Category Archives: Evolution

ATLANTA The 1956 World Series was the first of Brian Snitkers lifetime. Don Larsen threw a perfect game for the Yankees then, and it is one of the more indelible moments in baseball history. All these years later, no pitcher has thrown another no-hitter in the World Series.

On Friday night, in Game 3 of this World Series, Ian Anderson held the Houston Astros hitless for five innings at Truist Park. Snitker, the manager of the Atlanta Braves, pulled Anderson from the game.

It was not a move Casey Stengel would have made on that golden afternoon in the Bronx long ago. Then again, Snitker acknowledged, it was not a move he would have made until recently, either.

The me of old, probably a couple years ago, would be: How the hell am I doing this?, quite honestly, Snitker said, after a 2-0 victory that gave Atlanta a two-games-to-one lead. But the pitch count was such that he wasnt going nine innings.

Anderson had thrown 76 pitches, only 39 for strikes, with three walks and a hit batter in his five innings. In truth, he was less like Larsen and more like Bill Bevens, the star-crossed Yankee who issued 10 walks in Game 4 of the 1947 World Series before he lost a no-hit bid and the game with two outs in the ninth.

Bevenss pitch count is lost to time, but he was 30 years old and his arm never recovered; he relieved in Game 7 and then never again pitched in the majors. No modern manager would recklessly risk a pitchers future in pursuit of a World Series no-hitter, so Anderson never had a chance.

Only three other starters had been pulled with a World Series no-hitter intact two because of injuries (John Tudor in 1988 and David Wells in 2003), and one (Curly Ogden in 1924) because his manager essentially used him as a decoy to scramble the opposition. Andersons outing was the longest no-hit start in the World Series since Larsens.

It was never going to last very long. If he had not lifted Anderson after five innings, Snitker said, he definitely would have done so after six. Atlantas four best relievers each had two days off, Snitker explained, and Anderson had thrown a lot of pitches to the hitters at the top of the Astros order, which was set to lead off the sixth.

Snitker took the prevailing approach to bullpen management, in which relievers are peacekeepers more than firefighters. Why flirt with possible trouble when the starter has already done his job?

Theres a reason for it, said Tyler Matzek, who followed A.J. Minter and Luke Jackson and lost the no-hitter on a bloop single to left by Aledmys Diaz leading off the eighth. The guys, the front office, Snit, everybodys gone over it a few times for what the game script is for us to win this thing. Obviously, the game script is right.

The beauty of sports, of course, is that there actually is no script; the performers try to carry out the managers plan as an opponent tries to foil it. There is always a chance that a pitcher will be better than his team could have expected. When that happens in a setting like the World Series, fans want to believe they might see another Larsen.

Who could forget the letdown in Game 6 of the World Series last fall, when Tampa Bay Rays Manager Kevin Cash pulled Blake Snell from a shutout in the sixth inning while facing elimination? Snell had utterly dominated the Los Angeles Dodgers, who were thrilled to see him leave for a tired reliever, Nick Anderson. The Dodgers promptly stormed ahead and won the title.

In that case, though, Cashs flaw was trusting the wrong reliever: Nick Anderson had been struggling, and the Dodgers were eager to see him. The Astros were not as thrilled to see Ian Anderson depart, because they knew Atlantas bullpen would be just as stingy.

They have a really good pitching staff all the way around, said Alex Bregman, who rolled a single against the shift off Will Smith in the ninth. No matter whos coming in, youve got to stay focused and locked in.

Especially when those pitchers are Minter, Jackson, Matzek and Smith. Jackson looks sharp again after a rough National League Championship Series, and the other three have been overpowering throughout the postseason, with a combined 1.10 earned run average and 43 strikeouts in 32 innings.

Anderson, 23, took a no-hitter into the sixth inning of his major league debut against the Yankees last August. But he said he could not remember ever throwing a complete-game no-hitter, even in high school in Clifton Park, N.Y. He wanted to keep pitching on Friday, but conceded he could not challenge Snitkers logic.

I knew he wasnt going to budge, Anderson said. Its hard to. Youve got guys like Matzek and Minter and Luke and Will at the back end coming in, you cant blame him for going to those guys. Those guys, time in and time out, get it done.

Starters have been working less and less this October, which stands to reason at the end of a long season following a very short one. But what we saw in Game 3 was mostly about the evolution of pitching.

Technology helps coaches identify the right areas of emphasis for each pitcher. Armed with the knowledge of what they should use and why, more pitchers than ever have the stuff to overwhelm hitters for short bursts. The best teams, like Atlanta, have lots of those pitchers.

Ten or so years ago or, say, in 1956 a starter was probably the managers best option deep into the game. Now he may not be, even if he has not allowed a single hit.

I dont know, Snitker said, almost apologetically. Its just that we had all our guys gassed up today. I kind of liked how it set up.

It set up Atlanta with a lead in the World Series, and that more than matching milestones from decades ago is all that really mattered.

More here:

Pitching and Managing Evolve, and a No-Hit Bid Ends Early - The New York Times

In late 2018, when Jon Cody first started sharing his idea of a streaming service focusing exclusively on health content, some of his audiences were skeptical. Nobody questioned the increasing appetite for health-related content, nor the commercial potential. The concerns were around the medium itself.

Streaming was the thing your kids were doing, right? he recalled.

But when COVID-19 accelerated healthcares digital transition and triggered a broader reliance on technology, Codys vision proved prescient. Streaming, to parrot his phrasing, was now the thing you and your kids and your parents and everyone else was doing.

A couple of things have happened globally that make the idea make more sense today than it did two or three years ago, Cody noted. Streaming is undeniable now that Disney and HBO and a lot of the other big guys have jumped in. That world is a lot less clunky.

With todays launch of Digital Health Networks, the company enters the streaming mix with an ambitious offering primed to take advantage of the aforementioned trends in healthcare and technology. Showcasing a wealth of programming from organizations like the Mayo Clinic, the Cancer Research Institute and South Florida PBS The Health Channel, DHN aims to inform, inspire and entertain in equal parts.

People are going to come to us for one purpose and stay for a bunch of others, Cody said. Maybe you want information on breast cancer and end up taking a look at Living on the Veg. Theres no single way we expect people to experience this.

Indeed, DHN arrives fully formed, with a user-friendly interface (courtesy of platform partner Switch Media) and far more content than one would expect from a streaming startup. Other health media plays have been limited by the both the volume and the consistency (both in terms of production quality and tenor) of their offerings. DHN, on the other hand, has unified around storytelling, even for its most clinical-minded content.

Take The Human Body, created in conjunction with Blausen, which owns a library of medical and scientific illustrations as well as 3D animations. From that abundant source material, DHN has created some 330 shorts about everything from hair loss to inguinal hernias.

Other content available at launch includes Redesign My Brain, The New Science of Food and The Surgeon & the Soldier. There are channels devoted to mental health, addiction and cancer, as well as ones specifically catering to medical professionals and parents. Cody expects the number of channels to expand to 25 by the end of 2022.

Our purpose is healthcare stories, Cody stressed. Through those stories, were trying to help people to understand what their options may be, along the lines of, Hey, whatever it is Im facing, Im not alone in this process. Were not sitting here being doctors.

The content slate will expand further during 2022 with a host of original content from DHN Studios, the companys dedicated production arm. With studio space in Austin and Los Angeles (and New York City and Washington D.C. soon to follow), DHN Studios has already started production on This Week in Healthcare, Going Broke to Stay Alive (which will explore the undercovered realm of financial healthcare toxicity) and Horizons (billed as a docuseries on the innovations of the near future in healthcare).

We think our advantages are scale, our production capabilities and experience. Its hard to put something like this together if you havent done this before, Cody said. Hes clearly qualifies: an attorney who served on the staff of Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell, Cody has worked for Fox Entertainment Group and was founder and CEO of TV4 Entertainment.

DHN launches into a market more or less devoid of direct competitors, though theres some topical overlap with The Able Channel and SurvivorNet. Cody declines, however, to share the companys viewership goals.

I have expectations for numbers, of course, he said. But its easy to get somebody to come; whats important is what they do when theyre here. I dont need to see X million people, but I need to see a rabid audience that has taken to this brand and really held on to it.

To some extent, were competing for peoples time with the Netflixes and Hulus of the world, Cody continued. But we want you to turn this on as a streaming service, not just as a medical service. I think were going to surprise some people.

Continue reading here:

Behind the evolution and launch of Digital Health Networks - Medical Marketing and Media

The Lynx R1 MR headset.

XR typically refers to the spectrum of spatial technologies that cover the gamut between virtual (VR) reality and augmented reality (AR). The world is largely familiar with the concept of VR, the complete immersion in a digital space. It helps that VR is already available on consumer platforms such as Oculus Quest and PlayStation VR. Less understood is AR, which seeks to enhance the real world by overlaying the digital world on top it. Even within these two categories of XR, there are additional levels of immersionsome smart glasses feature a single monochrome display. Others, such as Hololens or Magic Leap, provide more advanced iterations of AR.

While many are familiar with the concept of VR, the market and the world are still becoming acquainted with AR. While VR is already available on consumer platforms such as Oculus Quest and PlayStation VR, consumer AR that everyone wants is still years away. People want AR glasses to have the graphical capabilities of todays Oculus Quest, inside the fashionable form factor of todays Ray Ban Stories. However, thats simply not possible with todays optical, wireless, battery and processing capabilities. Qualcomm is at the forefront of enabling headworn AR and VR solutions, including the Oculus Quest, Ray Ban Stories, and many other headsets.

I recently spoke with Qualcomms GM of XR, Hugo Swart about the companys vision and foundational work on Mixed Reality. The company has been building chipsets and platforms for XR since the early days and had one of the earliest AR platforms called Vuforia in 2012 and enabled pioneers in headworn AR like ODG. Qualcomm Technologies were also pivotal in enabling early smartphone VR solutions as well as the first Standalone VR headsets including the wildly popular Oculus Quest 2.

Why we need Mixed Reality

In the meantime, technologies like RGB video pass-through AR or Mixed Reality are bridging the gap on the way to AR. You may have heard Microsoft use the term Mixed Reality to describe its XR platform. While this is similar, in the context of this column, Mixed Reality refers to enabling both AR and VR within a single VR device. Microsofts definition refers to different devices sharing the same spatial computing platform and potentially space. In addition to possessing VR capabilities, Qualcomms vision for a Mixed Reality device must be able to use passthrough color cameras to recreate a feed as close to the real world as possible for the purpose of AR.

Mixed Reality capable VR devices must also be lighter and more compact than current VR devicesthey need to feel almost invisible to the user much like a pair of AR glasses would be. Were already seeing this in devices targeted towards Mixed Reality, such as the Lynx R-1 which runs on Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 chipset. I expect that well see similar devices from Facebook, Apple and other tech giants pursuing AR very soon

Right now, Qualcomm believes there are four paths within AR that are evolving in parallel, on different parts of the XR spectrum:

Eventually, these capabilities will merge to the point where it becomes difficult to tell the difference between each category. The lines will become very blurry, like what were seeing with VR today.

Mixed Reality features

In speaking with Hugo I learned that there are a common series of challenges that must be overcome in order to fully enable this new form of spatial computing. First, Mixed Reality headsets require the lowest latency possible along the entire image processing pipeline, since they must capture whats happening in the real world, process it, render it and then display it inside of the headset, in almost real-time. If things are too out of sync, the user will feel like they are drunk or have motion sickness. There cannot be any weak links in the chain, not even in the display. Every millisecond matters in Mixed Reality, even more than in VR or AR. This is a problem that Qualcomm recognizes and is working to mitigate. According to Hugo Swart, the companys GM of XR, Qualcomm has managed to bring photon-to-photon latency down to under 10 milliseconds from the previously standard 30ms+.

Second, Mixed Reality needs to have a deep understanding of the environment and be able to utilize AI algorithms to recognize objects and map the users surroundings. This is what allows the headset to overlay digital information over the real-world environment for AR functions. Additionally, even if the user is using the headset in VR mode, it needs to be able to help with boundaries and object avoidance. Snapdragon XR2 chipset, which is the standard for todays XR headsets, has these capabilities built-in.

In addition to low-latency and environmental awareness, a Mixed Reality device needs to have enhanced interactivity. In other words, users should be able to interact in AR, VR and MR experiences using different user interfaces and control schemesfor example, hand tracking for base-level interactions and controllers for more intensive applications like gaming and creative work.

A Mixed Reality device must also consider how the user interacts with both virtual and physical objects while inside of the headset and what that might mean for the users immersion. For example, it will need to understand the differences between different types of objects, applying the proper level of opacity to them depending on their degree of relevance. When you look at the previous generation of XR chipsets, the Snapdragon XR2 increased AI performance by 11 times, which is crucial in enabling such features.

Last but certainly not least is the fact that Mixed Reality headsets require a fundamentally better field of view (FoV) than most AR headsets, which typically feature between 30 and 50 degrees. This is because bending light is difficult, and these devices light engines are limited by what can fit inside their necessarily lightweight and compact form factors. Todays technology simply cannot produce anything beyond 50 degrees, for the most part. There are a few exceptions, but these solutions tend to be more appropriate for engineering environments versus consumer, due to their size and weight.

One workaround to this bottleneck is RGB pass-through technology, which delivers the FoV that users expect, on a much more accessible timeline. Snapdragon XR2 chipset was specifically designed to support up to 7 different simultaneous camera streams including ultra-low latency processing to enable a lag-free RGB passthrough experience. Qualcomms powerful Adreno is designed to enable the higher resolutions of Mixed Reality displays to mitigate the loss of visual fidelity that results from an increase in FoV. People want access to AR and MR today, not in three to five years when lightweight AR headsets finally support an acceptable field of view and levels of performance. For AR to be accessible, Mixed Reality headsets must flourish. This will allow developers to build AR experiences on todays available hardware for tomorrows AR headsets.

Mixed Reality: a consumer or enterprise technology?

With how much Mixed Reality borrows from both VR and AR, it would not be surprising for it to inherit many of the same use cases. In fact, consumer and enterprise use cases for AR and VR translate almost perfectly to Mixed Reality. However, there are some use cases that are even better in Mixed Reality than VR or AR by themselves.

One of those is enterprise training. Imagine being able to take advantage of Mixed Realitys wide FoV, overlaying graphics onto, but still very much seeing the real world. This makes Mixed Reality a powerful proposition for job training.

There are additional Mixed Reality applications already in use in the enterprise, such as remote assistance and guided work instructions. However, these stand to become much more powerful and capable than the simple 2D head-mounted solutions we have today. There are also consumer use cases aplenty, since a user can turn virtually any surface in their home into a gigantic display without losing their real-world spatial and situational awareness.

Final thoughts

Many in the industry agree the convergence of AR and VR is inevitable. Mixed Reality is still in its early days, but much of the XR industry appears to be moving in that direction in the near term. Mixed Reality will not only benefit from the technological developments of AR and VR, but also facilitate them at the same time. There will be many users who will want a single, Mixed Reality device to cover the gamut of XR. Qualcomms technological innovations inside of the XR2 are at the core of making that possible today. However, not everyone will want this unified device and may prefer to only have AR or only have VR. Users want choice and hopefully the market will give them that with a diversity of XR devices and approaches. Much like the XR headsets and Android smartphones of today, many will likely be powered by Qualcomm technologies.

Disclosure:My firm, Moor Insights & Strategy, like all research and analyst firms, provides or has provided research, analysis, advising, and/or consulting to many high-tech companies in the industry, including Qualcomm. I do not hold any equity positions with any companies cited in this column

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Qualcomm And Mixed Reality: The Next Step In The Evolution Of XR? - Forbes

by Gary Kennedy

Halloween will occur on October 31, 2021. This holiday occurs the day before the Christian holy days of All Hallows Day. In some countries this is known as All Saints Day or Hallowmas which occur on November 1 and 2, respectively.

In Germany, when I was assigned there, it was also referred to as Totensonntag or Blue Christmas, Thursday of the Dead. Costume parties, jack-o-lanterns and huge festive bon fires were part of the fanfare. The why of that is unclear but it just seemed to be part of the evolution of the holiday. Trick or treat just seemed to jump in there as well.

By todays standards, I dont believe we would consider this a religious holiday. The advent of costumes seems to me to be a competition between good and evil, for the most part, in a fun, peaceful way. However, many of we ancients can remember 1950-70 in which if you didnt give a treat then you stood a good chance of having your house, car and other personal property pulverized with eggs or bad things being written on your walls with crayons, magic markers and even paint, by the real evil ones. Some of us with hopes of avoiding this would keep a light on, maintain a smile and give treats to the little monsters and some not so little.

The police were always on high-alert during this time. I should add it wasnt all bad as some of the children were adorable and sweet. Some of us even loved the event so as to enjoy the children and to say hello to their parents. For the most part the event was territorial. Some of the older unaccompanied children figured out that the more affluent sections of the town gave the best treats, some even money. So, they being mobile and unattended would head for these locations to cash in on the better goodies. Those that would cause the damage were usually of the older groups with no adult supervision.

All Hallow tide, the time in the liturgical year (relating to liturgy or public worship) in which the dead are acknowledged, especially saints, martyrs and other revered individuals. This is strongly a religious attempt of defining this holiday. Obviously, Jesus and testimony for him were death sentences which consisted of swains, burning at the stake, crucifixion as well as various forms of torture. The first Christian martyr was Saint Stephen who was taken out of the city of Jerusalem and stoned to death. Final words echoed those of Jesus, a prayer of forgiveness for his attackers. (Acts of Apostles 7:60) Jesus (Luke 23:24) Stephen is the patron saint of deacons and stone masons both Christian and Secular.

So as you can see, Halloween is not just a day of door knocking and treats giving, but also has religious overtones far more significant than the Halloween we celebrate. We have allowed it to evolve into something totally different from what it was intended. There is so much more to this holiday than what I have given you here.

In any case we are still under the influence of this terrible Covid epidemic and that leaves us with many questions to resolve before we knock on doors and accept food stuff from strangers. Some folks known to each other will have small gatherings at their homes where there is some semblance of safely. In my opinion, all should not be lost during these hard times regarding our children.

This is a time when memories are created and shared throughout the years to come. Its up to us to make them good and safe. God bless and enjoy your holiday. Also, remember there are more than just treats; we have family, friends and the one who makes all things possible. Im not sure exactly what he thinks of this holiday but he reads the heart. So I am pretty sure he knows we mean no harm or disrespect.

The Town Line is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit private foundation, and all donations are tax deductible under the Internal Revenue Service code.

To help, please visit our online donation page or mail a check payable to The Town Line, POBox 89, South China, ME 04358. Your contribution is appreciated!

Originally posted here:

MY POINT OF VIEW: The evolution of Halloween - Town Line

According to NBA.coms defensive rating, it has been nearly a decade since the Minnesota Timberwolves finished the regular season with a top-15 defense (2013-14: 12th; 105.2). Its been almost two decades since they finished with a top-10 defense (2003-04: 6th; 98.5). In what should not surprise anyone who has followed the team closely since their conception in 1989, they have never finished with a top-five defense.

Yet, within the top-five (99.0) is precisely where the 2021-22 Wolves find themselves through a paltry four games this season.

Unbelievable performance for us tonight from start to finish, Wolves head coach Chris Finch told the media following his teams 113-108 win over the defending champion Milwaukee Bucks Wednesday night. Offense dried up a little bit as we went along, but our defense never really let down.

Burgeoning star both on the court and the podium Anthony Edwards was a little more, shall we say, energetic about the Wolves defensive performance.

Man, we lock up, man. I dont care what nobody say about us. We play the best defense in the league. I stamp that. We gonna have two, three people on the All-Defensive Teams, no what Im saying. And I might be on one of them, Edwards joked after the victory. We definitely been winning games on the defensive end, man.

While their new system remains a work in progress Finch likened it to algebra compared to the Bucks calculus on Wednesday a couple of essential tweaks and a renewed sense of focus on that side of the ball have the Wolves playing championship-level defense.

Perhaps the most significant and impactful change was how they attack pick-and-rolls, as highlighted in the video posted by Dane Moore below.

Save for the first game against the Pelicans, the Wolves have swapped out their big man drop coverage for applying pressure at screen level. This is something that Dane and other media members have spoken on and written about extensively, but making this switch accomplishes a couple of tasks.

The new scheme takes advantage of the overall length and athleticism of Karl-Anthony Towns, Jarred Vanderbilt, and Jaden McDaniels, in effect constricting the passing lanes available to the ball-handler as he comes off the screen. It also prevents the ball-handler from getting a head of steam towards the hoop and allows the Wolves defenders to dictate the opposing offenses actions rather than reading, reacting, or predicting what they will do.

Attacking the screen is particularly a boon for Towns, who would often look like a deer in the headlights in seasons past when defending the pick-and-roll as his ability to react to the actions of the ball-handler was poor, to put it lightly. However, the scheme also plays to the strengths of Vanderbilt and McDaniels, namely their elite lateral quickness, long limbs, and nose for getting their fingertips on the ball, which has resulted in the Wolves accumulating an average of 11.5 steals per game (third-best overall).

(Quick side note: Another change seen in the video above is that the Wolves have drastically cut down their number of switches off screens. Finch has said that refraining from switching increases individual accountability to stepping up on defense, something easily seen through four games.)

Another adjustment the Wolves have made is stressing the importance of contesting 3-point shots. Vanderbilt, McDaniels, Edwards, and Josh Okogie have been exemplary at quickly closing the gap and getting a hand in the face as they rise, which has resulted in opponents shooting a trifling 28.6% from beyond the arc (tied for second-best overall). Opponent 3-point field goal percentage is one of the more volatile defense stats, so it should be taken with more than a grain of salt. However, the numbers back up what the eye has perceived in this instance, which lends greater credence to the stat.

The last significant change made by the Wolves is placing an increased emphasis on protecting the paint.

You got to stop something, and most good teams are stopping the rim, Finch said. We feel we got to win that battle as much as we can, first and foremost.

The Wolves have held opponents to 43 points in the paint on average (tied for eighth-best overall) and a 55.3% field goal percentage within six feet of the rim (third-best overall), of which Towns deserves the lions share of the credit. Theyre also blocking an average of 7.8 shots per game, placing them second in the NBA.

Finch and his coaching staff have wholly revamped the Wolves defense by making common-sense adjustments that play to his athletes strengths while minimizing their deficiencies. While the regular season is a slog, and there is still a long road ahead of them, the Wolves odds of finishing with a top-15 defense are much better now than ever thought possible before the start of the season.

Continued here:

We lock up, man: On the Evolution of the Wolves Defense - Canis Hoopus

Tusks are uniquely mammalian structures, found in a variety of animal species, including elephants, walruses, warthogs, wild boars and hippopotamuses.

Mammals with tusks find an array of uses for their modified teeth, including fighting, digging, defense, burrowing, pushing over trees, and even assisting with locomotion as in the walrus that uses its tusks to lift itself up onto the ice. And yet, there has been little research on the evolutionary origins of tusks or what may have led to the development of this dental phenomenon.

In a new study, published today in theProceedings of the Royal Society B,researchers trace the first tusks back to dicynodonts, ancient relatives of mammals that lived before the dinosaurs, and they shed light on the evolution of mammalian tusks.

Tusks are this very famous anatomy, but until I started working on this study, I never really thought about how tusks are restricted to mammals, said study lead author Megan Whitney, postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University.

Whitney recalls that the idea for the study of dicynodonts arose while she and other researchers were taking a lunch break during a paleontological dig. We were sitting in the field in Zambia, and there were dicynodont teeth everywhere. I remember Ken picking them up and asking how come they were called tusks, because they had features that tusks dont have.

Dicynodonts are not mammals, but are mammal-like reptiles that lived between 270 and 200 million years ago, before the radiation and proliferation of the dinosaurs. They are very distant relatives of modern mammals and are characterized by having two tusks that protrude from their upper jaws, in the position of the canine teeth. The name of the group, dicynodont, literally means two dog teeth.

As a group, they were very successful, becoming distributed throughout the world and radiating into many different habitats. There were more than 70 different genera of these fascinating vertebrates, varying from mouse-sized to elephant-sized.

The researchers had to define exactly what was meant by a tusk, as there was clearly confusion between the terms teeth and tusks. Not all protruding teeth are technically tusks.

For this paper, we had to define a tusk, because its a surprisingly ambiguous term, said Whitney. The researchers determined that for a tooth to be a tusk it must extend out from the mouth, be made entirely of dentine lacking the enamel covering most mammalian teeth and be ever-growing.

Some of the dicynodont teeth that the team observed in Zambia didnt seem to fit the definition of a tusk either they were coated in enamel instead of dentine. There are many different kinds of dicynodonts and they appear to mostly all have tusks, said Whitney, however, when you look at the micro-structural details theyre very different in those groups.

The researchers used micro-CT scans to examine the fossilized tissues of the dicynodont tusks. Paper-thin slices of fossilized tusks from 19 dicynodont specimens, representing ten different species, were examined in this way.

The histological sections showed that the oldest groups of dicynodonts had a big tooth, rather than a true tusk. It was only much later in their evolutionary history that dicynodonts evolved a true tusk that was ever-growing.

Mammals face a paradox when it comes to their teeth. Most mammals, like humans, replace their baby teeth with adult teeth only once in a lifetime. Mammalian teeth are covered with enamel, and so are very durable, but if an adult tooth is lost, it is irreplaceable.

In addition, mammalian teeth are attached to the jaw by means of pegs that fit into sockets in the jaw the attachment involves soft, fibrous tissue or ligaments.

By contrast, the teeth of other vertebrate groups are attached to the jaw by hard-tissue fusion of bone to tooth, and may also have several sets of tooth replacements during a lifetime.

It appears that the mammalian conditions of soft tissue attachment and few replacement teeth sets the scene for the development of an ever-growing tusk. This tusk is covered with dentine, which is less durable than enamel, but it can continue to grow throughout the life of the animal.

The dicynodont specimens in the current study, which came from South Africa, Antarctica, Zambia, and Tanzania, appeared to have the mammalian conditions of reduced number of replacement teeth at the canine position and a soft tissue attachment of teeth to the jaw. Interestingly, this is a combination of features that is unique to mammals.

If you have these two things, a reduced amount of tooth replacement and a soft-tissue attachment, an ever-growing tooth allows the animal to get around the fact that it cannot replace the tooth. Instead, it evolves to continuously deposit the same tooth tissues, said Whitney. And as the animal continues to deposit the tissue, the tooth begins to move outside of the mouth to become functional.

The dicynodonts examined in the current study show the first known examples of true tusk development in vertebrates. We dont really know what functions the dicynodonts tusks may have had because we cant observe them and see what they were doing with them, said Whitney. Thats a lingering question about dicynodonts, even more so now.

The study also showed that dicynodonts evolved ever-growing tusks multiple times in different groups, indicating convergent evolution during their history. I kind of expected there to be one point in the family tree where all the dicynodonts started having tusks, so I thought it was pretty shocking that we actually see tusks evolve convergently, said Whitney. This is a similar story to what we see in elephant evolution in that it mirrors a lot of the patterns that have been studied on how elephants got their tusks.

We were able to show that the first tusks belonged to animals that came before modern mammals, said Kenneth Angielczyk, co-author and curator at Chicagos Field Museum.

Dicynodont tusks can tell us a lot about mammalian tusk evolution in general. For instance, this study shows that reduced rates of tooth replacement and a flexible ligament attaching the tooth to the jaw are needed for true tusks to evolve. It all ladders up to giving us a better understanding of the tusks we see in mammals today.

By Alison Bosman, Earth.com Staff Writer

Read the rest here:

New secrets revealed about the evolution of mammal tusks - Earth.com

TOKYO -- Even in today's digital society, ballpoint pens remain an essential tool in our daily lives, whether at work or for jotting down our deepest personal thoughts in a journal.

In Japan, stationery stores typically carry a huge selection of ballpoint pens. Tip sizes, for example, typically range between 0.5 mm and 0.7 mm, to as little as 0.38 mm. While the sheer number of choices can flummox buyers, it also tells us something about Japan's unique writing instrument culture.

The ballpoint pen is a surprisingly new invention, dating back to 1943. The first model used oil-based ink developed by Hungarian inventor Laszlo Biro. Ballpoints came to Japan later, with manufacturers competing to roll out new products. Ohto, a company in Yuki, Ibaraki Prefecture, marketed a pen that used water-based ink in 1964. In 1984, Sakura Color Products in Osaka launched a gel-ink pen that it said allowed people to write smoothly, like water-based ink pens, but whose ink, when dry, offered the water resistance of oil-based ink.

In the early days, pen tip sizes ran from 0.8 mm to 1.2 mm. Overseas, bold was best: "People in Europe and the U.S. use signatures a lot, and as they write with Roman letters, they tended to prefer thick lines," according to a spokesperson of the Japan Writing Instruments Manufacturers Association.

By contrast, Japanese is written mostly with kanji, as Chinese characters are called. They tend to have many strokes, so thick lines make for messy writing. That led Tokyo-based Zebra to introduce a pen in 1959 with an oil-based ink and a tip measuring 0.7 mm. It later expanded the range of tip sizes to include 1.0 mm and 0.5 mm pens.

Although the typical scribbler might think the number refers to the width of the line a pen lays down, it actually indicates the diameter of the tiny roller in the tip that gives the ballpoint its name. The width of the line a pen produces is actually about half the ball's diameter.

But not all pens are created equal: The thickness of the line "differs if you use different products, even if they have same tip size, like, for example, a 0.5 mm pen, because the ink quality and the amount of ink flow vary," according to the Writing Instruments Manufacturers Association spokesperson.

Although they are both sold as 0.5 mm tip, gel ink ballpoint pens, Mitsubishi Pencil's Uni-Ball Signo's line is 0.3 mm wide, while that of Pilot's Hi-Tec-C is slightly thinner, at 0.25 mm. Line widths also vary depending on whether the ink is oil- or water-based.

The top-selling ballpoint pens are those with 0.5 mm and 0.7 mm tips, but in the last few years pen makers have introduced products with smaller and smaller rollers. After Pilot introduced a Hi-Tec-C model with a 0.3 mm tip, rivals followed suit.

Making such tiny rollers for pens that use oil-based ink is difficult because of its viscosity, but Mitsubishi Pencil successfully developed a 0.38 mm version of its Jetstream pen, putting it on sale in 2013.

"When carbon copies were still used widely, pens with thicker tips were often preferred, but the purpose of [pens'] use in work has shifted. People now use them to make notes in the narrow spaces between the lines of printed materials, or to make notes in a tiny notebook," a spokesperson for Mitsubishi Pencil said. "That led to an increased preference for pens with thinner tips."

The 0.38 mm tip size of the Jetstream may seem random, but it is the result of the company's efforts to create a comfortable feel with an oil-ink pen and the optimum balance in line thickness, the spokesperson said.

Last year, Mitsubishi Pencil introduced a 0.28 mm version of the Jetstream. The technology for making ballpoint pen tips has advanced to the point where manufacturers can fashion tips that are minuscule yet resist wear and tear, and they are pushing smaller tipped, oil-ink products. Incidentally, young Japanese increasingly prefer 0.3 mm tips for mechanical pencils.

Despite growing digitization and a falling birthrate, sales of pens and pencils remain solid in Japan. According to the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, sales of ballpoint pens totaled about 63.5 billion yen ($559 million) in 2020, an increase of 2.4 billion yen versus a decade ago, although sales of ballpoint pens for office supplies fell over the period, hit by the global financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.

But, said Tomoo Ikeda of Zebra's public relations department, "There are increasing numbers of people who buy them for themselves, with their primary focus being design and functionality factors [as an expression of] individuality."

Japanese ballpoint pens have a worldwide reputation for quality. Japan exported about 750 million ballpoint pens using water-based ink in 2020. Pilot sells nearly 90% of its ballpoints overseas.

"Even as the nation digitizes, people are enjoying analog aspects of things as they seek what is special to them," Zebra's Ikeda said.

Excerpt from:

A fine line: The evolution of the ballpoint pen in Japan - Nikkei Asia

Artificial intelligence and deep machine learning are allowing UAS to scale and intensify their impact across many sectors.

Every now and then, the world experiences significant bursts of innovation thanks to random concurrence of favorable conditions in technology, business and society. The explosive growth in innovative applications of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) over the last 10 years can only be matched by the World Wide Web and the iPhone.

Remote controlled flight had existed since the Royal Air Force launched the Queen Bee aircraft in 1935. After that, drones evolved to higher levels of sophistication, but remained, for the most part, limited to military applications. Perhaps the two watershed moments that turned drones into true consumer products happened in 2010, when Parrot flew its AR Drone with an iPhone app at CES, and in 2013, when DJI equipped its Phantom drone with a camera.

Ease of navigation, image capture capabilities and miniaturization of ARM processors provided fertile ground for AI applications across all sectors. This powerful combination allowed drones to permeate an impressive variety of domains, including ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) and targeting, film, agriculture, logistics, engineering and disaster response. The iPhone, the GoPro camera, GPS and AI were technology kindling. The number of problems that have been waiting for a UAV solution is only bound by imagination.

Todays drones come prepackaged with GPS sensing and navigation capabilities, video capture, and command and control applications, as well as several interfaces that allow the implementation of AI and special purpose programs. This combination puts the system in UAS.

Computers enabled massive automation and scaling of information processing. AI, on the other hand, moved computation to a much higher level, enabling massive automation of reasoning, or more precisely, solution discovery and parameter optimization. These two operations allowed machines to learn.

An AI thermostat, for instance, can learn the optimal temperature setting that minimizes the number of trips a person takes to warm or cool a home or office. To do this, a machine learning algorithm collects many data points such as room temperature and the action the person takes every time she or he sets the thermostat. This gives the algorithm valuable feedback on what the proper setting should be given ambient temperature, time of day, etc. All machine learning algorithms follow the same principle, except they use hundreds or thousands of thermostats, each of which learns an obscure parameter inside the algorithm. The accumulation of learning from these units results in machine intelligence such as recognizing a cat in an image, parallel parking a trailer truck, translating text from Mandarin to Arabic with no prior knowledge of vocabulary or grammar, or identifying terrorist cells in a social network.

The most successful and practical applications of drones today leverage AI for image recognition and image stitching. While this is far short of the full promise of AI, it is making a tremendous impact, helping to automate and scale a vast array of applications, at minimal cost. Drones are flying inside Europes cathedrals and architectural treasures to build comprehensive 3D models. Drones count sheep in Israel, and, surprisingly, stay awake. Civil engineers use drones to constantly scan large structures like bridges, dams and oil rigs to detect structural faults before they grow into serious problems. And, of course, the military has been using drones for decades now to collect field intelligence. Drone imaging is becoming so prevalent that it will be virtually impossible to find a domain that has not been permeated.

Drones that scan the insides of a cathedral, for instance, enjoy many luxuries that are rarely afforded to many in other domains. The drones can easily fly back to charging stations every time they need power. They can use broadband to upload their high-resolution videos to the cloud to be processed by gigantic server farms. They are protected from wind, rain, theft and attacks, and run little cybersecurity risk. AI cannot do its job without some of these luxuries.

The challenge of operating applications in hostile environments such as war zones, or forest fires, requires a great deal of support infrastructure as well as bigger, more powerful drones. This challenge provides a great opportunity for AI to provide operational support functions. Albeit less glamorous than object identification, navigation and context determination, these support functions optimize and preprocess the data to mitigate the lack of readily available powerful computing and high-speed data transfer.

For example, rather than upload high- resolution images to the server, or process them on the drone, AI algorithms are used to sample the images and only capture relevant features, such as edges, position of each eye relative to the nose, etc. These features can then be uploaded to a server requiring much lower bandwidth and using much less power. Another powerful approach, which is frequently used in movies, consists of taking a few high-resolution static images and low-resolution video; AI algorithms then use the two to construct high-resolution video. Once high-resolution video is on the server, then virtually endless computing power can be used by advanced AI. A drone equipped with FHD video, for instance, captures images that contain 19201080 pixels (about 2 million). Using images, an eighth the FHD resolution produces 240135 (or 32,400 pixels), which still provides recognizable images and results in an order of a 64-fold reduction in power required for capturing, storing and transmitting the images, as well as required bandwidth. Many AI applications only use 6432 images, which results in a 1024-fold reduction.

Advances in computing and battery technology as well as increased availability of bandwidth will make these support functions less relevant in many applications. However, the drive for miniaturization and continued expansion of drones onto new domains of application with hostile environments will always require additional support functions.

The model of using a handful of drones to capture images or other data and upload them to a server to run advanced AI is prone to be outdated very soon. The problem with this model is that it cannot be operationalized. It is neither robust nor is it scalable. If a drone fails, gets lost or suffers a physical or cyber attack, the whole operation could fail. The cost of manually replacing drones in a battlefield or an offshore oil rig is operationally too expensive. The model for the future is one that uses hundreds or thousands of drones as a system, rather than individual drones.

Transforming individuals into a system has been fundamental to many areas, including physics, biology, social science and technology. The key distinction is that the system is greater than the sum of its parts. It is a universal property of sustainable systems. The science of managing large numbers of individuals as a system has been applied with great success to marketing, finance, web search, language translation, environment restoration and AI itself. Transforming an army of drones into a system of one is a natural application of this science.

To cite a public example, in 2012, Ars Electronica Futurelab created the first drone light show, in which 49 drones were programmed with flocking and swarming behavior inspired from birds and bees. The result was an emergence of artistic light patterns in the sky. Since then, there have been hundreds of light shows, using thousands of drones. Most of these shows use highly coordinated drones to show, for instance, a man walking in space at the 2020 New Years celebration in Shanghai.

As impressive as it is, a light show is simply a rendering of 3D images in which each drone occupies the position of a pixel. The technology-associated challenges are not to be underestimated, but this remains in the realm of coordinating individuals rather than managing a system.

AI exemplifies the power of leveraging large numbers of individuals as a system. In 1956, Oliver Selfridge and Marvin Minsky founded what is known today as AI with the notion of daemons, or background computer programs, working as a system to solve complex problems. Since then, there have been a proliferation of distributed technology systems founded on the principle of agents, or daemons, working together to tackle complex problems at scale. Hadoop technology that is today widely used to mine huge amounts of text data, such as web logs, is based on agents that each grab a subset of the data and break the task into thousands of subtasks that are executed in parallel. Agent-based modeling is widely used in biology to learn about the sustainability of an ecosystem, for instance. In these models, thousands of agents are programmed with certain behaviors, like deer eating vegetation at a particular rate, trees growing at their own rates, predators eating deer, etc. These agents then interact randomly with each other and produce many plausible outcomes.

Consequently, deep learning, which is at the center of many of the most impactful applications of AI in drones, gets its power from neural networks in which hundreds, or thousands, of very basic mathematical functions systematically cooperate to adapt their parameters as they learn from experience. These neural networks are organized in layers whereby each layer feeds a summarized version of its inputs to the next layer, allowing the network to dive deeper and deeper into the features that really matterhence the name deep learning.

Drones are no different from the nodes in a neural network, albeit much more sophisticated. With todays technology, small and simple drones can be produced at very low cost. Instead of a handful of powerful drones, with single points of failure, thousands of simpler drones can operate as a system. Systems of drones are much more effective than individuals. A handful of drones can be shot down in a battlefield; a dust of drones, on the other hand, is much harder to defend against.

The operationalization of drones as a multidrone system is key to enabling the next leap. Fortunately, there is a powerful precedent that presages high likelihood of success. In 2006 Amazon launched Amazon Web Services (AWS), which gave birth to cloud computing, transforming IT operations forever and making data centers a thing of the past. At the core of AWS are a number of support processes that marshal thousands of computers on the cloud to operate as one. Before AWS, the vast majority of AI applications were limited to a handful of powerful computers. Now AI, with virtually endless power, is readily available at a staggeringly small fraction of the cost.

Amazon, and many others, are diligently working on the the operationalization of drones today. They have a pressing need to use drones in package delivery logistics, at scale. They are tackling a number of technical and regulatory challenges, such as air traffic control. They have the know-how, the tools and, importantly, the imagination to build the support infrastructure that makes drones operate as a system.

Drone light shows are a spearhead that is driving the systematization of drones today. They are creating the market conditions that drive miniaturization, cost reduction, interoperability and, crucially, the development of support processes. Indeed companies like Intel, EHang and HighGreat have developed a tremendous arsenal of technologies and capabilities that allowed them to rapidly scale drone light show production. SPH Engineering, a software engineering firm located in Latvia, is offering open source as well as premium software that allows anyone to create their own drone light show.

It is only a matter of time until these light show capabilities are repurposed for other activities. The availability of open source software along with standard drone interfaces provide extremely favorable conditions to implement AI applications. While light shows are concerned with mapping drones to pixels, these more generalized applications will focus on mapping drones to sub functions. For example, some drones will follow movement in a battlefield, others will count soldiers, etc. While many of these applications will address the task at hand, such as mapping a war zone, much of the AI will focus on breaking up and distributing the task among thousands of drones, and stitching the parts to make the whole.

Read this article:

AI Fundamentals: The Evolution of AI in Drone Systems - Inside Unmanned Systems

This article originally appeared in Valid Points, CoinDesks weekly newsletter breaking down Ethereum 2.0 and its sweeping impact on crypto markets. Subscribe to Valid Points here.

Ethereums native asset was once discredited by bitcoiners and investors alike for its lack of hard monetary policy and ever-inflationary tokenomics. However, the combination of decentralized finance (DeFi), Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559 and the coming transition to proof-of-stake has worked to create what ether holders call Ultra Sound Money.

Ethresear.ch recently introduced multiple new models to predict the circulating supply of ether after the Merge takes place. To understand their findings and the variables involved in their models, its essential to know the following:

Ether is distributed to reward miners for producing blocks under proof-of-work (PoW) and, under Ethereum 2.0, will be used to reward validators for proposing blocks in proof-of-stake (PoS).

EIP 1559 introduced a deflationary mechanism to the network, creating a base transaction fee for utilizing block space on the network and then burning that fee out of existence.

Ethereum 2.0 has an adaptive yield demand curve that attempts to ensure minimum viable issuance, or that enough validators are working to secure the network.

Since EIP 1559 was implemented on Aug. 4, 620,000 ETH at a market value of $2.6 billion has been burned through transaction fees. Using that burn rate and the current network demand metrics, Ethresear.ch found that around 2.5% of ethers circulating supply would be burnt annually. Under proof-of-work, the 2.5% burn only offsets a portion (~39%) of ethers emission schedule. However, emissions fall drastically post-Merge, potentially even making the asset deflationary.

Going back to Ethereum 2.0s adaptive yield curve, the blockchain looks to incentivize enough validators to properly secure the network and not any more. Assuming that staking yield falls around 3%, Ethresear.chs model predicts that the long-term supply of ether may fall anywhere between 27.3-49.5 million ETH or 23%-42% of todays supply.

Story continues

Such a reduction in supply could easily be met with the expectation that ether will be infinitely more scarce than it is today. However, the model requires assuming that demand for blockspace will stay at current levels, which is harder to predict now than ever. Alternative layer 1s continue to grow in popularity, but layer 2 systems built atop Ethereum are just getting started.

Read more: The Success of Ethereums Alternative Ecosystems

Welcome to another edition of Valid Points.

The following is an overview of network activity on the Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain over the past week. For more information about the metrics featured in this section, check out our 101 explainer on Eth 2.0 metrics.

Disclaimer: All profits made from CoinDesks Eth 2.0 staking venture will be donated to a charity of the companys choosing once transfers are enabled on the network.

Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon is suing the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) after being served with a subpoena at Messaris conference last month. BACKGROUND: Do Kwon believes the SEC may have violated its own rules by serving him as a South Korea resident. Furthermore, the founder announced that Terra and Mirror are decentralized and cannot simply be shut down, contrary to what regulators might believe.

Polymarket, the largest DeFi predictions market, is said to be under investigation by the Commodities Futures Trading Commision (CFTC). BACKGROUND: Amid a potential billion-dollar funding round, the CFTC is looking into whether Polymarket offered unregulated swaps or binary options. The firm hired the CFTCs former head of enforcement to deal with the investigation.

A large interoperable Merge developer network is aimed for release during November. BACKGROUND: Eth1 and Eth2 clients came together to launch a test network earlier this month and now aim to release a larger version with further client interoperability. The symbiosis between execution and consensus clients and the creation of successful test networks are positive signs for a successful Merge.

Uniswap has done over $500 billion in trading volume since its inception in November 2018. BACKGROUND: Uniswap is the most popular decentralized exchange on Ethereum Layer 1 and is continuing to expand on Arbitrum and Optimism. According to Token Terminal, the protocol has also returned $1.6 billion in revenue to its liquidity providers.

Decentralized stablecoins have come back to the DeFi spotlight as FXS and SPELL surge in price. BACKGROUND: Regulation of stablecoins and the demand for cheap leverage has led to recent growth in the Maker, Abracadabra and Frax ecosystems, with decentralized stablecoins chipping away at USDT and USDCs market share.

Valid Points incorporates information and data about CoinDesks own Eth 2.0 validator in weekly analysis. All profits made from this staking venture will be donated to a charity of our choosing once transfers are enabled on the network. For a full overview of the project, check out our announcement post.

You can verify the activity of the CoinDesk Eth 2.0 validator in real time through our public validator key, which is:

0xad7fef3b2350d220de3ae360c70d7f488926b6117e5f785a8995487c46d323ddad0f574fdcc50eeefec34ed9d2039ecb.

Search for it on any Eth 2.0 block explorer site.

Continued here:

The Evolution of Ethereums Monetary Policy - Yahoo Finance

An evolutionary mystery revolving around an ancient animal was recently solved by a recent study. The specified creatures, known as the bryozoans, had been found in the deepest parts of oceanic bodies for at least 35 million years earlier than first thought. The findings prove that the animals thrived throughout their early life along with major groups of species.

The fossils are confirmed to be older than the initially estimated age. The oldest set of bryozoan remains were previously dated around 480 million years ago, during the Ordovician period. The dating was 50 million years later than the surge of major lineage existence.

(Photo: Peter Southwood / WikiCommons)

The bryozoans are actually a colony of small animals called zooids, and according to the latest discovery from Australia and China, the Protomelission gatehouseifossils were not that young in terms of evolutionary age with their distant relatives. The new fossils are estimated to exist at least 500 million years ago.

Natural History Museum's Department of Earth Sciences expert Paul Taylor said in the museum's reportthat the discovery is essential to the mystery between the encrusting colonies from the Cambrian and the existence of the Protomelission gatehousei. The finding suggests that there are more diversity of the bryozoans in the Cambrian than the first discovered specimens. The initial records present the colony's structure as back-to-back individuals that form a single column upward that water. However, the structure could potentially differ from the primitive sorts of the species.

Bryozoans are colonies that form a large phylum among the biggest groups in the animal kingdom. The group consists of over 6,500 living species, and most are found in water bodies, specifically under the ocean's depths. The colonies are composed of tiny individual invertebrates called zooids. they have a size of less than a millimeter in length and are dominantly uniform in physical structure. The near-microscopic size of the zooids may not fit to the category of animal kingdom members, but they actually have managed to comprise all of their anatomical organs, inducing the muscles, digestive, and reproductive system collectively into their small bodies.

ALSO READ: Dinosaur Fossil in Australia First Thought as Giant Carnivore Confirmed Today as Herbivore

Taylor said that the zooids form bryozoa on rocks and other solid materials that could be found underwater, but some of the species are able to cluster on shells and even seaweeds. The zooids are part of the oceanic food chain and could be a great source of nutrients for other marine creatures such as crabs and fish. Along with their nutritional functions, the bryozoans could also form into the reef-like body to serve as temporary habitats for many underwater species.

But the animals have been considered a pest by some regions, especially in places where marine and fishing enterprise is active. Due to this stigma, the presence of the bryozoans is frequently disregarded or overlooked. The limiting data are also shrouded by the mysterious absence of the animals during the Cambrian explosion, but the recent findings are expected to contribute more to future research regarding their true origin. The study was published in the journal Nature, titled "Fossil evidence unveils an early Cambrian origin for Bryozoa."

RELATED ARTICLE: Tusk Evolution: Researchers Trace First Mammal Relative

Check out more news and information on Paleontologyin Science Times.

See the original post:

Bryozoan Evolution from the Depths of the Ocean Solved; Study Says - Science Times