Monthly Archives: November 2019

Full Alliance Group Announces New EBO2 Sites in Florida and the Caribbean – PRNewswire

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BEVERLY HILLS, California, Nov. 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Full Alliance Group, Inc. (OTCPK: FAGI) is pleased to announce the opening of two new EBO2 treatment offices.

Dr. Yu and his staff arrived in Boca Raton, Florida, and then the Cayman Islands earlier this week with two brand-new portable EBO2 units and are currently training Dr. Joseph Purita and his staff. Dr. Purita is well-known in the stem cell and regenerative medicine sector and is eager to implement our ozone technology within his thriving practice.He has offices in Boca Raton as well as in the Cayman Islands.

Dr. Purita's Pensum Regenerative Clinic in Grand Cayman already specializes in stem cell treatment and anti-aging.The addition of EBO2 technology is expected to work synergistically with the well-established stem cell protocols already in place at the clinic.

"Expanding our footprint to the East and South, as well as the Caribbean, has been a critical part of our strategic plan," said Dr. Brian Volpp, MD, CEO and President of Full Alliance Group, Inc. "We are grateful that Dr. Purita has committed to the Yu Method and that he has made the financial commitment for two of our new units.His reputation within the stem cell community should allow ozone therapy to become more mainstream as he gains more experience with integrating EBO2 into his existing protocols."

Also, we have been advised by our legal team that the third quarter financial filing must be made publicly available to all shareholders. Consequently, the filing has been posted on our website:https://FullAlliance.com

About Full Alliance Group Inc.

Full Alliance Group Inc. (OTCPK: FAGI) is a multi-faceted holding company with various interests in technology, healthcare, and nutraceuticals. Nutra Yu, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Full Alliance Group, develops, markets, and distributes a proprietary line of nutraceutical products. EBO2, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Full Alliance Group, is the provider of ''EBO2'', a modern high volume blood gas exchange unit for the treatment of 5-7 liters of blood with medical ozone. The unit allows extracorporeal blood and oxygenation, ozone exposure and blood filtration.The process filters blood in a unique way by using the integrated diffusing membranes within the filter fibers to trap lipids and proteins which are in excess in the venous blood supply. The EBO2 unit is considered the world's most advanced medical ozone therapy.

For additional information regarding Full Alliance Group, visit, http://www.fullalliance.com.

Paul Brian Volpp, MD, MPH, President / CEO The Full Alliance Group

Forward-Looking StatementsThis shareholder update may contain a number of forward-looking statements. Words and variations of words such as: "expect", "goals", "could", "plans", "believe", "continue", "may", "will", and similar expressions are intended to identify our forward-looking statements, including but not limited to: our expectation for growth, benefits from brand-building, cost savings and margins. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control, which could cause our actual results to differ materially from those indicated in our forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to: continued volatility of, and sharp increase in: costs/pricing actions, increased competition, ability to raise sufficient operating capital, risks from operating internationally, consumer weakness, weakness in economic conditions and tax law changes.

Full Alliance Group Inc. Investor RelationsDave DonlinEmail: Info@TheCervelleGroup.comPhone: (407) 490-6635Web: http://www.StockInvestorDaily.comVisit: http://www.fullalliance.comContact: ir@fullalliance.com

SOURCE Full Alliance Group, Inc.

https://fullalliance.com/

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Full Alliance Group Announces New EBO2 Sites in Florida and the Caribbean - PRNewswire

An Inside Look at the Anti-Aging Regimens of the Rich and Famous – NewBeauty Magazine

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This article first appeared in the Winter 2019 issue of NewBeauty. Clickhereto subscribe.

Money cant buy happiness,but it can make younger-looking skin a whole lot easier to achieve. J.Lo and Jennifer Aniston are both rumoredto have their own Ultherapymachines, and Kimora LeeSimmons has claimed touse La Mer eye cream fromhead to toe to keep things taut.What would a typical skin-care regimen look like if yourlast name was Bezos, Gatesor Arnault? These beautyexperts give us a peek at whatthe ultimate future-proofingplaybooks look like.

You May Also Like: This Is What It's Really Like to Plan a Secret Celebrity Plastic Surgery Appointment

TOX TALKSweat seems to be enemy number-one when money is noobject. Franklin, TN dermatologist Jill C. Fichtel, MD saystargeting all sweaty areas every six months is at the top ofthe to-do list, and Nanuet, NY dermatologist Heidi Waldorf, MD has her sights set on Blowtox. I already tox the backof my neck every five monthsthe bottom of my hair curlsand frizzes as sweat travels therebut, ideally, I wouldtreat my entire scalp every three months ($1,500).

BODY ROCKIf thousands of dollars in serums and lotions lined yourmedicine cabinet, why stop at your neck? A full-bodycocktail of wrinkle-plumping SkinMedica TNS Essential Serum($281), Retin-A and La Prairie Skin Caviar Luxe Cream($505)would replace any old body lotion for Boston facial plasticsurgeon Caroline A. Banks, MD. New York facial plasticsurgeon Jennifer M. Levine, MD offers up a casual solutionto slack, less-than-camera-ready skin: off-label use of hyperdiluted Sculptra Aesthetic from head to toe.

To eliminate dry, dull skin for the foreseeable future,New York cosmetic dentist Pia Lieb, DDS would drenchherself in Clarins Body Balm($43) each morning and evening;New York dermatologist Rita Linkner, MD would swap herusual hydrator with collagen-boosting Alastin Regenerating Nectar($195), and, before coating every inch of skin withBiologique Recherche Srum Placenta and Creme Masque Vernix, New York City facialist Autumn Henry would endevery long week in the most chic, drool-worthy way: relaxing in a CBD-infused milk bath in an amethyst tub.

NEEDLE WORKGravity doesnt care if youre rich, famous or an MD. Tobeat it, Miami dermatologist Stacy Marie Chimento, MDdaydreams of having Profound RF radio-frequency microneedling treatments done on her face, neck, stomachand thighs every two yearspaired with the dimple-blasting powers of VelaShape, of coursefor lifting, tighteningand cellulite-busting.

Dr. Linkner thinks like us: Id get out my Pro-Nox andUltherapy my entire body. New York dermatologist Sapna Palep, MD agrees, though shed alternate between Ultherapy and Titan. To cut down on trips to and from the office,Dr. Fichtel would buy her own Emsculpt device to leave athome. The ultimate home gym equals Emsculpt, couch,boxed wine and Netflix.

Dr. Levine chimes in with her dream fat-busting regimen: noninvasive SculpSure to those stubborn areas resistant tohours at the gym. "I'd start with abdomen and flanks, then arms, then finally the inner and outer thighs."

FAT FREEZEDr. Waldorf is currently living our fat-freezing dreams. Seea bulge, freeze a bulge has kept me fit and fitting into mywardrobe, she says. When I lecture on CoolSculpting, Ioften do my CoolSculpting macarenamy hand movements mirror all the places and times Ive had it done: lowerbelly, upper belly, waist, flanks, bottom of my butt, upperarmsand repeat! I think Im up to 18 cycles since 2012.

LIGHTEN UPTo undo the photodamage he incurred as a kid, New Yorkdermatologist Joshua Zeichner, MD says he would Fraxelthe entirety of his sun-exposed skin. Forget costif socialdowntime wasnt a factor, I would microneedle my facewith PRP every month, says Greenwich, CT dermatologistKim Nichols, MD. And for the most relaxing dose of brightening power, Englewood, NJ plastic surgeon Shwetambara Parakh, MD would top her monthly whole-body HydraFacial sessions with bottles of SkinCeuticals C E Ferulic($166).

LUST LIST

1. An LED light-therapybed would be upthere on my wishlist, says cosmeticformulator StephenAlain Ko. Whilethe research isntparticularly convincing, the thought oflaying in a warm,quiet, meditativespacewith propereye protection, ofcoursewhile doingmy skin care reallyappeals to me.

2. Skin-care superstarCaroline Hironsfull-body cocktailincludes La Mer Body Cream($195) andher secret weapon:Kate Somerville Deep Tissue Repair Cream($150) twice a day,head to boobs.

3. I would buy a timemachine and startusing productsearlier to preservemy youthand getmy NeoGraft hairtransplant 15 yearsearlier, says GrandRapids, MI plasticsurgeon Bradley Bengtson, MD.

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An Inside Look at the Anti-Aging Regimens of the Rich and Famous - NewBeauty Magazine

In science, its better to be curious than correct – The Conversation CA

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Im a geneticist. I study the connection between information and biology essentially what makes a fly a fly and a human a human. Interestingly, were not that different. Ive been a professional geneticist since the early 1990s. Im reasonably good at this, and my research group has done some really good work over the years.

But one of the challenges of the job is coming to grips with the idea that much of what we think we know is in fact wrong. Sometimes, were just off a little and we try to get a little closer to the answer. At some point, though, its likely that were just flat out wrong in some aspect.

We cant know when were wrong, but its important to remain open-minded and adaptable so we can learn from our mistakes. Especially because sometimes the stakes can be incredibly high with lives on the line (more on this later).

In the late 1980s, cattle started wasting away. In the late stages of what was slowly recognized as a disease, cattle began acting in such bizarre manner that their condition bovine spongiform encephalitis became known as mad cow disease. Strikingly, the brains of the cattle were full of holes (hence spongiform) that were caked with plaques of proteins clumped together; these were proteins that were found in the brains of healthy cattle, but now they had an unnatural shape.

Proteins are long chains, but they fold into specific complex shapes. But the proteins in the cattles brains were misfolded. Some time after, people started dying from the same symptoms, and a connection was made between eating infected cattle and contracting the disease. Researchers determined that the culprit was consumption of brain and spinal tissue, the only tissue that showed the physical effects of infection.

One of the challenges to explaining mad cow disease was the length of time from infection to disease to death. Diseases, we knew, were transmitted by viruses and bacteria, but no scientist could isolate one that would explain this disease. Further, no one knew of other viruses or bacteria whose infection would take this long to lead to death. Science leaned toward assuming a viral cause, and careers and reputations were built on finding the slow virus.

In the late 1980s, a pair of British researchers suggested that perhaps the misfolded proteins in the plaques was key. This proposal was soon championed by Stanley Prusiner, a young American researcher early in his career. The idea was simple: the misfolded protein was both the result and cause of the infection.

The misfolded protein plaques killed brain tissue and caused correctly folded versions of the proteins to misfold. Prusiners hypothesis was straightforward, but it didnt fit the way scientists understood diseases to work. Diseases are transmitted as DNA (and in rare cases, RNA) by viruses or bacteria. But they are not transmitted in protein folding.

For holding this protein-based view of infection, Prusiner was literally and metaphorically shouted out of the room. Then he showed, experimentally and elegantly, that the misfolded proteins, which he called prions, were the cause of these diseases. For this accomplishment, he was awarded the 1997 Nobel Prize in medicine.

We now know that prions are responsible for a series of diseases in humans and other animals, including chronic wasting disease, a disease whose spread poses a serious threat to deer and elk in Ontario. And, circling back, the over-cooked burger phenomenon is because of these proteins. If you heat the prions sufficiently, they lose their unnatural shape all shape actually and they cant transmit the disease.

So in this case, the information necessary for disease transmission is the shape of the protein, not in the genetic code of an infecting virus or bacteria. This fact is why this case specifically speaks to me as a geneticist. All my career, Ive been trained to look for answers in DNA sequences. Prions remind me that sometimes really interesting answers are not were we expect them to be.

Where does this leave us? To me, the take-home message is that we need to remain skeptical but curious. Examine the world around us with open eyes and be ready to challenge and question our assumptions. Also, we shouldnt ignore what is in front of us simply because it doesnt fit our understanding of the world around us.

Climate change, for example, is real. Its another example of why its important to be open to being wrong and the need to try to get it right. Medical science only started controlling mad cow disease after we understood the role of prions, and the years of denial cost an untold number of lives.

Similarly, our global refusal to accept the massive climate change around us, and our obvious role in it, is leading us into one weather-based disaster after another, and all the loss of life associated with these disasters.

Ive spent a lot of time in my career putting together models of how the biological world works, but I know that pieces of these models are wrong. I can almost guarantee you that I have something as fundamentally wrong as those prion-deniers, I just dont know what it is. Yet.

But the important thing isnt to be right. Instead, it is to be open to seeing when you are wrong.

[ Youre smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversations authors and editors. You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter. ]

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In science, its better to be curious than correct - The Conversation CA

Thermodynamic probes of instability: application to therapeutic proteins – European Pharmaceutical Review

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Developing a stable therapeutic protein formulation requires an intimate knowledge of the protein and its physical and chemical properties. In this article, Bernardo Perez-Ramirez and Robert Simler discuss the thermodynamic consequences that low temperature can have on the aggregation tendencies of a protein.

Proteins are dynamic entities, constantly adopting different partially-folded states as a function of temperature and other solution variables. These variables dictate the standard free energy between the native, unfolded and partially folded aggregation prone states leading to oligomerisation. As a result, not all oligomerisation events in proteins are similar. Altering these variables, such as temperature, pH, salt and ligands, could induce a protein to aggregate as a consequence of unnatural folding to balance the thermodynamically unfavourable interactions between solvent and exposed hydrophobic residues in proteins. In the same way, these variables may induce a protein to self-associate, in mostly the native state, to counteract the unfavourable interactions with the solvent. Thus, cold instability without inducing cold denaturation could destabilise the native state of a protein, making it more prone to aggregation events.

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Thermodynamic probes of instability: application to therapeutic proteins - European Pharmaceutical Review

What is Biophysical Analysis? – The John Innes Centre

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Clare Stevenson runs the Biophysical Analysis facility at the John Innes Centre.

Recently, she explained why she is passionate about increasing the use of these Biophysical techniques and making the science more accessible to a wider range of users.

The Biophysical Analysis (BA) facility has state of the art instrumentation for looking at structures of molecules and enables scientists to observe and measure the strength of the interactions between biomolecules.

Biomolecular interactions are central to biochemistry and an understanding of these interactions can aid our knowledge across a broad range of science, so the biomolecules we look at may be proteins, DNA, RNA, small molecules or drugs.

We recently added a third technique to our biophysical service; a Circular Dichroism Spectroscopy (CD), maintained and run by Julia Mundy.

The CD spectrophotometer uses a Xenon light source to collect CD data on biological macromolecules in solution at near and far UV wavelengths. This technique is commonly used to look at the folding of proteins, provide information on the secondary structure of proteins and can detect changes in structure during protein-protein or protein-ligand binding events. Julia runs samples for scientists as a service or will train users how to use the equipment themselves.

In addition to the CD, the BA facility has two complementary techniques for studying biomolecular interactions; Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) and Isothermal Titration Calorimetry (ITC).

In Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR), one of the biomolecules you are investigating is attached to a surface and the other biomolecule is flowed over the surface. If there is an interaction a response is observed. That interaction can then be observed, on the computer, in real time and you see the biomolecules binding and unbinding. Once you know that an interaction occurs you can do some further measurements to determine how strong or weak the interaction is.

The SPR is highly automated and once an experiment is optimised it can even be left testing multiple interactions while the scientist is at home sleeping. Recently I have been working with Dr Tung Le, looking at protein-DNA interactions. Once the experiment was planned, it can be run quickly and within 20 minutes we can see if binding is happening. Tungs group can easily screen many different protein samples and DNA sequences quickly in an automated manner getting the results the next day.

Weve also recently been successful in obtaining some funding which will allow us to purchase a new instrument that will enhance our SPR capability even further.

Isothermal Titration Calorimetry (ITC) is a complimentary technique to SPR but rather than requiring one biomolecule to be immobilised, it has one in a cell and one in a syringe. The molecule in the syringe is injected into the one in the cell and if binding occurs the heat given out (exothermic) or taken in (endothermic) can be measured.

Changes in heat occur when molecules bind, and the ITC can measure these tiny changes in heat with high sensitivity. This information can then tell us whether the biomolecules interact and, if they do, how strong the interactions is. Plus, knowing the heat changes in the interaction can also give us a clue to how the molecules are binding.

Both techniques are complimentary but have different advantages and disadvantages. As a facility we speak to the scientists and recommend the best technique for the desired experiment and spend time training, troubleshooting projects and analysing results.

We also run regular training courses where people interested in all three techniques can come and learn what is involved and what they need to understand before putting on their lab coat.

Our BA facility is available for anyone to book and use.

Predominantly we work with John Innes Centre scientists, but we have also worked with The Sainsbury Laboratory, University of East Anglia and external companies like Leaf Expression Systems. If you want to measure any interactions, we can help, wherever you are.

Our facility can run 24-hours-a-day, 365-days-a-year, thanks to being able to automate much of the process, which in turn means we have the instrument capacity to take on more than we are currently doing.

I enjoy my job and my career has had lots of highlights.

I am particularly proud of a method that I developed to study protein DNA interactions by SPR. This is our Reusable DNA Capture Technique (ReDCaT) and enables DNA to be attached to a surface and easily removed. This means that the SPR instrument can be used to measure the interaction of multiple proteins with many DNA sequences in a high throughput and automated manner.

I was always good at science and maths at school, but I think my parents expected me to become a doctor, rather than a scientist. I come from a medical family, full of doctors and nurses, so it was sort of assumed I would follow the family trade.

However, I was bit of a rebellious teenager, so I found myself applying to do Biochemistry at Liverpool Polytechnic, now Liverpool John Moores University, and realised that biochemistry was a fascinating subject and I wanted to learn more.

My degree included a year in industry and I really enjoyed working in the lab. After graduation I found a job with a rival company and I had a lot of fun and learnt a lot working in the area of drug metabolism.

After a new challenge in 1996 I applied for a job as a Research Technician for Professor David Lawson. His passion for solving the 3-dimensional structures of proteins using crystals was inspiring and it encouraged me to take a step sideways. I must admit, I am hugely grateful to David, because he took a bit of a chance on me, as when I first came, I had only done a little bit of protein work and knew very little about protein crystallography. However, I learnt quickly and had excellent technical skills so was able to become competent at growing protein crystals and solving structures.

I realised that in academia having a PhD is important (although believe it is your competency and skills rather than the qualification that is what is really the important thing) but I was lucky to have the support from the John Innes Centre to complete my PhD in 2007. It took over seven years studying part-time, while I was working full time and I also had a baby.

I solved several structures as part of my PhD but also had to study a protein-DNA interactions and had to learn how to use SPR. The more I did it the more I enjoyed it and over time I became the most experienced person at the John Innes Centre for using this technique and ended up training and advising others.

Over time SPR became the first technique in the facility and then it expanded to include ITC and CD. I now manage the facility but also continue working for David on the Protein Crystallography Facility.

There was, and I think remains, a feeling that biophysics is quite pedantic and difficult, but the machines are actually relatively easy to use with the right training and support. I love working with students and post docs showing them the techniques and designing their experiments with them.

Running a facility means every day is different and sometime hectic but feel lucky to work with so many great scientists and make their experiments happen.

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From Mediterranean Lentil Salad to Cinnamon Raisin Bread: Our Top 10 Vegan Recipes of the Day! – One Green Planet

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Ready, set, recipes! Here are our just published, fresh-out-the-mill recipes in one convenient place! These are the top vegan recipes of the day, and are now a part of the thousands of recipes on ourFood Monster App! We have cauliflower chocolate mousse, Mediterranean lentil salad, and the ultimate guacamole recipe, so if youre looking for something new and delicious, you are sure to find a new favorite!

Source: Cauliflower Chocolate Mousse

If youre looking for a much healthier and more nutritious version of chocolate mousse, youve got to try this Cauliflower Chocolate Mousse by Mitra Shirmohammadi. Theres more than a full serving of vegetables in each cup, its free from refined sugar, and also super allergy-friendly (no dairy, eggs, soy, or gluten). Cauliflower is one of those miraculous vegetables that works incredibly well in both sweet and savory dishes. Theres no way anyone can ever tell there are vegetables hidden in your chocolate mousse! If you have picky eaters at home, this cauliflower chocolate mousse is a great way to get them to eat more veggies without even realizing it!

Source: Cinnamon Raisin Bread

Vegan and gluten-free cinnamon raisin bread thats refined sugar free and packed with raisins and texture. Made extra cinnamon-y with a secret ingredient! Its easy to make and only takes 1-bowl (and plenty of cinnamon and raisins.) This Gluten-Free Cinnamon Raisin Bread is a little less table bread and a lot more dense bakery- style bread. Its hearty, naturally sweet, and packed with protein and fiber.The combination of ground cinnamon and cinnamon kombucha adds the perfect amount of spice. Its hearty enough to serve for a breakfast bread or nutritious snack but sweet enough to also function as a healthful dessert. For even more texture, try adding walnuts or almonds when folding in the raisins. Serve your slices of gluten-free Cinnamon Raisin Bread by Lauren Kirchmaier warm with a big smear of almond butter slathered on top.

Source: Vegan Scampi in Lemon Garlic White Wine Sauce

This is a really simple dish that tastes elegant. Hearts of palm are the perfect stand-in for scallops. They have a similar look when sliced and a briny quality reminiscent of seafoodgreat for those with a shellfish allergy. This Vegan Scampi in Lemon Garlic White Wine Sauce by Jenn Sebestyen is elegant and delicious!

Source: Savory Granola

The amazing thing about granola is that you can, just like banana ice cream, use the basic recipe, exchange the spices and make your own combination. This savory granola recipe is perfect for topping your salad and soups or just munching on as a midday. It only takes about 20-30 min to make and the ingredients are pretty simple. You have to try this Savory Granola by True Foods Blog!

Source: Chocolate Pie

Chocolate and pie what could be better? This Chocolate Pie by Lenia Patsi is the ideal dessert to make this weekend. Simple and decadent!

Source: Protein Apple Berry Crumble

Vegan apple berry crumble is the perfect Autumn dessertits cozy, comforting, cinnamon-spiced & absolutely irresistible! This isnt however a standard crumble recipe. This is a healthy, refined sugar and gluten free crumble with added protein. You are going to love this Protein Apple Berry Crumble by Vicky Coates!

Source: Mediterranean Lentil Salad

This Mediterranean Lentil Salad by Medha Swaminathan is the perfect reset after a weekend of eating things that seemingly all contain massive amounts of vegan cream, cheese, and/or cream cheese. Its super easy to make, so your food-fatigued body doesnt have to do much work. Plus, its really good for you.

Source: Gado Gado Salad With Nut-Free Sauce

A mixed vegetable Indonesian-style salad served with nut free sauce dressing. The medley of vegetables with potato and tofu added make this salad a tasty, nutritious, attractive and colorful dish. This Gado Gado Salad by Daphne Goh is not only naturally gluten free but also vegan, egg free, nut free and refined sugar free. For soy free, simply omit the fried tofu and add some pumpkins for protein.

Source: Crispy Flavorful Pickles

A super quick recipe for yummy, full-of-flavor pickles. Have these Crispy Flavorful Pickles by Caroline Ginolfion the side of your preferred vegan dinner!

Source: The Ultimate Guacamole

This is the The Ultimate Guacamole by Christina Bedetta. Serve it with chips and fresh vegetables or enjoy it in wrap form. Its easy to make and is a great addition to so many dishes. Made with creamy avocado, red onion, tomatoes, and spices there is no arguing that this is the ultimate guacamole recipe. With such delicious flavors and versatility, the possibilities are endless!

We also highly recommend downloading ourFood Monster App, which is available foriPhone, and can also be found onInstagramandFacebook. The app has more than 15,000 plant-based, allergy-friendly recipes, and subscribers gain access to new recipes every day. Check it out!

For more Vegan Food, Health, Recipe, Animal, and Life content published daily, dont forget to subscribe to theOne Green Planet Newsletter!

Being publicly-funded gives us a greater chance to continue providing you with high quality content. Pleasesupport us!

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From Mediterranean Lentil Salad to Cinnamon Raisin Bread: Our Top 10 Vegan Recipes of the Day! - One Green Planet

Chiropractor Denver Announces Hormone Replacement Therapy Colorado Springs to Transform Life of Aging People – Press Release – Digital Journal

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Colorado Medical Solutions brings Hormone Replacement Therapy Denver that can keep patients young by overcoming their aging related complications.

People in Denver and Colorado can now fight their aging problem with the perfect Hormone Replacement Therapy offered by Colorado Medical Solutions. The anti-aging clinic is located in Denver and Colorado Springs, and specializes in hormone replacement therapies and functional medicines for both men and women. The clinics Hormone Replacement Therapy Denver is ideal for men and women who want to remain young and feel youthful forever. The therapy helps aging people in overcoming their sluggishness and to feel more energetic to work with more energy.

According to the spokesperson of the clinic, people may come across many types of physical or emotional complications with the growing age. While the aging process cannot be reversed, but there are certain therapies that can delay the age related complications. They offer bio-identical hormone replacement therapy that brings transformative results both in men and women. The spokesperson reveals that the male population often experiences a hormonal imbalance after the age of 40 years. In some men, the complication may appear earlier or later. However, the problem can cause several kinds of medical conditions and to avoid these complications, men can take advantage of the Hormone Replacement Therapy Colorado Springs.

The problem of hormonal imbalance trouble many women as well. The common HRT for women include estrogen therapy, progesterone therapy, thyroid treatment, and testosterone replacement therapy. The Chiropractor Denver offers a set of hormonal replacement therapies for women to avoid common menopause symptoms. Many women complain of symptoms, such as night sweats, hot flashes, cramping, breast tenderness, vaginal dryness, and others due to hormonal imbalance only. The clinic offers female hormone optimization, so that a woman will not to suffer from such complications any more. The HRT for women helps improve a womans condition after the menopause.

Colorado Medical Solutions also specializes in regenerative medicine or IV Therapy Colorado Springs. In this therapy, a human beings cells, tissues or an organ can be replaced to restore normal human functions, which otherwise may have affected due to aging or any other reason. The clinic employs the most cutting-edge technology to offer the IV therapy to alleviate the pain and sufferings of the patients. The clinics advanced stem cell therapy is a comprehensive procedure to overcome the cell or tissue loss in humans due to aging. The clinic also excels in providing Platelet Rich Plasma therapy or PRP therapy in which blood can be injected into any body part to increase the healing potential of the organ.

One can learn more about these advanced therapies by visiting the website https://coloradomedicalsolutions.com

About Colorado Medical Solutions

Colorado Medical Solutions is an Anti-Aging and Functional Medicine Clinic with two locations in Denver and Colorado Springs. The clinics specialize in Bio-Identical Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) for men and women, Regenerative Medicine and IV Therapy. Furthermore, they offer an array of regenerative medicine modalities, such as Stem Cell Therapy, Medical Weight Loss ED Treatment and other sexual enhancement options for men and women.

Media ContactCompany Name: Colorado Medical Solutions Contact Person: Dr. Dean JonesEmail: Send EmailPhone: +1 (720) 550-6907City: DenverState: COCountry: United StatesWebsite: https://coloradomedicalsolutions.com/

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Chiropractor Denver Announces Hormone Replacement Therapy Colorado Springs to Transform Life of Aging People - Press Release - Digital Journal

Understanding Ayn Rand’s Rejection of Faith

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Even among the non-religious, deep religious faith is often portrayed as a strength and a source of comfort. But theres at least one atheist who had a diametrically opposite view of the value of religious faith. Ayn Rand was a staunch advocate of reason and an opponent of faith. Consider this passage of hers from the climactic speech near the end of Atlas Shrugged:

To make sense of why Rand would have been so uncompromising in her opposition to faith, it is helpful to explore her distinctive view of what faith demands.

As I discussed in a recent webinar, Should I Go by Reason or by Faith?, theres much confusion about what faith actually means. For instance, I argue that faith is not the same thing as trusting other people: we can sometimes have good reason to trust other people. At minimum, faith means accepting something as true without reason or evidence.

One believes on faith not out of some positive internal joy, but out of fear of a negative.

Somewhere in the distant reaches of his childhood, when his own understanding of reality clashed with the assertions of others, with their arbitrary orders and contradictory demands, [a mystic is a man who] . . . gave in to so craven a fear of independence that he renounced his rational faculty. At the crossroads of the choice between I know and They say, he chose the authority of others, he chose to submit rather than to understand, to believe rather than to think. Faith in the supernatural begins as faith in the superiority of others.1

One thing that I think makes this view of faith plausible is that it helps to explain why many people have the religious beliefs they do. Why, for instance, are there so many Muslims in the Middle East? Have all or even most of them carefully compared different religious texts and faith traditions and coincidentally decided that the Koran is the most reliable? Or did they simply uncritically accept what they were raised to believe? The latter is far more likely. Obviously the same explanation applies to Hindus in India, Jews in Israel, and Christians in contemporary America.

READ ALSO: Ben Bayer on Arbitrary Speculation and Religious Faith

All of this should help clarify why faith cannot be a source of strength or comfort in Rands view. There is nothing empowering or comforting about living a life shackled to ones tribe, a life of surrendering the I know to the they say. Neither is deceiving oneself into thinking one is actually peering at eternal truths with the help of an inner light. This is why Rand thought it was crucial that we go by reason all the time and never by faith.

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Understanding Ayn Rand's Rejection of Faith

Gordon Sondland: 5 things to know – Fox News

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Gordon Sondland, theEU ambassador, finds himself at the center of Wednesdays impeachment inquiry hearings set to take place inWashington. He is considered a key witness, but unpredictable due to hisevolving accounts of how the Trump administration dealt with Ukraine. Before the wealthy businessmanappeared on the scene in D.C., he was a Seattle hotelier and major donor to President Trump. Here arefive other factsabout the 62-year-old.

FAMILY SURVIVED THE HOLOCAUST: Sondland once told the Portland Business Journal that his parents escaped from Nazi Germany. "My mother was able to get out of Nazi Germany because her father was Russian, and those with a Russian passport could leave,"he said. "My father was not so fortunate and he had to be smuggled out of Germany by being tied to the bow of a vegetable freighter that was leaving for the North Sea. He almost lost one leg because it was so cold and he wound up in France."His father went on to fight Nazis in North Africa. His family eventually ended up in Uruguay and moved to Seattle.

POWER COUPLE: Sondland is married to Katherine Durant, a successful Portland real estate broker. The couple wasfeatured in OregonBusiness.com in January about their courtship (she said he wasnt her type at first). Durant, who helpedrun the hotel business while her husband servedoverseas, toldThe Washington Post that the media is not treating her husband fairly. "We live in a world right now where theres no upside to supporting someone like Gordon who isworking for Trump; its a mob."

AYN RAND INFLUENCE: Sondland is a fan of Ayn Rand, the author of "The Fountainhead"and "Atlas Shrugged."President Trump is also a fan of "The Fountainhead." The author died in 1982.

ATTRACTION TO PEOPLE WITH POWER: An associate of Ted Kulongoski, the former governor of Oregon, told Fortune that Sondland works hard to ingratiate himself with influential people. Sondland is a major Republican donor and a divining rod for people with political power, the source said. If you walk into a crowded room and you're looking for the most powerful person, look for Gordon, because you know he's tall and he'll be within 5 feet of them."

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ABANDONED TRUMP: Sondland, who initially supported Jeb Bush in 2016, made a public break from then-candidate Trump after his comments on the Gold Star Muslim family. He went on to donate $1 million to Trumps inauguration through some of his companies, NPR reported.

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Gordon Sondland: 5 things to know - Fox News

Why Selfishness is Necessary – Thrive Global

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The title may conjure up the Ayn Randian philosophy of theVirtue of Selfishness or Atlas Shrugged. The article does take some of AynRands philosophy and apply this to todays life. Altruism as defined byAuguste Comte, calls for living for the sake of others. The belief that one must place the welfare ofothers over our own self-interest. That a person must become a sacrificiallamb and self-sacrifice as a value and duty. Other interests are subordinate to your owninterests and its is ones moral obligation to live life in this manner.

Ayn Rands definition of selfishnessis that a person has the right to live for their own self. It does not mean the person can do whateverthey want. Morality and ethics are partof the societys culture and laws that need to be obeyed. The person has a right to live a life ofreason, purpose and self-esteem.

It is not my intention to uphold or debate the RandianPhilosophy, rather make the point that in order to be altruistic a person mustbe selfish. Lets look at the basic needs of the Altruistic person that need tobe met for the Altruist to help others.

Health. Too often we have seen people neglect theirown health in order to make life easier for others. While this may work in the short term,eventually your disregard for your health will catch up with you. The longhours at the office, the second job, unhealthy eating habits, the striving caregiver. The selfish motive of Altruism should be to place your health above allelse as a rational interest, in order to pursue the unselfish goals.

Wealth. There needs to be enough to meet the basicneeds of the Altruist. We have seen the exemplary charitable behavior of BillGates or Warren Buffet who have more to give than most people can imagine. Inorder for the normal person to contribute either in time or money, both ofwhich are interchangeable, there should be a buffer of wealth that allows theperson to contribute in a meaningful way.

Mental Fortitude. The Altruist needs to develop theappropriate mental strength so they can immerse themselves in the aid ofothers. It means at times taking the selfishstep to devote time and energy in their own mental wellbeing. To feed theirsoul with the rest, reflection and recuperation it needs.

To quote Ayn Rand from the Fountainhead: To say I Love You one must know first how to say the I. The I must be self-aware, self-accepting and strong.

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Gordon Sondland’s Family: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know – Heavy.com

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YouTubeGordon Sondland's family includes two kids and a wife.

Gordon Sondland, Donald Trumps ambassador to the EU, is a hotelier from the west coast who is the son of parents who escaped the Nazis. He has two children and is married to Katherine Durant, who runs an investment company and with whom hes been described as a power couple.

Sondland is a long-time Republican donor, businessman, and philanthropist (who has at times donated to Democrats) and who has ties to the campaigns of George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, and Mitt Romney. Hes been mixed on Trump over the years, but he did give the presidents inaugural committee $1 million through various companies, and hes now found himself in the midst of the impeachment inquiry.

Sondland attorney, Robert Luskin, told CBS News, Sondland believes strongly that he acted at all times in the best interests of the United States, and he stands ready to answer the Committees questions fully and truthfully.

A video biography created when Sondland became ambassador highlighted his wife and kids:

VideoVideo related to gordon sondlands family: 5 fast facts you need toknow2019-11-20T09:20:19-05:00

Heres what you need to know about Sondlands Family:

Gordon Sondland, the United States Ambassador to the European Union, addresses the media during a press conference at the US Embassy to Romania in Bucharest September 5, 2019.

Sondland is the child of immigrant parents who fled Nazi Germany, according to Politico.

Oregon Live reported that Sondlands parents left Gdansk, now Poland, and his father fought the Nazis in the French Foreign Legion and British Army. The family eventually settled in Uruguay and then Seattle, Washington.

In a video biography put out when he was named ambassador, Sondland said he was born and raised in Seattle, but he was the first in my family who were born in the U.S.

My mother was able to get out of Nazi Germany because her father was Russian, and those with a Russian passport could leave, Sondland said, according to Fox News. My father was not so fortunate and he had to be smuggled out of Germany by being tied to the bow of a vegetable freighter that was leaving for the North Sea. He almost lost one leg because it was so cold and he wound up in France. His father later fought the Nazis in North Africa.

Sondland spoke about his family origins and the Holocaust to Portland Business Review. You can listen to that audio interview here. In it, he explained that his parents married at age 15 and were teenage sweethearts who left Nazi Germany in a very precarious way.

He gave a lengthy tribute to his parents at his nomination hearing, saying, Theirs was a story of intense personal sacrifice, unshakeable spirit and faith, hard work, good luck, and a deep commitmentdevoted in equal parts to the United States and to each other. Having met and married in Berlin in 1938, Gunther and Frieda, and my sister Lucy, unlike so many of their less fortunate relatives were able to flee the scourge of Nazism.

He added:

In 1939, Frieda and Lucy found safe haven in South America, while Gunther promptly volunteered to take up arms against the murderous, authoritarian regime from which theyd just escaped. First, with the French Foreign Legion in Africa, and later with the British Army in Burma. World War II came to a close, and two years later so too did Gunther and Friedas eight-year separation, when they were reunited in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1947. Along with tens of thousands of other Jews, Gunthers surviving family had sought shelter in Shanghai. Soon, they and Gunther, Frieda, and my sister Lucy found fortunate, permanent refuge in Seattle, Washington, on the Northwestern edge of our great country. Here, they raised their two children, including me, the first of my family ever to claim natural-born citizenship in the United States. Here, they embarked on their own unique American dream, as proud American citizens, eventually starting and running a small successful dry-cleaning business for the next thirty years. Here, they labored, loved, made many friends andhad a positive impact on their community. Here, they never ceased being grateful to the country that had given them hope, safety, and a new beginning. Gunther and Frieda fought hard for their American citizenship. They cherished it. They nurtured it. And, they marinated me and my sister Lucy in it. They bequeathed to us neither riches nor property, but something much more treasured: an abiding respect for industry, determination, and self-sufficiency; a deep love of God, family, and country this country in particular; faith in the rule of law; and, finally, the certainty that self-governance is essential to happiness, prosperity and true liberty.

GettyUS Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland (L) and European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic talk with to reporters aboard Air Force One May 14, 2019, in Louisiana.

Sondland has gone back and forth on Trump over the years, and hes regarded as more of an establishment Republican who is a fan of the free market and Ayn Rand.

Sondland spoke about Trump to a Politico podcast in which he also advocated for the free market. Hes a hell of a lot of fun, Sondland said, of Trump, indicating that he thinks Europeans have been too hard on the president. I think they would enjoy his company.

However, according to Oregon Live, after initially supporting Trump during his run for president once Trump was the Republican nominee, Sondland and his wife broke with Trump when he criticized Gold Star Father Khizr Khan. Trumps constantly evolving positions diverge from their personal beliefs and values on so many levels, their spokesperson said, according to Oregon Live.

At that time, a spokesperson for Sondland cited his parents experiences, saying they were persecuted for their faith.

The spokesperson also said, according to Willamette Week: Mr. Sondland is a first generation American whose parents were forced to flee Germany during the years leading up to World War II because they were persecuted for their faithHistorically, Mr. Sondland has been supportive of the Republican partys nominees for President. However, in light of Mr. Trumps treatment of the Khan family and the fact his constantly evolving positions diverge from their personal beliefs and values on so many levels, neither Mr. Sondland or Mr. Wali can support his candidacy.

Sondland, chairman of Provenance Hotels and based in Oregon and Washington, later changed his mind and became a major donor to Trumps inaugural committee.

Sondland and his wife run the Sondland Durant Foundation. Its website says The Gordon D. Sondland and Katherine J. Durant Foundation was founded in 1999 by Gordon Sondland & Katherine Durant. The organizations supported by the Foundation include the Portland Art Museum, OMSI, OHSU, New Avenues for Youth, Oregon Ballet Theatre, the Portland Parks Foundation.

The foundations mission is described as Helping Families & Boosting Communities. Sondlands wife, who is also called Katy, holds a Bachelor of Science in Business form Pepperdine University as well as an MBA in Finance from Willamette University, according to the foundations website. Max and Lucy Sondland are also listed on the website. They are both college students.

In 2018, in his statement after being nominated as ambassador, Sondland said of his wife, Shes a formidable success in business, as well as in our home, and shes been an enduring source of strength and humbling, smart advice since the day I was fortunate to meet her nearly 30 years ago.

The foundation website lists these boards for Durant: Pratt School of Engineering Board of Visitors at Duke University; Portland Art Museum Board of Directors and Executive Committee, Chair of the Investment Committee; Jesuit High School Board of Trustees; Elevate Oregon Board of Directors.

Sondlands website lists him as serving on the following boards: Sanford School Board of Visitors at Duke University; Oregon Health & Science University Foundation; U.S. Bancorp Washington State Advisory Board; National Finance Co-Chairman; George W. Bush Center.

Sondlands wife is also involved in real estate investment.

YouTubeGordon Sondland and his wife, Katherine Durant.

Both Sondlands described to Oregon Business how they met. I flew to Portland to look at a building Katy was marketing. My friend and mentor Howard S. Wright counseled me against the investment but advised me to keep in touch with that broker; she is really pretty and smart, Sondland said.

Katy added, He really wasnt my type. I was focused on showing him and Mr. Wright the building I hoped they would buy. I was not successful in that endeavor, but I sold it to someone else. Today we say it was the best deal weve ever done that didnt go through. She told the site she insisted on keeping her name and staying in Portland.

They have gone on to amass a $60 million fortune and a major art collection.

Im also a lover of art. Katy and I have assembled a wonderful collection. Weve been fortunate even to loan a couple of paintings to the White House, Sondland said in the video biography, which shows off a couple of the familys paintings. According to Mother Jones, Sondlands art collection is worth about $25 million.

Gordon Sondland and his wife.

Max and Lucy Sondland, the couples children, are also listed on the foundations website. They are both college students. Willamette Week reports that Max attends Duke University; his parents gave the college $2.5 million.

Sitting next to Katy are our two proudest accomplishments, our children Max and Lucy, both of whom are undergraduates at Duke, and both of whom departed challenging summer internships so they could be here by my side, Sondland said in 2018 at his nomination hearing. Im delighted they could be here today.

A video biography introducing Sondland by the U.S. Mission to the EU shows the new ambassador sitting in his home with his wife, making coffee, and sitting next to his dog. He said he had been married for 25 years to Katy Durant and introduced his two children.

My family is the most important thing to me, said Sondland.

READ NEXT: Gordon Sondlands Net Worth.

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How to draw in Google Docs using the built-in Drawing tool, to add customized drawings to your documents – Business Insider

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captionIts possible to draw directly in Google Docs to spice up your documents.sourceShutterstock

Google makes it easy to get artistic with Google Docs, giving you a few options to add your own personal drawings in any document.

There are two ways to draw in Google Docs. You can either insert a drawing into an open Google Doc or create a drawing in Google Drive using Google Drawings.

We are going to focus on the first method drawing into a Google Doc directly but keep in mind that you can create an image in Google Drawings and then later upload that same drawing into a Google Doc.

Heres how to create a drawing within Google Docs.

1. Log into Google Drive and open your Google Doc. If youre creating a new Google Doc, click on the + New button followed by Google Docs.

2. In the toolbar, click Insert. Using your cursor, highlight Drawing in the sub-menu, then click + New when it appears.

3. A checkered window will pop up; this is, essentially, your digital sketchbook. It includes a toolbar that allows you to perform several functions, such as draw lines and shapes, insert images, alter colors, or create text boxes.

4. Select your preferred tool by clicking on it, then click and drag the tool across the workspace to draw with it.

5. Once you are finished drawing, click Save and Close.

Once you have added your drawing, you can continue to edit and format your Google Doc however you want to.

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How to draw in Google Docs using the built-in Drawing tool, to add customized drawings to your documents - Business Insider

This Is The $13 Cable Officially Recommended For Oculus Link Beta – UploadVR

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Are you wondering what cable to buy to connect your Oculus Quest to your gaming PC to play Rift games?

The beta for Oculus Link launched today, which lets you use your Quest as a PC VR headset with a USB 3.0 cable. But USB is a fragmented, not always adhered-to standard, and it can be difficult to know which cable to buy.

To make matters worse, the USB cable included in the Oculus Quest box will not work with Link.

When Facebooks Oculus Rift launched in 2016 it used USB 3.0 external sensors, and users found when trying to extend them that it can be challenging to find a fully specification-compliant cable.

Facebook is releasing a $79 official custom 5 meter Oculus Link Cable later this year. Thats the same length as the Rift S cable. However, it will initially only be available in limited quantities. Facebook tells us it will expand availability in 2020.

UPDATE: This cable is now back-ordered on Amazon until December, but you can still buy it. We have changed the link to point to an eBay seller still offering the right cable.

Facebook has an official recommendation for what to buy until the Link Cable is available: the Anker Powerline USB-C to USB 3.0 Cable (10ft) with 56k Ohm Pull-up Resistor.

To ensure youre buying the correct cable, the model number is AK-A8167011. At the time of posting, its currently $13, but prices can sometimes change.

Facebook tells us that this is their recommended option for the beta, and that it tested the cable with good results.

However, keep in mind that this cable is only 3 meters long 2 meters less than the Rift S cable. It may be possible to get Link working at 5 meters using USB extension cables. Check back at UploadVR.com later this week as well be reporting our testing results. It is also worth noting that only some GPUs are supported with Oculus Link at launch, and check out these instructions to get started with Oculus Link on Quest.

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This Is The $13 Cable Officially Recommended For Oculus Link Beta - UploadVR

How to ditch the cloud and move to do-it-yourself NAS instead – The Age

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What is NAS?

NAS is essentially a bunch of hard drives that connects to your home network, powered and housed by a small computer, enabling a centralised file storage system you can access from anywhere.

Traditionally a NAS box required a bit of know-how to get running, but manufacturers have made great strides in this area to the point that almost anyone can set up a powerful network storage solution that is more capable and flexible than a cloud storage service.

Synology's DS218J is a powerful two-bay NAS box at an entry level price of around $230.

Since you're buying the NAS box and requisite hard drives outright, there's more of an upfront investment. But it works out cheaper in the long run as there are no ongoing monthly fees. Cloud storage is akin to renting a place for your data to live, whereas NAS is more like owning your own home, giving you complete control and ownership. Boxes are designed to run 24/7, but generally don't consume a lot of power.

A two-bay NAS box can be picked up from as low as $200. Filling those slots with two 1TB hard drives will set you back another $100, so in total you're looking at $300. By comparison, a Google One plan with 2TB storage will set you back $125 a year. I invested in a more expensive five bay Synology DS1019+, and filled up the hard drive slots as and when I needed more storage over time. More drive bays also give you better redundancy, as you can mirror data so you won't lose any if one or two drives fail.

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Keep in mind that NAS boxes can do more than just store and share your photos. The likes of Synology and QNAP have an extensive app ecosystem that extends the functionality well beyond the bounds of traditional network storage.

I use mine as a media server so the family can easily stream movies and music stored on the NAS to any connected smartphone, tablet, PC or streaming box, in addition to serving as a PVR for recording major sporting events on free-to-air television. I also use it to drive and monitor my home security cameras.

There are a number of companies that make NAS boxes, including QNAP, Western Digital and Seagate, but Synology's DiskStation line is far and away the best in the industry when it comes to ease of use, stability and features.

For example making your NAS accessible from outside of your home network usually involves setting up port forwarding rules or other complicated network settings. But Synology's QuickConnect feature bypasses this by allowing you to assign a simple URL or ID for access.

The DS1019+ is a five-bay NAS box that supports 4K transcoding expansion bays for even more storage, at around $1000.

It's also the only NAS system that can match Google Photos in terms of smarts. Synology's Moments app, which runs on top of the company's Diskstation Manager operating system, analyses all your photos and puts them into sensible albums for you, making it much easier to find the photo you're looking for.

It uses facial recognition to group photos with similar faces, and scene recognition so you can search based on things that are in the picture.

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Unlike Google Photos, Synology does all this without ever collecting any user data or sending a single photo to the public cloud.

You can also set the app to automatically upload any new photos from your phone to your NAS.

Another strong point for NAS compared to cloud storage services is speed. Cloud services are limited by your internet speeds and the bandwidth of their servers, whereas NAS utilises the speed of your local home network which is significantly faster.

Of course it's always wise to keep a backup offsite of all your important files in case there's a fire or burglary. Synology has multiple options for doing this, backing up data stored on the NAS to a public cloud service like Google Drive, OneDrive or Dropbox.

The benefit here is that Synology will encrypt your data before it is uploaded, so your data can't be trawled and won't be compromised if the cloud service is hacked or breached.

Some NAS boxes allow you to sync an encrypted backup of your storage to the cloud.

Synology also offers its own private cloud option called Synology C2 Backup, with the basic plan costing between $16 and $100 a year depending on your needs.

Another option is to invest in a secondary Synology NAS offsite and have files synchronise over the internet. I personally go the manual route; plugging a USB drive into the NAS on a monthly basis to back up my most precious data, namely my collection of family photos and videos.

Krishan is a multi-award-winning Australian technology journalist.

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How to ditch the cloud and move to do-it-yourself NAS instead - The Age

Ecosystem | Definition of Ecosystem by Merriam-Webster

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1 : the complex of a community of organisms and its environment functioning as an ecological unit That influx of fresh water alters the ocean's salinity near the seafloor, a factor that influences the makeup of the ecosystems in those places. Sid Perkins Global warming, if it proceeds as many scientists predict, threatens to undo decades of conservation work and could mean the destruction of the monarch butterfly, the edelweiss, the polar bear and innumerable other species living in fragile ecosystems, an emerging body of scientific evidence suggests. William K. Stevens

2 : something (such as a network of businesses) considered to resemble an ecological ecosystem especially because of its complex interdependent parts Newspaper layoffs have ripple effects for the entire local news ecosystem because, as the Congressional Research Service noted, television, radio and online outlets often "piggyback on reporting done by much larger newspaper staffs." David Sirota Lots of Walmart customers are underserved by banks and other financial institutions, [Daniel] Eckert says; the company's experiments with finance-related products and services help customers "not only save money but also have access to a financial ecosystem they were crowded out from." Rob Walker

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Ecosystem | Definition of Ecosystem by Merriam-Webster

Has Arm Discovered the Ecosystem Keys? – The Next Platform

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Arm server development is a reality and a growing one at that. Not just from a performance point of view but also, perhaps more important, from an ecosystem view.

Be it the Marvell ThunderX2 processor or the Ampere eMAG Skylark processor, the hyperscale, cloud, enterprise ecosystems are willing to adopt these new processors to further improve their TCO or dollars/core.

The all-important ecosystem is catching up with Arm, which is key to the momentum necessary to make the Arm servers a sustainable reality. With AWS launching their version of Arm instances i.e. Graviton processors, theres the much needed push to make the software ecosystem more widely acceptable in the industry. Not just that, AWS even announced bare-metal offerinings for EC2 A1 instances.

Slowly but steadily, Arm has also made a mark for itself in high performance computing, something we expect to see in full force at this years Supercomputing Conference. Arm has the most traction in terms of deployments and software development in HPC in the United States, Europe and Japan with each region leading the way along different trajectories to deploy systems based on the Arm architecture for their supercomputers.

All of this has taken time and extended development, of course. The first wave of Arm based servers came in 2010 until 2014 and were more experimental in nature than real production systems.

The first 64-bit Arm design i.e. the ARMv8-A was introduced in 2011 and since then the Arm server ecosystem have seen lots of ups and downs. ZTSystems, in November 2010 had launched a 1U Data Center Arm server based on Cortex-A9 cores (32-bit) which was supposed to be energy efficient and a denser solution compared to Intel Servers. Then came Calxeda with their version of 32-bit Arm servers i.e. the EnergyCore-ECX-1000 which did not see adoption and Calxeda eventually went defunct in 2013. In 2011 AppliedMicro launched the X-Gene 1 processor followed by X-Gene 2 in 2014. Samsung, Cavium (now Marvell) and AMD came up with their versions of Arm processors which tried to penetrate the server market but could not generate tangible interest among the end-users to adopt these technologies.

Arm servers have undergone a transformation in terms of development and early signs of this were seen in a semi-secret project within Broadcom which was taking shape in the form of Project Vulcan. The idea was to develop a world class 64-bit serious Arm server to take on Intel in the HPC and cloud market.

In late 2016, when Avago gave up on Broadcoms ambitions to develop a first class Arm server, Cavium jumped in and brought the Vulcan IP and Team on-board and fully funded the Vulcan project, re-christened as Cavium ThunderX2 now, Marvell ThunderX2. In more ways than one, the ThunderX2 is a serious contender to Intel and AMD in the HPC, hyperscale and cloud businesses.

To make things better for the Arm ecosystem, in 2017, a brand new company, Ampere Computing bought the X-Gene assets and re-introduced the X-Gene processor as the Ampere eMAG processor. It needs to be mentioned that Qualcomm tried its hand at building a true Data Center Arm Server Centriq based on the Falkor Architecture and given Qualcomms standing, with time, it could have made their data center server project a success. However, for reasons unknown to many, they chose to significantly disinvest and many personnel from Qualcomms Centriq project were hired by Ampere Computing in Raleigh. Huawei has a very compelling Arm Server offering in the Kunpeng 920, which is a 7-nm, 64 core CPU.

Figure 1: Diverse Arm architectures (source)

The question many have is whether the Arm server ecosystem is mature enough to be excited about?

The ecosystem has come a long way to become a stable one. However, it has many miles to go to reach the same level as x86. Given this momentum, it would not be surprising if the likes of Google, Facebook, Tencent etc. are actively experimenting with Arm platforms. Amazon and Microsoft have already invested in Arm platforms in their respective clouds i.e. AWS & Azure.

Figure 2: Commits to Linux GitHub repository for x86 vs. arm64 as of 13th November, 2019

The contributions towards enabling aarch64 for Linux operating system have steadily increased since 2012 while the growth rate for x86 has not been as consistent. These are good indications that the Arm ecosystem is here to stay and growing.

An ongoing debate among software engineers is whether to implement a business logic in a monolithic architecture or take the same logic and break it down into multiple pieces. There is a growing trend of organizations moving to a Microservices architecture for various reasons be it unit testing, ease of deployment, server performance among many others. Also, microservices based architecture are relatively easy to scale compared to a monolith. Linaro, Arm and Arm Server Manufacturers are leading this charge. Also, Packet is providing the developer community a platform to develop and sustain the ecosystem.

If theres one area where Arm servers have taken the biggest strides, it is definitely be High Performance Computing (HPC). The Arm ecosystem for HPC is also the most developed compared to Arms progress in cloud datacenters.

The momentum for Arm in HPC was driven by many centers, but Dr. Simon McIntosh-Smith and the University of Bristol and Cray hosting the 1st Isambard Hackathon to optimize HPC applications for ThunderX2 based servers back in November 2017 at Bristol. This was promptly followed up by a 2nd Isambard Hackathon in March 2018.

Most of the HPC applications compile and run out of the box for Arm based servers with Arm compilers, GCC, OpenMPI, OpenMP support.

I participated in both representing Cavium Inc, assisting developers, architects and engineers optimize their codes/applications for ThunderX2 Processors. Collectively, we optimized key HPC applications like NAMD, UM-NEMO, OpenFOAM, NWCHEM, CASTEP, etc. and compared to Intel CPU Architectures like Broadwell and Skylake. Prof Smith and team did a detailed study identifying the opportunities and benefits of Arm Servers with regards to the incumbent Intel servers with compelling performance per dollar for the Arm-based servers.

Figure 3: Cray-Isambard performance comparison on mini-apps

Figure 4: Cray-Isambard performance comparison on key Archer applications

Figure 5: Cavium Inc. published HPC Performance comparison vs. Intel Skylake CPUs (2017)

This was a significant movement that Arm servers needed in the HPC space. The two Isambard hackathons also fast-tracked the Arm HPC development with Arm optimizing their compilers as well as Math libraries in collaboration with Arm server manufacturers like Cavium Inc (now Marvell Semiconductors). There is tremendous movement in the Arm HPC Performance Libraries optimization world. Arm has invested in optimizing GEMM, SVE, spMM, spMV and FFT libraries in collaboration with developers and Silicon manufacturers like Marvell. The Arm Allinea Studio has successfully established itself as a go-to tool for Arm server Workload Analysis, similar to what VTune would be for Intel.

Another major milestone was the Vanguard Astra Arm based supercomputer at Sandia National Laboratories powered by DoE, Cavium and HPE. This is the first Arm based supercomputer to make the TOP500 list at 156th position as of June 2019 and 198th rank in the November 2019 rankings. The building blocks are HPE Apollo 70 platforms, Marvell ThunderX2 CPUs with 4xEDR Infiniband interconnect. The Astra Supercomputer is made up of 2592 compute servers i.e. 145k cores and 663 TB memory. US DoE is making a concerted effort to invest in diverse as well as future proof technologies such as Arm, in its path towards achieving exascale computing.

Figure 6: Astra, the Arm based supercomputer debuted on the TOP500 list in November 2018

Europe and Asia are taking huge strides in deploying Arm based clusters and systems for HPC and Research. Be it Monte-Carlo, Isambard or CINECA-E4 projects in Europe or Japans Arm based Fugaku supercomputer, its just the beginning of a new era of Arm in HPC. Cray is betting big with the A64FX Arm chip built by Fujitsu. The A64FX prototype is number one on the Green500 list and 160th on the Top500 list..

HPC workloads tend to be highly parallelizable in nature, and Arm CPUs provide an opportunity to leverage lots of cores at reasonable price points. Further, having competition in the CPU market benefits all buyers, not just HPC shops, to negotiate the best resources for their workloads.

Marvell is a pioneer in more ways than one in introducing the Arm server ecosystem to the hyperscale world with Marvell and Microsoft partnering on ThunderX2 platforms for Azure. Oracle has invested $40 Million in Ampere Computing, which is home to the ARMv8 eMAG processor. Oracle also has plans to massively expand their datacenter footprint in the coming months and this investment in Ampere could mean potential deployment of eMAG processors in Oracle Data Centers.

In the recent past, theres been a slew of announcements regarding enhancements to the Arm ecosystem. VMware announced 64-bit support Arm Support. In an official announcement, DDN announced professional support for Lustre on Arm servers in 2018 In mid 2019 at ISC, AMI announced firmware support for the Marvell ThunderX2 Arm based servers in March 2019.

NVIDIA announced CUDA support for Arm at ISC19 and backed it up with a major announcement of introducing a reference design to enable organizations to build GPU-accelerated Arm based servers, which is a big shift towards enabling Arm to be successful in the HPC and accelerated computing segment. Imagine a system with power efficient Arm based CPUs with GPUs for training and AI ASICs for inference. Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence pose interesting opportunities & the collaboration with NVIDIA will enable this segment for Arm based solutions.

Like Intel, AMD and Arm, Ampere Computing too has created a developer program for developers to build and expand their Cloud Ecosystem. This will enable further and faster integration of Arm servers in the hyperscale and datacenter world in a much more open and collaborative way.

While the ecosystem still needs more time to grow and mature, it is steadily moving towards that nirvana of It just works. With the emergence of Arm in the computer architecture world along with RISC-V and many other semiconductor start-ups, its only a matter of time until aarch64 is the new normal like x86. That is what the community is all striving towards.

Once the developers are convinced that their software stack just works on Arm Servers, it would be a big win for the Arm Server ecosystem, and I for one am willing to make the bold claim that for many workloads especially HPC It just works

About the Author

Indraneil Gokhale is a Performance Engineer and leads the Hardware Engineering team at Box Inc. Indraneil has previously worked at Cavium (now Marvell), Uber and Intel. Indraneil has experience in optimizing HPC applications and workloads for x86 and aarch64 architectures. He has published white papers, book chapters on optimizing the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) application. Indraneil holds a Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering from Auburn University, USA and a Bachelors Degree in EEE from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad, India.

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Has Arm Discovered the Ecosystem Keys? - The Next Platform

Integrating Global Seagrass and Mangrove Ecosystem Observations – Eos

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In many nearshore waters around the world, seagrasses and mangroves (coastal saltwater forests) provide habitat and food for diverse organisms and valuable ecosystem services to people. Although human activities threaten these habitats, assessing their status and trends is made difficult by a lack of coordination, standardization, and integration between in situ and remotely sensed observations.

To advance coordinated international observations of these ecosystems, including observations of essential ocean variables (EOVs) and essential biodiversity variables (EBVs), multidisciplinary experts recently convened at a workshop jointly sponsored by the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) and the Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (MBON). Participants focused on current in situ and remote sensing observing capabilities, the technological innovations required to overcome the limitations of these two approaches, and how to promote data accessibility for use by a range of stakeholders.

Most seagrass monitoring is done in situ. Global monitoring networks (e.g., SeagrassNet, Seagrass-Watch) use similar low-cost protocols, such as visual surveys, offering promise for efforts to standardize best practices and interoperability. Remote sensing tools that generate high spatial resolution multispectral and hyperspectral images based on reflectance signatures provide data on seagrass spatial coverage at larger scales, but in situ verification is needed for species identification and plant health assessment.

The Global Mangrove Watch has documented a nearly 6% decline in global mangrove extent since 1996 using satellite data and available in situ observations.The Global Mangrove Watch (GMW) has documented a nearly 6% decline in global mangrove extent since 1996 using satellite data and available in situ observations. In situ sampling efforts are essential for validating maps derived from such satellite data and for assessing species composition, but at present these efforts are very limited and are not coordinated with each other. Thus, extracting similar data fields from existing data sets is resource intensive.

Workshop participants made recommendations for future seagrass observing, including integrating remote sensing and in situ data, linking existing in situ capacity across nations and networks, and leveraging these capabilities with promising technologies such as photo and video transects, including those produced using autonomous underwater vehicles. Participants agreed that advances in artificial intelligence applications for image processing will be needed to improve and speed up transformation of images into data products.

Participants also offered recommendations to improve mangrove observations, including linking in situ data (e.g., species composition surveys) to satellite data to validate maps and identifying existing in situ and drone sampling capacities and gaps.

For both seagrass and mangrove ecosystems, workshop participants agreed that coordinated observations will benefit from standardizing which plant parameters are measured as indicators of ecosystem health and condition; adopting data management practices based on findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) principles; organizing disparate data; and linking data systems to the Ocean Biogeographic Information System and the World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Standard operating procedures for OceanBestPractices could be developed from the Blue Carbon Manual (mangroves) and the protocols of SeagrassNet and Seagrass-Watch. Training and capacity development will be critical to expanding global coverage and ensuring continuity of observations.

The success of coordinated global seagrass and mangrove observations will require strengthening engagement between the field observation and remote sensing communities and nurturing partnerships.Overall, workshop attendees concluded that the success of coordinated global seagrass and mangrove observations will require strengthening engagement between the field observation and remote sensing communities and nurturing partnerships, including those with developing countries. Coordination and governance can be facilitated by system-specific groups such as the International Seagrass Experts Network and GMW and by GOOS and the MBON, which are working to implement observations of essential ocean variables to strengthen global observing, conservation, and sustainable development.

The participant list and presentations are available at the workshop website. We acknowledge support from NASA, GOOS, and the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, and we thank the participants for their contributions.

Emmett Duffy, Tennenbaum Marine Observatories Network and Marine Global Earth Observatory, Smithsonian Institution, Edgewater, Md.; Lisa Maria Rebelo, International Water Management Institute, Vientiane, Laos; and Patricia Miloslavich ([emailprotected]), Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia; also at Oceans and Atmosphere, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Hobart, Australia, and Universidad Simn Bolvar, Caracas, Venezuela

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Integrating Global Seagrass and Mangrove Ecosystem Observations - Eos

The collapse of the information ecosystem poses profound risks for humanity – The Guardian

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For the last few years, scientists have argued that were living through a distinctly new geological age. They call it the Anthropocene: a new age characterized by humanitys profound impact on Earth itself as evidenced by pollution, mass extinction and climate change.

We are currently facing a new systemic collapse, one that has built far more swiftly but poses potent risks for all of humanity: the collapse of the information ecosystem. We see it play out every day with the viral spread of misinformation, widening news deserts and the proliferation of fake news. This collapse has much in common with the environmental collapse of the planet that were only now beginning to grasp, and its consequences for life as we know it are shaping up to be just as profound.

The digital revolution greatly expanded human knowledge and wealth much as the industrial revolution did 150 years earlier when new technologies, notably the combustion engine, brought about extraordinary economic growth. And much like the building of great railways and interstate highways allowed people to connect, the creation of tools that allow anyone to be their own publisher has made it possible for new voices to reach large audiences around the world.

The collapse of the information ecosystem has already wreaked havoc on our political systems

But if the price of the industrial revolution was planetary destruction on an unimaginable scale, the digital revolution may be costly in a different but similarly destructive way. William Randolph Hearst owned the means of production and was free to publish made up stories to sell papers and stoke the Spanish-American war. Today, everyone is free to be their own propagandist.

The scale of the threat is hard to overstate.

When the scientists behind the Doomsday clock published their yearly assessment of how close we are to planetary doom, they added a new dimension to the dual threats of nuclear proliferation and climate change, namely the intentional corruption of the information ecosystem on which modern civilization depends.

What weve seen in recent years isnt just the collapse of informational authority. It is the destruction of the pact between the purveyors of quality information and the businesses that wanted to reach the consumers of that information.

In 2018, Facebook, Google and Amazon have sucked up nearly 70% of all digital advertising dollars, effectively taking the place of the old monopolies.

Some news organizations have become profitable by persuading their audience to pay for the journalism once heavily subsidized by advertisers. Others, such as the Guardian and HuffPost, have created membership programs that ask audiences to support journalism once heavily subsidized by advertisers. Still others now rely on foundations or wealthy patrons, with people such as Jeff Bezos taking the place of Pulitzer or Hearst.

But this is not enough to make the provision of high-quality and affordable information sustainable. Since 2008, at least 28,000 journalists have lost their jobs. Today, we get much less foreign news as news organizations close their bureaus, and local news may go the way of the dodo as newspapers across the country fold.

The scale of the threat is hard to overstate

The collapse of the information ecosystem has already wreaked havoc on our political systems. It has undermined democratic elections. It has shaken basic trust in institutions. It has left us with a world in which anyone is free to choose their own facts. It threatens to fundamentally destabilize the existing world order.

That world is a very dangerous one for humans in general, but it poses special and serious risks for businesses. Without facts, what are contracts? Without facts, what are laws? A world without facts is as dangerous for companies as it is for citizens.

Most major corporations have sustainability policies and seek to limit, as much as possible, the harm caused to the environment by their products. This is partly due to consumer pressure. But its also because companies have realized that climate change carries catastrophic business risks.

Just as companies decarbonize their businesses, they should think carefully about how they contribute to the destruction of our information ecosystem and choose to reach consumers on platforms that slow rather than increase the pace of information ecosystem collapse.

I am not suggesting anyone must immediately abandon Facebook or Google advertising platforms. But I do propose an experiment. What if the chief marketing officer of every major corporation set aside a substantial chunk of their marketing budget and devoted it to high-quality news? Of the $130bn devoted to digital advertising, set $50bn aside for news.

Indeed, the withdrawal of advertising dollars would be the single most powerful way to change the practices of companies that contribute most powerfully to the information ecosystem crisis. It dwarfs anything a regulatory body could do to alter the behavior of these platforms. When the FTC slapped a $5bnn fine on Facebook this summer, investors sent its shares soaring.

Advertisers love these platforms for the same reason industrialists love carbon-based energy: it provides powerful, measurable fuel for their businesses. But increasingly they are becoming wary of these platforms because they are full of disinformation, fraud and abuse. Just as companies are weaning themselves from substances that pollute our air, water and lands, companies should wean themselves from platforms that are destroying our information ecosystem. Its just good business.

The Doomsday clock stands at two minutes to midnight. But this new normal is not normal. As the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists put it earlier this year:

Nuclear war and climate change threaten the physical infrastructure that provides the food, energy, and other necessities required for human life. But to thrive, prosper, and advance, people also need reliable information about their world factual information, in abundance.

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The collapse of the information ecosystem poses profound risks for humanity - The Guardian

Dreamforce 2019: Salesforce Outlines Initiatives To Ignite Ecosystem Growth – CRN: The Biggest Tech News For Partners And The IT Channel

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Soon after founding Salesforce, CTO Parker Harris forcefully argued to CEO Marc Benioff that the new company should avoid building a channel.

"Marc, whatever you do, we do not want consultants," Harris said he told his co-founder twenty years ago.

Harris wanted the innovative cloud-based CRM to be a no-code platform, and systems integrators and consultants would ruin that vision, "because people are going to write code."

Thankfully, Benioff rejected his bad advice, Salesforce's CTO told thousands of ecosystem partners attending a keynote Tuesday at the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco.

[Related: Salesforce Dreamforce Keynote: AI, Integration, Alicia Keys And Protestors]

"We need you," Harris told those consultants he once hoped to shun.

Harris now sees partners who "speak the language of the customer" as vital to the company's strategy of extending into industry verticals. And Salesforce especially needs SIs as it leverages its MuleSoft platform to bring in data from Oracle and SAP ERPs, enabling implementation of a "single source of truth" concept presented through the Customer Truth 360 tooling unveiled earlier that day.

As the CRM leader chases Benioff's ambitious goal to double the business over the next few years, recruiting new partners, enabling existing ones to scale, and encouraging startups to form is a larger priority than ever before. The company has previously said it's aiming to build a channel of 250,000 services partners.

To that end, Salesforce channel leaders outlined specific initiatives Tuesday around enhanced advisory services, a new Architect Certification Program, expanded partner learning, and new resources to help customers identify implementation partners best-suited to their aims.

Tyler Prince, Salesforce's executive vice president of industries, innovation and partners, told representatives of the consultancies, digital agencies and ISVs attending the partner keynote that Salesforce is focused on helping them meet the increasing demands of customers in an era of rapid disruption.

"Salesforce is a different kind of company. I hope we're a different kind of partner to you as well," Prince said.

The opportunity for Salesforce's channel is massive, Prince noted, citing an IDC report that predicts by 2024 the Salesforce ecosystem will generate six times more revenue than Salesforce itself.

"Most of that is represented by solutions and services you provide," Prince told partners.

Kai Hsiung, chief growth officer at Silverline, was one of those in attendance, as he's been for every Dreamforce partner keynote.

To eventually enable the 250,000 partners needed to support Benioff's $28 billion revenue target, "the partner program will have to grow and adjust based on the different partner types out there," Hsiung told CRN.

Salesforce is making a valiant effort to that, Hsiung said.

"The next step is to figure out how to rightsize the enablement based on partner size, industry focus, product focus, geographic focus," Hsiung said. And "they are very much in tune with the feedback partners like Silverline are providing them."

That's why this year Salesforce has introduced so many new partner programs and initiatives, while also ending programs that became less relevant, he added.

Lori Steele, Salesforce's executive vice president for global customer success and professional services, earned a round of applause when telling the keynote's attendees: "our purpose as an organization is not to compete with the partner ecosystem, but to work together, to collaborate and bring the best of Salesforce to our customers."

Currently, half of Salesforce professional services are delivered through partners. "That's good, but it's not good enough," Steele said.

Customers are "really looking for us to come together with shared goals, shared measures," she said.

To deliver more value through its channel, Salesforce is implementing a new engagement model through which Salesforce's advisory services arm looks to collaborate closer with the channel. Salesforce will bring partners into engagements at critical junctures in the customer lifecycle and work closely with them to ensure challenging integration projects are successful, Steele said.

Salesforce wants to leverage the capabilities of partners and complement their skills, while "doing the right thing for customers at the right time," she told Dreamforce attendees.

Enablement is another important component of that vision, she said, and the company is doing "brilliant things with Trailhead."

That Salesforce learning platform isn't just about training, but also bringing best practices to partners and offering them opportunities to shadow Salesforce engineers in the field.

Randy Davis, a partner at Chicago-based Salesforce consultancy Sikich, said Salesforce execs delivered "an inspiring message to the whole partner community" at the keynote.

That message is reflected in an increased investment in partner programs, Davis told CRN.

"As they grow, they need to rely on partners more," Davis said. "It's extremely important partners are enabled with the right training and resources to make customers successful."

Earlier this year, Salesforce launched Trailhead for Partners, a learning system aiming to help consultants develop the talent they need to fuel their growth. Building upon that, a Partner Learning Camp was introduced at this year's Dreamforce, powered by the customized myTrailhead platform.

Prince also suggested to partners they familiarize themselves with innovations on the AppExchange marketplace.

"At a rapid rate, customers are going on the AppExchange not only to find cool apps, but to find a consultant," Prince said. "Use this to your advantage."

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Dreamforce 2019: Salesforce Outlines Initiatives To Ignite Ecosystem Growth - CRN: The Biggest Tech News For Partners And The IT Channel

Ten Predictions On The Future Of Work, VC And The Tech Ecosystem For 2020 And Beyond – Forbes

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What are YOUR tech, VC and future of work predictions for the year ahead?

Its that time of year. Not just for holiday shopping, expensive, crowded flights, and hopefully the creation of happy memories surrounded by loved ones. Its also that time when futurists ranging from academics and journalists to VCs like me get asked to contemplate all the ways in which budding trends will accelerate to a point that they begin to change the way we live, work and play. As an investor who focuses largely on the future of work, I spend a lot of time assessing how technological advances and economic and social change coalesce to impact the workforces of today and decades to come. So, here are my predictions for the year and decade about to begin.

Prediction 1: Direct listings will become the norm, not the exception. However, this is such a major change that it wont happen overnight. In 2019 we saw Pinterest and Slack both successfully direct list. In 2020 not only will more consumer brands direct list, but so will additional enterprise companies inspired by Slacks example. Slowly but surely over the next few years direct listings will emerge as the new best practice to capture value for founders, employees and investors. Wall Street will find new ways to extract value from this changing tide.

Prediction 2: Silicon Valley will fall a bit further from its perch at the pinnacle of tech innovation. Im not a Silicon Valley doomsayer. I believe that the nucleus of the worlds most mature tech ecosystem will continue to cultivate and nurture numerous innovative, game-changing startups to come. But I also believe that talent exists everywhere, and increasingly so does opportunity, so smaller tech hubs are giving Silicon Valley the fiercest competition of its existence. Outside of the US, Im excited about the continued growth of Indias vibrant tech ecosystem. Within the US, Im particularly bullish about the Pacific Northwest, which I believe will continue to gain ground on its larger, southern cousin as the third generation of spinoffs from Amazon and Microsoft and then newly minted unicorns like Auth0 and Outreach create a new tidal storm of B2B innovation.

Prediction 3: A significantly greater share of the professional workforce will shift from full-time to gig employees. Companies are always seeking to reduce costs and liabilities, but during a recession these efforts reach a fever pitch. Today many people think of Uber and Lyft drivers, Instacart and Postmates delivery workers and hair stylists when they think of gig employees, but the reality is that the gig economy is already far more wide-reaching. According to Deloitte, more than 40% of workers are currently employed in alternative work arrangements, such as gig and contract work. Over the next decade, that number will increase dramatically.

Prediction 4: The workforce will become dramatically more geographically distributed. Most experts agree that a recession is coming. The question isnt really about whether itll happen but when. When it does arrive, the recession will accelerate a number of trends already unrolling, the first of which is the rapid distribution of the enterprise workforce. Today geographically distributed teams are the exception. Within the next few years, theyll become the norm. Expect companies with 1 or 2 main offices to split into 4 or 5 smaller ones, and I expect a greater share of employees to work remotely several days a week or even permanently.

Prediction 5: The talent wars will remain fierce-- even during the recession. Even in a weak economy, businesses must hire and retain exceptional talent. This isnt to say that compensation and benefits will hold steady--they wont, but sought-after skills will remain in high-demand. To retain and develop employees while keeping their costs in check, enterprises will look to talent management tools that are both efficient and scalable. Expect to see more AI-based tools and fewer high-priced, in-person consultants.

Prediction 6: Any high-growth, low-margin company will face public scrutiny. In fact, we dont have to wait for 2020 for this to occur. The market pendulum is swinging away from growth at all costs towards efficiency and profitability-- especially among consumer goods firms where many of the unit economics are currently upside down. As my colleague Patricia Nakache told the New York Times, A lot of these highly valued companies have run into the buzz saw of Wall Streetreminding us that profitability matters.

Prediction 7: New KPIs will emerge as each companys north star. As SaaS becomes more ubiquitous and touches every industry vertical, net revenue retention, sales and marketing efficiency (for enterprise) and unit economics (for consumer) will become the north star metrics towards which all management teams and boards will manage and optimize.

Prediction 8: The next generation of VCs will finally assume the service role theyre paid to do. Venture capital still flows like water for especially talented entrepreneurs and promising startups. While for years VCs could rest on their wallets, the new guard of investors--the more service-oriented, extension-of-your-team sort--will overtake the old guard due to their willingness to serve their environment rather than assuming that everyone will adapt to them simply because they always have. As part of this transformation, the brands of VC firms will increasingly take a backseat to the brands of the individual partners who will come to be known among entrepreneurs not just for their savvy bets, but, equally importantly, for their service and value-add to entrepreneurs. The VCs who win will have the people skills to authentically connect with and win over founders, the go-to-market skills to help founding teams scale their businesses, and the work ethic to be known as a partner who doesnt just pick winners, but actually helps nurture and grow them.

Prediction 9: The fight to own the developer heart, mind and wallet will continue unabated. More than a decade ago, Steve Ballmer famously brought his developer-centric business strategy into the Internet mainstream with his classic, albeit cringe-worthy, developers, developers, developers chant. In proof that sometimes the best strategies have the most staying power, his mantra is still true today, even if the technologies the developers are building upon have long since evolved. In 2020, well see even more companies fight for the hearts and minds of developers--not just the major platform plays like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Oracle and Salesforce, but also a newer generation of tech giants like Zoom and Slack hoping to bring much-needed agility into the workplace. Developers should expect a lot of appreciation--and even more free t-shirts--to come their way.

Prediction 10: Software will continue to eat every vertical at a faster pace than ever before. It has been almost a decade since Marc Andreessen famously wrote in the Wall Street Journal that software is eating the world. His prediction proved to be sage because its just as true today as its ever been and will remain so in the decade to come. Even non-technology companies like WeWork pitched themselves as software companies in order to increase their value. Over the next decade, well see software devour the few remaining legacy verticals that have managed thus far to avoid digital transformation.

What do you think? What are YOUR tech, VC and future of work predictions for the year ahead? Share them with me on Twitter @kmehandru #FOWpredictions2020.

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Ten Predictions On The Future Of Work, VC And The Tech Ecosystem For 2020 And Beyond - Forbes