Category Archives: Evolution

June 27, 2017 A new study using 10-year-old samples finds parallels between individual and global flu evolution patterns. Credit: Kim Carney / Fred Hutch News Service

A new study has found that flu evolution within some individuals can hint at the virus's eventual evolutionary course worldwide.

Samples taken more than 10 years ago from people with unusually long flu infectionsand analyzed recently using modern genome sequencing methodsrevealed certain viral changes that matched global flu evolution trends several years later.

The study, published in the journal eLife, tracked how flu evolved over time in four people who were especially vulnerable to unusually severe viral infections: bone marrow transplant patients. For people with healthy immune systems, a typical flu infection lasts about a week, said Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center evolutionary biologist and doctoral student Katherine Xue, first author on the study. So she and her colleagues at the Hutch, Seattle Children's Research Institute and the University of Washington studied viruses that originated from patients who received transplants and developed severe flu infections that lasted two or more months.

These four patients were drawn from a group of nearly 500 transplant recipients who participated in a previous study led by Fred Hutch infectious disease researcher Dr. Michael Boeckh, also a co-author on Tuesday's study. That large study began in 2005 to improve understanding about the sometimes devastating impact of respiratory viruses in this vulnerable populationin fact, two of the four patients whose samples were analyzed in the current study went on to die of their infections.

Knowing what the flu virus does in a single infected person is important, Xue said, but it's difficult to study because the typical flu infection is so short. Most research tracks how the virus changes on a global rather than on an individual level.

"We know that flu changes really quickly, from year to year," said Xue, who is also a student in the University of Washington's genome sciences department. "All that evolution has to start somewhere. It has to start with individual mutations that arise within people while they're sick."

The flu's limited evolutionary options

The flu virus's rapid evolution is the reason we need a new flu vaccine every year. Through infections or vaccination, our immune systems build up cellular memories of past flu encounters, driving the virus to mutate so it can get around that immune blockade to continue infecting the same people year after year, said Fred Hutch evolutionary biologist and senior author on the paper Dr. Jesse Bloom.

But the virus is limited in its evolutionary potential. Mutations happen at random, and most that crop up will break or weaken the virus; only a handful of those changes allow the flu to slip past well-armed immune systems.

The researchers used a modern genetic sequencing technique, known as deep sequencing, to capture the complete genetic information from the thousands of different viral particles contained in a single patient's sample. They then followed the viruses as they changed from week to week during the patients' long infections. Some viral mutations petered out, but some "fixed" in each patient, meaning strains carrying that mutation eventually took over the entire population of viruses in that person's body. When a mutation fixes, that ensures the next person infected will also get that particular flu strain.

When they first started their analysis, they weren't expecting to find similarities between the four patients, Xue said. Their study had a more general aim: to understand how the flu evolves in an individual person. But they were surprised to find that some of the same mutations fixed in more than one patient. And they knew from other teams' research studying the global evolution of flu that some of those mutations would go on to take over the worldwide population as well, years after the strains had fixed in the cancer patients.

That doesn't mean that the same viral strains that later swept the world got their start in these few patients, Bloom said. Rather, it points to the few evolutionary paths available to get around people's immune systems.

"The viruses keep hitting on a relatively small number of solutions to this problem they face," Bloom said. "Mutations that [eventually] spread around the world come up over and over."

What would it take to build a flu forecast?

The researchers think the cancer patients' flu evolution predated the virus's global changes by so many years in part because these four people had such long infections. With a standard, weeklong infection, the virus has less of a chance to evolve because only a few hundred viruses out of the millions present in one person's body are transmitted to the next infected person, Xue said.

Those short infections and that transmission bottleneck lead to a "stop and start process of evolution," she said. In effect, the virus's evolution may be accelerated in patients with longer infections.

But it's also possible that favorable viral mutations appear in individual people years before they are able to take over the entire world's population of viruses. And that possibility hints that individual infections could, one day, be used to forecast flu's global evolution.

Predicting the mutations that take over the world would improve vaccine design, Xue said. Currently, researchers associated with the World Health Organization pick flu strains to include in each year's vaccine about 9 months before the next flu season starts, allowing sufficient time for vaccine production. It's a sophisticated and well-researched process, but it doesn't always capture the correct strains for a given flu season. Methods to better predict which viral strains will dominate each year could result in more effective vaccines.

The research team's next step is to understand whether they can see these early hints of global viral evolution in people with average-length infections. That will take a lot more than just four infections, Xue said. But the data is already out there, ready to be analyzed. Through the WHO's monitoring efforts, thousands of flu samples are taken around the world every year, and, increasingly, those samples are analyzed with the same deep sequencing methods that would allow such detailed analyses.

A unique group of four

The samples used in the study don't reflect the typical flu infectionbut they do underscore the importance of better understanding the virus. Influenza can be deadly for transplant patients. Because their immune systems can take up to a year to rebound after the procedure, those who undergo transplants are especially susceptible to easily transmittedand often mildinfections like the common cold and flu.

Normally, doctors do not bother tracking and analyzing colds and flu in healthy people. But at Fred Hutch's clinical care partner Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and many other cancer centers, patients who come down with a respiratory virus are followed very carefully because of the danger these infections pose. Colds and flu can lead to pneumonia and even death in many transplant patients.

In the original study, the patient volunteers, who all received transplants at SCCA, donated weekly swabs from their nose and mouth for as long as their infections lasted. With the volunteers' consent, extra material from those samples was stored in Fred Hutch freezersin case it could be useful for future research.

"We're incredibly grateful that these people who are undergoing really difficult treatments are still willing to participate in studies," Xue said. "The original study was conducted 10 years ago, and now that we have new methods, some of these original samples are bearing fruit in a way that we could never have imagined."

Dr. Steven Pergam, co-author on the study and a Fred Hutch infectious disease researcher and director of Infection Prevention at SCCA, also highlighted the patients' contributions to this study. Understanding how the virus affects this small group has led to knowledge that could impact anyone at risk from the flu, he said.

"These patients who are contributing samples are most at risk for complications from the flu," Pergam said. "It's a real testament to the patients who are willing to do this kind of research."

Next up, Xue and Bloom are interested in understanding how patients' immune systems change in response to an evolving virus. They would be able to pursue that approach using blood samples donated by the same patients whose viral samples they studied.

Such research could lay the groundwork for better treatment options for his patients at the SCCA, Pergam said.

"We need new treatments; we need better options for therapy; we need better vaccines to prevent patients from developing flu," he said. "This basic science work is incredibly valuable."

Explore further: Common cold can be surprisingly dangerous for transplant patients

More information: Katherine S Xue et al. Parallel evolution of influenza across multiple spatiotemporal scales, eLife (2017). DOI: 10.7554/eLife.26875

Angela P. Campbell et al. Clinical Outcomes Associated With Respiratory Virus Detection Before Allogeneic Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant, Clinical Infectious Diseases (2015). DOI: 10.1093/cid/civ272

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What we can learn about global flu evolution from one person's infection - Medical Xpress

Vanity Fair

Serena Williams's Style Evolution: From Tennis Phenom to Fashion Insider Vanity Fair Serena Williams is one of the greatest athletes to ever hit a tennis court, and she's also steadily become a formidable force in fashion, both on and off the court. The Vanity Fair cover star is a front row mainstay at fashion shows all over the world ... 'But Seriously,' Tennis Great John McEnroe Says He's Seeking 'Inner Peace'NPR all 675 news articles »

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Serena Williams's Style Evolution: From Tennis Phenom to Fashion Insider - Vanity Fair

A LEAP IN EVOLUTION OF PERFORMANCE

Innovation and quality are part of Edges DNA. The Evolution has no peer in the marketplace and is designed for WOW! As an in-cabin controller and programmer, the Evolution is the ultimate package!

The Evolution reprograms your vehicles stock computer. It resides in the cab with one simple cable connection to the OBDII (diagnostic) port. The Evolution is used to save the stock files from the vehicles computer and then upload the Edge calibrations into the vehicles computer. This amazing product is available for both gas and diesel pickups and SUVs. This product comes with multiple power levels custom tuned by a whole team of engineers, and can be installed in minutes without ever popping the hood. The Evolution greatly increases horsepower and torque. Not only does it re-tune your vehicle, it stays mounted in the cab and features real-time, monitoring of vital engine data for a complete gauge package.

If youre looking for a product to improve throttle response, that extra power when towing, race down the track, increase fuel economy, or to just improve the overall driveability of your truck then the Evolution is a great options. Not only do you get these increase performance features but you get a monitor that offers a clean simple solution for gauges like EGT (exhaust gas temperature), Boost readings, transmission temp, load percent, percentage of fuel left, and more with the expandability to even add more with our EAS (expandable accessory system). We didnt stop there. Get the CTS2 version and add our backup camera or control your 12 volt power accessories with our Power Switch connector. Want to learn more for your truck then configure your vehicle and view all the parameters available to monitor, horsepower and torque gains, and all the custom options like tire size calibration.

Evolution Features:

GAUGES* The EvolutionCSs or CTSs monitor the unit is a comprehensive gauge package that stays mounted in the cab of the truck and displays dozens of available parameters at a time. Monitor vital engine data, such as EGTs*, engine coolant temperature, transmission fluid temperature, engine oil temperature, and RPM, to name a few.

SAFETY FEATURES User-Adjustable Audible Alert Settings

PERFORMANCE TESTING, ALERTS AND RECORDSview video Performs and records 0-60 and quarter-mile times; quarter-mile MPH; peak engine temperature, RPM, speed and transmission temperature values. Sounds audible alerts when user-defined values are reached and automatically records the highest value of key parameters.

0-60 MPH Performance Test Quarter-Mile Performance Test Restore Defaults Option

INTERNET UPDATEABLE A USB cable is included with the unit so that the EvolutionCS2 and CTS2 units can be updated via the Internet to include the latest calibration files.

EXPANDABLE (items sold separately) Compatible with optional ExpandableAccessory System (EAS) to allow users to connect multiple, additional accessories Compatible with optional EGT pyrometer for engine protection

BACK-UP CAMERA (sold separately) TheEvolutionCTS2 features a built-in video port that allows users to connect the state-of-the-art Edge back-up camera directly to the CTS2 unit.

MYSTYLETM SOFTWARE (included)view video MyStyleTM software that allows users to choose from a variety of Edge custom backgrounds or simply upload an image of your choice, size, crop and save to your CS2 or CTS2 unit for the ultimate in customizability.

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Evolution CS2 California Diesel Edition 85301 (Ford, GMC, Chevrolet, Dodge, Ram)

Evolution CS2 Gas 85350(Ford, GMC, Chevrolet, Dodge, Ram)

Evolution CTS2 Diesel 85400(Ford, GMC, Chevrolet, Dodge, Ram)

Evolution CTS2 California Diesel Edition 85401 (Ford, GMC, Chevrolet, Dodge, Ram)

Evolution CTS2 Gas 85450(Ford, GMC, Chevrolet, Dodge, Ram)

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Evolution Edge Products

The Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution is a car that drove straight from Japan, through our TV screens, punched the Subaru WRX STI in the face, and quickly disappeared into oblivion.

The Lancer Evo X Final Edition is old news down to everything, save for the silly badges that

When it finally arrived in the U.S. in 2003 after the American people begged on their knees for yearsand after the Subaru WRX proved a business case could be made for such a movethe cars popularity was already through the roof thanks to Gran Turismo, Paul Walker and rallying.

But by the time the car sadly left us last year, the story turned into a tragedy. Mitsubishis rally car for the road hadnt received a facelift in almost a decade, its drivetrain was outgunned by newer, turbocharged, all-wheel-drive machines like the Volkswagen Golf R and Ford Focus RS, and the entire Mitsubishi brand was collapsing from lack of new car development.

And now the Evo is dead.

I paid respects to its legacy by going back to where the Evo started in Americawith the Evo VIII, the first one sold on our shores. And Im here to tell you why the cars demise still causes an unfilled void in todays automotive landscape.

(Full disclosure: The opportunity to drive a Lancer Evo VIII GSR came from an old high-school friend, and Canadian Jalopnik reader who had one imported from Ohio.)

Introduced in Japan in 1992 as a homologation special designed for Group A racing, the first Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution was a humble, compact sedan that inherited the larger, 2.0-liter, turbocharged four and all-wheel-drive system from the Galant VR-4 rally car. Think of it as the Japanese approach to the muscle car: small car gets big engine and some go-fast goodies.

Because the Lancer was smaller and lighter than the Galant, it proved to be the more logical choice for racing, which is why it was chosen over the Galant as Mitsubishis competition car.

Throughout its 14-year run, the Lancer Evo went through a total of 10 generations, incrementally evolving at each variant, coming out stronger and more competent each time.

The cars core specifications stayed pretty much intact for each generation; it was always powered by a 2.0-liter turbo engine, was always all-wheel-drive, and was always around 300 horsepower. Or a lot more, in certain special cases.

The one you see here, sold from 2003 to 2005, had a total power output, of 271 HP and 273 lb-ft of torque. All of it was sent to the ground using a torque-splitting all-wheel-drive system via a five-speed manual transmission.

The Evo distinguished itself from a normal Lancer by having a more aggressive front bumper, which housed a protruding front-mounted intercooler, a set of xenon HID headlights, an aluminium vented hood and roof, bulging fender flares, optional Bilstein shocks, Brembo brakes, a massive carbon fiber rear wing, Recaro racing seats and a set of 17-inch Enkei wheels.

Massively fortified from the base of its windshield all the way to its suspension attachment points using extra spot welds and intensive steel bracing, the Evo VIII was an all-weather, hyper-solid, supercar-slaying grocery-getter that could rocket out of the hole and onto 60 mph in a claimed 5.1 seconds.

The Evo was the forbidden fruit Americans had drooled over for more than a decade. This generation, the VIII, was the one they could finally feast on for themselves.

It also appeared during a sport compact car boom that was dominated by the Subaru WRX, the Dodge SRT4 and a few othersfew of which were as capableat the time. Plus, both of those cars were selling like crazy, so Mitsubishi wanted a piece of that pie too.

Finally, right after the Evos launch, Subaru announced that it would drop a 300-horsepower STI bombshell. America was suddenly introduced to a new generation of performance cars, and hadnt witnessed a rivalry this close since Camaro vs. Mustang.

It was a rad time to be alive.

Our Canadian friend Sbastien wanted an Evo VIII so badly that when he found out the car was only available to Americans (Canada only got the Evo in 2008), he did what any good Jalop would, and imported one himself from Ohio via Ebay. Since the base Lancer was already sold in Canada, he figured registering an Evo would be a piece of cake.

Turns out he was right.

Except for a requirement to fit daylight running lights onto the car, Sb could finally legally drive his unicorn in the land of the Timbit alongside the more common WRX STI.

His example is clean and has never seen winter, which may seem odd for an all-wheel-drive, turbocharged weather-conquering tool that lives in Canada, but thats actually why the car still looks mint after all these years.

Its also entirely stock, which is rare, all the way down to the period-correct Enkei wheels. His wheels. Theyre period-correct.

Except for a beefier, aftermarket intercooler, you know, for better cooling, all mechanical components on this Evo were left intact.

Spotting a 24-year-old sport compact car after your eye has gotten accustomed to the more modern offerings reveals how much that segment has changed over the years.

Todays factory tuned small cars like say, a Focus RS or a Civic Type R look like they were engineered from the ground up as true performance machines, with their performance baked into their original design.

The Evo VIII, on the other hand, looks like an average Lancer shitbox with a full battalion of branded performance parts glued on. It isnt really a pretty car.

Also: tiny button to spray water onto the intercooler.

But you have to admire the cars athleticism. It has a nice, purposeful demeanor thanks to a wide track, aggressive stance, gigantic rear wing and the fact that its mechanical components seem to want to escape the car through all available orifices.

Like a bodybuilder eating a bowl of cereal filled with creatine in the morning, the Evo is all muscle, even at rest.

Oh my god, this interior looks and feels cheap. Its funny, because Mitsubishi actually tried to spice up the cabin to justify the high sales price with softer materials to make the car feel more upscale.

They totally failed. Theres also absolutely no styling in there whatsoever. And those added gauges are a joke. I was sure they were aftermarket until I saw the tiny Mitsubishi logo inside them.

Otherwise, the Evo has a boring and ugly Lancer dashboard. Even more so than the slightly more premium Evos that followed, this car is thoroughly a shitty economy sedan inside.

Theres also a large, horizontal slab of carbon fiber that occupies all the space in the rearview mirror.

Oh wait, thats the wing.

And theres bonkers turbo lag. I thought the Volkswagen Golf R was bad, but it turns out the torque curve in that car is a magic carpet next to the Evo VIIIs. Floor it andnothingnothingthen swwwwooooosh!there she goes.

Dont get me wrong, when that boost kicks in, the car is fast and immensely fun. But you sense that the car would be useless without that turbo.

Its a Lancer, so its small, somewhat spacious and easy to park. Theres also a decent-sized bench back there, so you can fit a baby or a few bros. And theres a useful trunk. Sure, its a little less cavernous than in a normal Lancer because of that all-wheel-drive system under there, but itll swallow a full grocery order no sweat. Or a couple of golf bags.

Because of course, every Evo owner plays golf.

The Recaros are kind of hard to live with and not all that comfortable for long rides. They also take up a lot of space, as if they were an afterthought. Unless youve got the hands of a hobbit, good luck grabbing your phone or some pocket change if they fall between the seat and the door.

Finally: tiny little gas tank. This is a notorious problem with the Evo VIII, which is why many owners opt for a larger reservoir. Sb is lucky to get 200 miles with a full tank.

Other than those minor gripes, Id daily an Evo VIII.

Oh yes. All the fast. All the loud. All the legend.

The clutch is heavy and bites hard. Release it and youll hear a light thunk emitted from the drivetrain. You hear the driveshaft quietly doing its thing from underneath you as youre pushing the car hard. The engine whines, growls, and chirps along the way. The massive performance brakes squeak. You can actually hear the wastegate evacuating unused exhaust gases. Whoooshhhh.

Did you add a blow-off valve, Sb? I asked as we rocketed through the countryside in the rally-bred econobox.

Nope. Thats all stock, he replied.

What a glorious, addictive, Group A-appropriate sound. The Evo, even in road-legal form, feels every bit like a rally car. Its loud, obnoxious, running around with its middle finger in the air all the time. What an admirable thing this car.

While hooning, the Recaros suddenly make sense. They hold you firmly in place as the car generates massive cornering gs.

The tall manual shifter is kind of notchy. Lets just say it gets the job done. But the power. Oh my lord, the power. Once all 18 psi of boost kick in at around 3,500 RPM, the Evo is fast as hell, pulls strong and revs freely all the way to the limiter.

The shocks, which are not the optional Bilstein, are basically made out of rock. Stiff as hell. This isnt a compliant car, but one that focuses on getting around that bend with utmost efficiency.

Theres some understeer, normal, being a front-biased all-wheel-drive car. But play with the brakes and the gas a bit and the car transitions smoothly into light oversteer.

Hit that brake pedal and those massive Brembos will rip your face off and splatter it all over the windshield. And that tiny Momo steering wheel feels light, turns quickly and gives you plenty of confidence during heavy cornering loads.

As I was plowing through a sinuous, bumpy, pothole-filled Qubec road, sitting upright in what is essentially a little box with large windows, ripping through the gears, pretending to be a pro rally driver, I exclaimed a large - Ha! - incapable of keeping a straight face from the Evos cartoonish execution of performance.

What an adorable, fast, unrefined and totally bonkers little machine.

Sb paid $18,000 USD for his three years ago. Thats not bad for a car that sold for $30,000 in 2003. And considering that the Evo VIII could still brawl with a Golf R or a current STI on a track, I say paying $18 grand makes the car a fabulous value.

The Evo retains a better resale value than an STI, so a good bargain is hard to find. Good luck finding one in good shape and without mods of some kind. Plus, theres something about a 14-year-old turbocharged Mitsubishi that should give all but the mist hardcore mechanic some pause.

And now that the car is gone, expect its value to increase considerably in the years to come. Its kind of an automotive investment now, and the Evo VIII will be especially sought after for being the first example to have been sold in America.

Some will argue that with the presence of better turbo all-wheel-drive machines aroundthe Focus RS, for examplethe Lancer Evolution wont be missed.

I beg to differ.

Unlike some of todays sport compacts, the Evo was much more than a marketing exercise. It was the fruit of an entire carmakers racing development and research encapsulated inside a dorky economy car body. It came from a relatively small company that didnt have a massive budget to develop a performance car, and that shows inside.

What it had instead was a talented group of engineers who managed to put together one of the most iconic purpose-built performance machines of all time.

The Evo was the underdog that kicked everyones ass. It was another one of those cool cars that we love because it never apologized for what it was. There simply cannot be a substitute for the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution.

William Clavey is an automotive journalist from Montral, Qubec, Canada. He runs claveyscorner.com.

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The Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VIII Is The Kind Of Crazy No One ... - Jalopnik

NRL: Manly have beaten Cronulla in the NRL.

Marty Taupau is at his rampaging best.

YOU used to have the feeling whatever Martin Taupau was delivering, he always had the ability to give you just that little bit more.

The 27-year-old started his NRL career with the Bulldogs but rose to prominence in a two-year stint with the Wests Tigers that concluded at the end of 2015. The 1.9m, 112kg giant became a cult figure at the club for his hard running and big hitting.

But despite the undoubted potential, Taupau was always just a whisker away from being the full package. He was a damn good footy player nobodys disputing that but he wasnt the fearsome wrecking ball his frame allows for as often as he should have been.

There were signs the same shortcomings that prevented him from stepping up from regular NRL player to genuine matchwinner would plague him again when he joined Manly in 2016. He knocked Jack Bird out with a high shot early on that year and later copped a three-match ban for a dangerous throw before the season had even hit the halfway mark.

The Sea Eagles may have been regretting luring the big bopper to the northern beaches on a four-year deal later extended to keep him at the club until 2020 if he was only going to be playing two years worth of games due to suspension.

But Taupau has already started repaying Manlys faith. Never was that more evident than in his sides 35-18 thumping of defending premiers Cronulla on Sunday afternoon.

The rampaging front-rower has started to destroy opposition teams like everyone knew he could, but has rarely seen on a consistent basis. Taupau ran 17 times for approximately 220m in the Shire on Sunday. He recorded five offloads and three tackle busts.

He was immense from the opening whistle, and people stood up and took notice.

Martin Taupau is carrying a heavy load.Source:AAP

Their opening set just set the trend, Marty Taupau had a couple of touches early and boy they were powerful, NSW legend Peter Sterling said on Triple Ms Dead Set Legends.

Ex-Queensland captain Gorden Tallis nicknamed the Raging Bull in his playing days knows all about unleashing the aggression needed to dominate on an NRL paddock, and he saw plenty of rage in Taupau last weekend.

His second carry was a 20m carry going through the Cronulla forward pack. I think it was five offloads, 220-odd metres and 15 or 16 runs. He was absolutely devastating yesterday, Tallis said on Fox Sports program Monday Night with Matty Johns.

He gave the guys like (halfback) Daly Cherry-Evans and (five-eighth) Blake Green the room to move.

Matty Johns called the Manly giants improved mobility since he traded Concord for Narrabeen unbelievable.

Do you know what the big turnaround has been? Watching him at the Tigers he had that size and power but whats improved at Manly is his mobility and footwork. Its unbelievable, Johns said.

And as important as his work with the ball has been, its his work without it in defence and with his discipline thats impressed former Kangaroo Nathan Hindmarsh most.

Hes got the crap out of his game as well. He had a bit of crap it was a bit like (Rooster) Jared Waerea-Hargreaves when he first came onto the scene a little bit of pushing and shoving and wanting to start stuff, Hindmarsh said.

But now what hes doing is hes just running the ball as hard as he can and his defence has improved out of sight. Instead of trying to whack everyone all the time hes making proper tackles.

Taupaus starting to deliver on his potential.Source:AAP

And the numbers back up Taupaus evolution from hit-man to go-to man.

In 11 games this season, the New Zealand international averages more than 181m a game. Only two other Manly forwards average more than 100m a game Addin Fonua-Blake (102.5m per game) and Jake Trbojevic (137m per game). On average, Taupau makes the same amount of ground in a game as fullback Tom Trbojevic.

He also averages nearly five tackle breaks per game. Only one other Sea Eagle (Akuila Uate) averages four or more.

Taupaus work doesnt end when he hits the defensive line. He averages 4.2 offloads per game, while the next best is Curtis Sironen along with Lloyd Perrett, who average 1.8 offloads each a week.

Stats rarely tell the whole story in any sport, but these figures go a helluva long way towards explaining why opposition forwards around the country have every reason to be fearful when lining up against the bullocking Kiwi.

Manlys start to the season gave fans such little cause for optimism, losing the opening two games. But a stunning resurgence led by Taupau, the Trbojevic brothers and Daly Cherry-Evans sees it locked in the top four with nine wins from 14 games.

The question that remains to be answered is whether Manly and Taupau can sustain the form thats got them this far into September, when it matters most.

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Martin Taupau is making his mark as an NRL beast - NEWS.com.au

In the seven years since you first played Angry Birds , French mobile game studio Rovio Entertainment has released 14 follow-ups. Yes, 14 , only one of which you can call a sequel. The others included spinoffs, expansions, racing games, match-three games, shoot-em-ups, a Transformers tie-in, and two very angry Star Wars games. This isn't a franchise; it's an app store unto itself. And now, after a European release last year, the latest installment has landed in the US: the turn-based role-playing game Angry Birds Evolution . I cannot fathom why it exists.

Start up Angry Birds Evolution , which violates all mobile design principles by forcing your screen into landscape mode permanently, and the battle begins almost immediately. Mechanically, it's a bit like pinball meets Final Fantasy . Instead of choosing attacks from a menu as in other turn-based combat games, you slingshot your birds in classic Angry Birds fashion, sending them careening around tiny combat arenas. As you progress, you accrue a larger team of birds, level them up, and take on tougher and tougher teams of inexplicably green pigs.

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None of this really works. Even compared to the pantheon of light and easy phone games, I found the combat utterly brainless. My eyes actually unfocused as I played it. Angry Birds Evolution also boasts some of the worst sound design I've heard in any game. It features, so far as I can reckon, two songs, one of them a remix of the other, and both cloying beyond measure: unhinged percussion and self-conscious wackiness, with the whip-zang-pow sensibility of a sitcom parody of a Saturday morning cartoon. The visual design is straight out of the 2016 movie , which is to say it's terrible. The whole thing is a limping, confused affair, incomplete in a dozen different ways.

Rovio Entertainment

Yet, Evolution is a fittingly strange game for a strange franchise. There's nothing particularly appealing, or fun, about Angry Birds as a brand, nothing iconic about an eternal battle of birds against pigs. As the developers have noted before , pigs became the antagonists only because the game's development happened to coincide with swine flu being in the news. What made the original game a hit was its stroke of design genius: Rovio found in the slingshot a perfect idiom for a touch interface. The great charm of Angry Birds was the joy of playing. The great charm of Angry Birds Evolution is that it's free.

Unearthing a bad game just to say that it's a bad game seems cruel, I know. But it's provides a glimpse at the future of branded content. Not so long ago, a game like Angry Birds Evolution would scarcely be a game at all. It would barely work, feel thrown together by one hapless coder and a marketing team; crash after the first level, and still cost you $9.99.

Now, though, Evolution embodies an entirely different development strategy, one that recognizes that consumers are savvier than they used to be. It's a complete game that works, an original twist on the Angry Birds conceit, and exhibits some understanding of the broader gaming scene. It strives for irony, a postmodern savviness in the face of its own unconcealed profit motive; it jokes about the mainstream games it borrows ideas from, and piles on the schtick: There's a Zelda reference, a bird named Kim Fli Hy that's modelled after Kim Jong-il (concerning, if not quite racist), and a black-bobbed bird named Mia that I only now recognize as a Pulp Fiction reference. The jokes don't necessarily land, but they're there, and they represent an attempt to dress up a cash-in as something more personal and creative.

Even if you don't play Angry Birds Evolution and seriously, don't play Angry Birds Evolution it's worth noting these shifts. Brands know they can't sell broken nonsense anymore. For consumers, that might not be much, but it's better than it used to be.

Read more from the original source:

Glimpse the Dark Heart of Branding With Angry Birds Evolution - WIRED

Enlarge / A young Charles Darwin, before evolution had caused any public controversy.

In the US, opponents of evolution have tried to undercut instruction on the topic by suggesting schools should "teach the controversy." The national education authorities in Turkey, however, have decided that teachers should avoid any hint of controversy in the classroom. In service of that goal, the country is pulling evolution out of its high school curriculum entirely. The change will be implemented during the upcoming school year, 2017-2018.

In Turkey, the curriculum for state-run schools is set by the national government. The move against education in biology came as the state education authorities were undertaking a review of the national curriculum. Reports indicate that the review largely resulted in an emphasis on religious themes and Turkish culture and history, at the expense of information on Mustafa Kemal Atatrk and his role in the founding of the modern Turkish state.

But science got caught up in the process somehow. According to the head of the national board of education, Alpaslan Durmus, the problem is that Turkish students aren't given the necessary scientific background to separate the theory from the controversy that it has generated in some communities:

We are aware that ,if our students don't have the background to comprehend the premises and hypotheses, or if they don't have the knowledge and scientific framework, they will not be able to understand some controversial issues, so we have left out some of them."

So, rather than bring the students up to speed on biology in earlier grades, Turkey has chosen to drop the subject entirely. If students want to understand biology, they'll have to continue studying the topic in college.

The move has alarmed secular Turks, who are viewing it as a further encroachment by religious conservatives. Like many other countries, Turkey has a religiously motivated creationist community (one that includes some rather flamboyant public figures). But, until the election of Recep Erdogan, religious figures had little influence on national policy.

Read more here:

Turkey pulls evolution from its high school curriculum - Ars Technica

Perhaps, with the ascension of Ruth Davidson to political superstardom and the glorification of Sir Walter Scott on current Scottish banknotes (south of the border, were going for Jane Austen on our tenners), we will all revisit Ivanhoe. The story, youll recall, is set during the reign of the Lionheart King, who is away on crusade business, killing Muslims by the thousand. Like the good Christian monarch he is.

Scotts narrative has a prelude. A Saxon swineherd, Gurth, is sitting on a decayed Druid stone as his pigs root in the dirt. Along comes his mate Wamba, a jester. The two serfs chat. How is it, Gurth wonders, that swine when it reaches the high tables of their masters is pork (Fr porc); cow becomes beef (Fr boeuf); and sheep turns into mutton (Fr mouton)?

The reason, Wamba explains (no fool he), is 1066. Four generations have passed but the Normans are still running things. They have normanised English and they eat high on the hog. How did pig become pork? In the same way as minced beef sandwich, in my day, became Big Mac.

Ivanhoe should be the Brexiteers bible. Its message is that throwing off the Norman Yoke is necessary before Britain can be Britain again. Whats the difference between Normandy and Europa? Just 900 or so years. Scott makes a larger point. Common language, closely examined, reflects where real power lies. More than that, it enforces that power softly but subversively, often in ways we dont notice. Thats what makes it dangerous.

Weve thrown off the Norman Yoke but it remains, faintly throbbing, in the archaeology of our language. Why do we call the place parliament and not speak house? Is Gordon Ramsay a chef or a cook? Do the words evoke different kinds of society?

Matthew Engel is a journalist at the end offour decades of deadline-driven, high-quality writing. He is now at that stage oflife when one thinks about it all in his case, the millions of words he has tapped out. What historical meaning was ingrained in those words? It is, he concludes, not the European Union but America that we should be fearful of.

The first half of his book is a survey of the historical ebbs and flows of national dialect across the Atlantic. In the 18th century the linguistic tide flowed west from the UK tothe US. When the 20th century turned, it was the age of Mid-Atlantic. Now, its all one-way. We talk, think and probably dream American. Its semantic colonialism. The blurb (manifestly written by Engel himself) makes the point succinctly:

Are we tired of being asked to take theelevator, sick of being offered fries andtold about the latest movie? Yeah. Have we noticed the sly interpolation of Americanisms into our everyday speech? Its a no-brainer.

One of the charms of this book is Engel hunting down his prey like a linguistic witchfinder-general. He is especially vexed by the barbarous locution wake-up call. The first use he finds is in an ice hockey report in the New York Times in 1975. Horribile dictu. By the first four years of the 21st century the Guardian was reporting wake-up calls some real, most metaphorical two and a half times a week. The Guardian! What more proof were needed that there is something rotten in the state ofthe English language?

Another bee in Engels bonnet is the compound from the get-go. He tracks it down to a 1958 Hank Mobley tune called Git-Go Blues. And where is that putrid locution now? Michael Gove, then Britains education secretary, used it in a 2010 interview on Radio 4. Unclean! Unclean!

Having completed his historical survey, and compiled a voluminous dictionary of Americanisms, Engel gets down to business. What does (Americanism alert!) the takeover mean?

Is it simply that we are scooping up loan words, as the English language always has done? We love Babel; revel in it. Ponder a recent headline in the online Independent: Has Scandi-noir become too hygge for its own good? The wonderful thing about the English language is its sponge-like ability to absorb, use and discard un-English verbiage and still be vitally itself. Or is this Americanisation what Orwell describes in Nineteen Eighty-Four as Newspeak? Totalitarian powers routinely control independent thinking and resistance to their power by programmatic impoverishment of language. Engel has come round to believing the latter. Big time.

In its last pages, the book gets mad as hell on the subject. Forget Europe. Britain, and young Britain in particular, has handed over control of its culture and vocabulary to Washington, New York and Los Angeles. It is, Engel argues, self-imposed serfdom:

A country that outsources the development of its language the language it developed over hundreds of years is a nation that has lost the will to live.

Britain in 2017AD is, to borrow an Americanism, brainwashed, and doesnt know it or, worse, doesnt care. How was American slavery enforced? Not only with the whip and chain but by taking away the slaves native language. It works.

Recall the front-page headlines of 9 June. Theresa on ropes, shouted the Daily Mail. She was hung out to dry, said the London Evening Standard. Stormin Corbyn, proclaimed the Metro. These are manifest Americanisms, from the metaphor hanging out to dry to the use of Stormin the epithet applied to Norman Schwarzkopf, the victorious US Gulf War commander of Operation Desert Storm.

These headlines on Theresa Mays failure fit the bill. Her campaign was framed, by others, as American presidential, not English prime ministerial. But the lady herself ispure Jane Austen: a vicars daughter whose naughtiest act was to run through a field of wheat. She simply couldnt do the hail to the chief stuff. Boris, the bookies odds predict, will show her how that presidential stuff should be strut. He was, ofcourse, born American.

Engels book, short-tempered but consistently witty, does a useful thing. It makes us listen to what is coming out of our mouths and think seriously about it. Have a nice day.

John Sutherlands How Good Is Your Grammar? is published by Short Books

Thats the Way It Crumbles: the American Conquest of English Matthew Engel Profile Books, 279pp, 16.99

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The Evolution of Beauty reveals the true power of sexual attraction - New Statesman

June 26, 2017 by Janet Lathrop Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Since at least the 1920s, anecdotes and some studies have suggested that chimpanzees are "super strong" compared to humans, implying that their muscle fibers, the cells that make up muscles, are superior to humans.

But now a research team reports that contrary to this belief, chimp muscles' maximum dynamic force and power output is just about 1.35 times higher than human muscle of similar size, a difference they call "modest" compared with historical, popular accounts of chimp "super strength," being many times stronger than humans.

Further, says biomechanist Brian Umberger, an expert in musculoskeletal biomechanics in kinesiology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the researchers found that this modest performance advantage for chimps was not due to stronger muscle fibers, but rather the different mix of muscle fibers found in chimpanzees compared to humans.

As the authors explain, the long-standing but untested assumption of chimpanzees' exceptional strength, if true, "would indicate a significant and previously unappreciated evolutionary shift in the force and/or power-producing capabilities of skeletal muscle" in either chimps or humans, whose lines diverged some 7 or 8 million years ago.

Umberger was part of the team led by Matthew O'Neill at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, Phoenix, and others at Stony Brook University, Harvard and Ohio State University. Details of this work, supported in part by a National Science Foundation grant to Umberger, appear in the current early online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers began by critically examining the scientific literature, where studies reported a wide range of estimates for how chimpanzees outstrip humans in strength and power, averaged about 1.5 times over all. But Umberger says reaching this value from such disparate reports "required a lot of analysis on our part, accounting for differences between subjects, procedures and so on." He and colleagues say 1.5 times is considerably less than anecdotal reports of chimps being several-fold stronger, but it is still a meaningful difference and explaining it could advance understanding of early human musculoskeletal evolution.

Umberger adds, "There are nearly 100 years of accounts suggesting that chimpanzees must have intrinsically superior muscle fiber properties compared with humans, yet there had been no direct tests of that idea. Such a difference would be surprising, given what we know about how similar muscle fiber properties are across species of similar body size, such as humans and chimps."

He explains that muscle fiber comes in two general types, fast-twitch, fast and powerful but fatigue quickly, and slow-twitch, which are slower and less powerful but with good endurance. "We found that within fiber types, chimp and human muscle fibers were actually very similar. However, we also found that chimps have about twice as many fast-twitch fibers as humans," he notes.

For this work, the team used an approach combining isolated muscle fiber preparations, experiments and computer simulations. They directly measured the maximum isometric force and maximum shortening velocity of skeletal muscle fibers of the common chimpanzee. In general, they found that chimp limb and trunk skeletal muscle fibers are similar to humans and other mammals and "generally consistent with expectations based on body size and scaling."

Umberger, whose primary scientific contribution was in interpreting how muscle properties will affect whole-animal performance, developed computer simulation models that allowed the researchers to integrate the various data on individual muscle properties and assess their combined effects on performance.

O'Neill, Umberger and colleagues also measured the distribution of muscle fiber types and found it to be quite different in humans and chimps, who also have longer muscle fibers than humans. They combined individual measurements in the computer simulation model of muscle function to better understand what the combined effects of the experimental observations were on whole-muscle performance. When all factors were integrated, chimp muscle produces about 1.35 times more dynamics force and power than human muscle.

Umberger says the advantage for chimps in dynamic strength and power comes from the global characteristics of whole muscles, rather than the intrinsic properties of the cells those muscles are made of. "The flip side is that humans, with a high percentage of slow-twitch fibers, are adapted for endurance, such as long-distance travel, at the expense of dynamic strength and power. When we compared chimps and humans to muscle fiber type data for other species we found that humans are the outlier, suggesting that selection for long distance, over-ground travel may have been important early in the evolution of our musculoskeletal system."

The authors conclude, "Contrary to some long-standing hypotheses, evolution has not altered the basic force, velocity or power-producing capabilities of skeletal muscle cells to induce the marked differences between chimpanzees and humans in walking, running, climbing and throwing capabilities. This is a significant, but previously untested assumption. Instead, natural selection appears to have altered more global characteristics of muscle tissue, such as muscle fiber type distributions and muscle fiber lengths."

Explore further: Muscle fibers alone can't explain sex differences in bird song

More information: Matthew C. O'Neill el al., "Chimpanzee super strength and human skeletal muscle evolution," PNAS (2017). http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1619071114

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Chimpanzee 'super strength' and what it might mean in human muscle evolution - Phys.Org

June 26, 2017 by Grove Potter Credit: University at Buffalo

How fast does evolution occur? In certain bacteria, it can occur almost instantaneously, a University at Buffalo molecular biologist has discovered.

Mark R. O'Brian, PhD, chair and professor of the Department of Biochemistry in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB, made the surprising discovery when studying how bacteria finds and draws iron into itself. The National Institutes of Health has awarded him a $1.28 million, four-year grant to delve into the mechanisms of bacteria mutating to accept iron, and how the organism expels excess iron.

The discovery was made almost by accident, O'Brian said. The bacteria Bradyrhizobium japonicum was placed in a medium along with a synthetic compound to extract all the iron. O'Brian expected the bacteria to lie dormant having been deprived of the iron needed to multiply. But to his surprise, the bacteria started multiplying.

"We had the DNA of the bacteria sequenced on campus, and we discovered they had mutated and were using the new compound to take iron in to grow," he said. "It suggests that a single mutation can do that. So we tried it again with a natural iron-binding compound, and it did it again."

The speed of the genetic mutations17 dayswas astounding.

"We usually think of evolution taking place over a long period of time, but we're seeing evolutionat least as the ability to use an iron source that it couldn't beforeoccurring as a single mutation in the cell that we never would have predicted," he said.

"The machinery to take up iron is pretty complicated, so we would have thought many mutations would have been required for it to be taken up," he said.

The evolution of the bacteria does not mean it is developing into some other type of creature. Evolution can also change existing species "to allow them to survive," O'Brian said.

Bacteria, the most abundant life form on the planet, have been around for 3 billion years, evolving and adapting. So how big is the discovery of near instantaneous evolution?

"It will depend on how broadly applicable it is," O'Brian said. "Can we characterize the mechanisms, and look around and see if they are in other systems? How does this affect bacterial communities? How important is it for human health?"

O'Brian said other researchers may take up work on how the new knowledge could impact human health.

The mutation may not be related to how bacteria become resistant to antibiotics. The mutation that O'Brian observed resulted in a "gain of function," a much more complicated event than the adaptation to block an antibiotic, he said.

Organisms can adapt by switching genes on and off. Part of O'Brian's grant is to study how bacteria expel excess iron by turning on different genes.

The work now is "strictly scientific," but uses could be in the offing.

"There is the understanding of a mechanism that may help to better understand how you can approach an infectious disease, or approach remediation of the environment using bacteria," O'Brian said.

Explore further: Discovery may help patients beat deadly pneumonia

Researchers have found that a hormone responsible for controlling iron metabolism helps fight off a severe form of bacterial pneumonia, and that discovery may offer a simple way to help vulnerable patients.

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Since at least the 1920s, anecdotes and some studies have suggested that chimpanzees are "super strong" compared to humans, implying that their muscle fibers, the cells that make up muscles, are superior to humans.

In his classic comedy routine, "A Place for your Stuff," George Carlin argues that the whole point of life is to find an appropriately sized space for the things you own. What holds for people is also true for bacteria.

Mammals possess several lines of defense against microbes. One of them is activated when receptors called Fprs, which are present on immune cells, bind to specific molecules that are linked to pathogens. Researchers at the ...

When Mark Martindale decided to trace the evolutionary origin of muscle cells, like the ones that form our hearts, he looked in an unlikely place: the genes of animals without hearts or muscles.

Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science (CSRS) have discovered a new, yet simple, way to increase drought tolerance in a wide range of plants. Published in Nature Plants, the study reports a newly ...

Over two million years ago, a third of the largest marine animals like sharks, whales, sea birds and sea turtles disappeared. This previously unknown extinction event not only had a consid-erable impact on the earth's historical ...

Please sign in to add a comment. Registration is free, and takes less than a minute. Read more

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Near instantaneous evolution discovered in bacteria - Phys.Org