Category Archives: Oceania

Steve de Mamiel (Sedin)

Indian software development and consulting services outfit Sedin Technologies has expanded into the Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ) region through hiring Steve de Mamiel as its A/NZ managing director and setting up a Melbourne base.

The new Melbourne office is part of the company's continued expansion into the Asia Pacific region and joins a growing network including India, Canada and the US.

The Melbourne office will serve as a hub for Sedin's Oceania operations, offering end-to-end consulting services, including data and analytics, digital commerce, enterprise asset management, enterprise content management, enterprise engineering, robotic process automation and Salesforce technology consulting.

Sedin started off as a small team in 2006 to build products and solutions for companies and has constructed more than 500 applications and grown to more than 400 staff.

Our new office will serve as an important link between our customers on both sides of the Indian Ocean by providing them with faster access to resources that drive business growth and innovation, Sedin CEO and founder Dinesh Kumar said.

The addition of Steve de Mamiel as managing director will ensure that locally we will deliver the same high-quality service that our international clients have come to expect.

In the lead up to accepting the duties of country manager, de Mamiel worked with companies such as Panduit, Anchor and Hostopia Australia.

He will be responsible for managing all aspects of Sedin's regional operations, including sales, leadership and delivery management.

"With Sedins expansion into Australia, we expect to gain significant market share across various sectors," de Mamiel said.

"Were already experiencing high demand for our services from customers across the country and we look forward to strengthening our operations in this region, as we actively hire engineers, developers and project managers to help us serve our clients.

The company is currently looking for people across multiple domains including sales and marketing, technology and operations.

Sedin was assisted in its investment journey through government agency Invest Victoria, which provided insights into the states business environment to help the company understand the market potential and opportunities that exists in Victoria.

Melbournes tech ecosystem continues to create favourable conditions that allow businesses to thrive and grow, especially for companies like Sedin, and we are here to help with their international expansion in Victoria, Invest Victoria CEO Danni Jarrett added.

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Sedin lands in Melbourne with Steve de Mamiel at the helm - ARNnet

Increased Governments Spending On Infrastructure Development Will Shape The Future of The Maintenance & Repair Market

Fact.MR has provided detailed information about the providers of heavy machinery maintenance & repair services positioned across regions, revenue growth, and service offering expansion, in the recently published report.

NEW YORK, Oct. 17, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The latest study by Fact.MR, a market research and competitive intelligence provider, reveals that the global heavy machinery maintenance & repair market is estimated at US$ 182.8 billion in 2022 and is expected to progress at a CAGR of 4.5% between 2022 and 2032. The market is expected to grow amid increased government spending on infrastructure and the rising urban population across the world.

Rising urbanization has compelled the infrastructure industry to develop across the world. Suitable macroeconomic factors such as rising employment, low-interest rate, and an increase in disposable income have also led to a rise in the demand for residential housing, ultimately leading to an increase in the demand for heavy machinery and equipment. The maintenance & repair service industry is adopting new technology trends that help them in providing the best services to clients.

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The use of artificial intelligence in sectors such as power, mining, and construction, among others, has created a new wave in heavy machinery and equipment and its ancillary industries. With new and advanced developed machines and equipment, demand for skilled labour and their services has also increased manifold.

Key Takeaways from Market Study

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Segmentation of Heavy Machinery Maintenance & Repair Market

Competitive Landscape

Prominent heavy machinery maintenance & repair service providers are

The global market is highly fragmented owing to the low entry barriers and top global players trying to gain market share through various organic and inorganic strategies.

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Market Development

The business environment in the heavy machinery maintenance & repair market sees extreme competition among major players. To gain a solid hold in the market, key market players are employing organic and inorganic growth strategies.

Moreover, market participants are focusing on expanding their service offerings by integrating advanced technology into their services.

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Fact.MR, in its new offering, presents an unbiased analysis of the global heavy machinery maintenance & repair market, presenting historical market data (2017-2021) and forecast statistics for the period of 2022-2032.

The study reveals essential insights on the basis of type (automotive repair & maintenance, electronic & precision equipment repair & maintenance, commercial & industrial machinery repair & maintenance) and end-use industry (aerospace & defence, construction, energy & utility, farming, food industry, forestry & ground care, industrial heavy machinery, material handling, mining, transportation, others (not covered elsewhere), across major regions of the world (North America, Latin America, Europe, East Asia, South Asia & Oceania, and the Middle East & Africa).

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Mechanical Services Market:The global mechanical services market is estimated to progress at aCAGR of 4.7%from 2022 to 2032. The market is expected to reach a size ofUS$ 14.9 billionby the end of 2032, up from its current valuation ofUS$ 9.4 billion.

HVAC Services Market:The global HVAC services market stands atUS$ 71.1 billionin 2022 and is anticipated to progress steadily at aCAGR of 6.2%to reachUS$ 129.8 billionby 2032-end. Together, North America and East Asia account for around60%share of the global market.

EPC (Engineering, Procurement, and Construction) Market:The global EPC (engineering, procurement, and construction) market is projected atUS$ 7,927.5 billionin 2022 and is expected to expand at aCAGR of 5.7%to reachUS$ 13,800.2 billionby the end of 2032.

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Fact.MR is a market research and consulting agency with deep expertise in emerging market intelligence. Spanning a wide range from automotive & industry 4.0 to healthcare, technology, chemical and materials, to even the most niche categories. We are committed to deliver insights that help businesses gain deeper understanding of their target markets. We understand that making sense of the vast labyrinth of data can be overwhelming for businesses. That's why focus on offering insights that can actually make a difference to bottom-lines.

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Heavy Machinery Maintenance & Repair Demand Is Set To Reach A Valuation of US$ 284 Bn Billion 2032; Owing To Technology Integration into Service...

Alongside an unnerving number of dead bodies, droughts in the US have brought out a new mystery: how did a boat that sank by an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean during World War II end up in a dried-up Californian reservoir?

On Sunday, the Shasta-Trinity National Forest put out a number of social media posts about the boat, discovered while the water was low at Shasta Lake.

"The mystery begins with the painted numbers found on the ramp when the boat was moved," the team wrote of the boat on Facebook. "It is marked '31-17'. This confirms it as a boat assigned to the Attack Transport USS Monrovia."

The ship Monrovia was used as a floating headquarters for general George S. Patton during the invasion of Sicily during World War II. America's 34th President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, served on the ship at that time and in subsequent battles.

"It went on to a further 6 D-Day invasions in the Pacific," Shasta-Trinity National Forest explained on Facebook. "Reportedly it was used in the invasion of Tarawa. It names the crew and states that it sank in shallow water during that invasion."

The ship was later salvaged during the invasion of the Japanese-held Gilbert Islands by the US and sold for scrap in 1969, but nobody is clear how the smaller troop transport boat ended up in the US and at the bottom of a lake. It's possible that whoever bought the scrap metal of the boat attempted to float it, before quickly discovering it was not reservoir-worthy.

The ship, which was actually discovered last fall, is now being preserved ahead of being displayed at a Nebraska museum.

"Any 'restoration' will be done to preserve as much of the integrity of the boat as possible and will hopefully preserve it in a weathered 'combat fatigue' look," the team wrote on Facebook.

"There is more to discover of its history and obviously its time on Shasta Lake, and still the circumstance of its sinking remains a mystery."

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WWII Ship Sunk In Oceania Shows Up In Dried-Up Californian Lake Officials Have No Idea How It Got There - IFLScience

EMBARGOED OCTOBER 11, 2022

Ernst & Young, New Zealand and Ernst & Young, Australia (EY Oceania) have strengthened their transformation and ServiceNow technology capabilities through Ernst & Young Limiteds acquisition of the business of New Zealand-headquartered Red Moki.

The business acquisition will unlock the full potential of ServiceNow to transform organisations across a range of industries and specialist workflows.

Widely recognised as a top-tier specialist in the ServiceNow technology platform, Red Mokis operations spanned Australia, New Zealand and India, tailoring solutions that help manage intelligent automated workflows.

Rich Macfarlane, Technology Consulting Partner at EY New Zealand, said: We are experiencing unprecedented growth in ServiceNow demands from our clients. The Red Moki team will expand our footprint and expertise in the region and deliver valuable client outcomes.

We have known the Red Moki team for years and are great admirers of their work, so the decision to ask them to join EY was an obvious one. Their vision and growth plans align perfectly with ours and they will play an important role as we grow this business together.

The team from Red Moki have delivered major ServiceNow-enabled business transformations across government, financial services, telecommunications, consumer and many other industries in the region. Their expertise complements EY Oceanias breadth and depth of technology and transformation consulting experience with leading organisations.

The Red Moki team brings exceptional talent and genuinely innovative technology solutions in a highly-competitive market.

In support of EYs purpose to build a better working world, I am delighted that we are also co-developing a programme to support career opportunities for Maori and Pacifika peoples in technology and consulting.

Red Moki CEO Greg Woolley said: Im excited by the opportunities that joining EY will create for both the Red Moki team and our clients.

By joining forces with EY and accessing their global resources and skills, we will be able to take the service we provide to our clients to the next level and deliver true digital transformation across both the business and technology domains.

Our team is excited about the scale and range of opportunities that they will have access to by being a part of EY, not to mention the variety of career and development options that come with being with a leading global organisation.

Our shared people first focus made EY a natural cultural fit.

Simon OConnor, Managing Partner of EY New Zealand said:I am very pleased to welcome Greg and the Red Moki team.

EY aims to be the leading transformation partner for clients in New Zealand and overseas, and the added capability brought by the Red Moki team will help us deliver technology-enabled transformations to our clients.

The EY-ServiceNow Alliance already unlocks great value for our clients across the breadth of industries, delivering workflow transformation and improving employee experience in areas such as HR service delivery, Customer service delivery, risk management and compliance, and global business services.

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EY Oceania Strengthens Transformation Capability Through The Business Acquisition Of Red Moki - The Balance

World University Rankings 2023: results announced

Browse the full results of the World University Rankings 2023

Download a copy of the World University Rankings 2023 report

To describe the past three years in higher education as tumultuous would be something of an understatement. The pandemic and its lingering impact on borders, plus a war in Europe and rising anti-science rhetoric have collided to make the early 2020s some of the most difficult years for universities in recent history.

This year the data used in the World University Rankings are beginning to reflect the chaos caused by the pandemic: what they show is that many systems entered this period of disruption in positions of strength.

Here, we look at some of the top trends to emerge from this years rankings, and what they might mean for the future.

North America, in particular the US, has for a long time reigned supreme over higher education. At the highest level, US institutions continue to dominate, with 12 universities in the top 20, but taking a broader view of US performance, it is clear that the crown is slipping. This year, for the first time, continental data reveal that Oceania has overtaken North America to enjoy the distinction of the highest average overall score (based on universities ranked each year since 2018).

The average score across Oceania is 51.4, compared with 50.4 in North America; last year, both regions scored 50.4.

Having increased by6.4 points over the past six years, the overall score of Australia has now almost equalled the overall score of the United States.

So, what is behind the North American stagnation? The data reveal a steady drop in scores for citations over the past two years: currently the continents average score for citations is 68.8, compared with 70.1 in 2018. North Americas average score for research reputation has dropped since 2018 from 25.5 to 24.0,and for teaching reputation from 25.9 to 23.6, based on universities that were ranked every year from 2018 to 2023.

Simon Marginson, director of the Centre for Global Higher Education at the University of Oxford, says the expanding number of world-class universities is having a slight crowd-out effect in relation to US universities, causing a small relative decline in reputation. THEs reputation survey asks the worlds top scholars to name the 15 best institutions for teaching and research; the finite number means this is a story of a growing number of excellent universities outside the US, rather than American universities declining in quality.

Theres no evidence that US research is weakening in an absolute sense, or US universities are in any way in decline, Marginson says. This continues to be the most prestigious system in the world.

Oceania, on the other hand, has been enjoying a steady rise in average score for every pillar in the rankings since 2018. In particular, the continent is excelling in citations and international working.

This increase is largely driven by Australian institutions: the average overall score for Australian universities ranked each year is currently 52.9, up from 51.7 last year and 46.5 in 2018.

Andrew Norton, professor of higher education at the Australian National University, attributes the rise in part to a boost in funding for research over the past 15 years.

Merlin Crossley, deputy vice-chancellor at the University of New South Wales, says the Australian governments Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) strategy, initiated in 2010, certainly helped. But other things helped too. Australia built up some superb research fellowship programmes, in medical research first, then, with the Australian Research Councils Future Fellowships, across the board. This warded off the well-meaning hand of nepotism and supported top people to do good work.

The rise in both citations and international working is no coincidence, according to Gavin Moodie, professor of higher education at the University of Toronto, who has much experience of the Australian system. Several years ago the Australian governments performance-based research funding rewarded volume of publications. However, a series of studies demonstrated that this was at the expense of research quality for which citations were a better measure. Soon thereafter, a few studies showed that citations were higher for publications with authors from more than one country, so university researchers started seeking to increase citations and thus international collaborations. This move was reinforced by ERA, which adopted similar indicators of research quality.

The data on international students and staff reflect the academic year 2019-20, therefore the full force of Australias strict border control in reaction to the pandemic is yet to be felt. Could the hard border reverse the growing international presence of Australian universities?

Norton believes the decline in international students will have an impact because the cash they bring in is used to fund research. Furthermore, the number of research academics has fallen, and during 2020 especially the loss of casual staff meant that teaching and research academics needed to spend more time on teaching than usual. However, the lagging nature of publications and citations means that it may take a few years for this to show clearly in the citation numbers.

Some Australian universities have been successful in getting students to study online, but generally the fees and therefore profits are lower, he adds.

Crossley is optimistic: Online collaboration helped me during the pandemic. Colleagues I usually saw once every two years, I called on Zoom regularly. Many of our labs stayed open across the pandemic. Were back travelling again now. We have deep links to the UK and Europe, America, and Asia. The worlds population centre of gravity is in Asia and were in that time zone. Im hoping well keep evolving as either a sort of Scandinavia or perhaps a Canada of the south.

The rise of Chinese universities has been the big global higher education story of the decade, but the latest data may reveal a weak link.

While the countrys overall score is still rising, metrics reflecting internationalism are stagnating or declining.

Chinas average score for international outlook dropped from 34.1 last year to 32.6, based on all Chinese universities ranked in 2022 and 2023; the countrys averagescore for international students has dropped from 33.9 to 32.4, international co-authorship from 24.0 to 22.5, and international staff from 44.3 to 43.0.

As these data reflect the academic year 2019-20, the pandemic border closure is not the driving factor behind the decline.

Geopolitical tensions are more likely the culprit.

As the education system has improved there may be fewer incentives for Chinese universities to forge external links, but Western governments have certainly become increasingly jittery about links with Chinese academia.

Under former US president Donald Trump, the US Justice Department took a more punitive approach to university links to China by investigating professors at US universities over whether they disclosed financial ties when seeking federal grant funding and scrutinising visiting Chinese scholars from military affiliated universities.

In the UK, GCHQ, the governments communications headquarters, warned universities about hostile state actors targeting British institutions to steal personal data, research data and intellectual property that could be used for their own military, commercial and authoritarian interests.

Marginson posits that as Chinese scientists and doctoral students have become less welcome in some countries than they used to be, it is likely that sooner or later, higher education in China will [be] less welcoming to outsiders from at least those countries. That is the logic of international relations.

It would be regrettable if the growth of foreigners working in higher education in China has stopped, as the engagement is good for everyone. However, it would be unsurprising, as we are now in a more conflictual era in the geopolitics of higher education, Marginson added.

It would be safe to say that geopolitics is playing a significant role, says James Laurenceson, director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney. It is certainly the case that Chinese academics are more cautious and have to jump through more bureaucratic hoops to engage [with their] foreign counterparts than five years ago. Some have judged that its best just to keep their heads down.

Governments outside China are making engagement harder, Laurenceson says, giving the example of Australian Research Council discovery grants involving collaboration with China dropping to 23 this year, from 48 in 2021 and 79 in 2019.

He says the Australian government has made extensive efforts to sensitise universities and academics to risks around foreign interference. On one level thats a perfectly reasonable thing to do. But it is also leading to significant self-censorship by Australian academics not wanting to be tarnished with a foreign interference brush, even if their engagement is entirely defensible based on the facts.

The wilting global collaboration metrics do not take away from Chinas overall positive picture however, as the countrys average score has risen from 31 six years ago to almost 42 this year. This year, for the first time, there are 11 Chinese institutions in the top 200 and seven in the top 100.

Chinese universities are exceptionally good at securing funding from industry, with the average score for the industry pillar outperforming the world average by 13.1 points, and when it comes to research quality as measured by citations, China is steadily catching up with the US.

And there are plenty more positive stories to be found in this years data. Not least the rise of Africa. There are 25 new African universities in the ranking and Zambia, Namibia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Mauritius are all represented for the first time. There are now 17 African countries in the ranking in total, compared with nine in 2018, reflecting the continued improvement in research and teaching on the continent.

Nigeria in particular is improving rapidly. There are now 12 Nigerian universities ranked, twice as many as last year. Since last year the countrys average overall score has risen from 27.9 to 31.5.

When comparing continents over the past six years, Africa has seen the largest increase in average score for citations since 2018, with a rise of 19.2 points.

Over in the Middle East, two countries that are improving their overall score at a faster rate than the global average are Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Saudi Arabia has had the biggest increase in overall score since last year, with an average overall score of 50, compared with 45 last year; since 2018 the average score has risen by 17 points. The country scores particularly well on the international pillar, and on international staff especially.

UAE saw a similar rise, with an average overall score of 44.4, up from 40.0 last year.

Over the next couple of years the rankings data will paint a more detailed picture of the impact of the pandemic, but what we can see so far is that despite the many problems facing humanity, university systems across the world are resilient.

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World University Rankings 2023: trends analysis - Times Higher Education

Despite the slow internet in lower-income countries (including most of Africa), residents need to work three times more to access internet services due to the high data plan prices in these countries.

In Nigeria, MTN in September 2022 disclosed that the prices of its data bundles have been reviewed upward. Airtel also modified its prices for the country's 52 million active internet subscriptions.

In its latest Digital Quality of Life report on the global internet divide study, Surfshark revealed that this will affect the digital divide on the continent. As of October 2022, the internet in Africa is 83% less affordable than in Oceania (the region with the most affordable internet), and the gap between these two regions keeps expanding each year.

Surfshark's analysis highlights that Africa experiences the sharpest internet divide of all continents, with just 55% of the population having access to the internet (compared to 85% in Oceania). Such internet inequality, combined with the increased inflation rates and political uncertainties, is taking Africans on a downward spiral of economic hardship.

The launch of the Google Equiano subsea cable across the continent intends to boost internet connectivity and slash prices. A recent impact assessment study by Africa Practice and Genesis Analytics stated that once the cable becomes fully operational, internet retail prices will reduce by 21% and it will also increase internet speed by a six-factor.

According to Surfsharks Lead Researcher Agneska Sablovskaja, "People who can not access the internet are cut off from the digital opportunities that people from higher-income countries have. Without internet access, people cant study or work online, and they cant grow their economy with digital exports,"

"The internet is also very slow in many African countries. Even if people can afford the internet, they still face limitations in what they can do. For instance, low internet speeds often make it very difficult to make video calls," Sablovskaja added.

People from lower-income countries (including most of Africa) have to work approximately 11 minutes more than higher-income countries to afford 1GB of mobile internet that is 49 Mbps slower, according to Surfshark:

26 Mbps the average mobile internet speed in lower-income countries is 3 times slower than in higher-income countries and creates limitations in what people can do online. For instance, 26 Mbps may be enough for streaming a movie, but its not enough for a video call (which requires 50 Mbps).

The situation with broadband internet is no better - lower-income countries work 8 hours more than higher-income countries to afford a fixed broadband plan that is 83 Mbps slower:

The lowest-income countries in the DQL index, Ethiopia (115th in DQL) and Mali (102nd in DQL) are also the income group that experiences the sharpest internet divide.

People from these countries work 51 minutes (which is 14 times more than the highest-income countries) for mobile internet which is 68 Mbps slower. Broadband internet in these lowest-income countries is just 19 Mbps on average but is 8 times less affordable. The difficult political climates in these countries make internet access especially important without it, the world is left in the dark about the issues in these countries.

On a more positive note, South Africa fares the best in Africa in internet accessibility, with the most affordable and highest-quality internet.

Editor's Note: The data quoted in this report was provided by Surfshark

Link:

How Africa is still paying the most for the lowest-quality internet - Benjamindada.com

Rush hour in Mumbais CSMT station. By centurys end, Indias current population of 1.4 billion may shrink to just 1 billion. (Credit: Bhushan Koyande / Hindustan Times via Getty Images)

Humanity is hardly an exclusive club. No secret handshake required. On November 15th, the United Nations predicts that well be adding our eight billionth (living) member.

This is an alarming milestone to some, not just because of the numbers sheer magnitude imagine Londons 90,000-seater Wembley Stadium, squared but also due to the breakneck speed at which weve reached it. After all, it took us all of human history up to 1804 to reach our first billion. And then we needed just 123 years to get to the second one.

That was in 1927. Less than a century on, that figure has now quadrupled. But population growth is no runaway train. The global fertility rate has been dropping since 1964, down from 5 births per woman to just under 2.5 today.

As a result, the speed of population growth has already plateaued. Since 1960 when we achieved our third billion weve added billions at a stable interval, of about one every 12 to 14 years. The UN Population Division projects that those intervals will get longer again after billion number eight, and humanity will hit its peak numerically speaking at least by the end of the century, at just under 11 billion.

The ensuing population crunch will of course cause a bunch of worries and problems of its own. Yet knowing that the curve will eventually tilt downward is a welcome bit of good news. It marks a refreshing change from other, more intractable threats to our continued existence, like climate change, nuclear proliferation, and resource depletion.

All of this serves as a long-winded introduction to a remarkable realization: Instead of preludes to disaster, maps like these may become objects of future curiosity. A century or two from now, our successors, inhabiting a less crowded planet, may study them and marvel, Look how many we once were!

These are not maps in the strictest sense; they are in fact complex pie charts, showing the relationship between populations of individual nations, regions, and continents to each other, and to the whole.

As alternatives to purely territorial maps, they offer surprising insights. A classic example is the fact that Russia, the largest country in the world, has a population considerably smaller than Bangladesh, that comparatively tiny country jammed in between India and the Bay of Bengal. However, as mere snapshots, these charts say nothing about the growth or decrease of the pie and its pieces. Russias population is shrinking, while Bangladeshs is still growing, so the discrepancy between both will continue to increase.

Perhaps more relevant to the geopolitics of the future, India and China now roughly equivalent at about 1.4 billion each will shrink, but at a very different rate. By 2100, the UN predicts there could be as few as 500 million Chinese, while there still would be about one billion Indians.

So, what do these snapshots of global population at the cusp of our eight billionth member tell us?

At a global level, this is an Asian planet. All the other continents combined dont even come close. On its own, Asia (4.7 billion) represents 58% of humanity. Second-placed Africa (1.4 billion) constitutes 17.5%, followed by Europe (750 million, 9%), North America (602 million, 7.5%) and South America (439 million, 5.5%). Oceania at 44 million is barely 0.5%.

This chart makes a neat distinction between North Africa (257 million in total), mostly Muslim and largely Arab, and the ethnically and culturally distinct sub-Saharan part of the continent (1.2 billion in total). Egypt (107 million) dominates the north (and indeed the entire Arab world). Ethiopia (118 million) and Nigeria (218 million) are the population hotspots below the Sahara.

These three are the only countries with populations over 100 million, but as Africa is the continent predicted to have the lions share of future population growth this century, that club is likely to expand. The DR Congo (96 million) is the most likely first candidate.

Credit: Visual Capitalist

Asia is vast, allowing for regional population superpowers like Turkey (86 million) and Iran (87 million) in the Middle East (373 million in total) and Indonesia (280 million) and the Philippines (113 million) in Southeast Asia (686 million in total). But the longest shadows are cast by not-so-neighborly neighbors India and China (both about 1.4 billion). What will happen when, as mentioned above, their population sizes start to diverge toward the end of this century?

Russia (146 million) is Europes most populous nation, but not by as big a margin as China in Asia (or the U.S. in North America). Combined, Germany (84 million) and France (66 million) have more people. Those two countries represent most of Western Europe (198 million in total), as Italy (60 million) and Spain (47 million) dominate Southern Europe (152 million in total), and the UK (69 million) Northern Europe (107 million in total). Added up, these so-called Big Five countries represent 44% of Europes total population and the bulk of its economy.

Representing well over half the continents population, the U.S. (335 million) dominates North America (507 million in total) just as it does on a normal (geographical) map. For once, however, Mexico (132 million) is much larger than Canada (37 million). Guatemala (19 million) has the largest population in Central America (52 million in total), and Haiti (12 million) is the population superpower of the Caribbean (44 million in total), edging out Cuba and the Dominican Republic (both 11 million).

Curiously, this chart of South America looks a bit like the map of South America. Thats because Brazil (216 million) takes up about half the continent, both in terms of area and population. Colombia (54 million) is South Americas second-most populous country, but by a very long margin. Only Argentina (46 million) is in roughly the same league.

Oceania is the least populous continent (44 million, which is about as much as Greater Tokyo). In that little pond, Australia is the biggest fish (26 million, or close to 60% of the total). Second? Not New Zealand (5 million), but Papua New Guinea (9 million). No other Oceanian country or territory has more than a million inhabitants; Fiji (911,000) comes closest.

Do those 8 billion people add up to a world overflowing with humans? Lets correct the navel-gazing so typical of our species and appreciate the wider perspective.

The chart on the left represents the Earths entire biomass (that is, the total weight of all living organisms), which adds up to 545.2 Gt C. (Gt C stands for gigatons of carbon, and 1 gigaton is 1015 grams, 1 billion metric tons, or 2.2 trillion pounds.)

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Most of our planets biomass is made up of plants (450 Gt C, or 82.5%). The second-largest is bacteria (70 Gt C, or 12.8%), followed by fungi (12 Gt C, or 2.2%). Animals (which include us) make up just 2 Gt C (0.2%). The chart on the right isolates the animal kingdom, half of which is made up of arthropods (1 Gt C). The second-largest phylum are fish (0.7 Gt C, or 35%). Humans (0.06 GtC) represent no more than 3% of animal biomass (and 0.01% of total biomass).

Thats less than half compared to all the worlds mollusks. But then again, those mollusks dont all want a car, a fridge, and a million other things all wrapped in plastic.

Strange Maps #1174

Population graphs are here at Visual Capitalist.

Biomass graphs are here at PNAS, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

Got a strange map? Let me know at [emailprotected].

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Global population hits 8 billion soon, but shrinks by 2100 - Big Think

The history of the banana is more complicated than you might have ever imagined (if you ever thought about it at all).

More than 7,000 years ago, Oceania communities began to selectively grow wild Musa acuminata plants for their choice characteristics. Over time the plant's fruit gradually evolved into the famous sweet, seedless, conveniently-packaged banana we've all come to love.

Unfortunately today, most of the bananas we consume are clones of a single variety. Without diverse genetic approaches to handling diseases, it wouldn't take much for a single plague to decimate the global supply.

A close look at the genomes of various banana cultivars and their wild relatives has now uncovered signs that other banana plant relatives contributed to its development, with evidence of three previously undescribed species or subspecies lurking within.

Learning more about them could give us new ways to protect existing cultivars from pests and infectious disease.

Different banana varieties can have two (referred to as diploid), three (triploid), or four (tetraploid) copies of every chromosome, making it more difficult to unravel the evoutionary history of the delicious grass-like flowering plant.

In this latest study, scientists used genetic sequencing techniques to identify the genetic fingerprints of 226 different banana leaf extracts. By comparing wild and domesticated subspecies, the team was able to build up a detailed 'family tree' of the ancestors of the bananas we have today.

"Here we show that most of today's diploid cultivated bananas that descend from the wild banana M. acuminata are hybrids between different subspecies," says genetic resources scientist Julie Sardos from the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT in France.

"At least three extra wild mystery ancestors must have contributed to this mixed genome thousands of years ago, but haven't been identified yet."

The researchers believe that two of these three mystery ancestors are the same as those which had previously been identified using a different genetic analysis approach, but now we have more information about these gaps in the banana tree family history, and where the common genomes are.

It means that there are banana species or subspecies out there that have never been recorded by scientists although that doesn't necessarily mean none of those types of bananas remain.

"Our personal conviction is that they are still living somewhere in the wild, either poorly described by science or not described at all, in which case they are probably threatened," says Sardos.

The team then went further to try and figure out where these mysterious missing varieties might be growing, by making comparisons with similar banana species that we do know about and their respective locations around the globe.

One is likely to come from the area between the Gulf of Thailand and the west of the South China Sea, one is probably situated between north Borneo and the Philippines, and one looks like it came from the island of New Guinea.

The researchers say finding these missing ancestors is a matter of urgency it will enable us to preserve the biodiversity that they offer, and ultimately enable better bananas to be cultivated in the future.

"Breeders need to understand the genetic make-up of today's domesticated diploid bananas for their crosses between cultivars, and this study is a major first step toward the characterization in great detail of many of these cultivars," says bioinformatics scientist Mathieu Rouard, also from the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT.

The research has been published in Frontiers in Plant Science.

See the rest here:

Banana Genomes Hint at Hidden Species We Urgently Need to Find - ScienceAlert

Hemi Ahio has established himself as one of Oceania's top heavyweight prospects. Photo / photosport.nz

Hemi Ahio is happy flying under the radar for now.

After his last bout a first-round win on the undercard of the undisputed lightweight title fight between George Kambosos Jr and Devin Haney in June the 32-year-old says he "went back into hiding; just training and doing normal things".

But the hard-hitting heavyweight's record is beginning to speak for itself. With 19 wins in as many bouts and 14 of those by knockout, Ahio has established himself as one of Oceania's top heavyweight prospects.

On Sunday, Ahio will return to the ring in Melbourne - on the undercard of the Haney v Kambosos Jr rematch against Australia prospect Faiga Opelu (14-3-1), looking to press his claims to a shot at the best fighters the world has to offer.

"What I've got to do is really hurt someone in a way that it gets the top 15's eyes, or get whoever works with them to think it could be a good fight," Ahio said.

"I know for a fact that if I get in there with one of these big guys, they'll be really surprised by what I can do in there. I haven't really thrown down too much. I've had 19 fights, and I haven't really thrown down too much with any real big guys.

"They like to give, but they don't like to take too much. That's what I've seen in the top 15, so I would like to rub shoulders with them."

Nicknamed 'The Heat' due to his power and forward-pressing style, Ahio won seven of his first nine bouts within two rounds. Since then, he has travelled globally to compete against strong opponents. In his four bouts abroad, his opponents have had a combined record of 49-9-3.

However, each fight ended the same way with Ahio showcasing his talents and making the judges' services unrequired.

But while he is still getting stoppage wins albeit a bit later in the fights than early in his career Ahio's improvement under coach Doug Viney from Auckland's City Kickboxing gym has shown as his career has progressed.

Now, he's hoping that trend will continue against Opelu who suffered a knockout loss to Lucas Browne in his last bout - and he can try to climb the rankings.

"I've slowed down from dropping guys and getting first-round knockouts. I'm enjoying it a little bit more now," he said.

"When I do come across these top names and heavy hitters, we'll see what happens then, but right now I'm just enjoying what I do."

Ahio will be one of five Kiwi fighters competing at the event. Rising cruiserweights David Nyika and Titi Motusaga will square off against one another, with middleweight Marcus Heywood looking to upset undefeated American Lorenzo Simpson. Kiwi-born Australian super bantamweight Cherneka Johnson will also defend her IBO world title on the card.

The card will be broadcast free-to-air by TVNZ. The last time a boxing world title fight screened free-to-air in New Zealand was David Tua's unsuccessful bout against Lennox Lewis in November 2000. The broadcast was viewed by 1.3 million people.

Original post:

Boxing: Kiwi heavyweight Hemi Ahio ready for the spotlight - New Zealand Herald

Sarai Bareman is in her third week back from maternity leave. Straight on a plane from Zurich to Auckland, then Sydney, and soon back to Auckland. Not so much wrenching herself away from her new normal, more just adding full-time work to the full-time-mother equation. Its been an absolute baptism of fire, she says. Its a whole different struggle.

Of course, her six-month-old boy doesnt know that. Matthijs was a lovely surprise for Bareman and her husband but, now that she is juggling both him and Fifas teams for the 2023 Womens World Cup, her respect for footballers returning to the field after giving birth has reached the realms of the almost unthinkable.

She is talking about those like Katrina Gorry, who had her daughter last year and has played her way back into the Matildas starting XI. Ditto some of the women who contested Julys Oceania World Cup qualifiers. Papua New Guinea, for instance, had seven mums help their country to the upcoming intercontinental playoffs.

There were three or four mums in the Samoan team, she says. I cant even get out of bed some days, and these mums are playing for the national team. And whats cool is that we have some really high-profile mums, like Alex Morgan, who take their babies with them. Theyre visible, and that, for me, is so important.

In 2020, Fifa rewrote the regulations around maternity leave, announcing measures that will enforce fines and transfer bans on clubs who discriminate against players during pregnancy. It also fell in line with the International Labour Organisations minimum 14 weeks of paid maternity leave, with at least eight weeks after birth, at two-thirds of their contracted salary. The news was positive, but also met with concern that these minimum standards have been set too low.

Bareman, as Fifas first chief womens football officer, realises they are the basics, a first step. She is also aware, from her decade of working in a male-dominated industry so often averse to progressive change, that to make it happen requires tact and patience.

Theres a very broad range of things that need to be done across womens sport to grow it en masse, she says. And sometimes the quick-fix solutions are not always there. For me, you get far more back, in the end, from a strategic, long-term approach, than a lot of quick fixes.

The World Cup, Bareman says, underlines the incongruity of the global womens football landscape. Between a larger-than-ever tournament (quite literally it has expanded from 24 to 32 teams) featuring top nations booming off a flood of investment and the raging success of France 2019 and this years Euros, and the rest still floundering at the other end of a yawning economic chasm.

Thats one of the biggest challenges in Fifa and in womens football, she says. Because when we have these incredible moments like the Womans World Cup, when everybodys watching and were on the front page of all the major newspapers, that comes with big expectations.

But Im in this position in Fifa where I also see what the reality is for the vast majority of the rest of our member countries and, unfortunately for them, its not near that level yet.

Expectation is in the nature of our stakeholders, the fans, the players and the people involved in the game. I think thats good. It pushes us, our member associations and the clubs to deliver more. But theres not always, shall we say, the appetite or patience for the longer-term fix.

The message is that the World Cup is not just about the high-profile games played at big stadiums, but also a means of expediting development. An example is Morocco. The country failed to qualify for the 2019 tournament, but the president of the Royal Moroccan Football Federation was one of 60,000 in attendance at the final in Lyon, and was moved to upscale the countrys development structures. That November, the first domestic womens league was launched and this year, under the tutelage for former Olympique Lyonnais manager, Reynald Pedros, they hosted and made the final of the Womens Africa Cup of Nations, and have now qualified for their first World Cup.

For 2023 co-hosts, Australia and New Zealand, there are different challenges. The popularity of football in both countries is high in terms of grassroots participation but, barring widespread support the national teams, top domestic leagues struggle to breach the public consciousness of fans amid the cross-code crowd of mens and womens rugby, league and AFL. There is also a lesson to be heeded from the mens 2015 Asian Cup, which Ange Postecoglous Australia won on home soil in a headline-making moment administrators failed to sufficiently seize.

That is exactly why next years World Cup has got to be leveraged by all the stakeholders in the game, Bareman says. My message to everyone involved in the game at every level is that they should be looking at it as an opportunity to boost it. This is an unbeatable moment to leverage.

We have to talk about ticket sales, because that is why we are here. Organisers say that, in the first day of presale, they sold more than France did in the entire first week of sales. For them it is a big indicator one week out from next Saturdays draw in Auckland.

We also have to talk about womens rights in Qatar, an issue which alongside LGBT rights is receiving less international attention amid concerns over the exploitation of migrant workers by the 2022 mens World Cup host nation. On this she will not be drawn, but does have some things to say about the independent report released this month which found sexual misconduct and emotional abuse is systemic in the US National Womens Soccer League?

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We wouldnt normally say a lot before those sort of things come out, she says. But I have to say as a person, but also as a representative of Fifa, that type of abuse, harassment and discrimination absolutely has no place in football, full stop. And in the womens game its something becoming more and more prevalent. We have a zero-tolerance policy around this type of stuff.

Its a shame when you see the game on the trajectory its on the incredible momentum we have and then stories come out like what weve seen in the States. For me its quite heartbreaking. If it takes these high-profile cases like what we see happening in the NWSL to empower other women in those situations to speak up, then let it happen. Let it come out because thats the only way well be able to get rid of it.

Bareman grew up on rugby as a New Zealander with a Dutch father and Samoan mother, and it wasnt until she sought a connection with her mothers homeland that she jumped from playing club football in Auckland to representing the national team in Samoa. As a banking and finance expert, she was hired as Football Federation Samoas finance manager and then its chief executive between 2011 and 2014, rehabilitating the association after its suspension by Fifa for the previous administrations misuse of funds.

It was the first position where I really experienced a level of discrimination because of my gender, she says. Samoa is an incredible place. I love it. Its my home. I plan to retire there one day. But the football environment there is also very male-dominated, society in general is quite, whats the right word? Patriarchal.

That was more than 10 years ago. Now theres a female prime minister there, so things are definitely changing. But also culturally, although I have Samoan blood I couldnt speak the language when I arrived, so a lot of people wrote me off before they even knew me and before Id even done any work. Youre an outsider, and there were moments where I had to close my office door and take a breath, and maybe sometimes shed a few tears, to overcome certain things.

In 2014, when she returned to Auckland to take up a new role as deputy secretary general of the Oceania Football Confederation, she stepped straight into the fallout of corruption allegations that rocked world football. Back in 2015 there was some very high-profile arrests and things in Zurich, she says, in reference to the infamous police raid on a string of Fifa officials on corruption charges over the awarding of the mens 2018 and 2022 World Cups. The organisation went through a really dark time. Whats unique with me is that I was actually part of the reform journey.

Bareman was appointed as the only woman on the Fifa reforms committee, which would become an ongoing theme. She advocated for more women in decision-making roles within the governing body. I remember specifically saying, if there were more women in high positions within Fifa I dont think we would be in the position where we are today, sitting here having to make a reform package.

By early 2016 she was one of those women in a high position, sitting behind a desk and overseeing 211 member associations albeit at the aforementioned gradual pace. And when she recounts the trying experiences it took to get there, she speaks with a fresh authenticity which feels very un-Fifa-like.

Maybe some of the men wrote me off before they even knew me, she says, but I made 100% sure that, in every single meeting I went into on every single project I rolled out, that I had my research and I knew everything from A to Z. So maybe you think [because] Im a woman I dont belong here, but this speaks for itself.

Excerpt from:

An unbeatable moment to leverage: 2023 Womens World Cup must win hearts to change minds - The Guardian