percolating beneath the surface. Such was the case for Doctor Senator, a career criminal who possessed all the character traits previously mentioned. Its a role Turman was drawn to because of his fondness for Fargo the film and its sensibilities that permeate four seasons of the series.

I look for the positive in him and the dignity in him, the thing that makes him accessible, he said. And I find that those qualities are inherent in most people to some degree. And I try to find that degree to which that is believable, in this particular character that I'm playing.

Ma Rainey came to him after Denzel Washington, who is in the process of producing 10 August Wilson works for the screen the first having been Fences, which won Davis an Oscar in 2017 for best supporting actress saw him in a play at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. Washington told him to stand by and stay ready.

The result: another complex character and nuanced performance in Ma Rainey. Part peacemaker, part wise man, yet not willing to take anyones guff, Toledo tries to counsel Bosemans Levee, a young, headstrong know-it-all who is just looking to find his place in America, but doesnt understand the forces the overt bigotry and racism that hes working against. Some of the films best moments feature Boseman, who tragically died recently after an undisclosed battle with colon cancer, squaring off against Colman and Toledo.

Wolfe winds the tension up in those moments, but he takes Wilsons narrative and does so with its broader themes in mind. There exist different ways to interpret Ma Rainey and Wilsons words, including seeing it as a rumination on the issues that still haunt the Black community. Turman sees it as an exploration of religiosity in the community.

I think for me, what all this has done, is taking all of those characters and taking a point of view, an issue of faith and belief. In other words, Colman, God is everything to Colman's character, Turman said. He believes, he's a believer in his God, Don't you curse my God. He's willing to go to battle for that to me. On Chadwick's character, Levee's character, he curses God, as a result of his experience with him. He doubts God. He curses him and tells God, "I don't give a s--t about you.

Given the role religion has played in the Black community since slavery, the scene can be viewed as controversial and incendiary, but it also produces one of the most powerful scenes likely put on film in the past year as Levees monologue directed at God features a transcendent moment by Boseman thats made all the more poignant and tragic given what was learned after the film wrapped.

That scene, when he was doing that, he had a block that he wasn't able to really go past as an actor. He was having , Turman said looking for the words. Whatever. I don't know what was in his head, but it may have had to do with where he was at personally as well.

He gave Domingo credit for helping get Boseman to a place where he could release what felt like every ounce of his soul.

And Colman would not let him off the hook. Colman, even by going off script, encouraged him to, with a grit meters type of conviction, to go on. Keep going. Don't stop. What is it you're trying to say? And he's literally saying this to Chadwick, as Chadwick was struggling with it, he said. And he said, No, don't you yell, Cut. Don't you yell cut. Don't yell cut.Keep the cameras on. Keep the cameras rolling. What? What is it? And then Chadwick went through that scene and took it to that great place that it went. And we were all in shock and in awe and everything.

George M. Thomas dabbles in movies and television for the Beacon Journal. Reach him at gthomas@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @ByGeorgeThomas

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More than 50 years into his career, Glynn Turman appreciates evolution of film, TV - Akron Beacon Journal