That "Research" About How Smartphones Are Causing Deformed Human Bodies Is SEO Spam, You Idiots

That

You know that "research" going around saying humans are going to evolve to have hunchbacks and claws because of the way we use our smartphones? Though our posture could certainly use some work, you'll be glad to know that it's just lazy spam intended to juice search engine results.

Let's back up. Today the Daily Mail published a viral story about "how humans may look in the year 3000." Among its predictions: hunched backs, clawed hands, a second eyelid, a thicker skull and a smaller brain.

Sure, that's fascinating! The only problem? The Mail's only source is a post published a year ago by the renowned scientists at... uh... TollFreeForwarding.com, a site that sells, as its name suggests, virtual phone numbers.

If the idea that phone salespeople are purporting to be making predictions about human evolution didn't tip you off, this "research" doesn't seem very scientific at all. Instead, it more closely resembles what it actually is — a blog post written by some poor grunt, intended to get backlinks from sites like the Mail that'll juice TollFreeForwarding's position in search engine results.

To get those delicious backlinks, the top minds at TollFreeForwarding leveraged renders of a "future human" by a 3D model artist. The result of these efforts is "Mindy," a creepy-looking hunchback in black skinny jeans (which is how you can tell she's from a different era).

Grotesque model reveals what humans could look like in the year 3000 due to our reliance on technology

Full story: https://t.co/vQzyMZPNBv pic.twitter.com/vqBuYOBrcg

— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) November 3, 2022

"To fully realize the impact everyday tech has on us, we sourced scientific research and expert opinion on the subject," the TollFreeForwarding post reads, "before working with a 3D designer to create a future human whose body has physically changed due to consistent use of smartphones, laptops, and other tech."

Its sources, though, are dubious. Its authority on spinal development, for instance, is a "health and wellness expert" at a site that sells massage lotion. His highest academic achievement? A business degree.

We could go on and on about TollFreeForwarding's dismal sourcing — some of which looks suspiciously like even more SEO spam for entirely different clients — but you get the idea.

It's probably not surprising that the this gambit for clicks took off among dingbats on Twitter. What is somewhat disappointing is that it ended up on StudyFinds, a generally reliable blog about academic research. This time, though, for inscrutable reasons it treated this egregious SEO spam as a legitimate scientific study.

The site's readers, though, were quick to call it out, leading to a comically enormous editor's note appended to the story.

"Our content is intended to stir debate and conversation, and we always encourage our readers to discuss why or why not they agree with the findings," it reads in part. "If you heavily disagree with a report — please debunk to your delight in the comments below."

You heard them! Get debunking, people.

More conspiracy theories: If You Think Joe Rogan Is Credible, This Bizarre Clip of Him Yelling at a Scientist Will Probably Change Your Mind

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That "Research" About How Smartphones Are Causing Deformed Human Bodies Is SEO Spam, You Idiots

Scientists Spot "Stripped, Pulsating Core" of Star Caused By Horrific Accident

In a

Core Dump

Scientists studying a group of stars made an astonishing but "serendipitous" discovery when they realized that Gamma Columbae, a fairly average celestial body, might actually be the "stripped pulsating core of a massive star," according to a study published this week in Nature Astronomy.

If true, that means Gamma Columbae is missing the envelope, or vast shroud of gas, that hides a star's nuclear fusion powered core.

What caused the stripping of this atmospheric envelope is not definitively known, but the scientists posit that Gamma Columbae running out of hydrogen could've caused its envelope to expand and swallow up a nearby star, likely its binary partner. But in the middle of that relatively common process, something appears to have horrifically gone wrong and ejected the envelope — and possibly even led to the two stars merging.

Naked Core

Before the disaster, the scientists believe Gamma Columbae could have been up to 12 times the mass of our Sun. Now, it's a comparatively meager 5 stellar masses.

Although a naked stellar core missing its envelope has been theorized to exist, it's never been observed in a star this size.

"Having a naked stellar core of such a mass is unique so far," said study co-author Norbert Pryzbilla, head of the Institute for Astro- and Particle Physics at the University of Innsbruck, in an interview with Vice.

Astronomers had an idea of what the cores of massive and low mass stars looked like, Pryzbilla continued, but there wasn't "much evidence" for cores of masses in between.

Star Power

It's an exceedingly rare find because the star is in a "a short-lived post-stripping structural re-adjustment phase" that will only last 10,000 years, according to the study.

That's "long for us humans but in astronomical timescales, very, very short," Przybilla told Vice. "It will always stay as a peculiar object."

The opportunity to study such a rarely exposed stellar core could provide scientists an invaluable look into the evolution of binary star systems. And whatever astronomers learn from the star, it's a fascinating glimpse at stellar destruction at a nearly incomprehensible scale.

More on stars: Black Hole Spotted Burping Up Material Years After Eating a Star

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Scientists Spot "Stripped, Pulsating Core" of Star Caused By Horrific Accident

The Evolution of Godless Practices: Eugenics, Infanticide, and Transhumanism – The Epoch Times

Commentary

There is a straight line that runs from eugenics through infanticide to transhumanism. All three are the devils work in the material world.

Let us explore the issue.

From biblical times to the present, there has been an ongoing battle between good and evil that has been waged through the centuries. On one side, there are those who believe in a higher power and that mankind was made in the image of God, which is an immutable constant not to be trifled with or corrupted by human beings. Another way of saying that is that people in this camp believe that human nature itself has been immutable and constant through the millennia and that only by looking to God can mankind improve his condition.

On the other side are those who deny the existence of God and believe that mankind is the supreme intelligence in control of human destiny, is malleable and can be shaped through science, and can evolve to a superior form of man through the planning and experimentation by natural leaders over time. A corollary for the people in this camp is that there are no moral or religious constraints on their practices intended to evolve mankind toward some conceivedand ever-changingfuture vision.

Many in the first camp would characterize the ongoing battle as good versus evil. Mankind has been arguing about, defining, and redefining what it means to be good for millennia. The ancients defined good in terms of normal versus different, knowledge versus ignorance, and later right versus wrong in the context of defining laws and justice. Societies and governments were organized around these concepts.

The concept of evil has also been defined by many cultures through the ages. The dictionary now defines evil as morally wrong or bad; immoral; wicked. Most Americans (and most people in general) have an innate understanding of what is evil on a personal level. Some refer to that understanding as a conscience. Even the people in the second camp who believe that mankind is the supreme being have vestiges of consciences informed by religion and experience.

Governments have been organized to reflect, monitor, and control the cultural norms of the people governed. Logic dictates that those governments would also implement and enforce those cultural norms from a different philosophical framework from each other, partly as shaped by their respective religious philosophies and the various ideologies that have been developed and tested over the centuries, such as monarchical rule, Marxism, fascism, socialism, communism, corporate capitalism, patriarchy, oligarchy, philosopher kings, etc.

The totalitarian ideologies that were developed and tested during the 20th century (particularly fascism and communism) denied the existence of God so that the governments formed that exercised those ideologies would be unconstrained by religious and moral boundaries in their pursuit of developing and grooming their version of modern man in their societies.

Examples of those perversions of mankind include the following:

The Nazis were obsessed with racial theories that resulted in a pseudoscientific racial classification system in which Aryans (people of German and Nordic descent) were considered to be the master race at the apex of the human pyramid and destined to rule the world (on Nazi terms, of course). Jews were by Nazis to be on the lowest level of the hierarchy.

Nazi society was organized around these concepts to develop and promote those with the purest Aryan blood at the expense of those with lesser classifications in the hierarchy. For example, German boys were educated, inculcated, and groomed in Nazi principles through the Hitler Youth program. Girls were brainwashed through two parallel programs: Young Girls was an organization for girls aged 10 to 14, while the League of German Girls was for girls aged 14 to 18, with the latter being focused on comradeship, domestic duties, and motherhood.

Soviet Man was to be the ultimate proof that communism worked and that mankind could evolve for the better (as defined by the communists) without Gods guidance. The Russian communists attempted to shape the individual consciousness, character, and social practices in order to get the people to conform to the Marxist view of the perfect citizen.

The Soviets experimented with telepathic research, cybernetic simulations, and mass hypnotism over television to control the minds of their citizenry. This was a forerunner of the mass formation psychosis being exploited by the left and globalists these days.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has controlled education in China for decades to politically indoctrinate students at all levels according to CCP ideology, principles, history, racial theories, global objectives, etc., and, most importantly, conditioning everyone to acquiesce to the CCPs control of all aspects of Chinese society.

CCP leader Xi Jinping said in 2019, We need to strengthen political guidance for young people, guide them to voluntarily insist on the Partys leadership, to listen to the Party and follow the Party.

And the CCP is leading the world in implementing social controls to monitor compliance with CCP directives by all Chinese citizens. Educate, monitor, control, and discipline: the perfect world with perfectly compliant citizens envisioned for all by the Chinese communists.

Theories initiated in the 19th century bore spoiled fruit in the 20th and 21st centuries. Karl Marxs theories (Marxism) begat the Communist Manifesto, whose godless adherents continue to plague the world today. Charles Darwins theory of evolution begat eugenics, which the National Institute of Healths Genome Research Institute defines as an immoral and pseudoscientific theory that claims it is possible to perfect people and groups through genetics and the scientific laws of inheritance. John Deweys theory of progressive education similarly haunts U.S. public education to this very day.

Eugenics was/is particularly evil. Its adherents included the Nazis and Americans associated with the Population Society, the Committee on Eugenics, which studied selective and restrictive human breeding, and the American Eugenics Society.

Former President Franklin D. Roosevelt even promoted Nazi sympathizer and eugenicist Franklin Osborn to positions in government, including chairman of the Civilian Advisory Committee on Selective Service, chairman of the Army Committee on Welfare and Recreation, and chief of the Morale Branch of the War Department.

The Nazis used eugenics to justify the sterilization and ultimately the elimination of undesirables, including Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, Slavs, and others. Eugenics theories led directly to the Nazi genocide that killed millions in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.

Eugenics was also the basis for implementing sterilization laws in the United States in over 30 states, with some of those laws persisting on the books until the 1980s, according to the NIH Genome Research Institute. Over 60,000 people deemed to be idiots, imbeciles, promiscuous (females), or feebleminded were sterilized in the United States in the 20th century.

Eugenics also heavily influenced Margaret Sanger. A eugenicist and racist, Sanger founded the Birth Control League (1921) and its successor, Planned Parenthood (1942). She supported several eugenics initiatives: sterilization of people with mental and physical disabilities, segregation in concentration camps of undesirable criminals (for example, prostitutes, paupers, drug addicts, and the unemployed), and mandatory birth control training for mothers with serious disease (choice was not part of the equation).

Another of Sangers initiatives was the Negro Project, in which predominantly black neighborhoods were targeted for birth control programs. Its purpose was evident, as she later disclosed in a private letter in December 1939: We dont want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.

Planned Parenthood was, of course, one of the main organizations behind the passage of Roe v. Wade in 1973. The U.S. Supreme Court decision claimed that a womans right to an abortion was implicit in the right to privacy protected by the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. As a selling point, its advocates first claimed that abortions should only be performed in rare instances, such as rape, incest, or to save the mothers life.

Once the federal government funded Planned Parenthoods abortion clinics, abortion advocates incentivized by federal money pushed the boundaries of acceptable abortions from within the first trimester to eventually the evil practice of partial-birth abortions, in which a child being birthed is halted halfway and killed with scissors to the neck. Thus, simple therapeutic abortions have evolved to infanticidethe barbaric killing of children.

It should be noted that Adolf Hitlers Nazis were rightfully accused of committing genocide by killing 6 million Jews during the Holocaust. Similarly, communist China has been accused of committing genocide against 2 million Uyghurs in Xinjiang. However, these numbers pale in comparison to 63 million, which is the number of children aborted in the United States since the passage of Roe v. Wade in 1973. That number includes over 19 million black babies aborted. That is real genocide, whose underpinning philosophy is evil, as eugenics has become infanticide.

The newest effort by the godless camp to meddle with the natural course of humanity is the transhumanism movement, which seeks to accelerate human evolution through advanced technologies. It is a segue from eugenics because it aims to enhance the human species through the addition of advanced biological and physical (mechanical, bio-mechanical) technologies or, as Britannica puts it, to augment or increase human sensory reception, emotive ability, or cognitive capacity as well as radically improve human health and extend human life spans.

In short, the goal is to create super-humans who will live forever. And just like eugenics, there is no natural selection involved, but rather a selective implementation by and for those willing to pay the cost (and to be experimented upon). And there is no limit to the experimentation and no ethical constraints on applying the technologies.

God versus man. Good versus evil. The eternal struggle.

First came eugenics, then came abortion on demand and infanticide, and now there is the new horizon posed by transhumanism. That is the evolution of an evil kind! None of these have moral, ethical, or religious constraintsall are arbitrary as determined by those holding political power.

The Biden administration has cleared the decks for transhumanism through the signing on Sept. 12 of the Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure American Bioeconomy. Into the Brave New World we gowith much trepidation!

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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Stu Cvrk retired as a captain after serving 30 years in the U.S. Navy in a variety of active and reserve capacities, with considerable operational experience in the Middle East and the Western Pacific. Through education and experience as an oceanographer and systems analyst, Cvrk is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, where he received a classical liberal education that serves as the key foundation for his political commentary.

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The Evolution of Godless Practices: Eugenics, Infanticide, and Transhumanism - The Epoch Times

Evolution of the joint IAEA, IARC, and WHO cancer control assessments (imPACT Reviews) IARC – IARC

5 October 2022

A new Policy Review by researchers from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the World Health Organization (WHO), and partner institutions presents the evolution of the IAEA, IARC, and WHO joint advisory service to help countries assess national capacities and the readiness of the health system to plan and implement cancer control strategies. These assessments are known as integrated mission of Programme of Action for Cancer Therapy (imPACT) Reviews. The Policy Review was published in The Lancet Oncology.

The researchers describe the methodology of imPACT Reviews and present several country case studies. imPACT Reviews consist of a standardized assessment of the different aspects of cancer control prevention, early detection, diagnosis and treatment, palliation of symptoms, and survivorship as well as cancer surveillance and governance. Each agency is responsible for specific topics; the IARC assessment covers cancer surveillance and early detection.

The joint imPACT Reviews programme supports national health authorities in planning an integrated and specific approach to cancer control and measuring progress in implementation. Since the programme began in 2005, 111 imPACT Reviews have been implemented in 96 countries and more than 800 experts have been deployed.

Veljkovikj I, Ilbawi AM, Roitberg F, Luciani S, Barango P, Corbex M, et al.Evolution of the joint International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), and WHO cancer control assessments (imPACT Reviews)Lancet Oncol, Published online 26 September 2022;https://doi.org/10.1016/S1470-2045(22)00387-4

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Evolution of the joint IAEA, IARC, and WHO cancer control assessments (imPACT Reviews) IARC - IARC

Ariana Grande’s Beauty Evolution Is Something You Have To See – The List

Centered on a fictional high school for creative teenagers, "Victorious" is arguably one of the most entertaining, funny, and stylish shows for kids and teens from the early 2010s. Ariana Grande rose to fame for portraying Cat Valentine on the show at only 16 years old (via Alexa Answers). Grande eventually starred in the spinoff, "Sam & Cat," where her loveable character moved up from a supporting role to one of the main characters. On these shows, the ditsy yet sweet Cat rocked bold red hair (via YouTube), and Grande became known for that daring hairstyle.

During this era of Grande's career, she often flaunted glossy lips, rosy cheeks, and makeup that made her eyes look bigger and wider, per YouTube, matching her character's fun-loving yet somewhat clueless personality. However, this look didn't last forever for the pop star, and Grande shared in an interview that she's more than just that playful redhead. Grande said, "The red was Cat, and that was very much a character, and it was very much a portion of my life that I love and I am so grateful for... and I think fondly of that, but again, is not me" (via YouTube).

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Ariana Grande's Beauty Evolution Is Something You Have To See - The List

Bitcoin’s role in the evolution of money with University of Exeter’s Dr. Jack Rogers – CoinGeek

Is Bitcoin just another kind of money? An undergraduate module dedicated to Bitcoin at the University of Exeter sheds light on the question by delving into the history of money. The module, called Bitcoin, Money and Trust, was launched in 2018 after a high demand from students to learn about Bitcoin.

Dr. Jack Rogers, a senior lecturer in economics at the University of Exeter launched the Bitcoin module as a precursor to an MSc Fintech course which he leads. He says participation increased tenfold in recent yearsfrom less than 50 students when it launched to 700 this year.

Despite the impressive turnout, Jack believes that probably the big number is partly driven for the wrong reasonsall the various hype and sense that you could get rich from this.

On this weeks episode of CoinGeek Conversations, Charles Miller talks to Jack about the University of Exeters Bitcoin teaching, the evolution of money and the role Bitcoin plays.

Jack points to the emergence of central banking as a step change in history. He quoted Felix Martin, the author of Money: The Unauthorized Biography, whom he recalls speaking of a compromise power structure between the central bank and the government. For the first time in centuries, a decoupling between money and the state is happening before our eyes, Charles suggests. Jack agrees, saying a new technology that allows people to potentially pay each other without using existing fiat-based systems has indeed raised fundamental questions. He pertains to the authors view on cryptocurrency and how its lead to a disruption in the payment system which central banks have been in control of for a long time.

Jack believes the disruption in central banking was inevitable eventually: I think this stuff, central bank, digital currencies and things that you see now, maybe it was coming anyway I think the emergence of Bitcoin and all the hype and everything has kind of brought that forward.

Based on Jacks comments, its safe to say that the future of money will depend on the outcome of the competition between blockchain-based payment systems. For now, he admits no one is certain as to where Bitcoin is heading.

One of my students did a great dissertation on this, speculating that in 20 years time, will there be loads of different types of money? What does it look like? I mean, no-one can really say, Jack said.

Dr. Jack Rogers is co-authoring a textbook alongside Brendan Lee and Neil Smith. The book will be out by the end of 2023.

Hear the whole of Dr. Jack Rogers interview in this weeks CoinGeek Conversations podcast or catch up with other recent episodes:

You can also watch the podcast video on YouTube.

Please subscribe to CoinGeek Conversations this is part of the podcasts ninth season. If youre new to it, there are plenty of previous episodes to catch up with.

Heres how to find them:

Search for CoinGeek Conversations wherever you get your podcasts

Subscribe oniTunes

Listen onSpotify

Visit theCoinGeek Conversations website

Watch on theCoinGeek Conversations YouTube playlist

New to Bitcoin? Check out CoinGeeksBitcoin for Beginnerssection, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about Bitcoinas originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamotoand blockchain.

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Bitcoin's role in the evolution of money with University of Exeter's Dr. Jack Rogers - CoinGeek

Lady Gaga’s Beauty Evolution Is Something You Have To See – The List

The late 2010s brought about another memorable change in style for Lady Gaga, which began when she was cast as wannabe singer Ally in the hit 2018 reboot of "A Star is Born."Her red carpet looks for this era were suitably sleek and feminine, with a notable example being her 2019 Golden Globes ensemble. Matching her hair to her ballgown, Gaga looked classically beautiful, especially with the subtle shimmer on her eyelids and her nude lip (via Allure).

In 2022, Gaga gradually started to bring back some of the theatricality from her early "Mother Monster" days. Photographed on the Chromatica Ball tour, her heavy eyeliner and bold lips were signature Gaga and hearken back to her wilder looks from 2009/2010. The rest of her tour outfits were equally as bold, combining black, latex, and lots of leather (via Variety).

From heavy bangs and embellished eyes to pared-back glossy lips and ballgowns, Gaga is a true performer through and through no matter the occasion.

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Lady Gaga's Beauty Evolution Is Something You Have To See - The List

Ed Jones on Pace’s evolution and being part of the family business – Mediaweek

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Pace began as the in-house advertising department of Heaths Motors, a Ford dealership, and was established in 1964.

Since those foundational years, the Geelong-based agency has grown, developed, and evolved into the modern and diverse company it is today. It is one of the longest-serving agencies in the country that is also family owned and operated.

Account directorEd Jonesspoke toMediaweekabout Paces long-standing partnerships with clients, being part of the family business and the agencys future in sustainability.

While his family ran the agency, Jones shared that his journey to his role wasnt direct. He shared that he initially studied medicine before pursuing aviation and then doing private consultations and marketing strategies in the field.

Then I ended up finding myself enjoying everything here at the agency. Its a very diverse place, and my grandfather started it up.

It was never my plan to go into marketing, advertising, events, or anything like that. But funnily enough, I just stumbled across happiness, which was very unpredicted, he said.

Unlike most, Jones dipped his toe into the media industry growing up.I used to get dragged in here during school holidays because of the family tie-ins. I was brought into the art department or whatever I could be useful in between school holidays, so call it child labour, he joked.Jones shared that he officially began working with Pace 13 years ago temporarily while studying medicine. He said: Before long, I had found myself intertwined with a number of our key accounts, and it was just fun. So, I stuck around.

Pace is led by Jones uncleNicholas Heathwho has been at the agencys helm for over two decades. He noted that during the 1990s, Heath focused on sustainability and long-term planning for the agency.

He (Heath) was trying to get the agency to a point where you didnt have to think where next weeks wages were coming. With retail, automotive and other clients at that time, work was seasonal, Jones explained.

You had four extremely painful peak workloads a year and often some lulls in between, So cash flow was not part of the operation, he added.

Jones said that his uncle examined retainer base models and long-term contracts. He also noted that Heath landed key accounts in sectors such as healthcare, government, and tourism, which gave the agency plenty of continued momentum.

Jones continued: The agency will be 60 years old in 2024 and has just been going through the most excruciatingly painful but most rapid period of growth in the agencys history. Its pretty gun-ho at the moment.

Jones shared that he is often his uncles right-hand man to their team of 24, along with two recent full-time additions and eight regular subcontractors.

Pace has four facets as an agency marketing, advertising and media, events and digital that work collaboratively.

Its probably the most diverse and comprehensive range of services all under one roof. Its done and dusted in there, Jones said.

Jones noted many of their clients go to them with complex problems that require a consolidated team to fix the issue and deliver while working as an integrated team with their organisation.

That broad skill set is super useful for our strengths. It is pretty rare, he said.

Jones noted that over the years, they adopted strategic recruitment to hire people and build a solid team of hardworking and passionate people who bring intelligence, integrity and capability to the team.

Were able to solve very complex things and quite nimbly have small or large organisations. Were finding that many small and large organisations with complex problems need people like us. Its busy, which is a good thing.

Jones shared the agency still has some of its foundation clients to this day, in addition to maintaining long-standing client partnerships, noting their average client tenure is over ten years.

Of course, we have projects and things that come and go at a much shorter timeline than that, but our client relationships last long, he said.

Jones noted the agencys previous work with the likes of Shell, Alcoa, Viva Energy, and Haymes paint, as well as healthcare clients and ASX-listed companies.

Some clients may have reshaped or changed along the way because were talking decades. But we have many clients that have been around a long time, to the point where they have more changeover than we do, and we end up being the basket of knowledge, he said.

Jones continued: There have been some accounts where we have held the baton as theyve gone through change and disruption. So, weve been the one consistent part along the way, which is rare.

When youve got clients you work with that long, you get to know them very personally and professionally. It makes for a good, strong working relationship. You do better work because you care, he added.

Jones remained tight-lipped on Paces recent wins but noted that over the decades, the agency has worked with more than a thousand projects, many of which are a part of the agencys history.

Jones shared that they often re-winning old clients and projects theyve previously worked with. He explained that sometimes such relationships are forced to change.

Jones said: You find that you recross paths, and so thats that to us is a win when you end up working with some of the more sexy, reputable brands. They give us a bit of bragging rights.

Jones added that this is often an opportunity for Pace to reprove ourselves or reimagine things for the brand. He noted: Because its not a brand-new client from scratch, often its rediscovering an existing relationship thats got some sort of history to the place.

Pace did well during the pandemic, according to Jones. But he noted that it was overwhelmingly well, that it almost got hard to keep up.

Were about getting the job done, right to a high standard, collecting the odd award along the way, but its not why we do it.

You adapt. You are whatever is required on the day. When clients have a downturn, or theres some economic decline, he said, referring to COVID and the 2008 GFC.

At the end of the day, we are a value-for-money based agency, and were always a fair price tag and hand on heart, were going to do what we said were going to do.

Jones added: So being reliable and predictable to a degree, but also providing high-quality output and the agencys diversity. We can go wherever the flavour is and adapt as we need as opposed to just being a digital or niche agency.

In an economic downturn, we thrive because we know how to cut money and create opportunity, Jones added.

Sustainability is an area the agency has its eyes set on expanding in as it looks ahead. Jones said: Its not just flavour of the month, but the whole sustainability sector, particularly as everyone hits for net zero. Theres a lot of stuff were doing in that kind of space.

We also do a lot of economic development work and in tourism. Weve taken upon ourselves to provide a bit of leadership in that space, Jones added, highlighting a recent state government event led by Pace on zero-emission vehicles.

Jones noted that the event showcased plenty of technological innovation their existing clients are interested in as they adapt and reshape their footprints.

Jones also noted that the agency has been keeping busy with the demand for content as businesses catch up post-pandemic. He said: We cannot produce enough. At the moment, we think were on top of it and getting asked to do more.

The flavour is shifting from clicks and basic metrics against engagement to the quality of attention were generating and what that means, he said.

Pace re-joined as a member of the IMAA earlier this year at the suggestion of the agencys head of growth,Simon Larcey.

As a member, Jones noted that the agency has enjoyed a range of benefits with the industry body, including industry awareness, staff training and industry representation.

Jones added: Having a network and shoulders to tap on for various resources or requirements or knowledge is always good.

Top image: Ed Jones

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Ed Jones on Pace's evolution and being part of the family business - Mediaweek

Preply’s insight in technological evolution of language learning FE News – FE News

Preplys Daniele Saccardi offers insight into the technological evolution of language learning

Once upon a time, screens acted as cold separations from the warmth of other people.However, they have now become an integral part of our daily lives that offer us the chance toconnect with people that we otherwise would not have. The arrival of Covid-19 also saw anincrease in the usage of video platforms as educational tools. Children attended school fromtheir living rooms and students completed degrees from their beds.

Language learning especially has benefited from the transition to digital platforms in a waythat other subjects have not. Online video software has provided a platform for people in theUK to access native speakers as far away as Japan. Distance is no longer an object inaccessing native speakers of a learners target language.

Ukrainian startup Preply has wagered a considerable amount of time on the development oftheir own digital platform to teach languages and its paying off, with the companyexperiencing considerable growth.

We spoke with Preplys Campaign Manager, Daniele Saccardi, about how the languagelearning sector has evolved in the past decade and how the pandemic has influenced thetransition to digital learning:

Learning a language used to be all about memorising vocabulary and understandinggrammatical theory. However the world has adapted to a new communicative approach,emphasising the importance of being able to express oneself and share information in thetarget language. Not only is this approach more practical, as it allows the learner to beginspoken practice immediately, it is also beneficial for improving confidence, motivation andmemorisation.

Language learning technology has evolved to adapt to this communicative approach and fitinto an ever shrinking world. Far from the days of Software DVDs that we used in the earlypart of the century, we now have access to a variety of digital tools, such as mobileapplications and video conferencing platforms. The requirement to remain at home duringthe Covid-19 pandemic led to an increase in the usage of these conferencing platforms andopened up opportunities for students despite their geographical locations. Although I believethat we would have begun to rely more on technology in education, the pandemic definitelyacted as a catalyst to trigger this transition sooner.

Apps, such as Memrise and Anki, focus on providing students with key vocabulary by turningmemorisation into a game. These applications make great support tools to complementmore formal learning but can also be used as stand alone platforms to learn the basics.Some of the downfalls of these applications are dehumanisation and a lack of deeperunderstanding due to their surface level approach. Technology can only take us so far beforeassistance from native speakers is needed. Without communicating with native speakers,learners also miss out on learning colloquialisms and culture. What Preply does is bringtogether technological advances with humans, in order to bridge the disconnect between thetwo and to provide a more comprehensive and personal learning experience. Our tutors arewell versed in the merging of these two faces of language learning, allowing them to focuson building a connection with their students and tailoring the teaching to their particularneeds.

The future of language learning technology looks bright and it is worth watching this space

for advances in AI technologies. At the moment, AI is limited to spaced repetition, meaningthat the same word is repeated at regular intervals to improve memorisation. However, thereare endless possibilities to how AI can be integrated into language learning technologies inorder to improve the user experience. One such suggestion that I am aware of is the use ofchatbots that respond to your messages with personalised responses and can even providefeedback on your performance. Although this is convenient and can provide learners withmore confidence to make mistakes without being judged, I still strongly believe thatconversations with native speakers cannot be replaced due to the cultural underpinning oflanguage learning.

At Preply, we understand that each student has different requirements and so we usetechnology to complement and assist our teaching to varying extents depending on thestudent. The increased use of video conferencing platforms has opened up the world toopportunities beyond the classroom and we are proud to be a part of the ever evolvingtransition to hybrid learning.

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Preply's insight in technological evolution of language learning FE News - FE News

Empire of steel: Where Japan’s railways stand after 150 years of evolution – The Japan Times

In one of the more lavish ceremonies of 19th-century Japan, a teenage Emperor Meiji arrived at Shimbashi in the new imperial capital of Tokyo and embarked on something entirely unprecedented for the nation: a passenger train.

On Oct. 14, 1872, the emperor opened a railway line between Shimbashi and Yokohama, a transformative miracle in an era when transport was mostly horse-drawn carriages, horseback and rickshaws.

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Empire of steel: Where Japan's railways stand after 150 years of evolution - The Japan Times

Scottie Barnes evolution may be gradual, but it is essential for Raptors – The Athletic

EDMONTON With a crowd of almost 7,000 fans in attendance, Scottie Barnes saunters onto the court at Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre, home to a Raptors intrasquad scrimmage. While most of his teammates sprinted in when they were introduced, trying to keep the energy up, Barnes wont be rushed. He lifts his right arm and points to one end of the arena, lifts his left and points to the other. Hes a showman. He loves this stuff. After the scrimmage, flanked by Shelby Weaver, Raptors director of basketball operations and culture, Barnes is the last player out with the fans, signing autographs while practically encircled.

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A day earlier, its just him, O.G. Anunoby and assistant coach Earl Watson on the far end of the gym at the University of Victoria. Even while dealing with an injured finger for most of the season, Anunoby hit 69 above-the-break 3-pointers in 48 games last season. In his rookie of the year campaign, Barnes hit 36 in 74 games. Aside from one hot stretch in the first half of the season, Barnes wasnt much of a factor from deep, and defences routinely sagged off him. Yet, as the two sturdy swingmen launch 3s from the elbow, its hard to tell which guy is the established 3-and-D practitioner and which one is the prodigious talent who critics worried would never develop his jumper.

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Scottie Barnes evolution may be gradual, but it is essential for Raptors - The Athletic

Transport Evolution Africa Forum & Expo Drives The Renewable Energy Agenda With Record Turnout Of Africa’s Transport Sector – Africa.com

Bridging the gap between transport and energy sectors by reducing the reliance on fossil fuels and investing in cleaner modes of transport is critical for the creation of safer and more sustainable cities in Africa. This is according to private and public stakeholders from the continent and beyond who gathered at industry eventTransport Evolution Africa Forum & Expoin Durban last week to explore opportunities to connect Africas transport system through sustainable infrastructure.

Celebrating its 10thyear, the trade show has established itself as Africas largest transport event, hosting the regions port, rail and road authorities all under one roof.

TheTransport Evolution Africa Forum & Expo2022was opened by Ms. Fikile Sithole, Deputy Director General: Transportation Services, KZN Provincial Government, and attracted big industry game changers, like Transnet, Export Credit Insurance Corporation of South Africa (ECIC), Briggeman International, Afreximbank and Dube Tradeport. The event welcomed over 2,350 people over the two-day period and included over 100 exhibitors who showcased innovative solutions across the transport industry.

Co-located with The Big 5 Construct KZN, as well as several other events including the Women in Transport Awards and The Transport CEO forum, it successfully gave visitors access to the entire African Transport Infrastructure value chain. In addition, the strategic transport forum tackled African Continental Free Trade Area implementation, infrastructure, investments and cross border policies head on, while the B2B networking platform and exhibition gave solution providers the opportunity to showcase their global innovations and products.

Highlighting the transport sectors contribution of almost one quarter to total global greenhouse gas emissions,Yaa Agyare-Dwomoh, Consultant at Frost & Sullivan Africasaid that in South Africa, over 60% of South Africas 1.2 million vehicles on the road are diesel-powered, with the remaining powered by petrol. To achieve the energy transformation required for decarbonisation, she suggested the sector would need to rely increasingly on renewable energy sources, such as biofuels, natural gas, ethanol, propane, hydrogen and electricity.

Continuing the conversation of coordinating the transformation of the energy and transport sectors was Dr Marcelo Blumenfeld, an Assistant Professor in Future Transport Systems from the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, and an industrial fellow for Introducing Innovation at the Birmingham Centre for Railroad Research and Education (BCRRE).

While Blumenfeld admitted that many low-income countries may struggle to economically justify the implementation of electric powered railways, he said that alternative options such as battery and hydrogen were readily available, that provide viable and cost-effective ways to decarbonise railways, by upscaling existing assets without the need for fossil fuels. Using a case study carried out by BCRRE in Tanzania as an example, he illustrated how hydrogen-powered trains could reduce carbon emissions by as much as 10,000 tonnes every year.

Le-Ann Hare, Portfolio Director atleading global events company dmg events and host ofTransport Evolution African Forum & Expo,said that overall, the trade show was a categorical success. We were very pleased to have brought leading industry players from across the world to South Africa after a two-year hiatus and are confident that many valuable connections were made while bringing together like-minded people to learn and share their experiences in developing a sustainable way forward for the transport industry.

Next yearsTransport Evolution Africa Forum & Expowill be held on 20-21 September 2023 at Inkosi Albert Luthuli ICC Complex, Durban South Africa.

For more information, visit:www.transportevolution.com

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Transport Evolution Africa Forum & Expo Drives The Renewable Energy Agenda With Record Turnout Of Africa's Transport Sector - Africa.com

Jrgen Klopp praises forwards and Darwins evolution in surprise setup – The Guardian

Jrgen Klopp praised Darwin Nez and Liverpools new-look attack as his team comfortably eclipsed Rangers to strengthen their Champions League qualification hopes at Anfield.

Liverpools victory arrived courtesy of a Trent Alexander-Arnold freekick plus a Mohamed Salah penalty but it was the understanding between a reshaped forward line that enabled Klopps team to dominate Rangers, who remain without a point and a goal on their return to the Champions League stage.

Nez, making his first European start for Liverpool and only his third in total, was denied several times by the veteran Rangers goalkeeper Allan McGregor but impressed throughout. Klopp insisted it is only a matter of time before the Uruguay international is rewarded with his first goal at Anfield.

The Liverpool manager said: The way the boys up front moved together was extremely, extremely good, especially for only one session working on it. And that was a lowintensity session because of their recent workload. We never did it before. You saw how good a striker Darwin is to be constantly in those situations. Everybody saw tonight that this will happen. All good.

I think our setup was the bigger surprise tonight. We surprised ourselves and these situations can then happen. It was difficult to defend. Diogo Jota moved particularly well between the lines. It was a difficult game and occasion for Rangers but we respect them a lot. We dont think we are halfway through. Next week will be different. It was 2-0, a top game, good result, lets go from there.

Alexander-Arnolds goal was a timely reminder of his attacking quality following recent criticism of his defending and the doubt over his England place at the World Cup.

He played a good game, especially defensively, and scored a wonderful goal, Klopp said. Trent didnt have a defensive problem, we had a defensive problem. We were not in the perfect moment so we had to adjust. It was a wonderful goal. Its a long time since he scored a free-kick so I am happy he had that still in his locker.

Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football

Rangers manager, Giovanni van Bronckhorst, admitted Liverpool were on a different level and his team have to improve when the teams meet again at Ibrox next week. I think we improved in the second half but the level we face is very high, he said. Dont forget the level of the opposition. Before the game everybody said Liverpool was out of form but you can see the quality. The gap is obvious.

We are competing against one of the best sides in Europe. I think we competed really well. We will learn from this game and we should take those experiences into the next game and the league.

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Jrgen Klopp praises forwards and Darwins evolution in surprise setup - The Guardian

Do we need a new theory of evolution? – The Guardian

Strange as it sounds, scientists still do not know the answers to some of the most basic questions about how life on Earth evolved. Take eyes, for instance. Where do they come from, exactly? The usual explanation of how we got these stupendously complex organs rests upon the theory of natural selection.

You may recall the gist from school biology lessons. If a creature with poor eyesight happens to produce offspring with slightly better eyesight, thanks to random mutations, then that tiny bit more vision gives them more chance of survival. The longer they survive, the more chance they have to reproduce and pass on the genes that equipped them with slightly better eyesight. Some of their offspring might, in turn, have better eyesight than their parents, making it likelier that they, too, will reproduce. And so on. Generation by generation, over unfathomably long periods of time, tiny advantages add up. Eventually, after a few hundred million years, you have creatures who can see as well as humans, or cats, or owls.

This is the basic story of evolution, as recounted in countless textbooks and pop-science bestsellers. The problem, according to a growing number of scientists, is that it is absurdly crude and misleading.

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For one thing, it starts midway through the story, taking for granted the existence of light-sensitive cells, lenses and irises, without explaining where they came from in the first place. Nor does it adequately explain how such delicate and easily disrupted components meshed together to form a single organ. And it isnt just eyes that the traditional theory struggles with. The first eye, the first wing, the first placenta. How they emerge. Explaining these is the foundational motivation of evolutionary biology, says Armin Moczek, a biologist at Indiana University. And yet, we still do not have a good answer. This classic idea of gradual change, one happy accident at a time, has so far fallen flat.

There are certain core evolutionary principles that no scientist seriously questions. Everyone agrees that natural selection plays a role, as does mutation and random chance. But how exactly these processes interact and whether other forces might also be at work has become the subject of bitter dispute. If we cannot explain things with the tools we have right now, the Yale University biologist Gnter Wagner told me, we must find new ways of explaining.

In 2014, eight scientists took up this challenge, publishing an article in the leading journal Nature that asked Does evolutionary theory need a rethink? Their answer was: Yes, urgently. Each of the authors came from cutting-edge scientific subfields, from the study of the way organisms alter their environment in order to reduce the normal pressure of natural selection think of beavers building dams to new research showing that chemical modifications added to DNA during our lifetimes can be passed on to our offspring. The authors called for a new understanding of evolution that could make room for such discoveries. The name they gave this new framework was rather bland the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) but their proposals were, to many fellow scientists, incendiary.

In 2015, the Royal Society in London agreed to host New Trends in Evolution, a conference at which some of the articles authors would speak alongside a distinguished lineup of scientists. The aim was to discuss new interpretations, new questions, a whole new causal structure for biology, one of the organisers told me. But when the conference was announced, 23 fellows of the Royal Society, Britains oldest and most prestigious scientific organisation, wrote a letter of protest to its then president, the Nobel laureate Sir Paul Nurse. The fact that the society would hold a meeting that gave the public the idea that this stuff is mainstream is disgraceful, one of the signatories told me. Nurse was surprised by the reaction. They thought I was giving it too much credibility, he told me. But, he said: Theres no harm in discussing things.

Traditional evolutionary theorists were invited, but few showed up. Nick Barton, recipient of the 2008 Darwin-Wallace medal, evolutionary biologys highest honour, told me he decided not to go because it would add more fuel to the strange enterprise. The influential biologists Brian and Deborah Charlesworth of the University of Edinburgh told me they didnt attend because they found the premise irritating. The evolutionary theorist Jerry Coyne later wrote that the scientists behind the EES were playing revolutionaries to advance their own careers. One 2017 paper even suggested some of the theorists behind the EES were part of an increasing post-truth tendency within science. The personal attacks and insinuations against the scientists involved were shocking and ugly, said one scientist, who is nonetheless sceptical of the EES.

What accounts for the ferocity of this backlash? For one thing, this is a battle of ideas over the fate of one of the grand theories that shaped the modern age. But it is also a struggle for professional recognition and status, about who gets to decide what is core and what is peripheral to the discipline. The issue at stake, says Arlin Stoltzfus, an evolutionary theorist at the IBBR research institute in Maryland, is who is going to write the grand narrative of biology. And underneath all this lurks another, deeper question: whether the idea of a grand story of biology is a fairytale we need to finally give up.

Behind the current battle over evolution lies a broken dream. In the early 20th century, many biologists longed for a unifying theory that would enable their field to join physics and chemistry in the club of austere, mechanistic sciences that stripped the universe down to a set of elemental rules. Without such a theory, they feared that biology would remain a bundle of fractious sub-fields, from zoology to biochemistry, in which answering any question might require input and argument from scores of warring specialists.

From todays vantage point, it seems obvious that Darwins theory of evolution a simple, elegant theory that explains how one force, natural selection, came to shape the entire development of life on Earth would play the role of the great unifier. But at the turn of the 20th century, four decades after the publication of On the Origin of Species and two after his death, Darwins ideas were in decline. Scientific collections at the time carried titles such as The Death-bed of Darwinism. Scientists had not lost interest in evolution, but many found Darwins account of it unsatisfying. One major problem was that it lacked an explanation of heredity. Darwin had observed that, over time, living things seemed to change to better fit their environment. But he did not understand how these minute changes were passed from one generation to the next.

At the start of the 20th century, the rediscovery of the work of the 19th-century friar and father of genetics, Gregor Mendel, started to provide the answers. Scientists working in the new field of genetics discovered rules that governed the quirks of heredity. But rather than confirm Darwins theory, they complicated it. Reproduction appeared to remix genes the mysterious units that programme the physical traits we end up seeing in surprising ways. Think of the way a grandfathers red hair, absent in his son, might reappear in his granddaughter. How was natural selection meant to function when its tiny variations might not even reliably pass from parent to offspring every time?

Even more ominous for Darwinists was the emergence of the mutationists in the 1910s, a school of geneticists whose star exponent, Thomas Hunt Morgan, showed that by breeding millions of fruit flies and sometimes spiking their food with the radioactive element radium he could produce mutated traits, such as new eye colours or additional limbs. These were not the tiny random variations on which Darwins theory was built, but sudden, dramatic changes. And these mutations, it turned out, were heritable. The mutationists believed that they had identified lifes true creative force. Sure, natural selection helped to remove unsuitable changes, but it was simply a humdrum editor for the flamboyant poetry of mutation. Natura non facit saltum, Darwin had once written: Nature does not make jumps. The mutationists begged to differ.

These disputes over evolution had the weight of a theological schism. At stake were the forces governing all creation. For Darwinists especially, their theory was all-or-nothing. If another force, apart from natural selection, could also explain the differences we see between living things, Darwin wrote in On the Origin of Species, his whole theory of life would utterly break down. If the mutationists were right, instead of a single force governing all biological change, scientists would have to dig deep into the logic of mutation. Did it work differently on legs and lungs? Did mutations in frogs work differently to mutations in owls or elephants?

In 1920, the philosopher Joseph Henry Woodger wrote that biology suffered from fragmentation and cleavages that would be unknown in such a well-unified science as, for example, chemistry. The divergent groups often feuded, he noted, and it seemed to be getting worse. It began to seem inevitable that the life sciences would grow more and more fractured, and the possibility of a common language would slip away.

Just as it seemed that Darwinism might be buried, a curious collection of statisticians and animal breeders came along to revitalise it. In the 1920s and 30s, working separately but in loose correspondence, thinkers such as the British father of scientific statistics, Ronald Fisher, and the American livestock breeder Sewall Wright, proposed a revised theory of evolution that accounted for scientific advances since Darwins death but still promised to explain all of lifes mysteries with a few simple rules. In 1942, the English biologist Julian Huxley coined the name for this theory: the modern synthesis. Eighty years on, it still provides the basic framework for evolutionary biology as it is taught to millions of schoolchildren and undergraduates every year. Insofar as a biologist works in the tradition of the modern synthesis, they are considered mainstream; insofar as they reject it, they are considered marginal.

Despite the name, it was not actually a synthesis of two fields, but a vindication of one in light of the other. By building statistical models of animal populations that accounted for the laws of genetics and mutation, the modern synthesists showed that, over long periods of time, natural selection still functioned much as Darwin had predicted. It was still the boss. In the fullness of time, mutations were too rare to matter, and the rules of heredity didnt affect the overall power of natural selection. Through a gradual process, genes with advantages were preserved over time, while others that didnt confer advantages disappeared.

Rather than getting stuck into the messy world of individual organisms and their specific environments, proponents of the modern synthesis observed from the lofty perspective of population genetics. To them, the story of life was ultimately just the story of clusters of genes surviving or dying out over the grand sweep of evolutionary time.

The modern synthesis arrived at just the right time. Beyond its explanatory power, there were two further reasons more historical, or even sociological, than scientific why it took off. First, the mathematical rigour of the synthesis was impressive, and not seen before in biology. As the historian Betty Smocovitis points out, it brought the field closer to examplar sciences such as physics. At the same time, writes Smocovitis, it promised to unify the life sciences at a moment when the enlightenment project of scientific unification was all the rage. In 1946, the biologists Ernst Mayr and George Gaylord Simpson started the Society for the Study of Evolution, a professional organisation with its own journal, which Simpson said would bring together the sub-fields of biology on the common ground of evolutionary studies. This was all possible, he later reflected, because we seem at last to have a unified theory [] capable of facing all the classic problems of the history of life and of providing a causalistic solution of each.

This was a time when biology was ascending to its status as a major science. University departments were forming, funding was flowing in, and thousands of newly accredited scientists were making thrilling discoveries. In 1944, the Canadian-American biologist Oswald Avery and his colleagues had proved that DNA was the physical substance of genes and heredity, and in 1953 James Watson and Francis Crick leaning heavily on work from Rosalind Franklin and the American chemist Linus Pauling mapped its double-helical structure.

While information piled up at a rate that no scientist could fully digest, the steady thrum of the modern synthesis ran through it all. The theory dictated that, ultimately, genes built everything, and natural selection scrutinised every bit of life for advantage. Whether you were looking at algae blooming in a pond or peacock mating rituals, it could all be understood as natural selection doing its work on genes. The world of life could seem suddenly simple again.

By 1959, when the University of Chicago held a conference celebrating the centennial of the publication of On the Origin of Species, the modern synthesists were triumphant. The venues were packed and national newspaper reporters followed the proceedings. (Queen Elizabeth was invited, but sent her apologies.) Huxley crowed that this is one of the first public occasions on which it has been frankly faced that all aspects of reality are subject to evolution.

Yet soon enough, the modern synthesis would come under assault from scientists within the very departments that the theory had helped build.

From the start, there had always been dissenters. In 1959, the developmental biologist CH Waddington lamented that the modern synthesis had sidelined valuable theories in favour of drastic simplifications which are liable to lead us to a false picture of how the evolutionary process works. Privately, he complained that anyone working outside the new evolutionary party line that is, anyone who didnt embrace the modern synthesis was ostracised.

Then came a devastating series of new findings that called into question the theorys foundations. These discoveries, which began in the late 60s, came from molecular biologists. While the modern synthesists looked at life as if through a telescope, studying the development of huge populations over immense chunks of time, the molecular biologists looked through a microscope, focusing on individual molecules. And when they looked, they found that natural selection was not the all-powerful force that many had assumed it to be.

They found that the molecules in our cells and thus the sequences of the genes behind them were mutating at a very high rate. This was unexpected, but not necessarily a threat to mainstream evolutionary theory. According to the modern synthesis, even if mutations turned out to be common, natural selection would, over time, still be the primary cause of change, preserving the useful mutations and junking the useless ones. But that isnt what was happening. The genes were changing that is, evolving but natural selection wasnt playing a part. Some genetic changes were being preserved for no reason apart from pure chance. Natural selection seemed to be asleep at the wheel.

Evolutionary biologists were stunned. In 1973, David Attenborough presented a BBC documentary that included an interview with one of the leading modern synthesists, Theodosius Dobzhansky. He was visibly distraught at the non-Darwinian evolution that some scientists were now proposing. If this were so, evolution would have hardly any meaning, and would not be going anywhere in particular, he said. This is not simply a quibble among specialists. To a man looking for the meaning of his existence, evolution by natural selection makes sense. Where once Christians had complained that Darwins theory made life meaningless, now Darwinists levelled the same complaint at scientists who contradicted Darwin.

Other assaults on evolutionary orthodoxy followed. The influential palaeontologists Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge argued that the fossil record showed evolution often happened in short, concentrated bursts; it didnt have to be slow and gradual. Other biologists simply found that the modern synthesis had little relevance to their work. As the study of life increased in complexity, a theory based on which genes were selected in various environments started to seem beside the point. It didnt help answer questions such as how life emerged from the seas, or how complex organs, such as the placenta, developed. Using the lens of the modern synthesis to explain the latter, says the Yale developmental biologist Gnter Wagner, would be like using thermodynamics to explain how the brain works. (The laws of thermodynamics, which explain how energy is transferred, do apply to the brain, but they arent much help if you want to know how memories are formed or why we experience emotion.)

Just as feared, the field split. In the 70s, molecular biologists in many universities peeled off from biology departments to form their own separate departments and journals. Some in other sub-fields, such as palaeontology and developmental biology, drifted away as well. Yet the biggest field of all, mainstream evolutionary biology, continued much as before. The way the champions of the modern synthesis who by this point dominated university biology departments dealt with potentially destabilising new findings was by acknowledging that such processes happen sometimes (subtext: rarely), are useful to some specialists (subtext: obscure ones), but do not fundamentally alter the basic understanding of biology that descends from the modern synthesis (subtext: dont worry about it, we can continue as before). In short, new discoveries were often dismissed as little more than mildly diverting curiosities.

Today, the modern synthesis remains, mutatis mutandis, the core of modern evolutionary biology wrote the evolutionary theorist Douglas Futuyma in a 2017 paper defending the mainstream view. The current version of the theory allows some room for mutation and random chance, but still views evolution as the story of genes surviving in vast populations. Perhaps the biggest change from the theorys mid-century glory days is that its most ambitious claims that simply by understanding genes and natural selection, we can understand all life on earth have been dropped, or now come weighted with caveats and exceptions. This shift has occurred with little fanfare. The theorys ideas are still deeply embedded in the field, yet no formal reckoning with its failures or schisms has occurred. To its critics, the modern synthesis occupies a position akin to a president reneging on a campaign promise it failed to satisfy its entire coalition, but remains in office, hands on the levers of power, despite its diminished offer.

Brian and Deborah Charlesworth are considered by many to be high priests of the tradition that descends from the modern synthesis. They are eminent thinkers, who have written extensively on the place of new theories in evolutionary biology, and they dont believe any radical revision is needed. Some argue that they are too conservative, but they insist they are simply careful cautious about dismantling a tried-and-tested framework in favour of theories that lack evidence. They are interested in fundamental truths about evolution, not explaining every diverse result of the process.

Were not here to explain the elephants trunk, or the camels hump. If such explanations could even be possible, Brian Charlesworth told me. Instead, he said, evolutionary theory should be universal, focusing on the small number of factors that apply to how every living thing develops. Its easy to get hung up on you havent explained why a particular system works the way it does. But we dont need to know, Deborah told me. Its not that the exceptions are uninteresting; its just that they arent all that important.

Kevin Laland, the scientist who organised the contentious Royal Society conference, believes it is time for proponents of neglected evolutionary sub-fields to band together. Laland and his fellow proponents of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, the EES, call for a new way of thinking about evolution one that starts not by seeking the simplest explanation, or the universal one, but what combination of approaches offers the best explanation to biologys major questions. Ultimately, they want their sub-fields plasticity, evolutionary development, epigenetics, cultural evolution not just recognised, but formalised in the canon of biology.

There are some firebrands among this group. The geneticist Eva Jablonka has proclaimed herself a neo-Lamarckist, after Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, the 19th-century populariser of pre-Darwinian ideas of inheritance, who has often been seen as a punchline in the history of science. Meanwhile, the physiologist Denis Noble has called for a revolution against traditional evolutionary theory. But Laland, a lead author on many of the movements papers, insists that they simply want to expand the current definition of evolution. They are reformers, not revolutionaries.

The case for EES rests on a simple claim: in the past few decades, we have learned many remarkable things about the natural world and these things should be given space in biologys core theory. One of the most fascinating recent areas of research is known as plasticity, which has shown that some organisms have the potential to adapt more rapidly and more radically than was once thought. Descriptions of plasticity are startling, bringing to mind the kinds of wild transformations you might expect to find in comic books and science fiction movies.

Emily Standen is a scientist at the University of Ottawa, who studies Polypterus senegalus, AKA the Senegal bichir, a fish that not only has gills but also primitive lungs. Regular polypterus can breathe air at the surface, but they are much more content living underwater, she says. But when Standen took Polypterus that had spent their first few weeks of life in water, and subsequently raised them on land, their bodies began to change immediately. The bones in their fins elongated and became sharper, able to pull them along dry land with the help of wider joint sockets and larger muscles. Their necks softened. Their primordial lungs expanded and their other organs shifted to accommodate them. Their entire appearance transformed. They resembled the transition species you see in the fossil record, partway between sea and land, Standen told me. According to the traditional theory of evolution, this kind of change takes millions of years. But, says Armin Moczek, an extended synthesis proponent, the Senegal bichir is adapting to land in a single generation. He sounded almost proud of the fish.

Moczeks own area of expertise is dung beetles, another remarkably plastic species. In a cold environment, dung beetles will grow larger wings to range further for food; in a warm one, a rounder body and stomach to gorge locally. The crucial thing about these observations, which challenge the traditional understanding of evolution, is that these sudden developments all come from the same underlying genes. The speciess genes arent being slowly honed, generation by generation. Rather, during its early development it has the potential to grow in a variety of ways, allowing it to survive in different situations.

We believe this is ubiquitous across species, says David Pfennig of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He works on spadefoot toads, amphibians the size of a Matchbox car. Spadefoots are normally omnivorous, but spadefoot tadpoles raised solely on meat grow larger teeth, more powerful jaws, and a hardy, more complex gut. Suddenly, they resemble a powerful carnivore, feeding on hardy crustaceans, and even other tadpoles.

Plasticity doesnt invalidate the idea of gradual change through selection of small changes, but it offers another evolutionary system with its own logic working in concert. To some researchers, it may even hold the answers to the vexed question of biological novelties: the first eye, the first wing. Plasticity is perhaps what sparks the rudimentary form of a novel trait, says Pfennig.

Plasticity is well accepted in developmental biology, and the pioneering theorist Mary Jane West-Eberhard began making the case that it was a core evolutionary force in the early 00s. And yet, to biologists in many other fields, it is virtually unknown. Undergraduates beginning their education are unlikely to hear anything about it, and it has still to make much mark in popular science writing.

Biology is full of theories like this. Other interests of the EES include extra-genetic inheritance, known as epigenetics. This is the idea that something say a psychological injury, or a disease experienced by a parent attaches small chemical molecules to their DNA that are repeated in their children. This has been shown to happen in some animals across multiple generations, and caused controversy when it was suggested as an explanation for intergenerational trauma in humans. Other EES proponents track the inheritance of things like culture as when groups of dolphins develop and then teach each other new hunting techniques or the communities of helpful microbes in animal guts or plant roots, which are tended to and passed on through generations like a tool. In both cases, researchers contend that these factors might impact evolution enough to warrant a more central role. Some of these ideas have become briefly fashionable, but remain disputed. Others have sat around for decades, offering their insights to a small audience of specialists and no one else. Just like at the turn of the 20th century, the field is split into hundreds of sub-fields, each barely aware of the rest.

To the EES group, this is a problem that urgently needs to be solved and the only solution is a more capacious unifying theory. These scientists are keen to expand their research and gather the data to disprove their doubters. But they are also aware that logging results in the literature may not be enough. Parts of the modern synthesis are deeply ingrained in the whole scientific community, in funding networks, positions, professorships, says Gerd B Mller, head of the Department of Theoretical Biology at the university of Vienna and a major backer of the EES. Its a whole industry.

The modern synthesis was such a seismic event that even its flatly wrong ideas took up to half a century to correct. The mutationists were so thoroughly buried that even after decades of proof that mutation was, in fact, a key part of evolution, their ideas were still regarded with suspicion. As recently as 1990, one of the most influential university evolution textbooks could claim that the role of new mutations is not of immediate significance something that very few scientists then, or now, actually believe. Wars of ideas are not won with ideas alone.

To release biology from the legacy of the modern synthesis, explains Massimo Pigliucci, a former professor of evolution at Stony Brook University in New York, you need a range of tactics to spark a reckoning: Persuasion, students taking up these ideas, funding, professorial positions. You need hearts as well as minds. During a Q&A with Pigliucci at a conference in 2017, one audience member commented that the disagreement between EES proponents and more conservative biologists sometimes looked more like a culture war than a scientific disagreement. According to one attender, Pigliucci basically said: Sure, its a culture war, and were going to win it, and half the room burst out cheering.

To some scientists, though, the battle between traditionalists and extended synthesists is futile. Not only is it impossible to make sense of modern biology, they say, it is unnecessary. Over the past decade the influential biochemist Ford Doolittle has published essays rubbishing the idea that the life sciences need codification. We dont need no friggin new synthesis. We didnt even really need the old synthesis, he told me.

What Doolittle and like-minded scientists want is more radical: the death of grand theories entirely. They see such unifying projects as a mid-century even modernist conceit, that have no place in the postmodern era of science. The idea that there could be a coherent theory of evolution is an artefact of how biology developed in the 20th century, probably useful at the time, says Doolittle. But not now. Doing right by Darwin isnt about venerating all his ideas, he says, but building on his insight that we can explain how present life forms came from past ones in radical new ways.

Doolittle and his allies, such as the computational biologist Arlin Stoltzfus, are descendants of the scientists who challenged the modern synthesis from the late 60s onwards by emphasising the importance of randomness and mutation. The current superstar of this view, known as neutral evolution, is Michael Lynch, a geneticist at the University of Arizona. Lynch is soft-spoken in conversation, but unusually pugnacious in what scientists call the literature. His books rail against scientists who accept the status quo and fail to appreciate the rigorous mathematics that undergirds his work. For the vast majority of biologists, evolution is nothing more than natural selection, he wrote in 2007. This blind acceptance [] has led to a lot of sloppy thinking, and is probably the primary reason why evolution is viewed as a soft science by much of society. (Lynch is also not a fan of the EES. If it were up to him, biology would be even more reductive than the modern synthesists imagined.)

What Lynch has shown, over the past two decades, is that many of the complex ways DNA is organised in our cells probably happened at random. Natural selection has shaped the living world, he argues, but so too has a sort of formless cosmic drifting that can, from time to time, assemble order from chaos. When I spoke to Lynch, he said he would continue to extend his work to as many fields of biology as possible looking at cells, organs, even whole organisms to prove that these random processes were universal.

As with so many of the arguments that divide evolutionary biologists today, this comes down to a matter of emphasis. More conservative biologists do not deny that random processes occur, but believe theyre much less important than Doolittle or Lynch think.

The computational biologist Eugene Koonin thinks people should get used to theories not fitting together. Unification is a mirage. In my view there is no can be no single theory of evolution, he told me. There cannot be a single theory of everything. Even physicists do not have a theory of everything.

This is true. Physicists agree that the theory of quantum mechanics applies to very tiny particles, and Einsteins theory of general relativity applies to larger ones. Yet the two theories appear incompatible. Late in life, Einstein hoped to find a way to unify them. He died unsuccessful. In the next few decades, other physicists took up the same task, but progress stalled, and many came to believe it might be impossible. If you ask a physicist today about whether we need a unifying theory, they would probably look at you with puzzlement. Whats the point, they might ask. The field works, the work continues.

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Do we need a new theory of evolution? - The Guardian

Evolution goes live in West Virginia with Live Casino offering – PR Newswire

Evolution today announced that it has gone live with its wide-ranging online live casino offering for operators in West Virginia

STOCKHOLM, June 28, 2022 /PRNewswire/ --Operators have access to Evolution's wide range of online live casino games for this market, with the first live dealer games for West Virginia's online players including Live Roulette, Lightning Roulette, Blackjack, Infinite Blackjack, Three Card Poker and Ultimate Texas Hold'em. All of these Evolution games are streamed live from Evolution's state-of-the-art studio in Pennsylvania.

Evolution opened its first US live casino studio, in New Jersey, in August 2018, and followed this with studios in Pennsylvania, Michigan and soon to launch in Connecticut. West Virginia becomes the fourth US state in which Evolution is operating Live Casino in, while it has been operating its slots portfolio in this market since September 2020.

Jeff Millar, Commercial Director North America at Evolution, said: "We are so happy to bring our live dealer games to players in West Virginia. We are sure online players will absolutely love what they see and the experience of playing live at the tables, just as they would in a real land-based casino."

Millar added: "Players in West Virginia have had access to our extensive slots offering from our Group brand NetEnt for some time. Now our live offering adds even more choice and, of course, a new dimension of excitement as online players bet in real-time, with real dealers and alongside fellow online players."

For trade press and media enquiries, please contact: Amy Riches, Head of Marketing,[emailprotected]

For investor enquiries, please contact:Jacob Kaplan, CFO,[emailprotected], +46 70 508 85 75

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Evolution goes live in West Virginia with Live Casino offering - PR Newswire

Explore Vintage Culture’s new single with Solardo, the evolution of his sound, and more [Q+A] – Dancing Astronaut

by: Alex LambeauJun 24, 2022

In the last year, Vintage Culture has seemingly released music on every record label in sight. The Brazilian DJ is consistently one of the most supported artists in dance music, as his sound weaves genres together in artful fashion, resulting in a consistent stream of festival-ready hits.

Next up for Vintage Culture is a single with the UK based duo, Solardo. Released on June 24, Vintage Culture and Solardo come together for melodic-house single, Adidas & Pearls. As a current wave within house music looks to shift towards melodic and deep sounds, Vintage Culture continues to be at the forefront in the latest movement in trends. Dancing Astronaut connected with Vintage Culture for a chat about his ongoing sonic evolution, the labels helping him push his creative vision, and his new single with Solardo.

How has your sound evolved from your early production years of mostly Brazilian bass?

Vintage Culture: When I started as a teenager my world was smaller. My first ambition was to be playing atpopular clubs and festivals in Brazil. Maybe in my quiet moments I dreamed of touring the world, or headlining international festivals, but I didnt say that out loud.The immediate goal was to make music for myself and the audience around me. This style which is now called Brazilian bass really appealed to the fans.

I combined this stylewith international influences that I grew up listening tobands like Depeche Mode, New Order, [and] Radiohead. These artists have a great sense of melody and focus on the quality of the song itself. This has stayed with me. I think the fans can hear this on my new track, Adidas & Pearls with Solardo and Lowes.

Now, touring the world, Im exposed to influences from all over.This seeps into my productions without [me] even being conscious of it. So there was a natural evolution to the music.

How much fun have the latest So Track Boa parties been? The last one at the Belo Horizonte football stadium looked wild.

Vintage Culture: So Track Boa in 2022 was like being reunited with family and friends again.I could feel the spirit of the crowd and the positive energy of 40,000 friends as soon as I entered the venue. There is no greater feeling in the world. Being on that stage with those fans is the most comfortable place on the planet for me. This year So Track Boa, which is Portuguese for only good tracks, sold out very fast and was our biggest event yet.Im already thinking about next year.Iwill be personally selecting the artists from around the world for the festival.

Id like to take a moment to thank everyone who supported the festival and my shows around the world. I appreciate the fans so much and want them to know this.Thank you guys!

Many of your recent releases have been on some highly recognizable labels including Insomniac Records, Spinnin Records, Cercle Records, and more. How do you go about determining labels to partner with?

Vintage Culture: Just like producers, record labels seem to specialize in specific genres, or they have a particular sound and vibe. This is about the musical tastes of their A&R teams.If you listen to the tracks from Defected, you can definitely hear a similar vibe running through them.

With experience and time getting to know the people who work at each label, you realize which productions would work for each label and their A&R teams.

With such a busy touring schedule through 2022, how do you manage consistent quality in your output with such a chaotic schedule?

Vintage Culture: My mastering engineer is working around the clockshout out to Pimpo Gama in Brazil. Keep in mind I spent most of the lock-down in the recording studio. I missed playing live very much, but in another way this was a very creative time for me. I spent lock down writing, producing and recording almost every day.There is a backlog of great songs waiting to be released. Combined with my new tracks, I probably have enough music for the next two years.

The new track with Solardo is an interesting one, how did you find a balance of styles in the studio?

Vintage Culture: We have a high respect for each others work and we [each] have an appreciation of great songs.Lowes are very talented writers, so our goal was to combine our production skills to bring out the best of the song. We wanted to emphasizethe vocal melody and lyrics without stepping on the performance. Im very proud of Adidas & Pearls and together with Solardo and Lowes, we created a great track.

Featured image: @vintageculture/ Instagram

Tags: house, melodic house, Q&A, Solardo, Vintage Culture

Categories: Features, Music

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Explore Vintage Culture's new single with Solardo, the evolution of his sound, and more [Q+A] - Dancing Astronaut

New DNA Technology Is Shaking Up The Branches of The Evolutionary Tree – ScienceAlert

If you look different to your close relatives, you may have felt separate from your family. As a child, during particularly stormy fall outs you might have even hoped it was a sign that you were adopted.

As our new research shows, appearances can be deceptive when it comes to family. New DNA technology is shaking up the family trees of many plants and animals.

The primates, to which humans belong, were once thought to be close relatives of bats because of some similarities in our skeletons and brains. However, DNA data now places us in a group that includes rodents (rats and mice) and rabbits. Astonishingly, bats turn out to be more closely related to cows, horses, and even rhinoceroses than they are to us.

Scientists in Darwin's time and through most of the 20th century could only work out the branches of the evolutionary tree of life by looking at the structure and appearance of animals and plants. Life forms were grouped according to similarities thought to have evolved together.

About three decades ago, scientists started using DNA data to build "molecular trees". Many of the first trees based on DNA data were at odds with the classical ones.

Sloths and anteaters, armadillos, pangolins (scaly anteaters), and aardvarks were once thought to belong together in a group called edentates ("no teeth"), since they share aspects of their anatomy.

Molecular trees showed that these traits evolved independently in different branches of the mammal tree. It turns out that aardvarks are more closely related to elephants while pangolins are more closely related to cats and dogs.

There is another important line of evidence that was familiar to Darwin and his contemporaries. Darwin noted that animals and plants that appeared to share the closest common ancestry were often found close together geographically. The location of species is another strong indicator they are related: species that live near each other are more likely to share a family tree.

For the first time, our recent paper cross-referenced location, DNA data, and appearance for a range of animals and plants. We looked at evolutionary trees based on appearance or on molecules for 48 groups of animals and plants, including bats, dogs, monkeys, lizards, and pine trees.

Evolutionary trees based on DNA data were two-thirds more likely to match with the location of the species compared with traditional evolution maps. In other words, previous trees showed several species were related based on appearance.

Our research showed they were far less likely to live near each other compared to species linked by DNA data.

It may appear that evolution endlessly invents new solutions, almost without limits. But it has fewer tricks up its sleeve than you might think.

Animals can look amazingly alike because they have evolved to do a similar job or live in a similar way. Birds, bats and the extinct pterosaurs have, or had, bony wings for flying, but their ancestors all had front legs for walking on the ground instead.

(Oyston et al., Communication Biology, 2022)

Above:The color wheels and key indicate where members of each order are found geographically. The molecular tree has these colors grouped together better than the morphological tree, indicating closer agreement of the molecules to biogeography.

Similar wing shapes and muscles evolved in different groups because the physics of generating thrust and lift in air are always the same. It is much the same with eyes, which may have evolved 40 times in animals, and with only a few basic "designs".

Our eyes are similar to squid's eyes, with a crystalline lens, iris, retina, and visual pigments. Squid are more closely related to snails, slugs, and clams than us. But many of their mollusk relatives have only the simplest of eyes.

Moles evolved as blind, burrowing creatures at least four times, on different continents, on different branches of the mammal tree. The Australian marsupial pouched moles (more closely related to kangaroos), African golden moles (more closely related to aardvarks), African mole rats (rodents), and the Eurasian and North American talpid moles (beloved of gardeners, and more closely related to hedgehogs than these other "moles") all evolved down a similar path.

Until the advent of cheap and efficient gene sequencing technology in the 21st century, appearance was usually all evolutionary biologists had to go on.

While Darwin (1859) showed that all life on Earth is related in a single evolutionary tree, he did little to map out its branches. The anatomist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) was one of the first people to draw evolutionary trees that tried to show how major groups of life forms are related.

(Ernest Haeckel)

Haeckel's drawings made brilliant observations of living things that influenced art and design in the 19th and 20th centuries. His family trees were based almost entirely on how those organisms looked and developed as embryos.Many of his ideas about evolutionary relationships were held until recently.

As it becomes easier and cheaper to obtain and analyze large volumes of molecular data, there will be many more surprises in store.

Matthew Wills, Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology at the Milner Centre for Evolution, University of Bath.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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New DNA Technology Is Shaking Up The Branches of The Evolutionary Tree - ScienceAlert

Inflation & Battery Costs Could Hobble The EVolution – CleanTechnica

In a recent piece at The Wall Street Journal, we learn that the prices of electric vehicles, like all vehicles, are skyrocketing:

Overall, the average price paid for an electric vehicle in the U.S. in May was up 22% from a year earlier, at about $54,000, according to J.D. Power. By comparison, the average paid for an internal-combustion vehicle increased 14% in that period, to about $44,400.

EV manufacturers blame the $10,000 price disparity over gas vehicles on the rising costs of battery materials, especially rare earth minerals. Ford says that its whole profit margin for the Mustang Mach-E has been wiped out, and other manufacturers are seeing similar struggles.

Weve always known that the cost of battery packs is the reason EVs cost more than ICE cars, despite having much simpler powertrains and better design flexibility, but just two years ago prices were on the way down, with some experts predicting that the price of EVs would drop to that of gas-powered cars by 2024. Even worse, they predicted that EVs would only cost $2,000 more than gas cars by this year, which obviously didnt happen.

Rosy predictions that EVs would be as affordable as gas cars led to many jurisdictions placing their regulatory bets on EVs. Countries and US states, one after another, announced future ICE vehicle bans that would prohibit the registration of new fossil-fueled vehicles after a certain date, most often between 2030 and 2040. But, some of them have outs for future price changes, and all of them could be modified or repealed if EVs arent affordable enough to mandate without overburdening people.

So, these price increases should concern us all because if price parity or near-parity cant be achieved, much of the work toward getting EVs into mass adoptions, not to mention the mandates, is all put in danger. Battery material and refining industries need to expand greatly if theyre going to lead to competitive pricing, but we need to take a hard look at all other factors driving prices up and getting those addressed, too.

In the short term, our economic problems have one small silver lining for EVs: high gas prices. Automakers arent struggling to get people to buy EVs right now, largely because the cost of operating their gas-powered vehicle is as high as its ever been. Facing large monthly gasoline or diesel costs, the higher price for an EV just doesnt look as painful. This is no comfort to people who cant afford an EV, though.

Price parity isnt the whole story. The overall price of new and used cars can also threaten the near and long-term future of EVs, especially in places where wages are low.

Some recent vehicle shopping I did illustrates this pretty well. Its no secret that Im not happy with my Nissan LEAF. Id like to get a better EV with liquid cooling and better charging rates for regional driving, and having some more room wouldnt hurt, either. But, until recently, I was upside down in the car because I got fooled by a dealer into paying too much for the car. Recent price spikes for used cars has my cars value a little higher than what I owe, now, so I figured it might be a good time to jump ship.

But, when I started looking for a used EV, the reality sunk in. Used Teslas are all over $40,000. New EVs tend to mostly be over $50,000 (assuming you can find one). The cheapest used EV I could find that wasnt a compliance car was going for $30,000 and I couldnt get the dealer to budge more than $400. Some better deals could be found on sites like Carvana, but every single electric vehicle is marked sale in process, so that was a dead end.

The only thing that might be an option would be a new Bolt EV or Bolt EUV, oddly enough. Thats only because Chevrolet is offering big factory incentives on them, which would put the price in the range Id like to pay for one. But, Im having a hell of a time finding a dealer whos willing to sell them for MSRP minus the incentives (which would still turn the dealer a decent profit).

Instead, theyre counting on the high demand for EVs to enable them to basically steal the factory incentive. By concealing that GM is offering discounts, many dealers are selling the vehicles for MSRP and putting as much as $6300 in their own pockets. Are they in any hurry to sell it to me for whats basically MSRP? Not at all.

If I was trying to get rid of a gas-burner and trade it for an EV, Id probably be in worse shape. Im fortunate that our family has another gas vehicle we occasionally use on road trips, so I can get the cheapest EV on the market and still be OK if I need to take a road trip. But, if I only had one car, I couldnt realistically consider trading it for a Bolt of any kind (EV or EUV), as its 50 kW max charging rate wouldnt be realistic for longer trips in most cases.

Now, I know that with enough inflation for long enough, employers are going to have to start upping pay to keep families from shopping around for other employment options, but its pretty clear that the price of everything from food to gasoline to cars is vastly outpacing any gains people are making in pay right now.

If these prices, relative to incomes, for new and used EVs are here to stay, I think it could. Its going to hurt people, especially in poor states and regions. If someone toward the bottom of the economic totem pole cant afford anything but a used compliance car, EVs wont be a realistic option for them. Frugal people at all income levels certainly wouldnt waste time entertaining expensive EVs.

If this is a temporary situation, and prices start going back toward not only parity, but affordability, then its possible that EVs still have the bright future we want and need them to have.

Featured image provided by GM.

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Inflation & Battery Costs Could Hobble The EVolution - CleanTechnica