Category Archives: Evolution

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A multi modal approach to microstructure evolution and mechanical response of additive friction stir deposited AZ31B Mg alloy | Scientific Reports -...

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. Bolthouse Farms has closed its acquisition of Evolution Fresh from Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX). The acquisition includes the brand, business, and employees supporting Evolution Fresh. By uniting the two powerhouse brands, Bolthouse Farms looks to further accelerate the companys leadership within the premium juice and refrigerated beverage categories in retail.

Through this acquisition, Bolthouse Farms will expand its beverage offering from nutrient-dense, plant-powered juices and smoothies to include the full lineup of Evolution Freshs primarily organic, cold-pressed, premium juices. Starbucks stores in the U.S. will continue to sell Evolution Fresh products.

We are thrilled to welcome our colleagues from Evolution Fresh to the Bolthouse Farms family and look forward to working with them to drive the juice and refrigerated beverage categories forward, said Bill Levisay, president, Consumer Brands, Bolthouse Farms. As a combined company, we will share our resources, vertically-integrated supply chain, deep knowledge of fresh produce, and passion for ingenuity and innovation. Evolution Fresh produces deliciously fresh, cold-pressed juices that consumers are looking for. Our job now is to support their expertise and bring additional resources to the table to expand the brands reach.

Bolthouse Farms is the No. 1 super premium refrigerated beverage brand and one of the largest carrot suppliers to North American retailers1. Bolthouse has been on a rapid growth trajectory in the last few years, and this acquisition is an important step on the companys growth journey, with more expected to come, said Jeff Dunn, CEO of Bolthouse Farms. This acquisition expands our portfolio in a way that meets the health and nutrition needs of more consumers than ever before.

Bolthouse Farms is a portfolio company of Butterfly, a leading private equity firm that specializes in the food sector with a particular focus on high-growth, on-trend categories. Through Bolthouse Farms, Evolution Fresh joins Butterflys brand portfolio that includes the likes of Chosen Foods, MaryRuth Organics, Orgain, and Pete and Gerrys Organics.

Terms of the transaction, which Starbucks and Bolthouse Farms announced on May 24, 2022, were not disclosed.

About Bolthouse Farms

For more than a century,Bolthouse Farms has been known as the innovation leader in growing and distributing carrots and high-quality, nutrient-dense branded products. Employing more than 2,200 people and headquartered in Bakersfield in Californias fertile San Joaquin Valley, Bolthouse Farms is one of the largest carrot growers and distributors in the U.S. and the No. 1 premium refrigerated beverage brand in U.S. retail.* Guided by its purpose Ingenuity Grows Good the company also produces and sells super-premium juices, smoothies, caf beverages, protein shakes, functional beverages and premium refrigerated dressings, all under the Bolthouse Farms brand name.*SOURCE: IRI MULO L52 weeks ending May 1, 2022

About Butterfly

Butterfly Equity (Butterfly) is a Los Angeles, California-based private equity firm specializing in the food sector, spanning the entire food value chain from seed to fork via four target verticals: agriculture & aquaculture, food & beverage products, food distribution and foodservice. Butterfly aims to generate attractive investment returns through deep industry specialization, a unique approach to sourcing transactions, and leveraging an operations-focused and technology-driven approach to value creation.

For More Information:https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/08/01/2489744/0/en/Bolthouse-Farms-Finalizes-the-Acquisition-of-Evolution-Fresh-from-Starbucks-Strengthening-Leadership-Position-in-the-Juice-and-Refrigerated-Beverage-Categories.html

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Bolthouse Farms Finalizes the Acquisition of Evolution Fresh from Starbucks - BevNET.com

After controversy and the pandemic, one of the most iconic esports events in the world finally returns. The Evolution Championship Series 2022 will run its course this weekend, and here is why you should care.

Our story starts with a message board argument in the mid 90's. With Street Fighters rising popularity in arcades and healthy tournament circuits growing in the US, there was just one question left. Who is the best? A small tournament was held at the Golfland arcade hall in Sunnyvale, California. The Battle by the Bay.

Here on July 20, 1996, the event it would change gaming history. Back then, no one could've guessed that this annual even would one day grow into the most prestigious tournament in esports, the Evolution Championship Series. And I understand that some of our regular readers have probably no idea what I'm talking about, but don't worry, ESTNN is here to help you. Evolution or Evo in short is the Grand Prix of Fighting Games and a spectacle with no equal.

It is here where the best players across multiple fighting games collide in a three-day tournament to declare the definitive answer on who is the best in their discipline. But Evo also doubles as a convention for fighting games, it is here when new games get announced, demo builds can be tested, merchandise is being sold all capped off with mind-blowing reveals like new characters.

Image credit evo.com

But why is Evo so special? If you look at the prize pool compared to other landmark events like League of Legends World Championship or Dota 2's International, it doesn't seem to be that big of a deal. Actually, compared to the leagues of some of those fighting games, it looks like a joke. But the answer lies in the open tournament format that most fighting game community (FGC) events often employ. It goes back to the arcade roots of the genre, when everyone could participate and play by just dropping a quarter.

And while being the best in Street Fighter after year long league play might be more impressive on paper. It doesn't even come close to the prestige of winning Evo. For Street Fighter V alone, there are a total of 1320 sign-ups and over the course of the weekend, one of those 1320 players will be declared champion in a double elimination tournament. But by far the biggest title at Evo this year is Arc System Works Guilty Gear Strive with 2161 players ready to fight for the crown. This will be the first in person Evo held after the start of the pandemic and under new ownership.

On stream, there'll be a total of 9 games featured on stage. Those titles being in order of highest to the lowest participants; Guilty Gear Strive, Street Fighter V Championship Edition, Tekken 7, King of Fighters XV, Dragon Ball: FighterZ, Grandblue Fantasy: Versus, Mortal Combat 11, Melty Blood: Type Lumina and Skull Girls: 2nd Encore. With a total number of signees at 8049 from 63 countries.

Evo 2022 will be held from August 5 to 7 atMandalay Bay resort in Las Vegas, Nevada. You can find a detailed schedule and links for all the live streams here. We're also going to keep you updated on any of the reveals that might be happening this weekend.

Image credit evo.com

The live event Evolution 2020 had been cancelled in August 2020 in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic hitting the United States. During that time, however, the FGC went through a lot of hardship and some serious allegations. Several prominent members of the FGC had been accused of sexual misconduct and harassment. This spiralled into more and more revelations coming to light which painted the entire community in a very bad light.

Years and years of stories about female members of the community being harassed, blatant transphobia, rampant racism and other unsavoury acts really shined a bad light on this whole subsection of the gaming world. And while some of these stories turned out to be made up, most were not, some uncovered even more disturbing stories and it was just a mess. Even if the FGC had always differentiated itself from esports in general, many communities also neglected to keep themselves to higher standards and hold each other accountable.

And while the FGC always had and hopefully will still maintain some competitive banter, there was a dire need to draw the line somewhere. This entire fiasco which ended up destroying several subsections of the community, long-lasting friendships and tarnished the reputation of the entire community at large. With numerous pro-players being dropped by teams and sponsors as punishment, but we'd also like to clarify that some players had been punished unjustly and been outed from the community prematurely. The story itself is so big, that there is no way we could do it justice here so we will refrain from casting any judgement.

Probably the biggest story coming out of this whole fiasco in 2020 were some serious allegations against then EVO CEO Joey Cuellar (known in the community as Mr. Wizard), one of the founding members of the event. Shortly after the allegations came to light and countless sponsors and developers pulled out of the event and the board decided to cancel the event and remove Joey Cellular from his position as CEO. Shortly after, the online version of the event was also cancelled and the organizers refunded tickets and vowed to donate the rest of their funds to the NGO Project HOPE.

In 2021, Evo announced that they had been acquired by Sony Interactive Entertainment and Endeavour Group Holdings in a joined venture. The event had been held online and was split up over several regions to combat latency. All of this kind of took a toll on the event series but things are looking better this year.

The big shocker however is the absence of Smash Bros. Ultimate this year after Nintendo decided the title was not allowed to feature at the venue. It is unclear if that's due to the change of ownership, even if Sony vowed that they would do their best to showcase fighting games on every platform. In the past, Nintendo had been notoriously stingy about their support for the Smash Bros. community. But they also fairly recently officially licensed circuit for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Super Smash Bros. Melee in North America with esports organization Panda Global.

Image credit evo.com

So this year's event marks a new beginning for the Evolution Championship Series and the Fighting Game Community. Combo Breaker 2022 and Community Effort Orlando 2022 (CEO) already had some strong showings, and Evo will be by far the biggest event of the year even in the absence of two of its strongest titles. It also marks probably the last big showing of Street Fighter V before we transition into Street Fighter 6.

There have also been rumours for the potential next entry in the Tekken franchise after all Tekken 7 released in 2015 in Arcades and in 2017 on home consoles and PC. You can also expect a strong showing by Arc System Works, with Guilty Gear Strive being the main event at in the Michelob ULTRA Arena on Sunday. So expect at least a character reveal and potentially the rumoured follow-up to Dragon Ball: FighterZ.

Of course, we'll keep you updated on all of this and more here on ESTNN

See more here:

Evolution 2022: The Pinnacle of Fighting Games Returns - ESTNN | Esports News Network

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "Evolution of Physical Space in Hospitality" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

Strategy Briefings offer unique insight into emerging trends world-wide. Aimed squarely at strategists and planners, they draw on The International's vast information resources to give top line insight across markets and within consumer segments.

Physical spaces are evolving amid the impact of the global pandemic on consumer lifestyles, business models and workplace alongside the influence of digital transformation. They embrace flexibility and functionality to enhance consumer experience and mitigate risks.

Key Findings

Physical spaces blend into the digital world

Lines between the physical and digital worlds are blurring, especially with the rapid rise of the metaverse. Physical spaces are incorporating elements from the digital world while also trying to maintain a unique selling point over their virtual counterparts.

Immersive spaces drive return of in-person experiences

As in-person experiences return, they are facing greater competition from digital counterparts. Hospitality providers are using physical space to create immersive environments that create the worlds of consumers favourite brands and entertainment franchises to lure them back to in-person events.

Wellness and sustainability drive design in hospitality

The pandemic put health and wellness front of mind for consumers, and lockdowns showed just how strong of an impact physical space has on wellness. Coming out of lockdown, consumers are looking for sustainably-designed spaces that support their overall wellness.

Digital hospitality providers embrace the value of physical space

Just as the physical world is incorporating digital elements, digital hospitality providers are increasingly moving into the physical world. Their investments in physical spaces demonstrate hospitality providers efforts to merge the best elements of the digital and physical worlds.

Space as a service

Increased workplace flexibility increasingly means that consumers can work wherever they want. The future of work is redesigning spaces, as hospitality operators open their spaces to remote workers and focus on servicing their needs.

Key Topics Covered:

Introduction

Evolution of Physical Space in Hospitality

Meeting Consumer Needs

Conclusion

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/hpojh2

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Evolution of Physical Space in Hospitality, 2022 Consumer Report - Immersive Spaces Drive Return of In-person Experiences - ResearchAndMarkets.com -...

Were you unable to attend Transform 2022? Check out all of the summit sessions in our on-demand library now! Watch here.

Theres been so much discussion about the metaverse recently, as companies try to understand what it means for their engagements with customers and employees, and how their brand can be extended into it. Because the metaverse is a complex technological concept, the first step in understanding the potential impact is to define it. Is the metaverse a virtual place or network of places online created and run by tech companies? Is it the technology-mediated experiences we already have day to day combining physical and digital journeys, like location-based offers that appear on our phones and interactive displays in museums and stores?

Both views are correct. The metaverse is the next (not final) iteration of the internet where human interactions will be a combination of virtual, real-time, three-dimensional, and physical experiences. Our ways of working, creating, buying and consuming are already radically changing. The impact of the change will be deeper than the impact of the smartphone.

We are still at the beginning stages when it comes to real ROI for businesses, but now is the time to experiment and invest and innovate in metaverse-based use cases.

The key for organizations is to focus on the business outcome and goal for creating metaverse experiences, regardless of whether they happen online or in a hybrid digital-physical space. For example, while theres been a strong business and media focus on the marketing- and revenue-generating potential of the metaverse, theres also a growing recognition of the variety of potential metaverse use cases. In addition to entertainment, for example, organizations may use the metaverse to optimize business operations and enrich employee collaboration and training experiences.

Its also important to see how digitally enabled human experiences are evolving, and to expect them to continue to evolve, in order to plan strategically. For example, most of us are used to 2D flat user interface-based interactions with tablets, phones, computers and monitors. In fact, we expect those kinds of interactions and may be surprised if theyre not available in stores to help with tasks like planning room dcor.

Now, were seeing more of what we call natural or spatial user interfaces, in which users and the physical environment interact. Some technologies that support natural interfaces include beacons, biometrics and 3D extended-reality environments that users experience through a headset.

Other senses can be engaged by natural user interfaces through touch (haptics), audio, and even olfactory experiences, to create a more immersive interaction.Experiences can include augmented or virtual reality (AR/VR) to enhance or create new capabilities or ways to interact. The result is an experiencethat combines visual, natural/spatial, and traditional interfaces enabling a multisensory experience.

But we still have much to learn when it comes to the actual human-machine-human interaction. User experience and interface design skills are about to radically change. Ultimately, the experience will have to feel trusted, secure and private when required.

The interesting thing about the metaverse is that the technologies that support it arent new they are just maturing and becoming more accessible and affordable. Engagement blueprinting is an effective methodology to plan for and design the art of the possible. The process involves looking at each moment in a journey to see what the user experience is now and to think about how new real-time 3D and spatial technology can improve it.

For example, think about a consumer contacting a customer support call center. The customer doesnt see the behind-the-scenes service design that goes into that experience, from the phone menu to the hold music to the conversation with the customer service representative. All those elements were laid out years or even decades ago, and they may now have a brand impact thats very different from when they first launched.

Engagement blueprinting brings a fresh eye to the experience to understand the customer or employees feelings about the brand as they move through the process. For example, long hold times negatively affect customers views of the brand, while slow interactions create frustration that stresses front-line employees.

By reviewing the stack of technology, processes, and training that create that experience, blueprinting can identify areas for improvement to create a better experience for customers and employees throughout their journeys so they retain a positive impression of the brand and remain loyal advocates.

Increasingly, metaverse experiences will provide solutions to these challenges. For example, a customer could interact with a real-time 3D model of the product through the companys help portal to pinpoint an issue before speaking to a representative. Then the employee can also see the same product model to walk the customer through a troubleshooting process thats easier to navigate and more effective than a standard phone conversation.

In addition to improving service interactions for customers and employees, metaverse-based solutions can support more effective training, field service and sales. For example, in many industries, companies are preparing to lose a large portion of their retirement-age workforce and these employees will likely take a large amount of institutional knowledge with them. How can these businesses effectively capture that tacit knowledge, organize it, and present it to employees that need that information to work more efficiently? Virtual and augmented experiences using headsets, 3D models and haptic feedback help to capture and preserve that knowledge and share it without relying on tedious one-to-one training interactions. Using virtual reality for training purposes helps employees retain 75% more knowledge.

Once trained, a service technician can work more efficiently with access to product diagrams, guided installation walk-throughs, and other virtually augmented experiences all of which can reduce the time of calls, increase customer satisfaction and drive employee retention. Additionally, these solutions can generate customized cross-sell and upsell recommendations for the field technicians to share with customers.

Understanding how to make the most of the metaverse may seem complicated, but it follows the same arc as any other technology application. First, start experimenting. Apply traditional structured innovation and identify the candidate business use cases to solve for. Next, blueprint the process involved to understand how customers and employees experience it. Then, think creatively about how to leverage and combine existing and new technologies to improve the experience. Finally, keep an eye on emerging technologies so you can revisit the process as the metaverse evolves and customer and employee expectations evolve along with it.

Charlton Monsanto is executive vice president, digital customer experience atCapgemini Americas.

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TALENTRECAP.COM Entertainment Celebrity

Jill ORourke is a contributor at Talent Recap, writing news stories and recaps for shows like AGT, The Voice, and American Idol. She graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in English and Film Studies, and has been writing about pop culture since 2012, with previous bylines at Crushable and A Plus. Jill spends her free time binge-watching sitcoms and daydreaming about life as a hobbit

Former The Voice coach Ariana Grande has had a music career spanning over a decade. In that time, her style and talent have evolved over the course of six albums. Lets look back at her time in the industry, starting with her debut single in 2011.

This was Grandes debut single, released in 2011, while she was appearing in the Nickelodeon show Victorious. The track is an upbeat pop anthem with an inspiring message. Grande belts out the lyrics, but she hasnt entirely come into the breathy vocals and stunning high notes that will become her signature.

Grande herself has expressed mixed feelings about the song, saying in 2015, Thats like scrolling too far back on Facebook, and youre like, oh s**t.' She added that it felt like what people expected of her TV character Cat, but wasnt necessarily her style.

Grande released her debut album Yours Truly in 2013, with The Way featuring Mac Miller as the lead single. The singer leaned into the style of 90s R&B on the album, and the singles opening notes definitely bring to mind Mariah Carey.

This album also featured the singles Baby I and Right There, which have a very similar feel. Collaborations with artists such as Miller and Big Sean also bring a hip-hop influence to the album. The project feels much more in tune with the direction Grandes music has continued to take.

In 2014, Grande released her second studio album, titled My Everything. Its lead single was Problem, featuring Iggy Azalea. The singer continued to come into her own with this project, growing into a more mature style and incorporating more electronic elements into her pop sound.

Other singles from the album included Break Free and Bang Bang, in which Grande collaborated with Nicki Minaj and Jessie J. The album, which is full of tracks that make you want to dance, was nominated for Best Pop Vocal Album at the Grammys.

SEE ALSO: WE RANKED ARIANA GRANDES VEVO LIVE PERFORMANCES AFTER PLAYING THEM ON REPEAT FOR A YEAR

In 2016, Grande released her third album, Dangerous Woman. The title track was also the lead single, as Grande showed off a sultry style and more mature lyrics, as well as a sexy music video to go along with it. The track features powerhouse vocals from the singer, who won Artist of the Year at the American Music Awards.

Other singles from the album included Into You and Side to Side, featuring Nicki Minaj. The latter track includes some pretty suggestive lyrics about sex, just in case anyone was wondering whether Grande had grown up since her Nickelodeon days.

Grande released her fourth album in 2018, featuring the lead single No Tears Left to Cry. The project debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 200 chart and received praise for its experimental approach, as Grande explored different genres and sounds such as trap and house.

The album also features the track God Is a Woman, in which Grande continued to show off her vocal confidence and sexuality. Grande won her first Grammy for Sweetener, taking home the award for Best Pop Vocal Album.

Grandes fifth studio album was released in 2019, with the title track as the lead single. In the song, the singer got candid about her relationship history, name-dropping her exes such as Mac Miller, Big Sean, and Pete Davidson.

The signer continued her honest streak on further singles 7 Rings and Break Up with Your Girlfriend, Im Bored, which doesnt exactly beat around the bush. Thank U, Next was a success, earning four Grammy nominations including Album of the Year.

Grande released her most recent album, Positions, in 2020. The project brings together a number of musical qualities that Grande had become known for at that point, including sexually suggestive lyrics, a blending of genres, and strong vocals on songs like POV.

Its not clear when fans can expect Grandes next album. Earlier this year, the singer admitted to fans that she hadnt started working on her next project, as she was focused on The Voice and her upcoming role as Glinda in the Wicked movie adaptation.

In present day, Grande is preparing for her upcoming role in the film adaptation of Wicked. The singer will be featured in the film as the character, Glinda. She recently admitted that she has not been working on music of her own, but rumors have swirled that she will be featured on Beyonces upcoming album.

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The beauty of DNA is that it doesnt discriminate.

Following a moment of stunned silence, pandemonium broke out in a Barrie, Ont., courthouse on the night of March 1, 1991, when the jury foreman, after seven hours of deliberation with the 11 other jurors, stood and delivered the verdict in Claude Bourguignons trial.

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Bourguignon was charged with first-degree murder in the disturbing death in June 1989 of 2-year-old Paul Bourguignon Jr., Claudes nephew. The youngster had been sodomized and strangled, his body subsequently wrapped in a garbage bag in a Pampers diaper box and discarded in a dumpster near his west-end Ottawa home.

As soon as the foreman said not guilty, reporters hurried from the courtroom to file their stories. Others present, including family members, expressed their emotions, be they relief, thankfulness, anger or shock.

Hilary McCormack, the assistant Crown attorney who was prosecuting the case that, because of its notoriety, had been moved from Ottawa, waited for the other shoe to drop.

Im waiting for him to say not guilty of first-degree murder, but guilty of second, McCormack recalls. But nothing happened.

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The trial had gone extremely well for the prosecution, with Claude having to challenge the testimony of numerous witnesses in an effort to maintain his innocence. The neighbour who testified seeing him outside at 6:30 a.m. on the day Juniors body was discovered was mistaken, he claimed, as was another neighbour who testified to having heard a childs cry soon after Claude retired to the row house for the night. Even his mother and sister-in-law were mistaken when they said that he told them he received scratches on his stomach and groin from horseback riding, with Claude later telling police they were the result of picking burrs off a stray cat, a story that an animal expert for the Crown said was highly implausible.

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McCormack had also picked apart Claudes claim that the reason that sperm with his DNA was found on Juniors bed was that he had earlier masturbated there during a five-minute interlude when Juniors father, Paul Sr., had gone to greet his girlfriend. But hadnt the girlfriend testified that both Paul Sr. and Claude had greeted her together?

He really did look bad, McCormack recalls. I knew I had this guy it was just a matter of going through all these things. And at the end, I said to him, It couldnt have been anybody else, and he agreed with me.

The scene in the courthouse that night was soon turned on its head, however. McCormack recalls the juror closest to the foreman thumping him on the back, nearly knocking him out of the jury box, while other jurors shouted at him, No! No!

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Sorry, the flustered foreman explained to the court. I blew it. Claude Bourguignon was found guilty.

For that 10 or 15 seconds, McCormack says, Bourguignon thought he was acquitted. It really was quite a moment.

Claude Bourguignon was sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of parole for 25 years. Twenty-four years later, and at the time an inmate at Joyceville Institution, he died in hospital in Napanee at the age of 52.

The Bourguignon case was one of a pair of late-1980s Ottawa crimes crimes that heralded groundbreaking developments in the evolution of trials and evidence-collecting. Bourguignons was the first murder conviction in Canada secured by DNA evidence.

The other case was a brutal sexual assault that occurred in Ottawa in September 1988 and went to trial early in April 1989. Also prosecuted by McCormack, it marked the first time in Canada that DNA evidence at a trial led to a conviction. It was also first time that DNA in a criminal trial had been tested in Canada, by the RCMP.

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In that trial, the Crowns case against Paul McNally had concluded after three days of testimony, and the defence was due up next.

McNally, 32, had been charged with sexual assault causing bodily harm, unlawful confinement and breaking-and-entering following an attack on a 68-year-old widow in her New Edinburgh home. The woman was raped four times and forced to perform oral sex, with her assailant promising to return later that night and every night, she testified.

Trial judge Keith Flanigan, then a 19-year veteran of the bench, described the assault as one of the most repulsive attacks on a woman Ive ever encountered.

Although it was dark on the night of the attacks, the woman could make out enough of her assailant by the weak light of an outdoor streetlight to identify him. Her visual ID of the man was augmented, she added, by his smell. He was the same man, she said, who had been at her home a month earlier to tile a floor. She recognized the odour of the adhesive glue he used in his trade.

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If the womans identification wasnt conclusive on its own, it was enough for police to consider him a suspect, and an analysis of his DNA was conducted.

And so, on the third day of the trial, instead of launching into its case following the conclusion of the Crowns arguments, a break was requested by the defence. Facing overwhelming DNA evidence five independent tests leaving a slim one-in-70-billion chance that anyone else could have committed the crimes, according to expert testimony McNally, McCormack recalls, wanted some time to confess to his wife, who had vociferously supported him, before changing his plea to guilty.

McNally was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for the first charge, and two years each for the other two, to run concurrently with the first.

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The DNA evidence in the case, McCormack says, was crucial. Without it, the judges instructions to the jury about the reliability of visual identifications may have carried more weight. This would have been extraordinarily difficult to get a conviction (without the DNA). I would have pursued it, knowing that all of these adverse instructions from the judge were coming, because I was satisfied she was right.

But the admissibility of DNA evidence and its eventual overwhelming acceptance, McCormack adds, truly has revolutionized criminal investigations and criminal prosecutions.

The DNA evidence in the Bourguignon trial didnt draw a direct line from Claude to the youngster none of the uncles DNA was found on or in the boys body but it was one of many factors that strongly pointed to Claude and convinced a jury that he had committed the crime.

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Without that DNA evidence, McCormack is convinced that Claude might never have been arrested in the first place. And, unlike today, when suspects can, with a warrant and probable cause, be compelled to provide DNA, there was no such provision 30 years ago, except for blood samples from those believed to be driving under the influence of alcohol.

(Claude Bourguignon) had agreed, although not entirely voluntarily, McCormack recalls. Every other family member went and gave blood. He was kind of shamed into it by his family, by his mother.

Whether Claude knew the perils of submitting his DNA was uncertain. He had, however, already declined a polygraph, or lie-detector, test, the results of which are generally inadmissible in court. Those machines dont work, he said then. Theyre a waste of time.

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The use of DNA evidence in criminal trials, though still in its infancy, was not unheard of. The process of DNA extraction and profiling had been developed in Britain in 1985 and was first used in court in 1987, when Leicestershire baker Colin Pitchfork was convicted of the rape and murder of two 15-year-old girls, one in 1983 and the other in 1986.

McCormack, who in her undergraduate years had studied genetics and chemistry, followed that case closely. She understood the science of DNA fingerprinting, and, when the McNally case presented itself, wanted to use it.

They were testing in England and had started to do it in the U.S., she recalls. And so I phoned up my investigating officer and said I wanted him to go to the RCMP lab and get our samples. She had made a special presentation to the ministry to justify the expense. I said I think this is worth a chance because it was a really very brutal sexual assault really, really brutal and we ought to be investing in this. We would have been negligent not to do this.

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The RCMP, meanwhile, had just readied its lab to do DNA testing and offered to run McNallys samples.

The process of testing was extremely time-consuming and expensive then, considerations that factored into the three and a half months that passed between Junior Bourguignons death and his uncles arrest, as the public breathed heavily down the necks of Ottawa police to solve the murder.

It was a very, very slow manual process that took weeks to process a single case, says Dr. John Waye, at the time a molecular genetics specialist with the RCMP. Terribly laborious and slow, so it was used very sparingly, and prosecutors and the lab cooperated and picked out the cases where the evidence would be most probative.

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Now the director of laboratory genetics at Hamilton Health Sciences and professor of pathology and molecular medicine at McMaster University, Waye provided expert testimony at both the McNally and Bourguignon trials. And, while many viewed the bourgeoning science as hocus pocus, and indeed it was frequently challenged the Defence Counsel Association of Ottawa, for example, suggested at the time that DNA typing might turn out to be no more significant than polygraph tests Waye never doubted the science.

Every aspect of the technology was being tested, he recalls, and in the Bourguignon trial I could give an opinion about the rarity of something, but I couldnt justify my opinion using statistics. After a very lengthy voir dire (the pre-trial process to determine the admissibility of evidence), it was decided that the numbers would be too prejudicial.

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Today, though, Waye says that DNA evidence is as readily accepted as fingerprints following a few rough years at the beginning with numerous challenges based on arguments that would now seem frivolous.

Eleven years after the McNally case, Canadas National DNA Data Bank was created by an act of Parliament. It formalized the centralized collection of hundreds of thousands of DNA profiles to assist investigators solve various crimes. According to the RCMP, which oversees the data bank, its main goals are to link crime scenes across jurisdictional lines; help identify or eliminate suspects; determine whether a serial offender has been involved in certain crimes; and assist investigators, coroners and medical examiners in finding missing persons and identify human remains.

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The exoneration of suspects by DNA is sometimes overlooked, but the very first use of DNA evidence in a criminal trial in Canada, in Calgary in 1988, did just that, as it has since in numerous widely publicized exonerations, including those of David Milgaard and Guy Paul Morin.

The beauty of DNA is that it doesnt discriminate, says McCormack, who became Ottawas Crown attorney in 2000, then director of Crown operations before becoming chair of the Military Police Complaints Commission in 2015. It just exonerates or includes, and its probably as powerful a tool for vindicating people, particularly those in the States who are on death row.

In that sense, it has become an extremely valuable tool that convicts the guilty and exonerates the innocent.

bdeachman@postmedia.com

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Capital Crimes: Ottawa trials figured prominently in the evolution of DNA use in crime-solving - Ottawa Citizen

University of Toronto researchers have shed light on the evolutionarytransition of whales'early ancestors from on-shore living to deep-sea foraging, suggesting that these ancestors had visual systems that could quickly adapt to the dark.

Their findings show that the common ancestor of living whales was already a deep diver, able to see in the blue twilight zone of the ocean, with eyes that swiftly adjusted to dim conditions as the whale rushed down on a deep breath of surface air.

"In the evolution of whale diving, there's been a long-standing question of when deep-sea foraging evolved," says Belinda Chang, a professor in the Faculty of Arts & Science's departments of ecology and evolutionary biology, and cell and systems biology. "And it seems that based on our data, this happened before toothed and baleen whales diverged. The common ancestor of all living cetaceans was deeper diving and then later species evolved all the diverse foraging specializations we see in modern whales and dolphins today."

Chang worked with Sarah Dungan, a former member of Chang's lab who has a PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology from U of T, on a study describing their experiments, computational analysis and results in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Deep diving by marine mammals is one of the great evolutionary transitions, along with powered flight and living on land, and reveals much about how quickly life can adapt in a changing world.

Whales evolved from mammals that share a common ancestor with hippos and that were partially aquatic. The great mystery of their transition to deep-sea foraging was how quickly this ability developed. Dungan and Chang looked at whale fossils on a molecular level and focused on the rhodopsin protein, which absorbs light and sends a signal that travels through the retina to the brain.

One of the most intriguing aspects of this iconic land-to-sea evolutionary transition is that the qualities of the visual environment completely changed, says Chang. This helped to define which genes would be the most interesting for us to target in our studies.

Dungan applied robust data science models to rhodopsin proteins from a variety of living whales and related mammals. This computerized analysis revealed a gene sequence representing the rhodopsin found in the common ancestor of all living whales. She expressed this gene in lab-grown cells to resurrectthe predicted protein and experiment on purified samples.

"The fossil record is the gold standard for understanding evolutionary biology, says Dungan. But despite what Jurassic Park would have you believe, extracting DNA from fossil specimens is rare because the condition tends to be poor. So, if youre interested in how genes and DNA are evolving, you rely on mathematical modelling and a strong sample of genes from living organisms to complement what we understand from the fossil record."

Belinda Chang (back left) leads a lab that focuses on the evolutionary transition of animals' vision.Sarah Dungan (right of Chang) researched whale vision as a former member of Changs lab (photo by Diana Tyszko)

Dungan and Chang were astonished by the biochemical properties of the resurrected protein compared to land mammals. Early whale rhodopsin was more sensitive to the blue light that penetrates deepest into the ocean, to a degree that exceeded expectations. Its biochemical properties also suggested that the retinas of early whales could respond rapidly to changes in light levels.

Early whales eventually evolved into the many kinds of toothed whales and baleen whales we see today. As separate species of whale evolved, they established ecological niches at various levels of the sea and even in freshwater rivers. Dungan and Changs work shows that there were further evolutionary adaptations as members of both groups either surfaced from the early deep levels to hunt closer to the surface or specialized to become even more extreme divers.

"Ive always been fascinated by whales, says Dungan. The idea that there was a land mammal like me that eventually evolved to live underwater blew my mind as a kid, even though I really didn't understand exactly what that meant at the time.

It is amazing that nowwe can have this level of insight into the lifestyle of a long-extinct organism, just from doing laboratory experiments on one protein. Ancestral protein resurrection is an incredibly powerful way for us to interrogate how ancient organisms evolved that most people don't know about, she adds.

Next, Dungan and Chang plan to resurrect the ancestral whale proteins that transmit the rhodopsin light signal from the retina to the brain to provide insights into the neurological adaptations associated with deep diving. They will probe ancient evolutionary adaptations associated with new behaviours and hope to gain greater insight into how animals may adapt to a changing world.

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Whales' eyes offer glimpse into their evolution from land to sea: U of T researchers - University of Toronto

To paraphrase Mark Twain reports of the demise of insurance agencies have been greatly exaggerated.

The local agency has been the backbone of the industry and the target of outside forces that have been trying to eliminate or usurp the work role handled by the agency and staff.

Sure, the insurance distribution model is not optimized, but overall, there is no better approach based on the existing industry structure.

These outside forces are leading to the pruning of ineffective processes and improvements to effective methods. The local agency is still standing and evolving to stay relevant and competitive.

There are several major trends that are impacting the insurance industry.

These include agency consolidation, ease of starting a new business, the age gap, and insurtech and artificial intelligence. The first three trends will re-shape the existing industry and the agency business model and gently morph it into a revised structure. However, proponents believe that insurtech and artificial intelligence are disruptors that could totally change the way business is done.

Agency Consolidation

Big brokers have been buying smaller agencies for some time. Some require the agency to adopt a uniform business model, whereas other buyers let the agencies run semi-independently. Either way, more and more agencies have professional management, access to sophisticated tools and services, and connections to a national presence. This trend tracks with consumer expectations to have access to an organization that has broad support but a personalized approach.

Agency consolidation does create formidable competition for small independent agencies. Those still running their own agency need to focus on personal relationships and create ways to service accounts that make them competitive against larger firms. Unfortunately, the small local agency is less competitive with the larger and sophisticated accounts, which boxes them into working with smaller commercial accounts and personal lines.

New Agencies

Today, the ability to start an agency is as easy as it has ever been due to various options that did not exist 50 years ago. An entrepreneur today can start a new agency and access a wide variety of markets through aggregators, networks/clusters, or similar venues.

Access to good standard markets makes the firm viable right away. In the past, a new agency would have to broker business through another agency until they could get enough volume to have their own contract.

Aside from market access, some of these networks, clusters and franchises offer various types of support and different levels of involvement. They can create the benefits of a large national broker while allowing for independent ownership and control over the agency. Some of these organizations offer back-office support, such as accounting, customer service staff, and agency automation systems. Some networks provide risk management services and other tools that allow the smaller agencies to compete on a higher level.

Also important is that clusters, networks, aggregators and franchises are becoming an incubator for new agencies. In some cases, this could be one producer that has all the back-office support outsourced so he/she can focus on sales.

Age Gap

The third trend is an issue faced by all businesses it is a demographic population gap. Baby boomers have and continue to retire. The first boomers turned 65 in 2011; 10,000 boomers turn 65 every day. The youngest boomers are now about 60.

Millennials are now all in the workforce with Generation Z just entering. The issue is that there is a growing population gap because the generation in between boomers and millennials generation X is smaller than both the baby boomers and millennials groups. So, people in their 60s will be replaced by people in their 20s and 30s, because there are fewer people in their late 40s and 50s.

This age gap means an experience gap. The 25-year-plus seasoned producer or manager will be replaced by a person with less than 10 years of experience. The skills and efficiencies built by experience will be lost, while the younger generation comes up to speed.

Insurtech

Finally, there is insurtech, which is the 800-pound gorilla of these trends. Insurtech is the umbrella term now used to cover the usage of technology in the insurance industry.

This trend is a wild card because all the possibilities are truly unknown at this point. However, it looks like it will have a huge impact in the future.

For example, the wide use of self-driving cars is approaching. These cars are expected to be much safer due to technology, and the liability related to driving is expected to be reduced. Also, because the driver is really a passenger with no control, the liability would shift from the car owner to the car manufacturer. If so, the liability portion of personal lines auto policies will be a thing of the past.

This shifting of liability will repeat with other equipment and devices that we use in our daily lives, because those devices will have some sort of technology built in that can monitor performance, how it is used, resolve problems, evaluate surroundings, etc.

Conclusion

For insurance agencies, most likely the next 10 years will be a gentle evolution into a new form. This will be a result of the first three trends as the primary drivers. The number of medium-sized agencies will decrease and larger firms will control much more business. However, the next generation will see the creation of very small and nimble agencies. Basically, it will be salespeople who outsource the service and back-office work. In the long run, the role and even the existence of insurance agencies are very difficult to predict due to the role of technology.

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The Evolution of Insurance Agencies - Insurance Journal

Heng Huang is the Managing Director of Beijing HOT Mining Tech Co Ltd, one of the most innovative and up and coming players in Chinas mineral processing technology and mining equipment markets. His background includes various roles at JohnFinlay Engineering Pty Co Ltd in engineering and project delivery for coal preparation, handling and washing plants, plus as Sales Director conducting EPC project delivery for mining projects at Taggart (Beijing) Engineering Co Ltd.

He was also Chairman at Alpha Industrial Intelligence Holding Co Ltd which was and remains one of the leading players in underground mobile mining equipment (LHD and drill) remote control and automation systems in China. Recently, Beijing HOT Mining Technology and SDGT group jointly established a production base for underground trackless equipment in Jining City, Shandong Province. The first phase of the production line will be mainly used for the production of underground LHDs, underground articulated dump trucks, and drill jumbos for underground mining. The brand of the joint venture is GOOHOT.

At HOT Mining, which has a manufacturing facility in in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, his main achievement has been the development of X-ray ore sorting capabilities using X-ray Transmission (XRT) technology. Through intelligent sorting with XRT, the grade of selected ores can be improved, a large amount of waste rock can be discarded, and valuable minerals in tailings and slag can be recovered and reused, so as to reduce the processing cost of downstream processes like crushing, grinding and flotation. It therefore can greatly improve mine efficiency with resulting economic benefits, and extend the mine life significantly. It has been proven in precious metals and non-ferrous metals such as gold, silver, molybdenum, copper, zinc, tungsten and vanadium amongst others.

Heng Huang, MD of HOT Mining, second from left

The HOT Mining XRT sensor-based intelligent ore sorter Huang says has already been used at numerous locations, including the Silongduo lead-zinc mine in Tibet, China. Silongduo includes exploits two main deposits as well as several unexploited deposits located in the famous Gangdese metallogenic belt at an altitude of 4,810-5,600 m. It had stopped production for some years due to financial problems before HOT Mining technology was introduced. HOT Mining was entrusted as the long-term partner to carry on the trusteeship and operation of its Silongdo beneficiation plant. Huang comments: We did a deep investigation of current processing technology and concluded that XRT-based sorting technology would be the most effective choice as it can achieve rapid recovery production and lower operation costs. With the application of an XRT ore sorter, Silongduo lead-zinc mine can make a profit of CNY40 million per year with a CNY8/t cost. The rate of recovery of Ag, Pb and Zn is between 95 and 98%.

Moving to Indonesia, a container type XRT1800 from HOT Mining has been used at the Meiji coal mine. Huang told IM: This is a typical case for container type XRT sensor-based ore sorter application in coal processing. The client has 200,000 t of raw coal in the yard which requires gangue removal before it can be sold. The client was looking for processing equipment that would not need too much civil engineering investment, but with flexibility of the utilisation rates. Our container type XRT sensor-based ore sorter ticks these boxes. It can also be put into operation very quickly and offers great mobility for transportation. The container type XRT sensor-based ore sorter was applied to 50-300mm lump coal in Meiji coal mine. After processing by the XRT ore sorter, the lump coal is transported to the lump coal product warehouse by a clean coal belt conveyor, and the gangue is transported to the gangue dump by the gangue belt conveyor.

HOT Mining XRT1800 at Meiji coal mine in Indonesia

A third example is an XRT1600 put into operation at Hongzhuang gold mine in Henan province, China. Hongzhuang gold mine is a typical structurally altered rock type gold deposit. At present, the total amount of gold resources obtained is 40.956 t, where 6.244 t have been mined, and 34.712 t remain. The XRT1600 has been put into operation to optimise the existing beneficiation process and reduce the subsequent beneficiation cost.

The HOT Mining offering also includes CCD Colour Sorting; another method of material separation based on image recognition and machine learning technology. In mining, the ore colour sorter is also commonly called sensor-based sorting technology. Optical colour sorters (CCD colour cameras) combine X-ray sorting technology and NIR (near infrared spectrometry) to pick out the impurities in mined industrial minerals for removal or separate the stream into two or more categories. It can be used to process raw materials for use in the construction, cement and gravel industry after step-by-step processing such as crushing, grading, colour separation and grinding. The preparation of non-metallic minerals is particularly important as after colour sorting, the material has higher purity and a more uniform colour, which can significantly increase its saleable value. The CCD colour sorting technology has just recently been released but is set to be used in quartz, fluorspar and barytes operations.

Last but not least, HOT Mining has an on-line laser-induced plasma spectrometry (LIPS) element analyser. A major issue in coal preparation plants is the accurate online and real-time measurement of ash content. LIPS is an element measurement technology based on the basic principles that the wavelength of the atomic spectrum and ion spectrum has a one-to-one correspondence with specific elements, and the spectral signal intensity has a certain quantitative relationship with the content of corresponding elements.

Aerial view of Silongduo lead zinc mine processing operation in Tibet, China

Using high-energy pulsed lasers (several nanoseconds of time width) to irradiate the coal surface, a high temperature of more than 10,000 degrees is generated in the range of several microns, causing the coal to form a plasma in this area, and various elements in the plasma will emit light. Measuring this spectrum can obtain the content information for each element.

The industrial testing of the LIPS system was carried out in the Pangpangta coal preparation plant located in Shanxi province, China from November 2020 to July 2021. Huang says that the test results show that the laser ash measuring instrument offers simple maintenance and stable working conditions, even with high humidity, high dust, high vibration and wide temperature ranges. For repeated detection of the same coal sample, the absolute error of the machine is 0.2%, and the absolute error with the manual test result is 0.3%, which meets the requirements of the Chinese national standard for detection error. LIPS is also being used at the Yueliangtian coal preparation plant of Panjiang Group in Guizhou Province and the Longwanggou coal preparation plant of Datang Group in Inner Mongolia.

HOT Mining is not the only player in this growing Chinese market a major competitor is HPY Sorting Technology Co Ltd, established in Ganzhou, Jiangxi. It has supplied its HPY XRT Series to ZW Tungsten, Yunnan Phosphate and a number of other sites. It also offers its Circle Series which it says improves ore sorting accuracy and the feed rate while also reducing the space required for traditional XRT sorting machines.

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HOT Mining and the evolution of ore sorting in China - International Mining