Category Archives: Evolution

The acquisition strengthens Whereowares capabilities as a full-service digital experience agency

MCLEAN, Va., July 07, 2022--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Award-winning digital experience agency Whereoware today announced that it has acquired LookThink, a user experience consultancy and digital services provider based in Washington, DC. The move accelerates Whereowares growth and continued strategic transformation into a full-service, strategically-led solutions partner.

Together, Whereoware and LookThink advance as a digital experience agency with a full range of digital strategy and activation capabilities that can drive sustainable growth by attracting larger clients, increasing retention rates and upsells, and delivering impactful results. Clients will benefit from a broader strategy offering, deeper UX and design expertise, and a wider array of supported technology platforms, including Salesforce, Optimizely, Acquia, Drupal, WordPress and Acoustic.

The two companies have complementary capabilities, similar business approaches, and a shared focus on driving measurable results for clients, which include Cuisinart, Yamaha Motor Corporation, Pitney Bowes, Marriott Inc., and League of Women Voters. With more than 20 years in business, Whereoware is widely known for helping clients build profitable digital experiences through meaningful personalization and automation, data maximization, and custom technology solutions. Likewise, LookThinks practical approach to UX design and delivery sets the agency apart, with projects characterized by valued-based metrics, such as clients employee time-savings, increased engagement rates, reduced call center volume, and improved customer retention.

"The addition of LookThink greatly expands our capabilities and resources to help our clients achieve their objectives, creating intuitive solutions that make a positive impact," stated Michael Mathias, Chief Executive Officer of Whereoware. "Together with LookThink, we can deliver even stronger results for our clients through deeper expertise and a broader technology stack."

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Joe Mallek, President of LookThink, will assume the role of Chief Strategy Officer and oversee client strategy, UX, and design for Whereoware. "Both Whereoware and LookThink remain committed to building great companies that make a difference for employees and clients, with an unwavering focus on doing the right thing for all stakeholders," stated Mallek. "Combining our talents creates a stronger, diversified foundation of opportunities."

Whereoware recently incubated and successfully sold a software-as-a-service (SaaS) business to International Market Centers, a Blackstone portfolio company, in early 2020. Through 2021, the company prioritized investment in adding executive, management, and subject matter experts, improving systems and processes, and creating a scalable, strategically-led engagement approach for clients.

The combined companies bring together a cross-functional team of over eighty digital marketers, strategists, technologists, UX consultants, experience designers, business analysts, project managers and solution architects. As the companies join together, the first priority is to quickly build a business that helps clients and employees grow and succeed. Both offices will be maintained and evaluated in normal course as teams, systems, and processes are integrated to bring out the best from each company and provide industry-leading strategic guidance and digital implementation.

"This move not only accelerates our advancement as a full-service digital experience agency, but also allows us to better serve our clients with the expansion of our offerings and expertise. Im very excited to lead us into this next chapter of growth and highlight the combined talents and experiences of our teams!" stated Michael Mathias, Chief Executive Officer of Whereoware.

For more information about this acquisition, please visit: https://www.whereoware.com/lp/whereoware-welcomes-lookthink

About Whereoware

Leading digital agency for 20 years, Whereoware drives smart growth through digital strategy and activation. We specialize in successfully guiding brands through the ever-changing digital landscape, through customer acquisition, retention, and maximization; marketing optimization; and e-commerce solutions. Pioneering online personalization and holistic digital experiences, we design and build award-winning websites and email campaigns, and generate impactful results with data integrations, analytics, digital advertising, and SEO/PPC services. To learn more, please visit http://www.whereoware.com.

About LookThink

LookThink is a Washington, DC based User Experience Consultancy, providing design and development expertise optimizing internal systems and processes, improving customer experiences, and increasing operating efficiencies. Success is measured based on the impact that the work delivers for clients. Distinct from typical digital agencies, projects are characterized by value-based metrics such as employee time savings, increased rates of adoption, completion or engagement, reduced call center volume, and improved customer retention.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220707005212/en/

Contacts

Bonnie MossMoss Networksbonnie@mossnetworks.com 818-995-8127

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Whereowares Evolution as a Digital Experience Agency Continues with Acquisition of LookThink - Yahoo Finance

Gabriel Jesus joins Arsenal after making 141 goal contributions in 236 appearances for Manchester City.Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images

After 5 years at Manchester City, Gabriel Jesus will begin a new chapter in his Premier League career after completing his 45 million transfer to Arsenal this summer.

Jesus signed for City from Palmeiras in the summer of 2016 for around 30m but didn't join up with his new team until January 2017, when the 19-year-old was finally freed up to make the switch to the Premier League.

He first arrived at the Etihad as an energetic, versatile, all-action forward who had scored 26 goals in 67 senior appearances for his boyhood club prior to joining City. He leaves having scored 95 goals in 236 games in all competitions (and also registering 46 assists) while playing his part in four Premier League title wins, one FA Cup, three EFL Cups and a run to the 2021 Champions League final.

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However, the Brazil international was restricted to just 20 starts in the league last season, and while he still pitched in with eight goals and nine assists, the time is obviously right for Jesus to seek a fresh challenge elsewhere -- especially with City bringing in Erling Haaland from Borussia Dortmund this summer.

During his early career at City, Jesus was mainly deployed as a specialist goal poacher in a central role. He was undoubtedly effective, and quickly made a habit of scoring from close range with one-touch finishes. In fact, only one of his first 14 Premier League goals was scored from more than 8 yards out, and that was a penalty against Leicester in May 2017.

Since then his game has evolved and Jesus has adapted to become a much more rounded, Pep Guardiola-style forward, playing off either flank or down the middle when required. As such, he has added many more adept passes, touches in the penalty area, assists and even goals from outside the box to his repertoire.

With the 25-year-old on his way to the Emirates, here are the stats for Jesus' goal contributions and all-round play and a season-by-season look at precisely how Jesus has changed his game.

A 19-year-old Jesus first started life at City operating mainly as a classic out-and-out No. 9, specialising in instinctive bursts of movement, close-range manoeuvering and one-touch finishes.

His very first goal for the club emphasises the point, with the striker opening his account by scoring City's third goal in a 4-0 victory over West Ham at the London Stadium on Feb. 1, 2017 -- a tap-in from the edge of the 6-yard box to finish off an incisive passing move, i.e. the textbook Guardiola goal.

In his first half-season, Jesus continued in much the same vein and ended the 2016-17 campaign with seven goals in his first 11 games for City. While two of those goals came via his left foot, four via his right and one via his head, all seven of them were scored from inside the penalty area.

Jesus' first full season under Guardiola at City saw the forward make 42 appearances in all competitions, with 34 of them coming as a central striker.

Demonstrating an impressive efficiency in front of goal, Jesus scored 17 goals in all competitions from an xG rating of just 17.72. Once again, all 17 of his goals came from inside the box (eight from inside the 6-yard box). He also averaged just 4.2 touches of the ball inside the penalty area per 90 minutes -- the lowest season tally of his City career.

- Vickery: Jesus move has World Cup implications for Brazil- Stream ESPN FC Daily on ESPN+ (U.S. only)- Don't have ESPN? Get instant access

As well as returning his lowest single-season pass completion rate (80.3%), the Brazilian also completed fewer dribbles per game (0.8) and registered fewer assists (three) in 2017-18 than during any other season he spent at the Etihad, thus demonstrating the heavy emphasis on goal scoring rather than goal creation.

Jesus' crowning moment of the 2017-18 season came in the 94th minute of the final league game of the season when he scored deep into stoppage time to secure a narrow 1-0 victory over Southampton. City were already champions by that point, but the Brazilian's strike ensured that Guardiola's side became the first in history to reach 100 points in a top-flight campaign, leading to them being dubbed the "Centurions."

City powered to a domestic treble in 2018-19 by winning the Premier League, FA Cup and League Cup as Jesus improved on his output once again by scoring 21 goals and creating seven assists in 47 games across all competitions. While used as an auxiliary left winger on a smattering of occasions, the Brazilian was mostly deployed at the spearhead of City's attack and averaged a goal every 107.3 minutes he spent on the pitch as a result.

Jesus also significantly diversified his means of goal scoring by notching four goals with his left foot, 11 with his right and six with his head. His hat trick against Shakhtar Donetsk in the group stages of the Champions League is also notable for containing, along with two penalties, the one and only goal Jesus ever scored for City from outside the 18-yard box. When you look at his delicious 20-yard lob, scored in the 92nd minute, you wonder why he didn't score more.

The season after that treble proved to be the most prolific season of Jesus' City career, thanks at least in part to a succession of injury issues that regularly kept first-choice striker Sergio Aguero out of contention. Jesus capitalised and scored 23 goals in 53 games for City -- his best return for the club -- while also chipping in with 11 assists.

While City had to make do with the EFL Cup as their only silverware after finishing runners-up behind Liverpool in a COVID-mired Premier League campaign, their Brazilian striker achieved several career highs in statistical terms.

As well as his best goal and assist return, Jesus enjoyed more touches inside the area per game (5.7) and a better pass-completion rate (85.9%) than at any other point during his City stint, and also saw his average completed dribbles rank rise to 1.3 per game -- signifying the beginning of a subtle shift in his style of play.

Jesus also became only the second player in Champions League history to score for an English club in both legs of a knockout tie against Real Madrid after Ruud van Nistelrooy did likewise for Manchester United in 2003-04.

Minor injuries, a positive COVID-19 test and a suspension all combined to reduce the amount of time Jesus spent on the pitch throughout 2020-21, with his stats suffering accordingly. The striker made just 42 appearances for City in all competitions (down from 53 the previous season), scored 14 goals and laid on four assists -- his lowest goal contribution return in any of his five full seasons at the Etihad.

Exactly half of Jesus' 14 goals were scored at close range inside the 6-yard box -- five with his left foot, seven with his right and two with his head. Compounding his struggles, the striker's average for touches inside the area fell almost 20% from 5.7 per game in 2019-20 to 4.7 per game in 2020-21.

On the upside, the Brazilian's total of 14 goals were scored from an xG rating of just 14.2, his pass-completion rate remained steady (84.6%) and he also successfully completed more dribbles on average (1.6 per 90 minutes) than during any other season at the Etihad. In short, he carried and moved the ball more effectively in the build-up of attacks, but at the cost of being in the right place at the right time to convert chances. The fact that midfielders Ilkay Gundogan (17 goals), Phil Foden (16) Raheem Sterling (14) and Riyad Mahrez (14) emerged as the club's top goal scorers in 2020-21 suggests a more holistic approach to sharing the goals around.

City once again shared the goals around in 2021-22, with Mahrez emerging top of the club's scoring charts in all competitions with 24 goals to his name, followed by Kevin De Bruyne (19) and Sterling (17). Jesus made the fewest appearances for City (41) in any of his five full seasons at the Etihad and also amassed his lowest goal tally (13), though he was able to ramp up his assist count to a joint-high of 11.

Of the forward's 13 goals, just one came via his left foot and one other with his head, with all 13 being scored from inside the 18-yard box. However, only four were scored from inside the 6-yard box, which represents Jesus' lowest yield of close-range tap-ins since his first few months at City in 2016-17.

Jesus' reduced participation will have naturally had a negative effect on his productivity in terms of goal contributions, but it is perhaps worth noting that he enjoyed a spike in average touches inside the area (5.8 per game -- a career high), pass completion (85.1%) and minutes per assist (233.7 -- again, a career high).

Last season saw Arsenal ship Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang out of the club on a free transfer to Barcelona in February, Aubameyang having been stripped of the club captaincy and frozen out of the squad two months earlier, while Alexandre Lacazette left as a free agent in a more dignified exit when his own contract expired at the end of the campaign.

Given that the Gunners' top scorer in all competition in 2021-22 was 19-year-old winger Bukayo Saka (12 goals), and that only three members of Mikel Arteta's squad successfully reached double figures in terms of goals, the Gunners will no doubt be hoping Jesus can revert back into the ruthless poacher of yesteryear.

Whether the Brazilian is able to bring those qualities back to the fore and re-adapt to life as a penalty-box predator capable of scoring 20-plus goals a season remains to be seen. Perhaps a mix of both wouldn't be a bad thing either, especially as the Gunners aren't overly blessed with an abundance of seasoned, Premier League-proven goal scorers.

Young academy product Eddie Nketiah has been rewarded for his late-season form -- when he scored five goals in the final seven games -- with a new contract, but the 23-year-old is still far from the finished article. And, with Fabio Vieira joining the ranks of attacking midfielders and wide forwards at Arteta's disposal, actually having someone in the area to finish chances with reliable regularity will be key to Arsenal's hopes of finishing in the top four next season. No pressure, Gabriel.

ESPN Stats & Information contributed to this report

Originally posted here:

The evolution of Gabriel Jesus: Arsenal's new striker went from pure goal poacher to all-round attacker at Man City - ESPN

Humans are, undoubtedly, an absolutely weird and unlikely species. But what makes them that way? In my latest book, Growing Up Human (17.99, Bloomsbury), I explore a critical aspect of human evolution that all of us have experienced but somehow never makes the headlines even though it may be the very thing that makes us the single most successful primate on the planet.

In the book, I look at the evolutionary science behind human childhood and our unique adaptation in drawing childhood out for a lot, lot longer than other animals. I explore where we fit in the primate system of finding a mate, our unimpressive attempts at making babies, the evolution of our difficult, dangerous births and why we make milk like a zebra. What we do with these amazing, strange childhoods, is the result of the critical choices our species has made down the line; all to give ourselves a shot at being forever young.

This book comes from both a career spent looking at the bones and teeth of humans and our relatives to understand the evolutionary history of growth and development. However, it also comes from a much more personal place, as I was expecting a child of my own and realised exactly how many questions about this fundamental part of the human experience were still unanswered.

Why are human pregnancies so dangerous? Why are we (and whales) the only species to have grandmas? What should teenagers be doing all day? And of course, most critically of all, what are we planning on doing with all this extra time?

There are so many books on human evolution out there with a just-so explanation for how we humans ended up the way we have, that I want to share in this little list the books that opened up new questions instead; ones that tell us about how we study the human past as well as giving us inspiration for how to do it better in the future.

All of the best scientific research, after all, starts with inspiration, and these are some of the books that inspired me to take my own shot at understanding our world.

If you fancy browsing more great science reads, check out this list of the best science books to fuel your curiosity.

My specialist subject is teeth how they grow, and what we do with them. Prof Peter Ungar has been incredibly influential in this field for decades and has led some of the pioneering research into what has gone on in our mouths in the last few million years that perhaps doesnt get the attention it deserves.

While the hominid story of walking upright seems firmly fixed in our collective imagination, there is a whole world of evolutionary importance locked down in fossil teeth. Ungar explains how teeth reflect what we eat, and how our teeth have changed as the various species that came before us changed diets, environments, and lifestyles.

While Ungar is an undoubted expert and the book is full of important points about evolution, what I enjoyed most about were the insights from a researcher who has been in the field for a long time, and the first-hand accounts of some of my sciences most exciting discoveries.

This book is close to my heart for two reasons. For one thing, it is an incredibly up-to-date precis of everything our species and all the ones that came before us were up to. Its readable without skimping on detail, and is now my handy go-to for the expansive overview of human evolution.

Of course, I also had the benefit of sitting around the coffee table with both authors when I worked at the Natural History Museum, London. This means that for me, this book captures in print form some of the best aspects of that job: the opportunity to be in the room where people who know evolutionary anthropology are talking about the latest developments in research.

It is my mission in life to help spread the word that teeth are one of the most exciting and undervalued subjects to research. Prof Tanya Smith has written this book with, I think, exactly that same mission in mind.

If you want to know how teeth can be on the cutting (biting?) edge of science, this is definitely the book for you. Smith has done incredible work bringing new imaging technologies to bear on ancient teeth, taking Neanderthals into a synchrotron and coming out with a day-by-day account of growing up.

While the book explores how we can use stable isotopes and synchrotrons to recover the stories of ancient lives, one of the most appealing things about it is the openness with which Smith shares her own journey through the wonder of teeth, something sure to resonate with anyone who has fallen head over heels for science.

There are many ways to tell the story of our hominid past, but none are quite so lyrical as this book by Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes on our last relatives, the Neanderthals.

The best books on human evolution rewrite the tired old tropes of yesteryear, and this book not only rewrites them but sets out such a dense and poetic vision of life for our European hominid cousins that you can practically taste the bitter yarrow they ate.

Far from being the troglodytes of Victorian imagination, Wragg Sykes introduces an entirely new kind of human one that cares, imagines, and creates.

I have to include this wonderful book by Professor Marlene Zuk because it is such a refreshing antidote to the shallow understanding of human evolution that worms its way into popular culture.

Zuk dismisses the mythical ideas of a perfect Palaeo life and exposes the faddish diets, workouts, and dating advice that people have marketed while trying to sell the idea that there is some perfect evolutionarily adapted way to be human.

There is nothing more frustrating for an anthropologist than the idea that humans are evolved to do anything at all when it is so clear that the only way species survive is through adaptation and change. Taking down the protein gurus and nonsense love life advice with humour and fact, this is a wonderful book for anyone who has ever had a suspicion that maybe palaeo life isnt all its cracked up to be.

Growing Up Human: The Evolution Of Childhood by Dr Brenna Hassett (17.99, Bloomsbury) is out on 7 July 2022.

Read more about human evolution:

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5 of the best books on human evolution - BBC Science Focus Magazine

The way we use words and phrases changes as our knowledge about the world around us evolves. For example, the first use of the term gluten-free appeared in 1927. Over the next 80 years, numerous studies about celiac disease and non-celiac gluten sensitivity emerged. And in 2013, almost 90 years after the term was first used, the FDA finally issued rules for labeling gluten-free food items.

Such is the trajectory of language: Words and phrases enter our linguistic periphery before they enter our lexicons with their usage finally solidified and agreed upon at least for a moment.

The term collaborative intelligence is no exception. The concept originated in 1959, with Oliver Selfridges famous Pandemonium: A Paradigm for Learning, but the term itself only became more widely used and accepted following the coining of another, related term in 1994: collective intelligence.

Pierre Lvy, who coined the term "collective intelligence," proposed that collective intelligence encompasses both collaborative and collective intelligence. The two are different, and for the purposes of this article, its important to create clear distinction:

Collaborative intelligence refers to distributed systems where all agents contribute to a problem-solving network (autonomously or not), while the knowledge produced by this network can be referred to as collective intelligence.

Think of it this way: If collaborative intelligence is the hive mind, then collective intelligence is the resulting knowledge this mind agrees upon and applies.

And why does it matter?

As awareness of the term collaborative intelligence continues to push its way past the business periphery, the ideas it involves will make similar usage gains (and vice versa). And in an industry soaked with artificial vs. human intelligence rhetoric and the fear and immobility that rhetoric perpetuates we need to commit to an ideal of collaborative intelligence now.

Doing so can pull us away from debate and toward ARM intelligence that makes a real difference in the way businesses function and communicate with borrowers, debtors, patients, our companies, our data, and yes, of course, our NLP and other ML models. And that way of functioning will also change our results.

What does committing to collaborative intelligence look like, in practice?

Collaborative intelligence requires you to:

1) Believe in the inherent value of diverse information, and

2) Redefine transparency

The Inherent Value of Information Diversity

Its a fact: Solving complex problems demands individual expertise, the incorporation of conflicting stakeholder priorities, and the differing interpretations of experts with diverse lived experiences. In a system where that set of perspectives includes an AI model and an automation workflow, the trust you place in that diversity is paramount. You cannot reach collective intelligence and support positive ARM business outcomes without widening your lens.

A Redefinition of Information Transparency

Transparency is a tricky topic in ARM. Who should see what data, and when? While a collections agent shouldnt expose consumer credit information to their social media network, for instance, your notes should expose data that will reshape workflows to your workflow automation model and then expose the results of that automation to your human agents for their own application.

How do the agents in the system (your compliance department, their QA team, your contact center agents, the robotic process automation that augments those agents, your workflows, etc.) know when and where to draw the lines?

Transparency must be redefined. For the ARM industry to continue its evolution past simple human vs. robot conversation, we must allow transparency to act as a driver for business outcomes. What will you achieve when all agents in the network are empowered to both contribute and use the right information, at the right time?

You (or your model) might be able to create a connection between a set of conversations with a borrower and a future QA review workflow. Or a borrower may receive the exact right, personal response for their emotional state through exposure of their contextual data to a human agent. By treating transparency as a driver, you can decide what to correctly expose and when, and give all agents (human or not) the power to do the same.

Collaborative Intelligence is Here. Are You?

Heres the bottom line: A commitment to developing and working within true collaborative intelligence systems will improve ARM.

Consider the virtuous cycle that will occur when all agents within the problem-solving network are enabled with information. That information improves workflows for productivity, training, compliance, and so much more. And those improvements inform person-to-person conversations the data from which informs improvements to workflows.

This virtuous cycle both originates from and becomes the system itself a system that produces the kind of collective intelligence the ARM industry requires to thrive.

See the rest here:

Evolution of ARM: Up Next, Collaborative Intelligence - insideARM.com

The online casino industry has significantly changed over the last ten years. In this blog post, we will look at the evolution of online casinos and see how they have changed over the years.

We will also discuss some of the major milestones that have taken place in this industry during that time.

The online casino industry has its roots in the early days of the internet. In 1994, the first online casino was launched, revolutionizing how people gamble.

The event marked the beginning of a new era in gambling. People no longer had to travel to Las Vegas or Atlantic City to access casinos. They could now do it from the comfort of their own homes.

The early online casinos were quite basic by todays standards. They offered a limited selection of games and were not very user-friendly. Nevertheless, they were a hit with users and quickly became popular. Online casinos became so popular that they began to spring up all over the internet.

The online casino industry began to take off in the early 2000s due to several factors, including the increasing popularity of online gambling, the advent of online payment methods, and the development of more user-friendly casinos.

During this time, many new online casinos were launched, quickly becoming some of the most popular sites on the internet. In 2003, an estimated 15 million people gambled online. This figure rose to 18 million by 2004.

The online casino industry continued to grow rapidly; by 2006, there were around 1500 online casinos in operation, an incredible increase from just a few years earlier.

In 2008, the first real money gambling app was launched for the iPhone as it was a major development for the online casino industry. Therefore, people could now gamble on their mobile phones, anywhere at any time, on various online sports betting sites.

Therefore, the Best online casino reviews provides an online betting platform where you can play various online casino games via your smartphones and win many prizes.

A boom followed the launch of the first gambling app in mobile gambling. Today, hundreds of casino apps are available for iPhone and Android devices. It has made online gambling more accessible than ever before.

In the early days of online casinos, all games were played against the computer by the participants. It was fine for many, but some players craved a more realistic experience. In 2006, Evolution Gaming launched the first live dealer casino, a game-changer for the industry.

Live dealer games are played against real dealers in real-time. Therefore, it gives players a much more authentic and immersive experience.

Live dealer games are some of the most popular online casino games. They are offered by all major online casinos and attract millions of players from all over the world.

The growth of the online casino industry has brought many benefits to players. They include;

With hundreds of casino apps available for iPhone and Android, people can play on their mobile phones anywhere and at any time. Therefore, online gambling has become more convenient and easier to access than traditional land-based casinos.

Players no longer have to travel long distances to gamble. They can now do it from the comfort of their own homes or on the go.

With so many casinos to choose from, players can take advantage of generous bonuses and promotions. Therefore, they can gamble with less money and still have a chance to win big prizes.

The online casino industry has created thousands of jobs around the world. In addition to the people employed directly by online casinos, there are also many indirect jobs such as software development, customer support, and marketing.

One of the biggest benefits is the advances in technology. Online casinos can now offer players a much more immersive and realistic experience due to the development of live dealer games.

Live dealer games are played against real dealers in real-time, offering players a much more authentic casino experience.

When online casinos first launched, they offered a limited selection of games. Today, there are hundreds of different casino games to choose from, including all the classic casino games like blackjack and roulette and hundreds of online slots.

Therefore, no matter your taste in gambling, you will be able to find a game to suit you.

Its fair to say that online casinos have come a long way in the last decade. They have evolved from basic affairs with simple games and rudimentary graphics to becoming one of the most popular forms of gambling worldwide.

With innovations such as live dealer games and mobile gambling, there is no doubt that online casinos are here to stay.

Excerpt from:

The Evolution of Online Casinos Over the Last Decade - Tech Guide

The mustard family of plants, also called Brassica is very diverse and has numerous members. Our canola, Brassica napus is from this family, but so is kale, rutabaga, turnip, swede, cabbage, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, mustard and many more.

Rapeseed is a much more recent evolution than wheat. I should probably explain the difference between rapeseed and canola before we proceed any further. Rapeseed is the naturally evolved plant. Canola is man-made. Both are identified as Brassica napus. A natural cross between two distinct members of the mustard family; cabbage with 9 chromosomes and turnip with 10 chromosomes joined to form Argentine rapeseed (Brassica napus) with 19 chromosomes. It is called Argentine because we first imported it as an undeveloped rapeseed plant from Argentina. In 1936 we also imported a Polish rapeseed plant. Rapeseed was an industrial oil gaining popularity during World War II as Germany could not get access to fossil fuel oil to run their machines, they adapted to using rapeseed oil not only to lubricate their machines but to burn the rapeseed oil in their diesel engines. Rapeseed or canola oil can be directly substituted for diesel fuel in warm conditions. In the cold it gets too thick (viscous) to be useful unless heated. To prevent the viscosity from being a problem, chemists have turned the rapeseed or canola oil into an ester, a biodiesel. This is easily done in any 45 gallon barrel in your backyard. There is even a version of a mustard plant, Brassica carinata that can directly produce jet fuel.

Before the 1970s Canada had no healthy edible vegetable oil. We ate a lot of butter and lard. The search for an edible vegetable oil started with taking the two non-edible ingredients out of rapeseed. Erucic acid is a component of rapeseed that produces fatty deposits in the heart; unhealthy. Glucosinolates, also a component of rapeseed are detrimental to human and animal health because they interfere with the uptake of iodine in our bodies, contributing to liver disease.

Dr. Keith Downey in Saskatchewan and Dr. Baldur Stefannson in Manitoba selected and crossed rapeseed cultivars to reduce the erucic acid and glucosinolates. They were successful in the mid 1970s and canola was the new name they gave this man-made plant in 1978. The definition of canola is that it must have less than 2% erucic acid and less than 30 micromoles per gram of glucosinolates. Canola was not recognized as a generally recognized as safe (GRAS) food in the USA till 1986.

Today Canada is the worlds largest producer of this healthy vegetable oil, producing more than 18 million tonnes annually. The next closest producer is China at 13 million and India at 9 million. We can boast that we produce 10 times more canola than the USA. Canola does not like hot weather as its flowers spontaneously abort above 30 degrees Celsius.

Canola is arguably the healthiest edible vegetable oil in the world after flax. Unfortunately, the healthy part of flax, linolenic acid is also very unstable and will quickly go rancid at room temperature making it harder to market.

Since rapeseed and canola are very recently evolved, they still have characteristics of wild plants; their seeds shatter and do not stay on the plant at maturity. Canola is quite easily manipulated by plant breeders and finally only about 10 years ago they were able to breed a non-shattering characteristic into canola. This had an immediate uptake by farmers who now could park their swathers and straight-cut their canola in the same way they straight-cut their other crops like wheat.

More:

The Evolution of Canola - mySteinbach.ca

As far as cinephile archetypes go, none are quite as notorious as the film bro. Once upon atime, they were characterised as the obnoxious student who worships at the feet of Quentin Tarantino, Nicolas Winding Refn and Stanley Kubrick. They completely miss the point of American Psycho, and claim they understood the plot of Inception on the first watch. Their movie appetite is limited to the IMDb 250, acanon of films directed by mostly white cis men, deemed to be worthy by mostly white, cis male gatekeepers.

But as arecent TikTok trend demonstrates, the definition of the film bro has now expanded. The videos involve users filming themselves with their mouths agape, alongside ironic captions maligning apicky moviegoing partner. Film bros when you tell them you want to watch aMarvel movie and not atwo-hour black and white movie about the Serbian government shown through the eyes of apigeon, one reads. Pretentious film bros when someone says they would rather watch acomedy than a15-hour black and white Polish film that critiques capitalism, says another. Further TikToks mock the film bros horror at someone who wont watch a Croatian film about amans divorce process with his wife.

The message is clear: film bros should simply lighten up abit. But theres also been acurious shift in the perceived tastes of the film bro online beyond Christopher Nolan and the like, these now seem to include anything perceived as foreign. The geographical descriptors in these captions imply that anything non-American is automatically pretentious and elitist (which in itself is pricked with xenophobia.)

Is it silly to put this much thought into ameme? Perhaps. But when film bro movies are seen as misogynist red flags, its concerning that the number of films branded as such stretch far beyond Pulp Fiction and Joker. To close oneself off from all cinema in favour of what feels comfortable sets an alarming precedent. Theres adisturbing lack of curiosity when it comes to cinema, evident in the near-complete erasure of the mid-budget movie, and calls for the Academy Awards not to reflect the best films of the year, but simply whats popular at the time. Now that the cinematic scope of the average viewer is as narrow as the original film bros, the goalposts have moved.

In 1993, Martin Scorsese wrote aletter to the New York Times in response to an article criticising Federico Fellinis films for being too opaque to decipher astory. Its not the opinion Ifind distressing, but the underlying attitude toward artistic expression that is different, difficult or demanding, he said. I feel its adangerous attitude, limiting, intolerant. If this is the attitude toward Fellini, one of the old masters, and the most accessible at that, imagine what chance new foreign films and filmmakers have in this country? Its telling that Scorseses words from almost 30years ago continue to resonate today.

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The evolution of the film bro - The Face

WASHINGTON: Fossils unearthed in China are helping scientists get a better grasp on one of the marvels of evolution: the giant panda's false thumb, which helps this veggie-loving bear munch the bamboo that makes up most of its diet.

Researchers said on Thursday they discovered near the city of Zhaotong in northern Yunnan Province fossils about 6 million years old of an extinct panda called Ailurarctos that bore the oldest-known evidence of this improvised extra digit actually a greatly enlarged wrist bone called the radial sesamoid.

It closely resembled the false thumb of modern pandas, but is a bit longer and lacks the inward hook present on the end in the extant species that provides even greater ability to manipulate bamboo stalks, shoots and roots while eating.

The false thumb is an evolutionary adaptation to augment the existing five actual digits of the panda's hand. A bear's hand lacks the opposable thumb possessed by humans and various primates that enables the grasping and handling of objects using the fingers. The false thumb serves a similar function.

"It uses the false thumb as a very crude opposable thumb to grasp bamboos, sort of like our own thumbs except it is located at the wrist and is much shorter than human thumbs," said Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County paleontologist Xiaoming Wang, lead author of the research published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Ailurarctos was an evolutionary forerunner of the modern panda, smaller but with anatomical traits signaling a similar lifestyle including a bamboo diet. The modern panda's false thumb has some advantages over the earlier version.

"The hooked false thumb offers a tighter grasp of the bamboo and, at the same time, its less-protruded tip - because of the bended hook makes it easier for the panda to walk. Think of the false thumb as being stepped on every time the panda walks. And therefore, we think that is the reason that the false thumb in modern pandas has become shorter, not longer," Wang said.

The panda's tight grip on bamboo acts against the jerking action of the mouth in order to quickly break food into bite-size chunks, Wang added.

The researchers initially found an Ailurarctos arm bone in 2010, then discovered teeth and the false thumb in 2015, giving them a much better understanding of the animal. Until now, the oldest-known evidence of this thumb-like structure dated to fossils from about 102,000-49,000 years ago in the same panda species alive today.

The false thumb lets pandas hold bamboo to eat but not rotate the food as a true thumb would allow.

"One of the most important features of human beings and their primate relatives is the evolution of a thumb that can be held against other fingers for precise grasping. The panda's false thumb is far less effective than the human thumb, but it is enough to provide the giant panda with the grasping ability to eat bamboo," said paleontologist and study co-author Tao Deng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

Pandas, one of the world's eight bear species, once inhabited large swathes of Asia. They now live primarily in temperate forests in the mountains of southwestern China, with a wild population estimated under 2,000.

A panda's diet is 99% vegetarian, though they do sometimes eat small animals and carrion. Because of their inefficient digestive system, pandas consume large amounts to meet their nutritional needs - 26-84 pounds (12-38 kg) of bamboo while eating up to 14 hours a day.

The false thumb was not present in another closely related bear that lived about 9 million years ago, the researchers said.

"This is a great innovation transformation of a minor bone into an element that is useful for a particular purpose," said Harvard University paleobiologist and study co-author Lawrence Flynn.

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Marvels of evolution: Pandas and their extra false thumb - Geo News

Lake Tahoe has become one of the most sought after places in the world to not only live at, but to explore. With rich history and immersion into the wilderness, backcountry trails in the Tahoe Basin give an up-close experience with nature like none other. Imagine a world where it was impossible to reach and explore hidden gems within the basin. Glenn Hampton thought about this potential future in 1981, and decided to get to work to create a way for anyone to hike or ride the entire circumference around Lake Tahoe.

STARTED AS AN IDEA

Glen Hampton worked for the Forest Service and had a dream of a trail that circled Lake Tahoe, said the Tahoe Rim Trails Developmental Director Veronica Long. It was established back in the early eighties and construction started in the mid-eighties after they got permitting and approval. Although the trail was originally proposed to be 150 miles, the trail eventually grew larger and is now a 200 mile-long trail system.

The process took a lot longer than they thought to complete the trail. I think they were envisioning it was only going to take a few years, but it ended up taking 20 years to complete the trails, said Long. The final loop wasnt completed until 2001.

The trail, which would take a total of 10 to 12 days to hike in total, is broken up into nine major segments. The first segment begins in Tahoe City and spans to Brockway Summit, totalling 20.2 miles. The segment features beautiful views of Watson Lake, along with the Truckee River Canyon. The segments are divided where the highways cross through the trailheads. This allows hikers to trek an individual trail in a day, or spend multiple days completing the entire loop. Trails within the TRT include Brockway Summit to Mt. Rose and Tahoe Meadows, which is also 20.2 miles long, and brings explorers to the highest point on the trail at Relay Peak. From there, the next segment spans to Spooner Summit, with views of Christopher Loop and Marlette Lake View available to all.

From Spooner Summit to the Kingsbury South Connector, hikers can enjoy 19 miles of ancient fir trees and panoramic views of both the Tahoe Basin and Carson Valley. From the South Connector to Big Meadow, there is a pass under the highest peak in the Lake Tahoe Basin, while also giving campers the opportunity to visit and even camp out at Star Lake. From Big Meadow to Echo Lakes, the trail merges into the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail, and for 18.3 miles, theres opportunity to enjoy alpine lakes and wildflower displays, before reaching the longest segment of the trail: Echo Lakes to Barker Pass.

The 32.5 miles of the segment passes several more alpine lakes, including Lake Aloha, before bringing hikers back to the first segment in Tahoe City. In the last segment of the trail, an abundance of wildlife can be seen, along with creeks and wildflowers that eventually lead into Page Meadows.

By providing a path around the trail, we have given people a place they can experience nature and everyone can be on the same path and use that same sacrifice to the wilderness, said Long. By consolidating people on the one trail, theyre not going out exploring everywhere and trampling everything. Theyre all on the same path.

COMMUNITY OF VOLUNTEERS

The trail was initially pitched in 1981 by Hampton before the Tahoe Rim Trail Fund was formed in 1982 and granted nonprofit status. Construction initially began in 1984 at Luther Pass.

The first trailhead was completed in 1990 at Big Meadow in California and then 17 years later, the entire loop was completed at Stateline on the north shore. The work was done by volunteers, amounting to over 200,000 hours dedicated by members of the community. Theres plenty that goes into planning for a trail including what the optimal route for the paths would be, where water is going to be traveling, erosion, as well as the type of users that will be on the trail. Long explained that although there is a small team at the top of the association to organize, volunteer work on the trail is what truly allows it to keep functioning.

We organize volunteers to build and maintain everything, said Long. Building reroutes and new trails is a very important part of what we do. But with 200 miles of trail, you have to put a lot of focus on the maintenance as well. Theres a lot of big pieces of what we do that people dont necessarily think about; just because the trail is there doesnt mean its good to go forever.

Volunteers spend countless hours on the trail, clearing brush, rebuilding drainage areas, removing logs and other obstructions in the way of the path or any rebuilding, and taking care of erosion that might have happened due to continued use of the trail.

Long noted that the work of the volunteers and the association is what allows locals and visitors alike to continue recreating safely in Tahoe.

Trails really do protect the wilderness and let people engage with it in a way that will protect the forest for years to come. People dont want to protect something that theyve never experienced, said Long. By giving people an opportunity to go out into the wilderness and fall in love with it, then hopefully they will think about that in the future and protect nature in general.

MORE VISITORS HIT THE TRAIL

Lake Tahoe has had an influx of visitors since the pandemic started in 2020. This heavily impacted the dynamic of hiking and outdoor recreation.

More people were hitting the trail who had never hiked before, said Long. We found a lot more heavy use impacts from all of those people. We realized we need to educate the public on the proper way to sustainably recreate on the trail.

A program called Taskforce Trailhead was launched in 2021 to address the concerns of sustainability. Volunteers were trained to go to trailheads on busy weekends and educate people about the Leave No Trace slogan in the basin. The volunteers are equipped with wilderness ethics which include reminding visitors to pick up their trash, carry enough water, and the prohibition of campfires in the basin.

Tahoe is booming and we are seeing millions of visitors each year. The visitors are not going away, said Long. Theyre coming more and more, and our biggest challenge is to create an infrastructure that can handle all of those people and this vision of how that can scale up. Focusing on improving the trail, maintaining quality and maintenance, and investing in infrastructure to accommodate more people will help.

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Take a hike: The continuing evolution of the Tahoe Rim Trail - Sierra Sun

By Thomas Filbin

A powerfully relevant study about an iconoclastic Black thinker and poet who was dedicated to economic reform as well as the eradication of racism.

Claude McKay: The Making of a Black Bolshevik by Winston James. Columbia University Press, 426 pp., $32 (paper).

Claude McKay might be the most famous Black writer that Americans have never heard of, and that is not your fault. The reason is that he was a devout Marxist at a time when that stance was neither popular or correctly understood. Given the trauma of the First World War and then the Depression and worldwide upheavals, Marxism was seen by many as the solution, a salve for humanitys wounds because it spoke directly to the plight of the common working man and woman. Not everyone agreed with this position; for many, Marxisms call for collectivism over individuality was castigated as the enemy of all that was good and holy in American life. This splendid new biography by Winston James, a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, looks at McKays embrace of radicalism through a sympathetic lens. McKay did not become a Marxist through ideological indoctrination, but because it was how he made sense of an unjust world and the powers that kept it that way.

Festus Claudius McKay was born in Jamaica in 1889, the youngest of 11 children of Thomas and Hannah McKay, owners of a farm of a hundred acres, acquired by gift of marriage and hard labor. Workers were employed and the holdings functioned as a profitable business. James notes that these were reasonable criteria for qualifying as a capitalist farmer. Thomass father had been an enslaved African of the Asante nation, todays Ghana. The end of slavery allowed some Black peasants to become property owners. Upward mobility was not unique, but it was rare in turn-of-the-century Jamaica. Thomas was very dark-skinned, a characteristic that James identifies as a marker, at the time, of ones class as well as race. One could almost read a persons social class from the color of his or her skin, the historian explains.

The economic status of McKays family made it possible for Claude to acquire an education. Older brother Theo graduated from a teachers college and then became a headmaster. Theo was a freethinker, and he passed books on literature and politics to Claude, who described his years with his brother as a great formative period in my life a time of perfect freedom to play, read and think as I liked.

Jamaica became too small for Claude and he emigrated to America, first attending college in Kansas but eventually winding up in New York where, as a respected author, he became part of the Harlem Renaissance. He wrote poetry and novels throughout the 20s and 30s, but before that he had become increasingly radicalized as he learned of the horrific treatment of Blacks during Jim Crow. Lynching, beating, and burning of homes were common occurrences, and not only in the South. Violence was the means of preventing Blacks from attaining equality and full participation in social and economic life. McKay worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad for a time as a waiter; he started carrying a revolver for protection. His activist leanings became increasingly extreme: he moved from being a Fabian (or gradual socialist) to an outright Bolshevik after the 1917 Russian revolution. Promises of change for Blacks and workers were in the air. Marcus Garvey moved the headquarters of his Universal Negro Improvement Association to Harlem in 1913, while A. Philip Randolph, who organized the Black railroad porters into a union, left Florida for New York in 1911. The ferment of ideas, grounded in the goal of generating unified action, charged the air the reformers breathed. McKay was exhilarated by everything around him during his first years in New York.

Still, McKay was hungry for travel. He went to England, where he lived for a time, and visited Russia in 1922-23, where he was feted by the Bolsheviks, who saw racism and oppression as an essential part of the capitalism they opposed. His transformation from a submissive colonial to an anti-imperialist radical began slowly, but he became a fervent believer. He was harshly condemned at the time, but his belief that Marxs doctrines were not pipe dreams is becoming increasingly acceptable to a younger generation, which sees them as blueprints for a revolution that will upend an economic order that perpetuates inequality by exploiting the dispossessed. Thus the powerful relevance of a study dedicated to an iconoclastic Black thinker and poet who was dedicated to economic reform as well as the eradication of racism.

For many back home, this embrace of Soviet socialism marked McKay as suspect; he became branded as un-American, a hostile voice to be feared. The Red Scare of the 20s turned Americans who might otherwise be inclined to empathize with the workers of the world into suspicious patriots frightened by cartoon images of Communist revolutionaries coming to cut their throats as they slept. Americas visceral fear of socialism began then and continues to this day. Bernie Sanders is labeled a socialist by contemporary conservatives, who are anxious to stop any challenge to the neoliberal status quo. Of course, by global standards Bernie is no more than a center left European social democrat.

Socialism in most Western countries has morphed into an unstable hybrid of statism and capitalism, and the same can be said of the communist world. Russian oligarchs enabled by Putin are the new robber barons, the owners of gigantic yachts and castles. Years ago China opted for a middle way, although Xi has attempted lately to bring private actors under greater control by the state. The pragmatic as well as idealistic values of socialism have been perverted by the same forces that turned free enterprise into mega capitalism: the desire for unlimited power and the need to maintain it.

After time in France, McKay returned to America and wrote prolifically, editing a leftist newspaper. His poetry and nonfiction carried the banner of revolution, but the rise of Stalin and in 1929 the exile of Trotsky, whom McKay deeply admired, transformed him into a full-throated opponent of Russian authoritarianism. The decade leading up to McKays death in 1948 is barely covered here, but Jamess history is explicitly dedicated to the formative years of this Jamaican-American Black agitator and writer, his evolution into an apostle of Marxist socialism.

McKay was an artist whose written work covered a wide range of human feelings, not just the political. As an example of the latter, there is his 1919 poem If We Must Die, a forceful expression (drawing on resonances with WWI) of the angry desperation of Black resistance to white racism. Here are its opening lines:

If we must die let it not be like hogs

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,

While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,

Making their mock at our accursd lot.

The poem ends with a call to fight back, to die, if necessary, on ones feet and not on ones knees.

Yet McKay could also be more personal and unabashedly sentimental. The second stanza of his 1922 poem Spring in New Hampshire is an idyll, a daydream about the beauty of nature and our place in it:

Too wonderful the April night,

Too faintly sweet the first May flowers,

The stars too gloriously bright,

For me to spend the evening hours,

When fields are fresh and streams are leaping,

Wearied, exhausted, dully sleeping.

One comes away from Claude McKay: The Making of a Black Bolshevik feeling that the Black writer lived a full and admirable life, politically and socially engaged, but never to the diminution of his individuality. Pure Bolshevism would have dogmatically dismissed the personal and emotional as bourgeois affectations, distractions that took energy away from the struggle against oppression. But McKay was too much of a creative spirit to be remade into something other than what he was. For him, humankind needs both the bread and the roses.

Thomas Filbin is a freelance critic whose reviews have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Boston Sunday Globe, and Hudson Review. He lives outside of Boston.

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Book Review: "Claude McKay: The Making of a Black Bolshevik" -- The Evolution of a Radical Thinker - artsfuse.org